Dear Weekend Jolter,
Offering some measure of assurance that retaliatory lawfare would not consume him in office, then-candidate Donald Trump pledged during last year’s campaign that his “retribution is going to be success.”
He must have gotten tired of winning.
After a burst of retributive actions early in his second term — stripping security clearances and details for disfavored NatSec officials, punishing disfavored law firms, and setting up a DOJ working group to review, in part, the actions of those who prosecuted him — Trump’s administration is giving new attention to past tormentors.
How much is bluster and how much should be perceived by his rhetorical targets as a genuine threat? As Noah Rothman gets at, that may depend how far his subordinates go to put meat on the bone of his Truth Social posts and other comments. “Indeed, there may be no better way to earn his attention than to try to give heft to the threadbare conspiracy theories he retails or to fix a target onto the backs of his opponents,” Noah writes, citing, as one example, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s scrutiny of media outlets and programs at odds with Trump. (The jumping-off point for the piece was Trump’s weekend post suggesting that Kamala Harris, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Sharpton should be prosecuted for supposed campaign-finance shenanigans.)
More conspicuous is the ongoing clash between Trump and Barack Obama. His director of national intelligence has referred to the DOJ claims that Obama officials “manufactured and politicized intelligence” after the 2016 election to fuel the narrative that Russia interfered to help Trump — prompting Trump to accuse his predecessor of treason. The president upgraded his allegation to “serious treason” in an interview earlier this week.
As Andy McCarthy writes, Trump already has admitted that the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity protects Obama (though, Trump said, “it doesn’t help the people around him”). But Obama took the threat seriously enough to issue a rare statement in which a spokesman called the allegations “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction.”
You can read more in NR’s editorial. It is surely no coincidence, as the editorial says, that these dramas have resurfaced as the president tries to contain renewed controversy over Jeffrey Epstein. Andy breaks down the Tulsi Gabbard referral here (short version: there’s nothing new, the Clinton campaign indeed manufactured a “collusion” tale, Obama helped to prop it up, but the intelligence community was at least correct in judging that Russia meddled to hurt Hillary Clinton, and Obama’s actions were not crimes). James Lynch has more on Clinton-related revelations as well.
No matter the impetus, the attention has been enough to prompt others in the president’s orbit to get the gears of government whirring and see where it leads. Last week, the DOJ announced a “strike force” to assess the evidence publicized by Gabbard “and investigate potential next legal steps.” Senators Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and John Cornyn (R., Texas) want a special counsel to probe the involvement of Obama and officials from his administration in the “Russia collusion hoax.” Andy calls the idea “ludicrous” and laments the continuation of lawfare, with different targets:
Just as there is no legal basis to appoint a special counsel, there is no reason to believe there are prosecutable cases against former President Obama and his then-subordinates. . . . This is a vicious cycle that is undermining the legitimacy of federal criminal prosecution.
No doubt Trump’s time at the receiving end of lawfare, especially that waged by New York’s Alvin Bragg and Letitia James, fed his desire for retaliation. But at a time when the president is able to point to several victories — a trade deal with the EU, passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites, not to mention the Democrats’ low approval ratings — his antagonism toward past antagonists runs the risk of taking on a life of its own and overshadowing substance. The “cycle” of lawfare and related tactics won’t stop. As Noah cautions Republicans, “progressives will one day wield the weapons that Trump and company are fashioning for use in the culture wars against the right.”
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
On a tariff armistice: Trump Wins a Round in the EU Trade War
On Israel and Gaza: Trump Is Right to Point the Finger at Hamas for Gaza Woes
ARTICLES
Jack Butler: The Left Is Still Denying Reality
John R. Puri: The Moral and Factual Bankruptcy of Generation Z
Abigail Ingram: Mamdani’s Millennial Mirage
Jim Geraghty: U.S. and Europe Dodge the Bullet of an All-Out Trade War
Abigail Anthony: ‘Scene from a Horror Film’: The Southport Stabbing Spree, One Year Later
Charles C. W. Cooke: The Fantastically Daft Meltdown over Sydney Sweeney’s Jeans
Dan McLaughlin: The Worst Decision Yet on Funding Planned Parenthood
Audrey Fahlberg: Exclusive: Boston Children’s Hospital Subpoenaed by DOJ over Gender-Transition Procedures for Minors
Noah Rothman: Israel’s Side of the Story
Rich Lowry: Hamas Is to Blame for Gaza’s Woes
Jeffrey Blehar: South Park Illustrates the Real Economics of Television Comedy
Michael Brendan Dougherty: Everyone’s Just Going Crazy
James Lynch: Kamala Harris Announces She Will Not Run for California Governor
CAPITAL MATTERS
Tomas J. Philipson, on a correction at the Federal Trade Commission: Consumer-Oriented Antitrust: Trump’s Course Correction Begins
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Brian Allen surveys what’s making news in the art world, including a risky road trip for a delicate treasure: The Smithsonian Should Sue but Won’t, the Bayeux Tapestry Shouldn’t Travel but Will
Armond White takes on the NYT’s “100 Best Films of the 21st Century”: Signs of Bad Movie Times
RELEASE THE EXCERPT FILES
NR’s editorial breaks down what’s happening in Israel and the Gaza Strip, and why:
Israel’s many enemies have a huge incentive to promote the idea that Israel is using starvation as a tool of warfare. . . .
All that said, it does appear the humanitarian situation has now become more serious. Amit Segal, an Israeli journalist who has been skeptical of prior claims of mass starvation, has pointed to research showing the rising price of flour in Gaza and concluded that this time, “Gaza may well be approaching a real hunger crisis.” Other credible sources have concluded the same.
Even facing a hostile population, Israel has gone to incredible lengths to try and help feed Gaza. In terms of sheer amount of supplies, it’s an effort on par with the Berlin airlift. The current operation, though, has faced barriers created by the United Nations and Hamas. When the U.N. and its affiliated groups were in charge of food distribution, its supplies routinely ended up in control of Hamas, which hoarded aid for its own fighters and also sold it on the black market to raise money for its war against Israel.
Israel, seeking a way to get aid directly to the people without inadvertently helping to fund the terrorist group, helped put together the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation along with the United States. In the face of many challenges and threats from Hamas, the group has distributed about 100 million meals since launching in May. The new system for distributing food has created a cash crunch for Hamas, which is now struggling to pay its fighters.
However, despite its efforts, GHF was never intended to completely replace all food distribution programs, only to supplement them. Unfortunately, because the U.N. refuses to cooperate with the GHF, it has at times allowed hundreds of trucks worth of aid to pile up inside Gaza without distributing them. . . .
Hamas, meanwhile, has long demonstrated that it is willing to put its own population at risk knowing that the world will always blame Israel for any suffering that occurs. It’s telling that as international criticism of Israel spiked over starvation claims, Hamas dug in further in cease-fire negotiations, rejecting a deal that would have freed the hostages and put both sides on a path to ending the war.
Abigail Anthony marks one year since the horrific Southport stabbing spree, and takes a closer look at the details surrounding the killer that were overshadowed by unrest:
Exactly a year ago, a little girl named Alice told a listening circle at summer camp that “this is the best day of my life.” Then she was stabbed to death.
Her killer is Axel Rudakubana. Disorder broke out across the U.K. almost immediately after he murdered Alice and two other girls in the English town of Southport, yet practically nobody knew who he was, since the law offers certain protections for offenders under age 18. Within days, a judge lifted the anonymity order because there was significant public interest, citing the “idiotic rioting.” And yet, a year after that tragic day, it is as though the only thing we know about Axel Rudakubana is his name. Inconvenient details — his long history with knife crime, his multiple referrals to the authorities, his ties to Islam, his arsenal of weapons, his plans for biological warfare — have been suppressed, and they risk being wholly forgotten. In fact, alternative narratives have been promoted: Netflix released a limited series about a white teenage boy who murdered a girl with a knife because he was radicalized by right-wing politics on the internet, and the prime minister’s office supported efforts to show the drama in school.
And so it is time to resurface the uncomfortable truths about the “most dangerous prisoner in Britain” and his murderous rampage; failing to acknowledge the facts perpetuates the myth that this tragedy was entirely unpredictable and further allows the British authorities to evade the blame they deserve.
Rudakubana was born on August 7, 2006, in Cardiff, Wales, to Rwandan immigrants. As a teenager, Rudakubana demonstrated interest in school mass shootings, the 2017 London Bridge terrorist attack that killed eight people, the Irish Republican Army, MI5, and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, so he was referred three separate times to the United Kingdom’s counter-extremism “Prevent” program between 2019 and 2021 — but the program assessed that he lacked a commitment to a single radical ideology and therefore was not flagged as a threat.
In 2019, he asked, “Can we have a picture of a severed head?” during an art class and, in another class that day, made a graphic comment about killing with a drill. On five occasions from 2019 to 2022, the police responded to calls from Rudakubana’s home address about his behavior. At age 13, Rudakubana brought a knife and hockey stick (on which he had written the names of former teachers and classmates) to Range High School, from which he had been expelled for carrying a knife, to attack those who had supposedly bullied him. By 2020, a family member suggested to authorities that Rudakubana had a “hit list” of three targets, and the authorities had recorded that Rudakubana — unbothered by the idea of prison — intended to hit a particular boy with the hockey stick, then finish the job with the knife. That year, Rudakubana was convicted for the incident and handed a referral order, which is essentially an action plan of things like counseling to prevent re-offending.
But Rudakubana is not the type of person who can be rehabilitated.
Come for the sketch. Stay for the searing indictment of the author’s generational cohort. From John R. Puri:
There is an odd thing that many older liberals tend to say about America’s youth. As a member of Generation Z, which currently comprises those aged 13 to 28, I have often heard a similar refrain: “It’s you young people who are going to save this country.” “If only my generation listened more to you guys.” “We need you young folks to take over things, already!”
Some older liberals say such things because they seem to truly believe that young Americans are an especially enlightened demographic. . . .
Sometimes, this assumption is translated into policy. The United Kingdom recently announced that it will lower the minimum voting age from 18 to 16 to give British democracy what it desperately needs: the opinions of more teenagers. . . .
Just one small problem. Generation Z — the youngest generation that’s politically active — does not have some superior moral authority. We do not understand the world better than everyone else. Our political beliefs are not especially enlightened. Quite the opposite, in fact. We are, by and large, morally and factually bankrupt. And the polling data reflect this.
Start with our moral perception of the most recent war between Israel and Hamas, which began when Hamas burst through Gaza’s border with Israel in 2023 with a mission to “kill as many people as possible.” The terrorists gunned down concertgoers who were fleeing for their lives. They repeatedly threw grenades into a bomb shelter filled with unarmed civilians. They raped women, butchered infants, murdered the elderly, set families on fire, and took hundreds of hostages. Tragically, their mission was a success: At least 1,200 people were killed. What does Generation Z have to say about that?
In April 2024, Pew Research polled Americans on whether Hamas’s reasons for fighting Israel were “valid.” An overwhelming majority of respondents thought that Hamas’s motivations for butchering Israelis were invalid. Except those aged 18 to 29. Of those Americans, 34 percent said that Hamas’s reasons were “valid,” compared with just 30 percent who thought otherwise. That age group was also the most likely to say that the way Hamas carried out its attack against Israel on October 7 was “acceptable,” at 9 percent — more than double the share of the next-closest group that said the same. . . .
If young people’s thoughts on Islamist terrorists aren’t disturbing enough, allow me to turn your attention to Luigi Mangione — the 27-year-old man who murdered Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, late last year. As Axios reported in January, “A new poll of college students found that half view the suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s recent killing extremely or somewhat favorably, and nearly half believe the crime was justified.” Asked with whom they sympathized more, 45 percent of students said Mangione, the killer. A mere 17 percent chose Brian Thompson, the slain father of two; 48 percent said that they viewed the killing as “totally or somewhat justified.”
Generation Z’s stances on other issues are no more reassuring. Nearly a quarter of Americans aged 18 to 29 say they trust Russian president Vladimir Putin over Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the highest of any age group by far. In fact, younger people in countries around the world tend to view Russia more favorably.
Don’t miss Charlie’s take on the “great jeans” silliness:
Have you heard about the controversy that is “swirling” around American Eagle and Sydney Sweeney at present? Yes, that American Eagle and that Sydney Sweeney; the clothing outlet and the actress. Oh, you must. You see, the two of them recently teamed up for a marketing campaign, and, together, they made an ad in which Sweeney wore jeans and showed off her figure and drove a vintage car and did other Sydney Sweeney–esque things in front of the cameras. Unfortunately, though, everything “went wrong.” No sooner had the spot debuted than it had been deemed “provocative” and “offensive” and found guilty of “sparking debate.” And not about just any old thing, either. No, sir. The question that was presented by Sweeney’s new American Eagle commercial was whether or not the Nazis were Good.
You read that right. The National Conversation that has been bolted to this transient exhibition of denim has been about . . . eugenics, as conceived within the Third Reich. Swiftly after the ad was released, a handful of people on the internet began complaining that American Eagle had released a white supremacist commercial, and, as is often done, the self-licking ice cream cone was swung immediately into action: Some people were talking about it online, which meant that the press was able write about it as if it were a real story, which meant that the opinion outlets were able to get involved with a clear conscience, which meant that the press was able to write about it some more, which meant that other people were guaranteed to talk about it online, and, before too long, we had one of those perplexing news cycles that start with a single, mind-numbing complaint from the most ridiculous people in the country and end with daily updates on whether any of the figures who are passively involved in the circus have yet “responded to the allegations.” . . .
To believe that there is anything nefarious about the “Sydney Sweeney has good jeans” line, one has to forget everything one knows about sex, fashion, and marketing, to conclude that Sydney Sweeney is sedulously attempting to commit career suicide, and to imagine that, when this idea was merely embryonic, American Eagle’s beleaguered owners came back from lunch one sunny afternoon, sat happily around their corporate meeting table, and wondered aloud whether their favorite ad agency might just happen to have anything a bit Himmleresque lurking in its summer collection.
Or, to put it another way: one has to be a total bloody moron.
CODA
So here’s something completely different, a slow-building, jammy statement by an Australian instrumental band called Dirty Three. They might not be to everyone’s taste, but, hey, what is? I hadn’t listened to the trio in a long time, but the 30-year-old song came to mind the other day, and I wanted to share it. Hope you dig.