US Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson poses during a group portrait at the Supreme Court in Washington DC. REUTERS Media watch: Covering for Court-Packing “Politico’s Josh Gerstein illustrated precisely” this week how, if Democrats “try to pack the Supreme Court, the media would run cover for the enterprise,” flags National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke. Gerstein noted Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s advice to Americans to “defend the judicial system against salvos that jeopardize its independence,” but then cited only President Trump’s attacks on the court. Hah! Dems’ threats the past week “to pack the United States Supreme Court, abolish the Virginia Supreme Court, and interfere with any other court that gets in their way” barely left room for any other news, but Gerstein “can’t — or he won’t — see it.” That he cited only Trump’s criticism is “telling, but it’s also pretty alarming as a harbinger of things to come.”
As we near May 20, “Cuba’s Independence Day — a historic event in which the U.S. played a pivotal role,” recent “writing on the wall seems to suggest that this date could also mark the beginning of the end of 67 years of communist rule in Cuba,” cheers Arturo McFields at The Hill. Team Trump has “declared that Cuba constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to national security” and has expanded “sanctions.” “Trump wants a free Havana, and he makes no secret of it,” leaving the dictatorship “in a state of panic.” Add strong talk from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and it looks like Cuba’s “ready for its liberation day, and the U.S. seems to be ready to help.”
“Great news for Mayor Zohran Mamdani,” announces Jeff Yass in The Wall Street Journal; here’s how “to solve your affordability crisis.” The city “spends roughly $37 billion a year to educate about 850,000 children” —about “$42,000 per child, per year” — for results that are “a national shame.” Just give every mom $21,000 per year “as a voucher for her child to attend whatever school she chooses,” and put the other $21,000 “in a real account” that over 13 years should generate $300,000 upon graduation. The cash spent on the schools should make “every mother of two” in NYC is “a millionaire.” Give “her the money so she can control her destiny.” The teachers union isn’t interested in “education” — “they just want power.”
“Endless media profiles describing her competence and pragmatic leadership” during the campaign “overhyped” Virginia now-Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s “strikingly bipartisan tone” and her dedication to “lowering costs,” laugh The Washington Free Beacon’s editors. In office, she immediately joined the “nakedly unconstitutional, highly partisan, and shockingly incompetent” effort to gerrymander the state’s House districts. She campaigned saying she “had no plans to redistrict,” then claimed she had to “save democracy” by “trampling the state constitution.” She was “counting” on the state’s court “to cower” once voters passed the referendum, but it “laughed” the Democrats “out of court.” Spanberger is a “cautionary tale” of every “new Democrat darling” promising to “save the Republic through sheer grit and ruthless competence.”
“Supreme Court liberals’ penchant for slow-walking major rulings isn’t simply political,” warns The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle, it has imperiled “the lives of the conservative majority.” Notably, the Democrat-appointed justices “delayed the release of the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling reversing Roe v. Wade” by stalling on finalizing their dissent; then the draft majority opinion leaked, setting off “a wave of leftist protests and a literal firestorm of pro-abortion-led violence” in a bid to prevent the final ruling. A “would-be assassin was breathtakingly close to competing his deadly errand at Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home.” And they just “slow-walked” the 6-3 Louisiana v. Callais ruling, “which effectively put an end to Democrats’ nakedly race-based gerrymandering” — a delay that means “state legislatures won’t have time to redraw their maps,” which ups the chances “Democrats take back power.”
