NATIONAL REVIEW
FEB 06, 2026 |
|
|
◼ The Kennedy Center will close for two years, which should be just enough time for the Village People to set up their residency.
◼ As far as government shutdowns go, that wasn't too painful. From January 31 to February 3, 2026, several federal government agencies reduced their staff because of another impasse on Capitol Hill. But earlier this week, the House, the Senate, and President Donald Trump got together and passed legislation that secures full-year funding for most of the federal government through the end of September. The Department of Homeland Security is an exception. The DHS is currently funded only until February 13, as Democrats, angry especially about the fatal shooting of two Americans in Minneapolis by federal agents, want dramatic change in the department. The Democratic base would not tolerate their party's refusing to stage a fight. But it's not right to expect federal workers to do their jobs without pay. Government shutdowns don't save the taxpayer any money, and they usually leave both parties looking worse. Here's hoping that a deal to fund the DHS emerges promptly, with reforms but nothing that cripples its ability to do its work.
◼ News consumers must understand that federal law enforcement agents are the bad guys. Little else would explain why media outlets have gone out of their way to describe the people who get training to follow, harass, and frustrate Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection agents as mere free-speech enthusiasts. The media's desire to shape public opinion rather than chronicle events also explains their efforts to downplay anti-law-enforcement demonstrations that flirt with riotous conduct. In Portland, Ore., for example, Mayor Keith Wilson implored ICE agents to "resign" and "leave" the facilities they're tasked with protecting from violent mobs. Riot police in Los Angeles were met with "bottles, rocks," and "commercial-grade fireworks." In Minneapolis, where the federal government is drawing down the number of immigration enforcement agents, local police have allowed miscreants to set up roadblocks to screen for and intimidate those agents who still operate there. The press seems to think the public will see this disorder and blame the Trump administration for inspiring it—and is doing its part to ensure that result.
◼ Everyone in Congress had a chance to weigh in on the federal government's decision to publicly release more than 3 million documents related to its investigation of the notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The House of Representatives voted 427–1 to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act on November 18, the Senate passed the bill unanimously, and Trump signed it into law. The documents revealed no new evidence of crimes. But they suggest that many high-profile public figures who said they had only brief professional interactions with Epstein had closer and more personal relationships with him. In 2013, British billionaire Richard Branson emailed Epstein, "Any time you're in the area would love to see you. As long as you bring your harem!" According to a Branson representative, Branson was using Epstein's term for his adult female associates, and they met only to discuss business and charity. Mm-hmm. If you're a fabulously wealthy man who hung around with Epstein after he pled guilty in 2008 to having procured "minors to engage in prostitution," you knew the risks you were taking with your reputation. There are countless victims of injustice around the world; Epstein's friends are not among them.
◼ Pop singer Billie Eilish won a Grammy Award. As she collected her trophy, she bleated out a half-baked thought: "No one is illegal on stolen land." The remark was clearly designed to communicate her frustration with the Trump administration's deportation initiatives and the conflicts they have sparked in America's bluest urban enclaves. But does she mean that there is no such thing as an illegal immigrant in the United States because America is, essentially, illegitimate? If so, are America's immigration laws the only laws that are null and void? What about intellectual property protections? Can we dispense with the notion that her musical catalogue is the property of Universal Music Publishing Group? Should we throw out the Music Modernization Act, the Fairness in Musical Licensing Act, and all the other legal protections that put hard-earned money into the pockets of Eilish and other artists? What about the Constitution's property protections? Eilish's luxury Los Angeles home supposedly sits on the ancestral land of the Tonga tribe. Strangely, she seems in no rush to return it. Perhaps Eilish didn't devote a moment's thought to the shibboleth she broadcast from the stage. Nor, it seems, did anyone in the audience who foolishly nodded along.
◼ According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. life expectancy reached a record high in 2024. The average American can now expect to live for 79 years, an increase of 0.6 years from 2023. Life expectancy plummeted to 76.5 years in 2021 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, but things have fully recovered since then. Other factors that have influenced the change include a decline in deaths from drug overdoses, falling homicide rates, and improvements in medicine. Conditions such as heart disease, cancer, and diabetes all saw reduced mortality rates thanks to new treatments that have become more accessible to a broader range of income groups. The public may be sour about the direction of the country, but this crucial statistic is headed the right way. |
|
|
◼ The market's initial response to Kevin Warsh's nomination as chairman of the Federal Reserve, summed up by a jump in the dollar, is encouraging. Warsh was appointed the youngest-ever Fed governor in 2006. With experience and good connections on Wall Street, Warsh was well equipped to help navigate the global financial crisis that soon followed. The steps taken—the bailouts and all the rest—will be debated for decades, but, however painfully, we did get to the other side. Warsh left the Fed in 2011, but he has never abandoned his critique that the institution is doing too much. Since then, the central bank has often seemed more concerned with promoting "inclusion," fighting climate change, and pursuing other frivolous missions than with inflation. The Fed, Warsh wrote in 2025, "has acted more as a general-purpose agency of government than a narrow central bank." We agree. Not so incidentally, so does Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The question for Warsh, who we should note has only one vote on the board, is how his long-standing hawkishness on inflation—some of it, when he was at the Fed, of the boy-who-cried-wolf variety—can be reconciled with the views of a president for whom, it sometimes seems, no interest rate can be too low. Warsh's desire to see a smaller Fed balance sheet is praiseworthy, but it will be hard to square with lower interest rates. He has a delicate balancing act ahead of him, and that's before he gets confirmed.
◼ If you're planning to have a baby in the next three years, the president wants you to sign your child up for a Trump Account. You'll find $1,000 in there, courtesy of the U.S. Treasury, and you can deposit additional money to invest tax-free in your child's future. All American children born between the start of 2025 and the end of 2028 are eligible for Trump Accounts, which become available on July 4, 2026. Although investments within a Trump Account will grow tax-free, withdrawals will be taxed as regular income. Critically, individual contributions will not be tax-deductible. No withdrawals can be made until the child turns 18, and after that, withdrawals before age 59½ will be considered early and face a 10 percent penalty. Altogether, Trump Accounts will function as a significantly less advantageous version of a traditional IRA. As for the merits of the policy, most American families don't need yet another entitlement program. If the federal government wanted to help them more efficiently, it could give them the money it's spending on Trump Accounts directly, such as through an expanded child tax credit. After the Trump Accounts program expires in 2029, the government should shift focus to enable families to spend and invest their own money as they see fit.
◼ Mayor Zohran Mamdani's promise to bring the "warmth of collectivism" to New York City hasn't panned out for mentally ill and drug-addicted New Yorkers who are wandering the streets this winter. So far, the prolonged cold snap that has settled over much of the eastern half of the United States has claimed the lives of 13 homeless people in the city, according to the mayor's office. That figure is expected to rise as the various agencies that compile such data report their findings. Of the victims so far, most suffered from mental illness and substance abuse. The city's permissiveness toward them and their self-endangerment is mindless and morally bankrupt. Mamdani opposes breaking up homeless encampments; he prefers policies that provide housing to those who can't care for themselves. But this assumes that the city's homeless want shelter. Not all do, even if that puts their lives at risk. The god-awful deaths on the streets of New York City are unlikely to be the last foreseeable and preventable disaster under the new mayor. |
|
|
◼ For the first time, an American jury has awarded a verdict of medical malpractice over gender-transition surgery performed on a minor who later regretted it. It is unlikely to be the last. The suit, filed in state court in White Plains, N.Y., resulted in a $2 million verdict for Fox Varian. The 22-year-old sued her plastic surgeon and psychologist and their medical practices over a double mastectomy performed on her in 2019, when she was only 16, in pursuit of a "gender transition." The jury awarded her $400,000 in future medical expenses and $1.6 million in compensation for pain and suffering. It implicitly accepted the plaintiff's argument that the doctors rushed to push surgery prematurely instead of fully exploring Varian's other psychological conditions as an explanation for her distress beforehand. The result was permanent harm. The government could have stopped these abuses. So could the medical professions. In their absence, here come the lawyers. Independent journalist Benjamin Ryan, who attended the trial after the court sealed all the records, reports that 27 other such suits have been filed, a few of which were settled out of court for undisclosed awards. This was the first one to go to trial. Lawsuits are cold comfort to the victims who now struggle through detransitioning, but they deliver justice—and deterrence.
◼ In May, the Utah Department of Health and Human Services published a report defending pediatric gender interventions. Do No Harm, a group that seeks to protect medicine from wokeness, analyzed the report and concluded that it relied on low-quality and unreliable research. It also raised concerns about the report's methodology, including the quality of cited studies, the state agency's failure to register the review with an independent auditor, and the narrow time frame from which the research was drawn. Moreover, the Utah report conflicts with other prominent research that has guided gender policy, including the United Kingdom's Cass Review and a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services report, neither of which recommends hormone treatments or gender-transition surgeries for minors. The broader movement for caution gained momentum this week when the American Society of Plastic Surgeons issued a new position statement opposing "gender-affirming" surgeries in patients under the age of 19: the first major American medical association to do so. The American Medical Association released a similar statement, which recommends that such surgeries be delayed until patients reach adulthood. We hope that other medical associations come similarly to their senses, and remember the Hippocratic oath to do no harm.
◼ After months of economic hostilities, Trump announced a trade deal with India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, to lower U.S. tariffs on Indian goods. Trump had slapped a universal 50 percent tariff on imports from India in August, ostensibly as punishment for India's purchases of sanctioned Russian oil at a discount. These purchases, in the president's view, were undermining his leverage in negotiations with Vladimir Putin to resolve Russia's war against Ukraine. Now, in exchange for India's pledge to cease buying Russian oil, Trump is reducing the tariff rate to 18 percent. This is good news relative only to the exorbitant prior rate. Persuading India to quit financing Putin's brutal war machine was always a worthy end, but blowing up our whole trade relationship was not a proportionate or sensible means. Besides, maintaining a tariff of 18 percent is poor policy. Especially as it tries to shift America away from Chinese imports, the Trump administration should be expanding trade with other developing countries that have vast industrial capacity. India is a perfect candidate for such rebalancing and a major geopolitical player whose alignment this century is not yet settled.
◼ On a visit to China, embattled British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met with Xi Jinping. He hoped that the meeting would give him a statesman's sheen. Instead, Starmer looked like a dupe. Reportedly, Xi agreed to see him in exchange for final permission for the construction of a vast, sensitively located Chinese embassy in London. In Beijing, Starmer received a few kind words and various scraps from the paramount leader's table: visa-free travel to China for Britons, a cut in whisky tariffs, that sort of thing. What Starmer failed to win (assuming he even made a serious attempt at it) was freedom for Jimmy Lai. A British citizen and a long-term resident of Hong Kong since he fled communist rule in the 1950s, Lai is 78 and in poor health. The successful self-made businessman became an increasingly outspoken critic of the Chinese Communist Party despite Beijing's tightening grip on Hong Kong. Inevitably, he was arrested, and he has been held in solitary confinement since 2020. In December he was—surprise—found guilty of various offenses and is awaiting sentencing. Trump is set to go to China in April. When he returns home, Lai should also be on the plane. |
|
|
19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701, New York, NY, 10036 |
|
|
19 West 44th Street, Ste. 1701
New York, NY, 10036 |
|
|
|
Commentaires
Enregistrer un commentaire
Thank you to leave a comment on my site