What on earth are Democrats/Republicans doing?

Also: Ketanji Brown Jackson makes a powerful argument for school choice

There’s a stark difference between standing up for the domestic rule of law and schmoozing with a criminal over salted margarita glasses in a foreign country. Yet, if a person didn’t know any better, he or she might be under the impression that Sen. Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador earlier this month to demand the release of an imprisoned political dissident fighting for democracy rather than an alleged MS-13 gang member and former illegal immigrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Last week, I wrote about the puzzling politics of the modern Democrats.

…The attention Abrego Garcia is receiving is reminiscent of the Democrats’ recent call to “Free Mahmoud Khalil.” It is, needless to say, odd for a politician to spend his or her time defending a bigoted foreigner whose raison d’être is generating insurrections on campus while breaking the terms of his green card. Voters, many of whom dole out tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, have seen once-elite campuses turn into pits of anti-American extremism, which not only damages the reputation of higher education but also hurts the many excellent programs that do exist. For years now, the Left treats the keffiyeh-donning agitator who occupies buildings as the hero rather than the student trying to get to the library to study.

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), in fact, argues that Khalil’s deportation is a “brazen attack on our fundamental freedoms.” Though, admittedly, I’m not a constitutional scholar, I’m fairly certain that foreigners have no fundamental right to a student visa, a green card, or citizenship. While you can make the case that the administration messed up on Abrego Garcia, Khalil is being afforded due process rights. As we speak, a team of progressive lawyers is trying to keep a pro-Hamas activist in the U.S.

The rest here.

Then there’s the GOP

In a recent interview with podcaster Benny Johnson, Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson indicated that he wants congressional hearings on whether Building 7 of the World Trade Center complex was brought down by “a controlled demolition” in the aftermath of the Twin Towers collapse. Add this to hearings on the JFK files and the Epstein debacle at the White House, and I wonder which issue congressional Republicans will decide to campaign on during the 2026 midterm elections. “Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams?” “Epstein didn’t kill himself?” “Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone?”

Let’s, for a moment, forget that Congress can barely pass a budget. Let’s forget it’s done nothing to curb our spiraling spending and debt. Let’s forget that Congress has done nothing to constrain President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional, unpopular, and disastrous tariff agenda.

Congress hasn’t even bothered trying to codify the work of the Department of Government Efficiency, either. It has done nothing to streamline laws on deportations to help the administration. It has yet to extend tax cuts. It has done nothing to inhibit lower court judges from intervening in executive branch business. All that excitement over shuttering the Department of Education and the U.S. Agency for International Development will mean nothing unless Congress overturns the laws that created them.

And considering historical electorate trends and the economic mess we’re likely in, the GOP has only until the midterm elections to do anything.

Read the rest here.

You’re Wrong

On this week’s podcast Mollie and talk about Pope Francis' legacy, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's robbery, revisit the deportation debate, discuss Robert F. Kennedy's autism comments, and give our culture picks.

Ketanji Brown Jackson loves school choice

A few years back, the school board in Montgomery County, Maryland, instituted an “LGBTQ-inclusive” curriculum that included storybooks for children as young as prekindergarten. One of the rationales for the program is to “disrupt” the “binary” thinking of skeptical children — which sounds very much like indoctrination.

Parents sued. And now Mahmoud v. Taylor is front of the Supreme Court. During oral arguments, which seemed to be going relatively well for parents, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson conceded that she was “struggling to see how it burdens a parent’s religious exercise if the school teaches something the parent disagrees with.” After all, they have a “choice,” she noted. “You don’t have to send your kid to that school. You can put them in another situation.”

Theoretically speaking, this makes complete sense. You can surrender your impressionable young child to hokum about gender transformation that conflicts with your faith, or you can leave the school entirely and, presumably, send your children to a private institution or homeschool them.

The problem here is that Maryland is one of the worst states for parental choice. Jackson, who spent years on the board of a Christian academy in Maryland, should know this. Other than a tiny voucher program, there is nowhere to go. Maryland doesn’t have open enrollment policies that, at a bare minimum, allow parents to change schools within the district. Whichever school happens to be closest, no matter how poorly it performs or how ill-fitted it is for your child’s needs, is where they must go. Children might be the valuable thing in your life, but a Maryland parent is afforded more choices on where to buy a television than where they educate their children.

Maryland barely has any charter schools. Parents who want to homeschool, which is challenging enough, must wrestle with needless regulatory burdens to teach their own children.

More here.

Good reads

Conservative Catholicism Stages a Resurgence in the MAGA Era — Joshua ChaffinFollow and Aaron Zitner, WSJ

Harvard vs. Trump — Grant Addison, Washington Examiner

Free Speech Crumbles in Europe — Yascha Mounk, Dispatch

Bob Ross Finally Gets the Museum Treatment - Kelly Crow, WSJ

Until next week.