Mid-Day Snapshot · March 25, 2024

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“From The Patriot Post (patriotpost.us)”.

THE FOUNDATION

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Fellow Patriots, this day in history has a couple of significant events for Liberty. In 1634, roughly two hundred English settlers landed in Maryland and held a thanksgiving service to mark a milestone in their quest for religious liberty for Catholics. And in 1965, civil rights marchers led by Martin Luther King Jr. ended their march from Selma on the steps of the Alabama Capitol in Montgomery, marking a milestone in their quest for equal rights for blacks. The march of history reminds us that the battle for Liberty is never over. —Mark Alexander

IN TODAY’S DIGEST

ON THE WEB

FEATURED ANALYSIS

Squabbling Republicans Blow It Again

Between the moderates and performance artists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mike Johnson has an unenviable job.

Nate Jackson

House Republicans should elect Marjorie Taylor Greene as speaker and see how many incredible things she does with what will soon be a one-seat majority.

Greene, sometimes known by her initials MTG, is the GOP’s AOC, a performance artist elected to represent the people of Georgia’s 14th District. (Full disclosure: This author is a constituent who voted for her twice.) She’s a firebrand espousing populist conservative ideas, but her primary job, it seems, is drawing attention to herself. Every year, she does this by heckling Joe Biden from the audience during his State of the Union. This year, she came decked out in a T-shirt emblazoned with “Say Her Name,” a red sports jacket, and a MAGA hat.

One might argue that dressing like a carnival barker was treating the occasion with the seriousness it deserved.

She did serve a useful purpose. By heckling Joe Biden to “say her name,” Greene got the drug-addled president to attempt to say the name of Laken Riley, the young Georgia nursing student killed by, in Biden’s own words, an “illegal.”

Don’t get us wrong: Greene is talented at what she does. But what she does shouldn’t be mistaken for governing.

Democrats wrongly ousted MTG from all of her committee assignments in 2021, but she was also kicked out of the Freedom Caucus last year. Given that she has no interest in governing, however, those things actually make her stronger as the persecuted brave voice.

On Friday, she was at it again. No sooner had the House passed its $1.2 trillion spending bill to keep the government open — and we’ll have more to say about that in a moment — than Greene introduced a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair, which lays the groundwork for an effort to oust Mike Johnson from the post. “It’s more of a warming than a pink slip,” she said. She probably spent more time crafting a slew of X posts bragging about having done so than she did reading the bill or preparing the motion.

To be sure, roughly six months after booting Greene ally Kevin McCarthy from the speakership, Greene and her constituents certainly have reason to be angry at the way things still happen in Congress. Johnson promised to bring regular order to the budget process but hasn’t done so. He also did not give legislators time to read the more than 1,000-page bill before voting on it.

That and many of the items crammed into the legislation are why 112 Republicans voted against it versus only 101 for it. Still, after the Senate passed the bill and Joe Biden signed it Saturday, the government stays funded, and 112 House Republicans can go home and proudly tell their constituents they opposed the monstrosity. Everyone’s happy, right?

Well, Mike Gallagher’s not. The Wisconsin Republican announced his early retirement from Congress last month and has now said he’s bumping up his exit date to April 19. As we noted up top, that will leave House Republicans with a temporary effective majority of just one seat.

What, pray tell, does MTG think Johnson is supposed to do with a bare-bones House majority, a Democrat Senate — lost by the blundering of her Georgia colleagues David Perdue, Kelly Loeffler, and Herschel Walker, as well as assists from Donald Trump and MTG herself — and a Democrat in the White House?

Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican responsible for ousting McCarthy, didn’t offer much support for Greene. “When I vacated the last [speaker], I made a promise to the country that we would not end up with a Democrat speaker,” he said. “I couldn’t make that promise again today.” That’s a tacit admission that he and others have damaged the Republican majority.

We’d dearly love to see Congress return to constitutional order and priorities regarding spending. We’d be glad to stop the endless continuing resolutions and the high-stakes midnight showdowns to prevent shutdowns that Republicans always lose. Democrats will never cooperate, of course, and Republicans are busy fighting each other instead of Democrats. Unlike Democrats, Republicans don’t operate in lockstep.

Why was Johnson forced to rely on Democrat votes to pass a bloated spending bill? Because Republicans on the Rules Committee are bringing the bills to the floor via suspension, which requires a two-thirds majority. Meanwhile, 55 Republicans voted “No” on every spending bill in recent months. Just because Republicans aren’t unified doesn’t mean Mike Johnson doesn’t still have to govern in tandem with Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden.

In this bill, the GOP did manage to hang on to a bare increase in military spending and accrue some money for border security, but getting Democrats on board meant adding their priorities to the legislation, which drove off Republicans.

Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott summed it up nicely: “This is a crazy way to run the country.”

We don’t have a silver bullet for fixing the GOP, but the coalition runs a pretty wide gamut of ideological and practical approaches, and unity is pretty darn hard to come by. Most Republicans don’t enjoy the safe seat Greene does, either. She won her seat in 2020 with 75% of the vote, but that dropped to 65% in her reelection bid, which indicates that some of her constituents are growing a bit tired of her performance (pun intended).

We’re left wondering just how many Republicans would prefer to be in the minority because screaming that Washington is broken is a heck of a lot easier than fixing it.

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Executive News Summary

Trump’s two New York cases collide, Moscow terror attack, Leftmedia lose it over Ronna McDaniel hiring, and more.

Douglas Andrews, Thomas Gallatin, & Jordan Candler

Cross-Examination

  • Trump’s two New York cases collide: In Manhattan today, Donald Trump headed to court for an appearance concerning one of two legal cases against him — one that threatens his freedom, and the other that threatens his family business. His appearance regards the start date of the former, a trumped-up criminal case that includes 34 counts of falsifying business records related to his private hush-money payments to an ex-porn star. The eight-year-old case was dug up by Soros-funded Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in an attempt to incarcerate Trump and thereby take him off the presidential playing field. It’s unlikely to work, even in the rigged town of Manhattan, which went 9-to-1 for Joe Biden in 2020. “There’s no way there should be a prison sentence in this case,” said former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy on Fox News this morning. “This is a non-violent business-records crime at best, in which there are no victims, and no one was hurt.” McCarthy noted that courts usually see through an overzealous prosecutor’s stacking of charges in order to make them look more serious, adding, “It would be a travesty if [Trump] did an hour in prison.” The other case is a non-jury civil trial in which hard-left judge Arthur Engoron has assessed a ridiculous $454 million bond, due today, and for which Trump-deranged New York Attorney General Letitia James has threatened to begin confiscating Trump’s properties if he doesn’t come up with the money. As McCarthy notes, “It’s a lot easier to win a money judgment than to enforce it, especially when you have such complicated finances as Trump does.” The next move likely belongs to AG James. Trump, who has vowed to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary, was unusually terse as he walked into the courtroom at 10 this morning, stopping only long enough to say: “Thank you very much, everybody. This is a witch hunt. It’s a hoax. Thank you.”
  • Moscow terror attack: On Sunday, Russia mourned the deaths of at least 133 people killed in a terrorist attack on a concert hall in Moscow on Friday night. During a music event, a number of men in camouflage entered and fired on the crowd of patrons and set the venue on fire. Within hours of the attack, Russian authorities announced that they had arrested 11 individuals, including four suspected attackers. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was recently reelected, blasted the attack as an act of terror and promised to punish the perpetrators. ISIS was quick to claim responsibility for the attack. Even so, Putin took the opportunity to tie Ukraine to the attack, alleging that Kyiv helped by keeping a “window” open for the perpetrators to escape. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky vehemently denied the charge, saying that Ukraine had nothing to do with this terrorist attack. The U.S. backs up Zelensky’s denial, with National Security Council spokesman Adrienne Watson stating: “ISIS bears sole responsibility for this attack. There was no Ukrainian involvement whatsoever.” Furthermore, two weeks ago the U.S. embassy in Moscow warned of a potential terror attack, issuing the following statement on March 7: “The Embassy is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.”
  • The Left hits a new low with Princess Kate’s cancer announcement: We hope the Leftmedia and the late-night also-rans are happy now. Looking at you, Stephen Colbert, and you, John Oliver. On Friday, the Princess of Wales, Kate Middleton, released a video in which she revealed her cancer diagnosis. From afar, this seems somewhat different than the typical “royal” story. We’ve long found Princess Kate to be the most endearing Royal, just a classy, beautiful young woman and a great wife and mom. This is reinforced by her video message. Since the announcement, there’s been an outpouring of support, and the prince and princess have now shared a new statement from their home at Kensington Palace: “The Prince and Princess are both enormously touched by the kind messages from people here in the UK, across the Commonwealth and around the world in response to Her Royal Highness’ message. They are extremely moved by the public’s warmth and support and are grateful for the understanding of their request for privacy at this time.” Contrast the class with which the princess and prince are conducting their affairs with that of codependent narcissists Megan and Harry, who, from the comfort of their California mansion, chimed in with a request for “peace and privacy” for Kate and William. This seems odd, ironic, and tone-deaf, given how they’ve trashed William and Kate in recent years and how they’ve taken a blowtorch to the royal family and its very public struggles. Better to have just shut their lousy soup coolers on this one.
  • Kamala’s red line and AOC’s lies: Vice President Kamala Harris was pulling double duty this weekend, trying to establish her nonexistent foreign-policy chops while at the same time trying to appease the pro-Hamas wing of her Democrat Party’s base. As the New York Post reports, Harris “kept open the possibility of US consequences if Israel ignores the Biden administration’s ‘red line’ and barrels into the southern Gazan city of Rafah.” As Harris warned on ABC’s “This Week”: “We have been clear in multiple conversations and in every way that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake. I have studied the maps. There’s nowhere for those folks to go,” she said, referring to Palestinian civilians taking refuge in Rafah. History, of course, shows that recent Democrat presidents don’t have a particularly good history of drawing red lines in the Middle East. Just ask Barack Obama, who beclowned himself and our nation back in 2012 when he talked tough to Syria’s Bashir al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, warning that Assad’s use of chemical weapons would cross “a red line,” but then slunk away when the Syrian regime flouted that warning all too convincingly. It would be perfectly fitting, though, for a Democrat president to finally enforce a red line — against our strongest ally in the region. In other Middle East lowlights from dim bulbs, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was spewing lies, accusing Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza and arguing that Hamas couldn’t spare the Palestinian people any additional hardship and end the war right this minute by surrendering and releasing the hostages it has held since October 7. “The actions of Hamas do not justify forcing thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to eat grass as their bodies consume themselves,” she said. “We and the Israeli government has [sic] a right to go after Hamas, but we are talking about a population of millions of innocent Palestinians. We are talking about collective punishment, which is injustifiable [sic].”
  • Leftmedia pundits lose it over Ronna McDaniel hiring: Former Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has been hired as a political analyst by NBC News. In announcing her hiring, Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” noted that McDaniel “will support our leading coverage by providing an insider’s perspective on national politics and on the future of the Republican Party.” However, having an insider’s perspective is a bridge too far for several Leftmedia pundits who slammed NBC for the hire. As a litany of criticism poured out, none was more unhinged than that of former “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd. In talking to the program’s current host, Kristen Welker, Todd accused McDaniel of engaging in “gaslighting” and “character assassination” of the media. He then said, “I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation.” To be fair, Todd does know a lot about gaslighting since he regularly practiced it when he was the host of “Meet the Press.”
  • WY bans medical mutilation of kids: On Friday, Wyoming Republican Governor Mark Gordon signed Senate File 99, legislation that bans gender-mutilation surgeries on children. The law prohibits “physicians from performing procedures for children related to gender transitioning and gender reassignment.” While Gordon signed the bill, he expressed hesitation over the potential for government infringement of rights. “I signed SF99 because I support the protections this bill includes for children,” he explained. “However, it is my belief that the government is straying into the personal affairs of families. Our legislature needs to sort out its intentions with regard to parental rights. While it inserts governmental prerogative in some places, it affirms parental rights in others.” The bill does contain exemptions that allow for parental or guardian consent “for a child who is born with a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sex development.” Wyoming now joins 23 other states in passing legislation protecting children from gender mutilation.
  • Greatest ethical scandal: Medically transing the kids is “one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine,” says a report commissioned by French senators. The report comes on the heels of the WPATH Files revelation and serves to corroborate the investigation’s findings, as it documents how healthcare professionals are being indoctrinated by a “trans-affirmative” ideology. French Senator Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio notes that the report found that “fashion plays a big role” in the growth of gender-bending surgeries. Furthermore, the risks associated with these gender-bending medical procedures are so downplayed that Eustache-Brinio argues, “The sexual transition of young people will be considered as one of the greatest ethical scandals in the history of medicine.” With the United Kingdom having already banned gender-bending medical procedures on minors, it looks like France may soon do the same. And with a growing number of U.S. states doing likewise, hopefully this medical scandal will be ended.

Headlines

  • White House vows to work to repeal pride flag ban passed with spending bill (Washington Examiner)
  • DOJ launches national “resource center” to aid authorities in taking firearms from people deemed “threat to themselves or others” (Daily Wire)
  • Anti-gun Everytown employs propaganda, fake numbers in juvenile shooting report (TTAG)
  • AMLO threatens to worsen illegal immigration crisis if U.S. does not cave to his demands (Daily Wire)
  • Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun to resign at end of the year following Alaska Air door blowout (New York Post)
  • New York’s $4.4 billion shoplifting shadow economy revealed — fueled by eBay and Facebook Marketplace (New York Post)
  • Seven countries met the WHO’s air quality guidelines — and the U.S. and Canada aren’t among them (NBC News)
  • Israel offers to release 800 Palestinian prisoners, including 100 murderers, in hostage deal (New York Post)
  • Satire: Meghan Markle announces Netflix show about how hard it’s been dealing with Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.

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How Google Interferes in Our Elections

A new report documents that Google has, since 2008, used its search engine and other tools to favor the election of Democrats.

Douglas Andrews

Nearly four years ago, a self-described Democrat named Robert Epstein was called by Republicans to testify before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. What he told them was chilling.

“I love America and democracy,” he began, “and I am also not a conservative.” But then, having firmly established his left-leaning bona fides, he offered evidence of what every fair-minded person who’s ever done a politics-related Google search has long suspected: “Data I’ve collected since 2016 show that Google displays content to the American public that is biased in favor of one political party — a party I happen to like, but that’s irrelevant.”

Epstein, a Harvard-educated behavioral psychologist and the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, went on to paint a grim picture: “Democracy as originally conceived,” he said, “cannot survive Big Tech as currently empowered.”

That might seem hyperbolic, but it wasn’t. Sixteen months later — now just a month before the 2020 election — Epstein appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to warn that Google and other Big Tech companies could surreptitiously shift as many as 15 million votes without leaving so much as a paper trail.

Was anyone listening to him?

Apparently not, if we’re to believe a new 16-page report from the Media Research Center, which documents 41 separate instances of election interference by Google since 2016.

For example, in 2008, when Google decided it wanted Barack Obama to be the Democrat nominee instead of Hillary Clinton, it censored pro-Clinton bloggers. Obama, of course, went on to win the nomination and then the presidency, and his administration kept that good thing going. As the report details: “Despite Obama’s promises to ‘shut the revolving door,’ an unprecedented number of Google employees cycled in and out of the administration. The Intercept tabulated ‘55 cases of individuals moving from positions at Google into the federal government, and 197 individuals moving from positions inside the government to jobs at Google.’”

That there is a lot of incest. And there’s more. By 2012, Google’s then-CEO Eric Schmidt was helping the Obama campaign assemble its technology and team. As the MRC report reads, “Schmidt was intimately involved in building Obama’s voter targeting operation in 2012, recruiting digital talent, choosing technology, and coaching campaign manager Jim Messina on campaign infrastructure.” Schmidt was so thoroughly invested in Obama’s win over Mitt Romney that he was at Obama’s campaign headquarters on election night.

What are the odds that a Big Tech titan will be hanging out with Donald Trump on election night 2024? (It’s a rhetorical question.)

Much to Google’s chagrin, 2016 didn’t go as planned. But then, The New York Times had Trump as a 100-to-1 shot on Election Day, so Google could be forgiven for not having taken the Trump threat too seriously. Still, its engineers weren’t sitting on their hands. They tweaked their search engine’s autofill capability to misdirect searches looking for info about Hillary Clinton’s crimes and her potential indictment, and they hid “crooked Hillary” from their search suggestions entirely. Couple these dirty tricks with the general search-engine censorship and Google’s targeted efforts to boost the Hispanic vote in “key states” by helping to fund rides to the polls, and the impact becomes considerable, especially in an election that was decided by fewer than 100,000 votes in three “Blue Wall” states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. As Epstein put it in that 2019 interview: “In 2016, Google’s search algorithm likely impacted undecided voters in a way that shifted at least 2.6 million votes to Hillary Clinton, whom I supported. I know this because I preserved more than 13,000 election-related searches prior to election day, and Google’s search results were significantly biased in favor of Secretary Clinton.”

Imagine their shock when they woke up on Wednesday to the reality of President-elect Donald Trump.

Shortly after the election — while some of our nation’s leading universities were scheduling “stress-busting self-care activities” such as coloring, blowing bubbles, and sculpting with Play-Doh — Google held an all-staff “trauma session” during which the company’s cofounder, Sergey Brin, called the election “deeply offensive” and said that Trump’s election “conflicts with many of [Google’s] values.” These words sound like more than just condolences; they sound like a call to action.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of the exhaustive MRC report, but we encourage you to read it yourself. Do so, and you’ll learn about Google’s election interference in the 2018 midterms and its all-hands-on-deck, everything-including-the-kitchen-sink approach to the 2020 election.

As for Google, MRC founder and president Brent Bozell had this to say about the Big Tech behemoth: “Google’s massive and deliberate efforts to interfere in U.S. elections for the past 16 years is unacceptable and the biggest threat to American democracy today.”

As Elon Musk put it: “This article understates the magnitude of the problem — Google interferes to help Democrats thousands of times every election season! This is to be expected when their censorship (aka ‘Trust & Safety’) teams … have far left political views.”

Never fear, though. As a Google spokesperson told the New York Post: “Politicians on the left have a long history of making similar claims, too. We have a clear business incentive to keep everyone using our products, so we have no desire to make them biased or inaccurate and have safeguards in place to ensure this.”

As we noted last week, Google jettisoned its famous “Don’t Be Evil” motto in 2015 in favor of the far more subjective “Do the right thing.” By then, its leadership clearly knew that the former directive had become untenable.

At least they get points for self-awareness.

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ERIC Aids Electoral Fraud

A leftist-created voter roll management system misidentified at least 168,000 people in Virginia as eligible to vote.

Thomas Gallatin

The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) bills itself as a nonpartisan organization whose “mission is to help states improve the accuracy of their voter rolls” and “increase access to voter registration for all eligible citizens.” In fact, more evidence has emerged that exposes ERIC as little other than an organization designed to increase Democrat voter turnout and hamstring the cleanup of voter rolls.

The initial appeal of ERIC, created in 2012 by hard-left activist David Becker, was that it promised to help states clean up their voter rolls using a more efficient and cost-saving system, thereby ensuring greater election integrity. Election integrity is an essential component for establishing and maintaining trust in any democratic institution. Any whiff of voter fraud will only invite doubt in an election’s results.

The problem is that despite its claims, ERIC is less concerned about maintaining accurate voter rolls and more interested in getting what it calls the “eligible but unregistered” (EBU) people onto a state’s voter rolls. This is evidenced by member state agreements to send voter registration forms to those on the EBU list, which ERIC compiles.

Back in August 2022, our own Douglas Andrews observed: “What makes the ERIC system so destructive to voting integrity, though, is that it doesn’t manage voter rolls in the way we’d normally expect it to. That is, it doesn’t tighten voter rolls so much as it inflates them. Indeed, while ERIC was responsible for the purging of just three million ineligible voters from the nation’s rolls in 2020, the system identified 17 million new voters. And you can be sure that that trove of new voters didn’t come from rural areas or the evenly divided suburbs; it came from urban areas like Atlanta and Detroit and Milwaukee and Phoenix.”

The good news is that, as ERIC has been exposed as being little other than a left-leaning organization designed to increase Democrat voter rolls, a growing number of Republican-led states have ended their partnership with ERIC.

As of July 2023, nine states have left ERIC: Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, Florida, West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, and most recently Texas. And thanks to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, Virginia remains free of ERIC’s grasp due to his veto of a Democrat-led bill that would have required the commonwealth to rejoin the dubious organization.

Youngkin had good reason to do so. “I have been explicitly clear about my affirmation of the legitimacy of our elections,” he said. “My focus is safeguarding Virginians’ private information and continuously improving an efficient, cost-effective voter registration system.” He then noted that Virginia initially left ERIC due to “persistent management issues, improper data use, escalating costs, and the inability to meet statutory requirements for border state information sharing.” And those things have not changed.

Virginia left in part because, as Elections Commissioner Susan Beals explained, ERIC “expanded beyond that of its initial intent — to improve the accuracy of voter rolls.” And ironically, or perhaps tellingly, voter roll accuracy has actually gotten worse.

According to records obtained by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, ERIC “claimed at least [168,000] deceased, relocated, [or] ineligible people” as EBUs “for taxpayer-funded outreach in Virginia.” That is not a minor rounding error. Rather, that’s a number that can easily swing election results.

Furthermore, it appears that Virginia’s experience with ERIC is not an anomaly. PILF has found that other ERIC member states “show similar efforts — or none.”

As noted above, it’s clear that ERIC’s primary reason for existing is to register as many voters for Democrats as possible, but the notion that EBUs exist that have not yet had an opportunity to register is bogus. As the PILF report correctly contends: “Remember, the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA), aka ‘Motor Voter,’ mandates that states like Virginia offer voter registration at DMVs. Meaning, every EBU fed back to Virginia has already said ‘NO’ to a voter registration offer. Everyone meeting these EBU criteria was submitted to Virginia officials for taxpayer-funded postcard outreach explaining how to register to vote.”

What ERIC is essentially doing is using a state’s records and funding in a get-out-the-vote drive for Democrats. Remember Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s “glitch” before the 2022 general election, whereby she sent out 30,000 registration postcards to noncitizens? Guess where Griswold got her list of erroneous EBUs. That’s right — Colorado is an ERIC member state, and Griswold, who happens to be a Democrat, chalked this up to a simple mistake. Make of that what you will, but the fact that a contact list of EBUs even exists is problematic. Private citizens themselves should be responsible for registering to vote, not the state.

Hopefully, more states will abandon ERIC. Contrary to its claims, this leftist organization has undercut election integrity rather than strengthen it.

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Navy Leadership Failures

The woes of the United States Navy run from the smallest ship to the highest leadership.

Brent Ramsey

In recent years, there have been incidents, accidents, and sideshows that reflect poorly on the Navy. Problems cannot be solved and corrected without honest retrospection.

  • In 2021, the USS Bonhomme Richard, a $3 billion capital ship, burned to a smoking hulk lashed to the pier. Navy personnel proved incapable of fighting the fire, and the ship was a total loss and stricken from the records. The JAG manual investigation that followed implicated poor leadership, and dozens of senior officers were disciplined as a result. An essential warship was lost to the Marines because a fundamental part of being a sailor — fighting a fire on a ship — was neglected up and down the chain of command.
  • Recent surveys of Surface Navy officers show most do not aspire to command. Has command at sea become so difficult that career officers want no part of it? Why do over half of this generation of career officers fear command?
  • Two entire ship classes, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and Zumwalt-class destroyers, are utter failures, and another class, the Ford-class carrier, is beset with major problems in operational effectiveness years after commissioning. The LCS proved to be so ineffective that the Navy is retiring the entire class decades early, which is a spectacular waste of billions. The Zumwalt-class destroyers are likewise an embarrassment with almost zero capability after the Navy spent billions. The Zumwalt class has been reduced to being multibillion-dollar test ships. The Ford finally deployed years late but still has multiple deficiencies that have not been corrected. Ford-class carriers cost billions more than planned and took years longer to build.
  • The Navy has missed its recruiting goals by thousands for two years, even with lowered admission standards. The Navy is failing to make the case to most young people that serving in the Navy is a worthy endeavor. A major source of recruiting is white males, those from the South, and Christians. These traditional sources have dried up due to the politicization of the Navy with its emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and climate change.
  • The Navy just announced ships are deploying with thousands of vacancies in manning, contrary to long-standing Navy policy. Ships without adequate manning are more dangerous to operate and place undue burdens on the crews.
  • During the pandemic, more than 10 times as many sailors committed suicide yearly than were lost to COVID. The Navy had a massive vaccination effort for a low-risk disease for the healthy military cohort, devoting resources to ensure every sailor was vaccinated. But it was business as usual regarding the mental health of at-risk sailors. How many lives would have been saved if the Navy had devoted the same resources used for vaccination to saving at-risk sailors?
  • In 2021, the USS Connecticut collided at high speed with an unobserved underwater sea mount. Fortunately, no one died. The CO, XO, and Chief of the Boat were fired. Who else in the chain of command was culpable for certifying those in charge? The Navy suffered a long-term loss of a vital attack submarine, and only these three leaders were held accountable. The sub will not return to service until 2027, and the cost of the repairs is estimated to be $80 million. That $80 million and a five-year loss of an essential ship will harm the Navy’s readiness at a time when we can least afford it.
  • Eight USS Ticonderoga-class cruisers were selected for upgrades in 2015. According to the Navy, some $2.4 billion was spent by 2021. Four of the selected ships, after being worked on for years, were quietly retired because they were too hard to fix, wasting millions. In 2024, the Navy is still working on upgrades to the remaining four cruisers with no end in sight. Has this kind of decision-making become commonplace and without consequences?
  • Navy shipbuilding is under duress. The shipbuilder of the Constellation-class frigate announced the first ship would be a year late. The second Ford-class carrier (USS Kennedy) will now be commissioned in 2025, three years later than planned. Still, it will not be operational before 2027. In 2027, the USS Nimitz, the ship Kennedy is replacing, will be 52 years old. Both SSN shipbuilders have announced delays in the construction of new attack submarines. China builds warships much faster and at a much lower cost. If reforms are not implemented urgently to fix the ailing shipbuilding industry, China will soon have the world’s most powerful and capable Navy.

I served at senior levels both as a Naval officer and as a Navy civilian. I have a vested interest in the Navy. The Navy is not prospering, and if our Navy fails, the nation is at severe risk. For our nation and our allies to be safe, a strong, competent Navy is essential — especially at a time when threats are multiplying around the world. Anything less will lead to disasters and ongoing conflicts. More dangerous scenarios loom on the horizon. Citizens must be aware of the dangers that we face internationally. Urge members of Congress to legislate the strengthening of our Navy and major increases in its funding. Our future as a nation depends on it.

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The Road to a Republican Senate

GOP control depends on a weak Biden and strong candidates.

Matthew Continetti

Republican chances of winning control of the U.S. Senate improved Wednesday when a Washington Post poll showed Larry Hogan (R., Md.) trouncing his potential Democratic opponents by double digits. The popular former governor, known for his independence and common sense, has been supporting Israel as his Democratic rivals squabble for left-wing votes. Though Hogan remains the underdog to replace retiring Sen. Ben Cardin (D.), his successful record and unique profile will force Democrats to play defense in a blue state that they normally would be expected to win without breaking a sweat.

The Democrats have reason to be nervous. The 2024 Senate map endangers their 51-seat majority like no other recent election. Democrats hold most of the contested seats this year, including in states that Donald Trump won twice. They also hold all three seats that the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter rates as toss-ups. The most at-risk Republicans are Sens. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Rick Scott (R., Fla.) — and their seats are both considered “likely” holds in red states.

The geography of this Senate cycle has always favored Republicans. But recently the number of potential GOP gains has increased, thanks to President Biden’s dismal job approval and to candidates such as Hogan. The decline in split-ticket voting, with states backing the same party for president and Senate, helps Republicans, too. And so does the realignment of the electorate along class lines (as measured by educational attainment) rather than ethnicity and race.

I divide the Senate races into three tiers: from the likeliest seats to turn red to outliers that could flip if everything goes the GOP’s way. Here’s my breakdown:

Tier One: West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana. These are the GOP’s top targets. The seat in West Virginia, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D.) has announced his retirement, is practically guaranteed for Republican governor Jim Justice. Manchin is the sole statewide Democratic official in West Virginia, where Donald Trump won by around 40 points in 2016 and 2020. When Manchin retires, the state will complete its decades-long transition into a GOP stronghold.

Ohio pits incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D.), now in his third term, against Republican challenger Bernie Moreno. The Buckeye State car dealer, born in Colombia, ran roughshod over his opponents in Tuesday’s GOP primary, beating his closest rival by 18 points. Moreno has the endorsement of Ohio’s junior senator, J.D. Vance (R.), and of former president Trump. The national GOP has rallied behind him. Trump won Ohio by 8 points in both 2016 and 2020. And Vance was one of the few Senate GOP success stories in 2022, when he won by 6 points. Brown is a skilled politician. But he’s swimming against the current in a state pulled by the red tide.

Montana’s incumbent senator, Jon Tester, is another talented Democrat serving his third term. His likely opponent is businessman and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. I’ve admired Tester’s personal affect and campaign skills since I covered his first Senate campaign, against GOP incumbent Conrad Burns, in 2006. And Tester has been able to thrive in a red state that voted for Trump by 20 points in 2016 and 17 points in 2020. But Sheehy, a newcomer backed by Montana Republican senator and Senate campaign chairman Steve Daines, will give him trouble. This is also the first time Tester and Trump have shared a ballot.

Tier Two: Nevada and Arizona. If Trump flips these two southwestern states in November, Democratic incumbents in Nevada and in Arizona could fall as well.

Nevada’s Jacky Rosen (D.) keeps a low profile in Washington, but she defeated incumbent Republican Dean Heller handily in 2018 and is the sort of senator you’d expect to last in a state that hasn’t voted for a GOP presidential nominee in 20 years.

Rosen’s problem is that Nevada is changing. Trump lost the Silver State by 2 points in 2016 and 2020, but he has since overtaken Biden. Rising prices and a broken immigration system have pushed Hispanic voters toward Trump. According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump is ahead of Biden by 4 points in Nevada. And his lead is consistent. The last poll that had Biden ahead was published in October. A Trump victory would boost likely GOP nominee Sam Brown, an Army veteran on his third attempt to win federal office.

In Arizona, the national GOP establishment coalesced around former television broadcaster Kari Lake. The MAGA celebrity, who lost a close race against Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022, is the likely Republican nominee against Rep. Rubén Gallego (D.) to replace retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I.). Lake will have to win over the Republicans and independents who were leery of her two years ago. She will also need Trump to defeat Biden in Arizona. At this writing, Trump is up by 5 points.

Tier Three: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. In 2016, Trump broke through the “Blue Wall” of Rust Belt states that hadn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1988. That same year, Republican Senate candidates won in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. There was no Senate race in Michigan.

Trump lost the Blue Wall states in 2020. Biden beat him by about 150,000 votes in Michigan, 80,000 in Pennsylvania, and 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. Michigan Senate candidate John James, now a Republican congressman, also lost by some 90,000 votes to incumbent Sen. Gary Peters. It stands to reason that if Trump climbs over the Blue Wall in 2024, then Republican Senate candidates in these three states will follow him on their way to D.C.

According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump leads Biden by 3 points in Michigan, where Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D.) is likely to face former congressman Mike Rogers (R.) in the fight to replace retiring Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D.).

Trump leads Biden by under 1 point in Pennsylvania, where GOP businessman and brilliant author Dave McCormick is running to unseat three-term Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D.). And Trump leads Biden by 1 point in Wisconsin, where investor Eric Hovde is the likely Republican nominee against two-term incumbent Tammy Baldwin (D.).

If you add Larry Hogan to the mix, Republicans stand to win anywhere from one to nine seats in November. A GOP run could shift the balance of power in the Senate from 51-49 Democratic to 58-42 Republican. That would be the highest number of Republican senators since the 67th Congress, from 1921-1923, and the largest Senate majority of either party since the 111th Congress, from 2009-2011.

But a lot can — and will — go wrong. As it stands, Republican candidates in swing states are running behind Trump, closely trailing their Democratic opponents. Indeed, Justice and Hogan are the only two Senate candidates with leads outside the margin of error.

The closeness of the election is a reminder that Trump’s lead, while persistent, is also narrow and precarious. It relies on independent voters continuing to prefer Trump to Biden, and on non-college minority voters showing up for Trump in November. If neither condition holds, then Trump’s advantage may shift ever so slightly by Election Day, bringing a win for Biden and limiting GOP gains in the Senate.

Candidate performance is another reason to be skeptical that Republicans will win all three tiers of Senate seats. We’ve been here before, most recently in 2022, when the GOP squandered opportunities by nominating individuals who mystified or scared the public. NRSC chief Daines has put a lot of work into candidate selection and training, and so far, his strategy appears successful. Yet all it takes is an errant word or a goofy moment or a general aura of weirdness to send independents and suburbanites back into the Democrats’ arms.

The 2024 candidates have something the 2022 candidates did not: President Biden on the ballot. His deep unpopularity — the public’s judgment that he is not up to another term — fuels Trump’s comeback and Republican hopes. We’re approaching the moment when Biden’s problems will become insolvable. If Biden can’t improve his numbers soon, Trump will return to office with a Republican Senate. One that includes Larry Hogan.

Matthew Continetti is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the founding editor of The Washington Free Beacon. For more from the Free Beacon, sign up free of charge for the Morning Beacon email.

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SHORT CUTS

Leftmedia Lob

“Daniel Penny, the former Marine who choked a homeless man to death last May on a New York City subway car, will stand trial beginning Oct. 8.” —ABC News (“Is ABC News just openly attempting to get sued for defamation these days?” —Not the Bee)

The BIG Lie

“To make Israel a partisan issue only hurts Israel and the US-Israeli relationship. Trump is making highly partisan and hateful rants. I am working in a bipartisan way to ensure the US-Israeli relationship sustains for generations to come, buoyed by peace in the Middle East.” —Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who has turned Israel into a political football

Tweet That Didn’t Age Well

“The overwhelming majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. And Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. In fact, they’re also suffering as a result of Hamas’ terrorism.” —Joe Biden, February 22 (“Over 70 Percent of Palestinians Support Hamas’s October 7 Terror Attack: Poll.” —National Review)

Adding Insult to Injury

“I’ll be candid. I don’t know the exact number of Americans that were left behind because the starting number was never clear. Same is true of at-risk Afghans … those numbers varied so widely that they were quite inaccurate, as best I could tell at the time. I would just say, I am not sure, even today, about the accuracy of all those numbers.” —retired Gen. Mark Milley

Too Late!

“It’s time for Kamala Harris to shine.” —CNN’s Julian Zelizer

For the Record

“We know legal immigration is America’s great strength, but it has always depended on a few key prerequisites. Immigration must be legal and measured. Why? Because only the host nation can adjudicate how many immigrants it can successfully accept and assimilate.” —Victor Davis Hanson

“If the first thing immigrants do is illegally cross the American border, and the second is to reside illegally in America, and the third is to obtain fraudulent identification to mask that illegality, then they will establish long patterns of illegal behavior and disrespect for their hosts.” —Victor Davis Hanson

Re: The Left

“Back in 2015, Google jettisoned its famous ‘Don’t Be Evil’ motto in favor of the far more subjective ‘Do the right thing.’ By that time, its leadership clearly knew that the former directive had become untenable. At least here, we can give the company points for self-awareness.” —Douglas Andrews

“The only party clamoring to save Hamas right now is the Democratic Party. Biden claims he continues to ‘affirm that Israel has a right to go after Hamas’ but also wants a ceasefire. Those positions are in direct conflict.” —David Harsanyi

“As a lifelong Democrat from a politically active Chicago family, I can no longer recognize the party from my youth. We once stood for something other than the next election or hating others.” —constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley

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