President Biden’s 2024 announcement “had none of the optimism you typically see from incumbent campaigns proud of what they’ve achieved,” and instead was “bizarrely limited in its focus to a single threat: the return of Donald Trump,” gripes Ben Domenech at The Spectator. “If the economy is doing as well as the White House regularly claims, you’d think that would be at the center of his launch and appeal for re-election. Instead, the mood of this ad was dark and foreboding,” a choice that has “an admission of failure as its subtext.” In short, “Biden’s campaign and the people who prop him up want more than anything to run against Donald Trump. . . . The question is: why are Republicans about to eagerly give him that gift?”
“Republicans urgently need to sort out their political argument on abortion, and the best effort we’ve heard so far is Nikki Haley’s speech” Tuesday combining “the moral case against abortion with a politics of persuasion and humility,” cheers The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. She is unapologetically pro-life but “tempered that conviction with political realism,” noting that bills that limit abortion in heavily Republican states can’t pass on the federal level. “She’s right”: “Compromise and incrementalism are often unpopular in movements rooted in moral conviction, but the pro-life right can’t dictate the law when most voters still think abortion should be legal.” Haley deserves credit for “confronting the subject” without being “sanctimonious or censorious” — and for seeking “discrete policy victories while building a broader cultural consensus.”
“The passage of a state budget bill should be a thorough, transparent and democratic process that allows for ample public input and discussion,” implores the Empire Center’s Kyle Davis. Gov. Hochul might do as past governors and “waive the constitutional requirement for bills to age on lawmakers’ desks for three days before being voted on,” but with the budget already weeks late, most “legislators are not in the know about what is in or out of the budget and will need time to understand what’s contained in the final deal.” With budget extenders, they’ve kept the state working fine, so “the case” for rushing through “the final budget bills is nonexistent.”
“The right that wants to disempower certain aspects” of Israel’s judiciary, as well as “the left that is staging a revolution against Israel’s democracy supposedly in the name of preserving” it, both “got wrapped up in their own melodramas over the past six months,” observes Commentary’s John Podhoretz. The left “took to the streets” over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s move to curtail Supreme Court power — a “way to handle losing an election” that “in its effectiveness” is “potentially more dangerous to the future good working order of democracy than the election denialism Trump practices.” But “democratic elections” are “better than street action.” “Netanyahu’s decision to suspend the judicial-reform process” shows a “pragmatic and necessary foresight”; he’s no Pharaoh, despite “protestors shamefully likening him to” one.
Despite a law giving “more veterans access to community care options through their VA benefits,” the Veterans Administration “has instead chosen to limit access to community care despite long wait and drive times,” thunders Darin Selnick at The Hill. Internal documents “reveal the VA is using outdated and manipulative scheduling practices to give the appearance that veterans can receive appointments within the wait and drive time standards.” Worse, “schedulers will cancel and reschedule appointments without veterans’ consent to ‘reset’ the eligibility clock to deny community care.” And staff get “trained to reduce referrals to community care by dissuading veterans from using the program or misleading them about their eligibility and management of care.” It’s time to “hold VA leadership accountable for their blatant disregard of veterans’ wellbeing and the law.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board