Elex desk: ZuckBucks Are Back!
Deep-blue Greenwich, Conn. was “offered a grant worth $500,000 from the US Alliance for Election Excellence,” notes Elaine Mallon at The Spectator — “an $80 million initiative created by the Center for Tech and Civic Life,” funded by “by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife” allegedly to help elections during COVID. But CTCL-funded counties “moved 2.3 percentage points more Democratic, and nearly 90 percent of CTCL funding in swing states went to Democratic-voting counties,” even ones with plenty of cash of their own like Greenwich and Chester County, Pa. (which got $2.5 million). No wonder “twenty-five states and twelve counties” banned “third-party funding of election administration” after 2020. Now the group’s “turned to a new model in advance of 2024” to get around the bans — “membership” with access to “partner organizations” propped up by “liberal dark money.” The “supposedly nonpartisan” effort sure looks partisan.
From the left: The Times’ Illiberal ‘Sickness’
A “sickness” of “illiberal” bias has overtaken The New York Times, thunders Joe Klein at Sanity Clause. One notable result: The paper poorly serves the “urban poor” and blacks. “Family preservation, neighborhood stability that comes with strict law enforcement and more creative schooling” are the “three essential components to a successful anti-poverty agenda,” but “you don’t often read about” them in the Times. It’s done “nothing to alleviate or illuminate the true causes of poverty” but instead helped exacerbate a climate of “anger and intolerance.” Klein urges “a major campaign, from the center and from the liberal left, against the illiberal bigotry” in “mainstream discourse.” “Elite media institutions like the Times have to be responsible, too.”
From the right: Gay’s Record of Race Ideology
Throughout Claudine Gay’s “career at Harvard . . . racialist ideology has driven her scholarship, administrative priorities, and rise through the institution,” argues Christopher F. Rufo at City Journal. A DEI task force she commissioned as dean in 2020 released recommendations “for engaging in the ‘historical reckoning with racial injustice,’ ” and “in 2022, Gay implemented an initiative . . . for ‘denaming’ any ‘space, program, or other entity’ deemed racist.” As prez, she “leads a sprawling DEI bureaucracy . . . that seeks to influence how students speak, think, and behave in relation to race.” “Harvard is now learning” that “naming as president someone who sees race and sex not as incidental human attributes but as ideological constructions that must be imposed on the institution comes with a significant downside.”
War watch: Aid Ukraine, ‘REPO’ Russian Assets
Ukraine may lose “if Congress does not approve a supplemental package,” but Yuliya Ziskina at The Hill suggests helping fund that aid with $8 billion in now-frozen Russian state assets “to supplement American spending.” “Congress must pass the supplemental for Ukraine, and the REPO Act.” That would let Uncle Sam “seize and transfer Russia’s frozen sovereign assets to fulfill Russia’s existing obligation to compensate Ukraine.” Passing both measures would show “Putin that his war has consequences and that Russia cannot exploit international law while wrecking all of its tenets.” It’s time for America to lead — “Ukraine, the world and justice are waiting.”
Conservative: Grey Lady’s Poll Puzzle
“The New York Times conducted a poll, showing that Joe Biden is in terrible shape for reelection because of the economy and immigration, and chooses to interpret it as a sign that Biden is in trouble because young people think he’s too supportive of Israel,” chuckles National Review’s Jim Geraghty. The poll asked, “What do you think is the MOST important problem facing the country today?”; only 1% answered “The Middle East/Israel/Palestinians” — far below the numbers citing “inflation,” “the economy” and “immigration.” Plus, notes Geraghty, “the entire article is framed as Biden facing a crisis among young voters who are abandoning him, but deep in the article, in the 32nd paragraph, the Times concedes that many of those who were old enough to vote last cycle didn’t vote.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board