Partisan bickering may soon reach an early zenith in the 118th Congress, but so might congressional chutzpah. In the previous session, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke longstanding House tradition by removing two Republicans from their committee assignments over their support for Donald Trump’s claims about the 2022 election. Pelosi further blocked then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s appointment of several Republicans to the January 6 select committee, also an unprecedented step.

McCarthy has chosen to block two Democrats from their committee assignments over their misconduct—but also a bit of retribution. New House Democrat leader Hakeem Jeffries had the temerity to claim that McCarthy’s move “runs counter to the serious and sober mission of the Intelligence Committee,” and that McCarthy should “honor past practice” and rescind his decision.

McCarthy is honoring past practice—the practice of bare-knuckled partisanship by Pelosi. Jeffries could have objected to it at the time but chose to endorse it. This is merely sauce for the goose after Democrats cooked the gander in 2021. 

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The Editorial Board of the New York Times recently published what we can only describe as an abortion manifesto—1800 words, two-thirds of the print page and the headline, “We must place access to abortion on the ballot.”

The statement included these words, “The fight over abortion has taken on new resonance in post-Roe America. It is no longer just a front in the culture wars, but rather a fundamental matter of health and well-being for millions of women. And the difference between life and death for many…” 

And thus the editors go on proposing a course of action, advocating state-level action through ballot measures—to support abortion.

So: there’s the plan, spoken right out loud.

But notice the very important “tell,” so to speak.  They said it is a “difference between life and death for many…”

Indeed, it is: abortion is intended to be a matter of death. Period. That’s what makes abortion—abortion. 

And this culture of death ought to be opposed every step of the way.

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The culture of death is expanding its reach. The FDA just issued what it calls a “permanent rule,” giving the approval for retail pharmacies to prescribe abortion pills.

What that means—as a practical matter—is that CVS and Walgreens may now be dispensing mifepristone, that is to say the abortion pill. The availability of those pills at the big chains and local so-called brick-and-mortar pharmacies, that is a game changer.

This was not imaginable back in 1973. Today, you need to know, more than half of all abortions in the United States happen not in an abortion clinic, but rather by means of taking a so-called abortion pill. Let me state clearly what many of you, I’m sure, already recognize: The moral equation does not change whether the agent of death is now a chemical, or a pill, or a surgical abortion.

Pro-abortion advocates cheered this move by the FDA saying this decision is good so far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. The culture of death, just understand this, is never satisfied. 

It will never be satisfied.

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So now we’re learning what the left means by “equity.” Seven high schools in Fairfax County, Virginia, have admitted they deliberately failed to tell some of their students they had been commended by the prestigious National Merit corporation. It was part of a new school strategy meant to provide “equal outcomes for every student, without exceptions.” 

The left’s concept of equity is crystal clear. Because not everyone can excel, no one will be allowed to.

It’s a fundamental assault on the American dream. The promise of this country has always been that you’ll be free to go as far as your hard work and talents can take you.

This premise no longer holds true when the left is in charge. Their vision is emblematic of the way Winston Churchill once described socialism: “the equal sharing of misery” … or in this case, academic mediocrity.

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The nation has, once again, maxed out its credit card. I’m referring to the $31.4 trillion dollar limit on gross federal debt.

A “debt limit crisis” is most definitely not a “crisis” in the sense of a sudden set of extraordinary and dangerous circumstances. It is, rather, a regularly recurring moment of American political Kabuki.

When power to raise the debt limit is divided between Democrats and Republicans, getting to an agreement can be tedious.

Congressional Republicans will triumph only if they can agree on a few reasonable demands—and then make those demands specific, understandable, and public; and repeat those demands again and again and again on every television set and over every radio show and podcast.

So: What’s the GOP’s ask? Spending cuts, cutting appropriations for the 87,000 new IRS staff agents, and a tangible commitment to a border wall are among the candidates but there is no consensus yet.

If they can get to that consensus without cutting defense spending, it would be an early win for the new House majority.

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Perhaps Joe Biden’s big mistake was announcing he’d run for reelection. Because that’s when all his troubles started.

Think about it. Apparently, he’s had all kinds of classified documents, stashed all over, for six years. Yet none of us knew about it. That happened only after Democrats overperformed in the midterms and Joe Biden then decided he hadn’t passed his expiration date after all.

The problem is that many in his own party don’t agree. They see Biden’s frequent confusion growing worse. They realize he might not have won in 2020 had he not been able to campaign from his basement.

But the biggest problem is that by running for reelection, Biden is blocking the rise of a new generation of Democrats.

Joe Biden was a compromise candidate from the start. Democrats rallied around him out of necessity. If he’s no longer useful, they’ll move him aside for the same reason.

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A million children have fled the public schools since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It’s not hard to guess why. During the pandemic, parents finally got a peek inside the schoolhouse doors, and what they saw was grim: too much wokeness, and too little learning. That, plus the shutdowns themselves—driven by teachers’ unions and extreme Covid policies embraced by many school districts, all contributed to the exodus.

There’s a warning here for the politicians. American parents aren’t pleased with the education their children are getting.

Legislators have two choices. They can fight the teachers’ unions leaders to try to fix the public schools. Or else they can pass legislation to offer poor and middle-class kids the same educational choice rich kids get.

The decision is theirs. But it’s clear the status quo simply isn’t an option.

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Finally cornered by the media over a scandal the White House hid before the midterms, Joe Biden claimed that he takes security “seriously” for classified material. Just how seriously? After the Department of Justice disclosed that Biden had kept classified documents in his garage, Biden told the media that it was every bit as safe as his Corvette. 

The Corvette standard had, until Thursday, been applied by the media. After Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel and detailed how the White House had slow-rolled the news of Biden’s violations of the Espionage Act, that standard began to change. Earlier reporting had been framed almost entirely around the usual “Republicans pounce!” narrative. 

Afterward, media outlets began to grudgingly note that the scandal was at least the same class as the one hyped up about Donald Trump – and that Biden and his team had hid it until well after the midterms. That’s not a Corvette standard; it’s a political car wreck, entirely of Biden’s own making.

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Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s triumph in gaining the gavel after 15 ballots was perhaps sweeter than anyone not named McCarthy knows—because it was so very hard to gain and because it was so long in coming. 

McCarthy’s road to victory began long before his first bid for the speaker’s gavel came up short in 2015. It began before McCarthy joined the House in 2007, and even before he was elected to the California State Assembly in 2002. Perhaps it began when McCarthy was still in college and he started as a staffer for Bill Thomas—the California Republican in the House for whom he worked for 15 years.

McCarthy won because enough Republicans know the value of their party, and the work that it takes to build it. 

As the new speaker distributes the fruits of his long struggle, McCarthy won’t be “punishing” anyone. He’ll be rewarding those who appreciate the value of political parties. 

The margins in the House are narrow. The challenges are great.

We wish Republicans and Speaker McCarthy well.

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Did a Russian troll-farm meme of Hillary Clinton arm-wrestling Jesus really cost her the 2016 election? After more than six years of unrelenting hysteria over “disinformation,” the Washington Post belatedly reported on a study that concluded what everyone should have known already. Data shows that Russian ‘interference’ via supposed disinformation didn’t impact voter choices—at all.

All of this irrational panic over a minor social media intrusion in a national campaign has done real damage to free speech. Congress demanded censorship from social media and tech giants, who saw this as an opportunity to interfere in American political processes for their own ends.

As Joseph Bernstein wrote in his 2021 book “Disinformed,” these warped incentives created a government-media industrial censorship complex—and it plagues us to this day, supported by mainstream media outlets who failed to ask the basic question of whether memes change voter decisions at any scale, let alone enough to decide a national election.

Shame on them all.

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