Politics

GW sides with the CCP The images created by dissident Chinese artist Badiucao to draw attention to the evils of the Chinese Communist Party are subversive in style but their message could hardly be clearer. The posters depict Winter Olympic sports while revealing the crimes of the Chinese regime: blood drips from a figure skater’s blade, a biathlete points his rifle at the head of a Uighur prisoner, a competitor rides not a snowboard but a CCTV camera. Were a leader of a major American educational institution shown Badiucao’s art, you might expect a message of encouragement or admiration. Not so in the case Mark S. Wrighton, president of George Washington University.

Today’s school-aged students are in grave danger. A murderous virus is ripping through the population, leaving a tragic body count in its wake. We need aggressive preventative measures. Classes need to go online, indefinitely if necessary. The experts must be heeded. The science must be followed. This epidemic is simply too dangerous; we cannot afford to play games with our children's lives. I’m talking, of course, about the preeminent public health crisis of our time: lawnmower deaths. The threat that lawnmowers pose to our nation is no joke. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance system, 90 Americans die every year from lawnmower accidents. Over the past decade, 3.

A new Johns Hopkins systematic review cuts in two the narrative that government-imposed mandates meaningfully prevent coronavirus deaths. The review looked at 34 different studies analyzing business and school closings, shelter-in-place orders, and international travel bans. It included data from US and European Covid mitigation efforts, along with endeavors in India, South Africa and China. Almost two dozen of these studies were peer-reviewed, while the other 12 were working papers. The results of this meta-analysis are striking. Lockdowns reduced Covid mortality by an average of only .02 percent. Shelter-in-place orders were slightly better at a 2.9 percent average, but nothing worth crowing about.

Jeff Zucker and the boys in the bubble “If you aren’t making news, you aren’t governing,” Matt Gaetz, the scandal-plagued Florida congressman, writes in his memoir Firebrand. As Jay Caruso reports in our February cover story, the ultra-loyal Trumpist and inveterate controversy-seeker grew up in the house used to film The Truman Show. Given that Gaetz embodies the blurring of the lines between reality and fiction, entertainment and politics, performance and action, that biographical detail is almost too good to be true. But how much of an outlier is Gaetz, really?

I’ve noticed a pattern over the past few years. We saw it when Joker made over a billion dollars at the box office, despite numerous reviews and think pieces assuring us that everyone who enjoyed it was a dangerous alt-right incel. We saw it most clearly in 2016 and again in 2020 when the tens of millions of Americans who voted for Donald Trump were uniformly smeared as white supremacists. To suggest any other motive was unacceptable. Racists! All of them! We saw it twice in the past week. The first of those instances is related to the ongoing Freedom Convoy protest in Canada. More on that later.

On Tuesday, I reported that Congresswoman Terri Sewell, a Democrat representing Alabama's 7th District, will not hold in-person meetings at her DC office with unvaccinated individuals. "PLEASE NOTE: Proof of COVID-19 vaccinations are required for every in-person or in-office meeting with the Congresswoman or with Staff,” read the signature on an email I got ahold of from one of her staffers. You can read that story here. Of course, I gave her office the chance to comment on the piece before it went to publication. I emailed her press secretary my questions with a two-hour deadline, and the piece was not posted until three hours later. The story was picked up by Fox News shortly thereafter. I did not hear from the congresswoman's office until around 9 p.m.

Congresswoman Terri Sewell hasn't been deterred by court injunctions against President Biden's vaccine mandates; instead, the Democratic representative for Alabama's 7th district has instituted her own. Only vaccinated persons may meet in-person with Representative Sewell or her staff, according to an email obtained by The Spectator. Representative Sewell's scheduler recently sent out an offer for congressional staffers to nab some free peanuts from Alabama. For those not in the know, congressional offices regularly receive free promotional products from their state and share or trade with other offices. A note at the bottom of the "FREE SNACKS" email, however, suggests the unvaccinated might not be able to get their hands on those tasty peanuts.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected every part of society, and the country’s economic wellbeing has been no exception. The time since March 2020 has provided a sort of natural experiment as to how various untested policy ideas play out in real life. Initially, most politicians on both sides of the ideological spectrum agreed on the need for a robust federal response to the virus. These actions took many forms: universal relief checks, enhanced unemployment benefits, and historic funding of vaccine research and distribution — just to name a few. For well over a year, the federal government was a source of seemingly unlimited spending. Although many of those policies have since fallen by the wayside or are at least becoming less relevant, some remain part of a fierce public discussion.

Another battle in the West’s sanctions war against Russia is set to begin. The US and its NATO allies have put together what they’re calling a strong package of economic restrictions on Russia in response to its military buildup near Ukraine’s border. What’s in the package remains a secret but it appears to focus on Russia’s energy sector. A State Department spokesperson told NPR on Thursday that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany would remain inoperable if an invasion happened. The Financial Times suggested that other new Russian gas developments are also on the sanctions list. The UK wants Russia booted from SWIFT, the Belgian financial messenger services company, while the West also floated the idea of sanctioning Russian President Vladimir Putin.