Politics

“They are the ones who are making it a war zone,” Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois bloviated on CNN recently, as Jake Tapper listened, displaying his best Resting Serious Journalist Face. “They need to get out of Chicago. If they’re not going to focus on the worst of the worst, which is what the President said they were going to do, they need to get the heck out.”   ICE has overreached its authority, according to Pritzker, arresting innocent children and zip-tying grandparents in the middle of the night, asking people for their citizenship papers on the street. And yet here comes the National Guard, as ordered by Donald Trump, an “invasion” of trained soldiers from Texas. “Every American needs to stand up and stop this madness,” Governor McCheese tweeted.

There was a time when Wikipedia felt like a miracle: a spontaneous, self-governing lexicon arising from the turbid chaos of the web. No editors kept gates, no gilded towers barred entrance, no one had power to impose a worldview, it was all done by thousands of neutral volunteers harvesting and serving the world’s knowledge, onto a digital platter. And their sheer numbers – it was hoped – would preserve accuracy and objectivity. The same way a crowd has more wisdom than the individual.However, as the years pass, that illusion of noble neutrality has shattered. And a clear and maybe terminal tilt to the left has revealed itself. As Wiki-founder Larry Sanger lamented in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, the Wikipedia he wanted has long gone.

Big nicknames come with big responsibilities. And the owner of one of the mightiest monikers – Big Balls – feels the weight of his own obligations keenly. In a rare interview, Edward Coristine spoke about how his family fled to America from Russia after his grandfather was executed for spying for the US. Valery Martynov was a KGB officer who was recruited by the FBI in the early 1980s. He passed Soviet secrets to his American handlers until he was exposed by Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, two of the most notorious traitors in US history.  Recalled to Moscow under false pretenses, Martynov was arrested and executed in 1987. His widow and children eventually sought refuge in America.

New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has a bold plan for the city’s schools: phase out the Gifted and Talented program in elementary education. His rationale is that these programs create disparities and feed inequality. It’s a familiar progressive argument. If some students are excelling, others must be suffering. If a child is recognized as gifted, it’s unfair to those who aren’t. The logic is as simple as it is destructive: equality means sameness, even if sameness means mediocrity. There is nothing wrong with recognizing giftedness. In fact, it’s common sense. If a child demonstrates unusual ability in math, science, writing, or the arts, you nurture it. You don’t bury it under a misguided notion of “equity.” Excellence, like athletic talent, must be cultivated.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is shocked, shocked, that President Taco Bowl is using memes online to mock his comportment during the government shutdown. Jeffries calls the memes, which depict Jeffries and Chuck Schumer wearing sombreros and sporting handlebar mustaches “racist” and has tough-guyed Trump to “say it to my face.”   Cockburn enjoys a good troll-meme and suddenly finds himself in a world where Republicans are the ones with a sense of humor. House Speaker Mike Johnson told “my friend Hakeem” to “just ignore it.”   “These are sideshows. People are getting caught up in – in battles over social media memes,” Johnson said in the Hill. “This is not a game. We’ve got to keep the government open for the people.

On Tuesday evening, the Illinois pope weighed in on Illinois politics. A reporter from the Catholic news outlet EWTN asked Pope Leo XIV about the Archdiocese of Chicago’s decision to award Senator Dick Durbin with a “lifetime achievement award” for his work advocating for immigrants coming to America. “Some people of faith are having a hard time with understanding this because [Durbin] is for legalized abortion,” the reporter said. How should Catholics feel about that? “I am not terribly familiar with the particular case,” the Pope conceded, speaking in English. Then he spoke more broadly, and vaguely, about what it means to be “pro-life”. “Someone who says ‘I am against abortion’ but says ‘I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” he said.