Politics

Biden’s bill of health and the Democrats’ third rail The president is in rude health, according to his doctor. In fact, the octogenarian is so youthful, he’s still growing. In a letter detailing the results of a medical exam conducted on Thursday, White House physician Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor recorded the president’s height at six feet — a modest increase on the five feet, 11.65 inches he measured in December 2021. Summarizing his findings, Dr. O’Connor reported that Biden is a “healthy, vigorous eighty-year-old” who is “fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency, to include those as chief executive, head of state and commander in chief.

Here's an idea that won't happen but should: if Kamala Harris really wants to reset her political future — and strike back hard against the naysayers in Washington who have undermined her for the past two years — she should consider replacing Dianne Feinstein in the Senate. Hear me out, and feel free to play the theme from The West Wing or House of Cards in the background. Democrats are transparently paranoid about Kamala Harris's failure to launch. She's viewed as a major liability, and should she be the nominee in 2024 through happenstance or an unexpected Joe Biden retirement, most Democrats in Washington feel she would lose to any Republican, even Donald Trump.

In recent months, the train track that was bustling during my small Pennsylvania town’s heyday has been back in use, hauling coal to ports that ship it overseas. The train blares its whistle around 7 a.m., waking our sleepy town with a bygone sound of enterprise. The whistle blows again around 5 p.m., and people rush to watch the train chug on through. Real train buffs, with expensive cameras in tow, line the tracks at dawn. It’s novel, old-timey, and thrilling. But otherwise most of us never think about trains. Most Americans, for that matter, never think about trains.

Haley takes aim at the Olds Nikki Haley launched her heavily trailed presidential campaign today with a speech in Charleston. The former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador walked on to “Eye of the Tiger” and came out swinging with a not-so-subtle jab at over-the-hill politicians refusing to give way to a younger generation. “We’re ready, ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past,” she said. “If you’re tired of losing, then put your trust in a new generation. And if you want to win, not just as a party, but as a country, then stand with me.” Haley, to her credit, backed up this rather platitudinal generational pitch with a mischievous and concrete policy: mandatory mental fitness checks for officeholders over the age of seventy-five.

The biggest open secret in Texas politics is now public knowledge. For months, it's been known that Ted Cruz will run for re-election to the Senate in 2024, skipping the presidential contest. It's a smart move by Cruz for a number of reasons, and will likely benefit the potential candidacy of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who would have had to compete with Cruz in the conservative lane for the GOP nomination. Those who come in second in presidential primaries, as Cruz did in 2016, tend to run again. The fact that Cruz is passing on the opportunity leaves a major opening for others. Since 1976, every competitive presidential primary on the Republican side has had one thing in common: at least one candidate has hailed from Texas.

The National Park Service cleared a major homeless encampment in downtown Washington, DC on Wednesday, a move that eased local residents and infuriated activists. McPherson Square, located just blocks from the White House, has been effectively cordoned off from the rest of the public since the proliferation of the tent city during the pandemic. The Spectator was the first to report in December that the NPS would start enforcing its no camping policy on park land in the nation’s capital. Signs went up around McPherson Square last month warning the inhabitants of the tent city that they would be removed on February 15.

“Are you anti-mask?” “Are you anti-vax?” “Are you anti-science?” Employees of Levi Strauss & Co repeatedly pummeled me with these questions during 2020-2022, when I was the company’s brand president. Why? I advocated in defense of children: against the masking of toddlers, against closed playgrounds and youth sports, for open public schools. I’m not exactly sure what an anti-science person is. But that’s not me. I’m pro-science. And that’s why I’m anti-mask. Given the findings from the recent Cochrane study, a meta-analysis summarizing seventy-eight studies including a million people, the science is now clear: “Face coverings make little to no difference” in Covid infection and fatality rates. Even when the hallowed N95 is worn.

Here's a simple question: how much American taxpayer money is being spent to silence, censor, and blacklist opinions? Legacy media reporting on the House Oversight Committee's initial look into the actions of Twitter during the 2020 elections focused mostly on questions surrounding Hunter Biden's laptop. The committee's investigative reports, however, ought to hone in on the most disturbing aspect of this story: social media giants were routinely directed and coerced into censoring and silencing American citizens by entities funded by those same taxpayers.

Fresh — or not so fresh — from his awkward and stilted State of the Union address, President Biden took his show on the road to Florida to stump against what he claims are Republican plans to cut (“sunset” in Beltway-speak) Social Security and Medicare. Apparently unaware that Florida is now an irretrievably red state, on Thursday the president spoke at the University of Tampa in what was widely received as a kickstart to his expected 2024 reelection campaign. Despite platitudes about bipartisanship, Biden targeted Florida Senator Rick Scott, a Republican who has floated a plan to review federal programs once every five years for reauthorization (though the plan does not specifically mention either Social Security or Medicare).