Spectator Life

Republicans in the House are considering a bill to make major changes in federal student loans for college, and President Trump is floating the idea of making colleges responsible for borrowers who fail to repay. For decades student loans and their repayment are never far the center of controversy, but it wasn’t always that way. I grew up in the era before massive student debt. Student loans were available in 1971 when I went off to college, but they didn’t dominate the terrain like a Tyrannosaurus rex. They were more like Barney, the joyful purple denizen of PBS, who had a ferocious appetite for public funds but had not yet evolved into the carnivore who preys on the livelihoods of college graduates.   But the student-loan monster had already been born.

Gwyneth Paltrow may be set to pass her celebrity-everyone-loves-to-hate crown to another out-of-touch elitist. The Goop founder and queen of outrageous “wellness” hacks has announced – gasp! – that she’s begun eating like the rest of us. Paltrow has followed a Paleo diet for years – meaning she cut out virtually all culinary joy for the sake of eating like a cavewoman, though I assume she did more gathering than hunting. Yet on her Goop podcast last week, Paltrow announced, “I’m a little sick of it if I’m honest. I’m getting back into eating some sourdough bread and some cheese. There, I said it. A little pasta. After being strict with it for so long.” Paltrow’s foray into normal-people food is serendipitous; or perhaps it’s ingenious timing.

“Why did I ever order those tests?” This is the question that Dr. Sharon Ostfeld-Johns of Yale Medical School now asks herself of every drug test she ever ordered for newborns with mothers who were heavy users.The pediatrician is one of a growing cadre of doctors who think that at risk babies should not be screened for drug exposure because positive tests lead to interactions with child welfare services and exacerbate what they see as racial bias in the system. Like so many new policies in this field, though, the efforts to reduce racial disparities only end up harming the most vulnerable children.   Dr.

The weather is growing warm, which means anti-Semitic demonstrations are blooming at elite universities. The hatred of Jews is no longer hidden, as it was in the days when Jewish enrollment was quietly limited by quotas. Now, it is displayed openly by a campus coalition led by hardline American leftists (students, faculty, and administrators) and Muslim students, some from America, some from the Middle East.  Their hatred is screamed at Jewish students and pro-Israeli speakers—and then at anyone who dares support them or simply demands the basic right to speak or be heard. Any support for Israel is damned as “genocide” and then shouted down, shamed, or worse.

Scratch almost any major US political story and sooner or later you’ll hit a big red nerve that belongs to the Chinese Communist party (CCP). Tariffs, energy, TikTok, the border, Fentanyl, Greenland, Panama, the Gulf of America – on all these subjects the Trump administration is, one way or another, trying to limit Beijing’s power in the West. And Donald Trump’s "war on Harvard," it turns out, is no exception. It’s clear that the President is pushing against anti-Semitism and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion madness on America’s most famous campus, as well as in countless other colleges and universities.

The Singer Sewing Machine Company is credited – that’s the right word – with popularizing the idea of the installment plan. Starting in 1856, a customer could buy a sewing machine for a very modest down payment and a rather lengthy commitment to further payments. Isaac Singer copied the idea from a piano company, but he turned it into a model of aggressive marketing to the average household. His “dollar down, dollar a week” slogan launched the era of consumer credit on a mass scale, and helped to marry mass production of durable goods to middle-class household economy. The idea spread quickly. By early in the 20th century, people could buy “washing machines, refrigerators, phonographs and radios” on the installment plan. The idea faced some resistance too.

I was present when President Trump signed the executive order to protect women’s sports. But I knew the fight wasn’t over. In fact, it seems to be getting even uglier.  The American “progressive” faction is digging its heels in to allow men to keep stealing women’s trophies and opportunities – turning hard-won female spaces into political battlegrounds.   This Monday, for the first time, a man ran in the Boston Marathon in the women’s category – and a female athlete who disagreed with his inclusion was sent violent threats, highlighting the farcical state of American athletics.  The rule change means that now it is possible for a man to win the men’s category, the non-binary category and the women’s category.

President Trump has already dropped the first hammer on Harvard. He’s ready to drop the whole tool chest on a whole slew of universities – and it won’t be pretty. Outraged Democrats will call the punishing sanctions authoritarian, even fascist, and well beyond the authority of a constitutional officer. Republicans will back the president, saying universities had plenty of chances to correct their serious problems and did nothing.  Some threatened sanctions are readily defensible, such as demanding better protection for Jewish students and eliminating discrimination in admissions, hiring and promotion. Some are not, such as demanding intrusive federal oversight of course content and departmental hiring. All Trump’s actions will be challenged in court.

This is drumming season.  That’s the time of year when the woodpeckers stake out their territories by tapping out tattoos on hollow trees.  Road signs or “no trespassing” edicts make an even more impressive racket.  I come to Vermont to get away from Midtown Manhattan’s horns and sirens – but this time of year, it’s just a visit to the percussion section.  But the real racket isn’t from the birds declaring their sovereignty over the woods.  It is from Harvard declaring its sovereignty over American higher education. In a letter dated April 14, the principals of two Washington law firms wrote a brief letter to three officials in the Trump administration telling them they need not worry about antisemitism at Harvard.

In his first public remarks since leaving office, Joe Biden recalled – without a hint of self-awareness – the moment from his childhood he first saw “colored kids” on a bus going by.” It was, in his telling, a pivotal experience, one that sparked his youthful sense of outrage growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania.Let’s stop right there.At best, the speech – billed as his first major intervention since Donald Trump took office – reveals how deeply stuck in the past Biden’s racial worldview really is. At worst, it’s an embarrassing reminder that the Democratic Party continues to view black voters, especially black men, not as equals or thinkers, but as props in white liberal moral storytelling.As a black conservative, I've heard this record before.

Last week’s violent anti-Semitic protest at Stanford is yet another sign of a pernicious climate on many campuses. The immediate targets are Jews and Israel. The larger targets are many of the values we prize in the West. At Stanford, students broke into the university president’s office using hammers and crowbars. They proceeded to barricade themselves inside, destroy the furnishings, and scrawl noxious graffiti there and on the building outside. Some estimates say they caused $700,000 in damages. Twelve students were arrested by local police. The Santa Clara District attorney announced that the break-in had been carefully organized in advance, caused enormous damage and warranted criminal charges. But, he said, it did not warrant severe punishment.