Conservative: Obama’s Empty Omar Defense

President Barack Obama is “not just backing radical leftists,” observes The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman, but “making fact-free assertions that investigating a particular radical member of Congress is an abuse of power.” Obama charges Team Trump with “selectively” targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar for her “political beliefs,” when he can’t “know what evidence exists” to prompt that investigation. How did the feds “persuade a judge to sign a warrant,” especially since the judge is a Democrat? Calling Obama a hypocrite is “fair,” given how his administration “poisoned our politics” and abused its power with the Russia collusion hoax. Or maybe he assumes “the bar for investigating political adversaries is just as low” as during his administration.

Mideast watch: Settler Violence Shames Israel

“In the first six months of 2026, 660 settler attacks killed six Palestinians,” frets Yardena Schwartz at The Free Press. Yet the “most pressing problem” is “the Israeli government’s apparent disinterest in stopping them.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims he won’t stand for “vigilantism,” but then “why are Jewish extremists permitted to carry out repeated attacks against unarmed Palestinians” with “near-total impunity?” Yes, “widespread Palestinian violence, both in the West Bank and Gaza, is ongoing. But Israel is responsible for maintaining law and order wherever it is violated, regardless of the perpetrators’ nationality.” If it “continues to stand by” and allow Jewish attacks, the violence “risks becoming a stain on the very people and history they claim to be fighting for.”

Culture critic: The BBC’s Trans Delusions

“When the BBC announced last week it was making a two-part documentary series about J.K. Rowling,” grumbles Malcolm Clark at Spiked, trans activists reacted as if “the Beeb was part of a giant, right-wing conspiracy.” Yet the release “describes Rowling as ‘one of Britain’s most polarising public figures’ ” merely because “she defends the factual reality of biological sex” — the majority position. It’s clear Rowling won’t participate in the documentary, knowing she wouldn’t “be treated fairly” since the BBC “long ago gave up even trying to feign impartiality when it comes to issues around sex and gender.” Future historians detailing the decline of the BBC will likely highlight the moment it alienated “Britain’s most successful living writer.”

Campaign beat: El-Sayed’s Brotherhood Dodge

Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed aims “to portray valid questions about his background and his associations as Islamophobia,” fumes the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. He dodges questions on his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, claiming his opponent’s “only strategy is to point to me and my name and my faith and to say that we’re different.” Confronted with evidence of his mom’s Brotherhood ties, he says, “I have never had these conversations with my mother. I wasn’t raised by my mother.” Finally, notes York, El-Sayed refused Saturday to clearly disavow the Brotherhood; he “turned the question away from himself” into an assault on the questioner’s motives, even sermonizing on “John F. Kennedy’s statements on Catholicism during the 1960 presidential campaign — as if there were any equivalence between the Catholic Church and a U.S. government-designated terrorist organization.”

Eye on ObamaCare: Death Spiral Ahead

“Many people with ObamaCare coverage could see their premiums rise” up to 50% “in just two years,” warns Merrill Matthews at The Hill. Critics predicted such price hikes from the start; turns out Democrats couldn’t “make health insurance work the way they wanted it to work.” Their COVID-era enhanced subsidies “simply masked the real cost of the premium increases.” Without the extra cash, premiums will rise and dropouts increase (mostly “younger and healthier people”), making “the health insurance pool smaller and sicker, which will force premiums even higher.” Plus: “2.6 million improper and phantom enrollments” will soon be be dropped, further reducing de-facto subsidies. “Can anything stop or reverse ObamaCare’s death spiral? Apart from a new round of enhanced subsidies, probably not.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board