From the right: Dems’ Deal With Israel-Haters

Aligning “with the international left on Israel” may offer Democratic leaders “short-term relief but create hellish problems” later, warns The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim. The “anti-Zionists” Dems ally with for “a winning coalition despise democratic politics,” and absolutely refuse to compromise: E.g., they’ve heckled Mayor Mamdani for bowing to “legal reality” that he can’t arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. And however Jewish Democrats like House candidates Brad Lander and Scott Wiener pander to the anti-Israel diehards, they’re still despised. The party’s leaders “don’t grasp that the anti-Israel left would rather destroy them and their party than moderate or compromise.” Losing Jewish donors isn’t enough; Democrats will need “more pain” before dumping their “new friends.”

Elex analyst: Is Trump Still ‘For You’?

“The defining moment of the 2024 presidential campaign” came when President Trump donned a yellow apron to work “the fry station and the drive-thru window at a McDonald’s,” argues the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone. That presented him as approachable, “serving ordinary people” while “acknowledging the seriousness of the work they do.” And what’s harmed his “political standing” since is the perception that he’s now “serving himself rather than his constituents,” even as prices rise due to “high tariffs and the Middle East conflict.” Indeed, “Trump’s job approval moves inversely to gas prices.” Republicans may “argue that Democrats are ‘for they/them,’ ” but convincing “voters that ‘President Trump is for you’” is harder.

Biowar beat: Russian-Plague Puzzle

Moscow is denying plague rumors after “a technician at Russia’s Irkutsk Research Anti-Plague Institute has died of ‘pneumonia of unknown etiology,’ ” but Ivana Stradner & Mark Montgomery warn at The Hill that “Russia has been asking a darker question for nearly a century: how can disease be turned into a weapon?” Though “Russia officially ended the Soviet offensive biological weapons program in 1992,” note the reluctance to “admit international inspectors” to Irkutsk. Hmm: After the Kremlin supposedly foreswore such military research under the Biological Weapons Convention, “in 1979, authorities concealed an anthrax release from a Soviet biological weapons facility that killed civilians.” And if the tech’s death “was simply a case of pneumonia, Moscow should have little to fear from an independent investigation and transparent reporting.”

Conservative: Obama’s Odd Israel Obsession

Ex-prez Barack Obama “has carried a chip on his shoulder about Israel since he left office,” observes Commentary’s Seth Mandel; “it’s the one thing he apparently can’t let go of.” In a recent Belfast speech, he veered into full-on antisemitism, claiming that “Jewish people” “took land” in the Middle East. In reality, notes Mandel, “Jews legally purchased land” in what’s now Israel; “rather than displacing people, they drained malarial swamps so they could live on land they purchased.” Yet “none of this is new, nor would Obama listen to a history lesson that he so desperately needs. So what’s the point?” Well, “in the Middle East, Obama failed”— and now “he’s upset that Israel won’t just live quietly under an Iranian nuclear shadow so his personal legacy could remain intact.”

Shrink: Private Schools’ ‘Disability’ Dodgery

“Rather than dreading a diagnosis signaling their kid has a learning disability,” neuropsychologist Katie Davis reports at The Free Press, her “clients have come to expect and hope for one.” Why? It “can open the door to a range of accommodations in school, including extra time for testing.” Such “accommodations have become so common, especially in private schools, that time constraints on tests have become meaningless.” Public schools have “structures in place that constrain how far the gaming can go”; private schools have “set up a system’ that’s “easy to game.” Argh! “We should teach kids to learn how to navigate” times when they “fall short.” And when accommodations “become something you can purchase, the students who lose are the ones who were never in a position to buy them in the first place.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board