Centrists: Trump’s Health Reforms Beat the Hype

When “the Trump administration took reasonable and modest steps” to curb fraud and waste, “Democratic leaders characterized them as draconian cuts,” notes The Washington Post Editorial Board, which proved untrue. When it canceled 760,000 dubious Obamacare policies set up by unscrupulous brokers, progressives called it a plot “to strip Americans of their healthcare” —- yet “the sky didn’t fall,” as only 51 of the removed enrollees requested reinstatement.” Ending a temporary Medicare Part D subsidy brought claims that Trump had “doubled prescription drug costs for millions of seniors,” but premiums “will increase on average by less than a dollar.” All in all, “the administration’s efforts to reduce costs and combat fraud look promising,” proving progressives were simply dusting off “granny’s wheelchair for another attack ad.”

Media watch: Big Lies and French Riots

“The mainstream media are fuming,” notes Heather Mac Donald on X, claiming National Rally head Marine Le Pen is “exploiting the French riots” by arguing they confirm everything she has “been warning about for years, especially regarding Third World immigration. Determined to “deconstruct these far-right narratives,” prestige press mount an “elite effort at euphemism,” such as calling the violence and destruction “unrest” and “social instability.” “But the waves of hate-filled destruction crashing over France’s once great cities validate” Le Pen’s diagnosis of “France’s demographic catastrophe.” “If naming a deliberate attack on Western civilization by those who feel only resentment and envy earns one the title of far-right extremist or racist, so be it.”

Rowling: Beware Trans Activists’ Elite Blinders

“What to me represents no change at all in my political or ideological outlook has, in recent years, seen me and women like me subject not only to criticism but also to death threats,” marvels JK Rowling on her website. “We oppose the current, dominant strain of trans activism, which holds that a man who declares himself a woman is, literally, a woman” because of the clear threat this “poses to women’s rights.” Sadly, “large numbers of women who’ve never been poor, who’ve never worked the kind of job where they’d be vulnerable to predatory men and who’ve never needed a rape crisis centre have spent the last few years vilifying members of their own sex for fighting to retain their hard-won rights and single-sex spaces.” She’ll stick with the “millions of women who don’t have the luxury of pretending that their sex doesn’t matter.”

Midterms watch: Minnesota Senate Race

Minnesota’s Senate race will test whether a Republican can “win in a blue state” despite President Trump’s low approval numbers, contends The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim. Progressive Democrat Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, “running in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican statewide in 20 years, would ordinarily glide to victory,” is up by only three points. Why? Her positions are “implacably progressive”: Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, halt arms sales to Israel, etc., and she’s tied to Gov. Tim Walz and his Medicaid scandal, while her opponent, former NFL reporter Michele Tafoya, is “a strong candidate.” Flanagan’s big hope: Linking link Tafoya to Trump, which will work if “a majority of Minnesotans hate anything Mr. Trump does because he does it.”

Libertarian: Right Divides on Property Taxes

“The debate over property taxes isn’t just a struggle between those who want to trim the state’s take,” but also a conflict “between anti-tax activists and their frequent allies among advocates of local power,” cautions Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. To homeowners, yearly property tax bills “require what feels an awful lot like an annual rent payment” that “reduces the sense of security that owners feel in their homes.” Yet replacing this revenue with state taxes “would move power further up the political food chain” and reduce local control. As one expert notes, the problem with property “lies not only in how the money is raised, but also in how much government spends.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board