Schools beat: A Sad Legacy of Brown v. Board
“When the Supreme Court delivered its historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling 70 years ago on May 17,” it hoped to produce better academic outcomes for blacks, recalls The Wall Street Journal’s Jason L. Riley. Yet it’s clear that “racially mixed classrooms aren’t essential” for that, even if policymakers insist on them. Truth is, the ruling was “a political calculation,” aimed at not inflaming the South. In “some of the best” schools, after all, “a majority of the students are black and Hispanic,” as at some of the worst schools. Success isn’t determined by a school’s racial makeup but by its educational policies. The “focus on what a school looks like demographically” is “one of the unfortunate legacies of Brown.”
Conservative: End Congress’ Spending Addiction
It’s been “a rough couple of weeks for anyone who cares about fiscal sanity,” groans Mick Mulvaney at The Hill. The U.S. federal debt passed $35,000,000,000,000. Social Security and Medicare “are barreling toward insolvency” as “interest payments in the first seven months of the fiscal year exceeded each of defense spending, Medicare and Medicaid.” “Some Democrats do care about the debt.” “But spending less on anything” goes “counter to their DNA.” And while “Republicans care about Social Security and Medicare” more than Dems admit, most “like spending as much as Democrats do.” Fiscal hawks in Washington have long looked “like homeless guys, standing on the corner holding handmade signs reading, ‘The end is near!’ ” Trouble is, sooner or later “we are going to be right.”
From the right: Bragg Jury May Acquit Trump
“Having served on three Manhattan juries, I would not be surprised if the 12 men and women hearing New York v. Donald J. Trump acquit him of all charges,” cheers Deroy Murdock at the Washington Times. “Manhattan juries are sober and perfectly capable of fairness,” and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s case is “built atop a cloud of helium.” The National Enquirer’s “catch-and-kill” scheme to help Trump “is not illegal.” “Mr. Trump faces prison for reporting legal expenses as ‘legal expenses,’ which is legal.” “If ‘lurid but legal’ reflects the opinions of 12 of my fellow Manhattanites — who tend to be tough but fair — then former President Donald Trump will be acquitted on all 34 charges and go back where he belongs: the campaign trail.”
Elex desk: President Harris?!?!
Given the president’s age, “it’s not far-fetched to say that a vote in November for Biden is really a vote for President Kamala Harris,” argues David Keltz at American Greatness. That “should terrify everyone who loves this country.” Harris has accomplished nothing other than “the occasional malapropism, bizarre philosophical utterances, speeches that do anything but inspire, and constant cackling.” She’s even less popular than Biden: “Her approval rating sits at an abysmal 38 percent.” “We’ve already seen what can happen when an elderly man allows the radical leftists in charge of him to dictate policy. It leads to instability at home and abroad.” So “the only thing scarier than a second Biden term is one in which Harris becomes in charge of the nuclear codes.”
Fact check: Biden’s 9% Confusion
President Biden keeps repeating the false claim that inflation was 9% when he took office in 2021 — when it was actually 1.4%. National Review’s Jim Geraghty asks if “this is a deliberate effort to mislead the public and get people to associate high inflation with Donald Trump’s presidency and not his own,” or whether “Biden misremembers the inflation rate when he took office, he was informed that his claim was false, and he has since forgotten.” Or maybe his staff don’t dare remind of the truth, meaning “we have a president who operates in a fog of half-truths and illusory claims” even as no one around him “sees any point in correcting him.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board