Dear Weekend Jolter,
Whether we’re conditioned to look more closely for world-disrupting events in October of an election year, or they in fact cluster together for mystical reasons, the month’s “surprises” have piled up at a rapid clip — and it’s not even halfway through.
It is possible, even likely, that nothing that happens between now and Election Day will have the impact that July’s events did on this presidential race. But in the wake of those seismic events, the polling advantage Donald Trump previously enjoyed has narrowed or been erased, leaving the contest effectively a toss-up in the battleground states. Anything that moves the needle in the final weeks before the election could be enough to determine its outcome. Such as:
• Iran rang in October by firing 180 missiles at Israel, in the wake of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon (Israel says Nasrallah’s presumed successor has already been “eliminated” as well, probably). This immediately launched speculation that Israel might target Iran’s nuclear sites in retaliation, after opting for a more measured response to an Iranian attack on the homeland earlier this year. The nation’s defense minister vows a “lethal” and “surprising” reply. At the very least, the war in the Middle East seems likely to expand, further straining the relationship between the Biden-Harris and Netanyahu governments.
• Two major hurricanes are posing a test of administrative competence for the Biden-Harris government. Setting aside the weapons-grade idiocy of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s chief concern and other such nonsense, the Biden administration has faced questions over an apparent FEMA funding crunch and accusations of mismanagement in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Following right behind, Hurricane Milton battered Florida this week, at first as a Category 3 storm before diminishing in strength as it moved across the state. As if to demonstrate how not to handle these crises from a political standpoint, Kamala Harris picked a needless fight with Ron DeSantis coinciding with Milton’s approach. Audrey Fahlberg and Brittany Bernstein write, in NR’s Horse Race newsletter, that Harris’s “every move, social-media post, and photo-op” is under scrutiny in this context, but “perhaps the biggest impact on the election could be roadblocks to voter turnout as a result of the storm fallout in battleground North Carolina.”
• Prosecutor Jack Smith offered a gift-wrapped October surprise when he filed a sprawling legal brief documenting his evidence in the 2020-election-interference case against Trump. It includes many unflattering details about Trump’s alleged conduct after the election and on January 6, 2021, including the account that his reaction upon learning that then–vice president Mike Pence had been taken to a secure location during the Capitol riot was to say, “So what?” The brief states: “At its core, the defendant’s scheme was a private criminal effort. In his capacity as a candidate, the defendant used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.” Andy McCarthy explains his doubts here about whether Jack Smith will fare well against the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, while calling the account “thorough and damning” and acknowledging the submission “could be effective in its intended purpose of influencing voters.”
• The East/Gulf Coast port strike for a few days seemed like it could escalate into a major political and economic headache for the Biden administration (and Americans generally). Thankfully, it has been resolved. But the episode underscored the extent to which Democrats are not prepared to get tough even with the most unsympathetic of union bosses (again, the man leading what would have been a crippling strike makes nearly $1 million a year and owns a mansion, bragged that his union’s actions could get workers in other sectors laid off, and is so resistant to consumer-benefiting technological change that he still complains about E-ZPass. E-ZPass!). Dominic Pino writes,
National elected officials truly working in the national interest would, when confronted with [International Longshoremen’s Association] bullying, stand up to the bullies and prevent a strike while demanding concessions on automation so that ports work better for Americans, not for the parochial interests of the ILA. Biden and Harris stood with the bullies instead.
We’ll see what the next three weeks bring. As Rich Lowry notes, Harris has been making polling gains on Trump on questions about the economy and inflation, a trend that should worry the Republican nominee. Then again, something that should come as no shock — Harris is finding it difficult to prise herself from the administration she serves in and to defend, as in her 60 Minutes interview, the decisions that administration has made. President Biden recently handed Republicans a gift when he talked up how he and Harris are “singing from the same song sheet,” and Harris, on The View several days later, slipped and implicitly endorsed the unpopular incumbent’s entire record.
The biggest October surprise might yet turn out to involve the man Democrats thought they could ignore beginning July 22. A FEMA stumble in the face of back-to-back hurricanes, a chaotic response to widening war in the Middle East, or public comments that undercut the vice president’s already anemic effort to portray her candidacy as one representing change — any or all of these scenarios could easily hurt the Democratic nominee. Remember what Barack Obama (allegedly) said about his No. 2. Biden could Comey his VP, consciously or not. And, as in 2016, Trump would reap the benefits.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
Our October 7 editorial: Why Israel Must Fight
Democrats are confused, at best, about free speech in the United States: Democrats Take Aim at Free Speech
Icky, even by Chicago standards of self-dealing: Brandon Johnson Gives Away the Store to the Chicago Teachers Union
“To describe Phillips’s legal odyssey is to condemn it”: The Long Road to Freedom for Jack Phillips
ARTICLES
Haley Strack: The CCP Cloned America’s Leading STEM High School — and U.S. Educators Helped
Philip Klein: Anniversary of Evil
Alex Welz: I Arrived in Israel Hours before the 10/7 Massacre. This Is How I Got Out
David Zimmermann: College Papers Failed the 10/7 ‘Stress Test.’ These Students Decided to Build Something Better
Ian Tuttle: Why Elite Students Can’t Read Books
Rich Lowry: The Travesty of the CBP One App
Audrey Fahlberg: Butler Rally-Goers Wrestle with the Possibility of a Trump Loss
Jeffrey Blehar: Brandon Johnson Makes Sure the Fix Is In for the Chicago Teachers Union
Jeffrey Blehar: The Obscene Public Humiliation Ritual of CBS’s Tony Dokoupil
James Lynch: Nearly 14,000 Minors Underwent Sex-Change Procedures in Recent Years, According to New Watchdog Database
Mitch McConnell: Judicial Bureaucrats Can’t Defy Congress
Dan McLaughlin: What the Supreme Court’s New Term Has in Store
And before you go — Don’t miss Noah Rothman’s reporting from Taiwan
CAPITAL MATTERS
Don’t blame the messenger. Dominic Pino just reads the data: Canada Is Poor
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
Armond White is back from reviewing Megalopolis, with a Reading Right column on the same: Francis Ford Coppola Ransacks an H. G. Wells Classic
Where in the world is Brian Allen? London, this time — for the National Gallery’s 200th birthday, spotlighting highs and lows, peaks and valleys, and a whole lotta Gogh: London’s National Gallery Throws Itself a Birthday Bash
EXCERPTS THAT ARE UNBURDENED BY WHAT HAS BEEN
If you read one story this week, make it this one from Haley Strack, a staggering account of China’s success in extracting U.S. know-how, with our help:
Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School has been so successful as America’s leading science, technology, engineering, and mathematics school that the Chinese Communist Party is working diligently to clone it, with the help of the school’s leadership.
CCP-linked entities have in recent years leveraged millions in donations to secure the school’s strategically vital intellectual property, according to internal documents obtained by the watchdog group Parents Defending Education (PDE) and shared with National Review.
After collecting generous donations through an affiliated nonprofit, TJ administrators handed the blueprint to America’s top-ranked STEM school — including its curriculum, syllabi, and floor plans — to America’s chief rival. Across China, there are now tens of state-sponsored Thomas Jefferson High School replicas, dubbed the Thomas Schools.
Chinese entities have donated $3.6 million to TJ through the Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund, a nonprofit organization the school set up in 1999 to aid with fundraising efforts.
Tsinghua University High School donated $1.2 million from 2014 to 2018, the Ameson Foundation donated $900,000 from 2014 to 2018, and Shirble HK donated $1.5 million from 2016 to 2021, according to IRS forms reviewed by National Review.
PDE claims that what the school calls “donations” were in fact payment for TJ’s intellectual property and further accuses the school of running afoul of the IRS by funneling the money through a nonprofit that, while outwardly independent from the school, acted as a broker, selling the school’s IP for Chinese cash.
“FCPS employees and staff bent over backwards to provide foreign donors unprecedented access to the inner workings of what was once the country’s premier secondary school — a courtesy that, strangely, has not been extended to either parents or the taxpayers who underwrote such innovation,” PDE president Nicole Neily said. “TJ’s formula for success was handed over to CCP-linked officials for a few million dollars in donations and a handful of junkets for staff — a bargain-basement price and one that should have triggered alarm bells at the district, state, and federal levels.”
Asked for a response to PDE’s claims, a Fairfax County Public Schools emphasized that “the TJ Fund is a separate and independent 501(c)(3) entity, which is not overseen by FCPS.” The spokesperson acknowledged that FCPS had a “formal relationship” with the Ameson Foundation until 2018 but said it has since been discontinued.
“FCPS has taken steps to ensure that the Fund will not accept or solicit donations from any foreign entity without the express consent of the division superintendent,” the spokesperson said.
The stench of Chicago’s political machinery is in the air once more. NR’s editorial details a truly remarkable sequence of events touched off by union demands:
On Friday afternoon, it became grimly clear what happens when a union as powerful as the [Chicago Teachers Union] manages to get one of its own lobbyists elected mayor.
The CTU has been preparing for years to renegotiate its contract with the city, and as part of the preparations, last year it funded the mayoral campaign of one of its own paid lobbyists and organizers, Cook County commissioner Brandon Johnson. Johnson won the narrowest victory in Chicago history and has proceeded to govern strictly for the union’s benefit. The CTU’s demands contemplate, among other things, Chicago Public Schools assuming $150 million of pension-debt obligations for non-teachers in the CPS system — at a time when the system already has an unprecedented half-billion-dollar budget shortfall. When Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez refused to sign off on a $300 million high-interest loan that the CTU (and Mayor Johnson) wanted him to take out to fund these new demands, Johnson began publicly pressuring his own school-board members to fire him.
Instead, the entire seven-person membership of the city’s Board of Education — personally selected by Johnson when he began his term in office — resigned as a group rather than accede to the unacceptable pressure. Johnson announced a replacement slate of school-board appointees on Monday morning, seven people presumably selected for their greater responsiveness to the mayor’s demands. The new board is almost certain to vote to fire Martinez, allowing Johnson to replace him with an appointee who will rubber-stamp the union’s demands. The Chicago Teachers Union looks likely to win everything it is asking for, which is precisely why its members elected one of their own as mayor.
And as a result, Chicago will sink further into debt as its tax dollars are increasingly captured by a select and privileged group of public-sector union members. Educational outcomes and test scores will not increase, but then that is not the point: Johnson has explicitly argued that school success should be measured by money spent per student rather than crude metrics such as literacy.
Audrey Fahlberg reported from Trump’s return-to-Butler rally over the weekend, and interviewed supporters on the big question — what comes after Trump?
After racking her brain for a few seconds, Norma Holm estimates that she’s been to 20 Donald Trump rallies to date. A resident of Hammond, Ind., the “Front Row Joes” jacket-sporting rally-goer says she traveled seven hours to watch the former president’s triumphant return to the Butler fairgrounds, where back in July, a gunman’s fire had grazed Trump’s ear, killed one man, and wounded others.
Holm insists that her 20-rally rally — which could probably put many national political reporters to shame — is nothing compared with the lengths that others Trump supporters will go to demonstrate their fandom. Some Trump-rally regulars arrive two days early so that they can get the best seats in the house, she said. “They sleep on the sidewalk. They secure their area. They come from all over.”
Four weeks out from Election Day, this is the type of Trump superfan who is starting to wrestle with the possibility of a Kamala Harris victory — and what that would mean for a three-time GOP nominee who has said he does not envision running for president again if he loses. “I think that that will be, that will be it,” he said in an interview last month. “I don’t see that at all. I think that, hopefully, we’re gonna be successful.”
The reality that Trump’s days as a candidate are numbered is difficult for voters, politicians, and pundits of all political stripes to grasp nearly a decade after the former president won the 2016 GOP primary and remade the party in his image. For his biggest supporters, there are doubts whether anyone — even his most loyal lieutenants — can replicate the 78-year-old former president’s persona if he loses and steps aside in 2028.
“No. I don’t think that anybody can,” says Holm.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” insists rally-goer Terry Conklin.
“I do not think anybody’s going to be able to replicate it, because Donald Trump is one of a kind,” adds Lori Duncan.
But who will carry the mantle for his movement if he doesn’t? Yes, Trump fans really like Ohio senator J. D. Vance. They praise his ability to intellectualize the former president’s views on the stump and the debate stage, and they say his concise rhetoric and impressive debate skills complement Trump’s meandering speaking style. But among the former president’s die-hard supporters, Vance’s new status as heir apparent may have less to do with his own talents and more with the reality that Trump has picked him as his running mate.
For the October 7 anniversary, Alex Welz writes about his own experience arriving in Israel for graduate studies — on October 6, 2023:
“You’re never going over there,” my Lebanese mom would constantly remind me when I raised the possibility of moving to the Middle East. “It’s too dangerous.”
So, when I decided to move there, it was only natural for me to regret not listening to Mom.
By mid 2023, I had officially accepted an offer to study at the University of Haifa in Israel for my postgraduate degree. My mom and I reached a tense compromise: My parents would tag along, make a vacation out of it, and, most important, see how safe it was with their own eyes before leaving with some measure of solace.
I touched down in Tel Aviv on October 6, 2023.
Exhausted from travel, I went to bed unaware that I would spend the entirety of my short time in Israel desperately trying to get home.
When I woke up around 11:00 a.m. the following day, it was immediately clear that Israel was under attack. In a country roughly the size of New Jersey, I knew the violence I saw unfolding on my screen couldn’t be far away.
But it wasn’t the shocking violence unfolding on Israel’s border with Gaza that struck me most. It was the stoic demeanor on the faces of Israelis adjusting to their new reality. People didn’t try to downplay the gravity of what was happening, but nor did they panic. Israelis were devastated, but this was not a nation in shambles.
Airliners refused to service Ben Gurion Airport for a short time as a full-blown war had just begun. All land borders were locked down, and the constant hum of fighter jets overhead became a nightly fixture. With southern Lebanon in sight, rumors circulated of an imminent Hezbollah offensive. It was then that I realized that, for all intents and purposes, my parents and I were trapped.
CODA
For a change of pace, I’m thinking a duet by Pops and Ella. Specifically, their take on the standard, “Stompin’ at the Savoy.” Starts out smooth, and then it hops — hope you dig.
Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading.