Dear Weekend Jolter,
That House Republicans so overwhelmingly broke with Donald Trump this week to approve legislation requiring a Chinese company to divest from TikTok or face a U.S. ban says a great deal about the risk the U.S. government sees in the popular app.
Recall that Trump just completed his takeover of the RNC with a family member now at the helm, that his objections helped to derail a recent border and foreign-aid bill, and that the GOP establishment is more or less foursquare behind him in ’24 despite his role whipping up a mob that attacked Congress.
But on this, the committee vote was 50-0, and the floor vote was 352-65, with only 15 Republicans opposing. While Senate prospects are uncertain, as Rand Paul and others fight what they consider an overreach, for those wondering what it would take for GOP lawmakers to defy the former and possibly future president, the answer is: the national-security threat that currently resides on your kid’s phone.
From NR’s editorial in support of the legislation:
The threat posed by TikTok that should matter most to Congress in considering this legislation doesn’t fundamentally have to do with its content or the behavior of its (overwhelmingly underaged) user base. Rather, it has everything to do with the fact that, aside from its social-media function, it is spyware — spyware owned and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Law-enforcement and national-security officials have previously testified to these concerns. FBI director Christopher Wray did so again this past week under questioning from Senator Marco Rubio, who pressed the witness on to what extent the Chinese Communist Party can access TikTok data and influence what Americans see by way of parent company ByteDance.
Wray agreed that the CCP not only can do that but has the power to direct content that would foment discord in the U.S. “That’s my understanding,” he testified. “And I would just add that that kind of influence operation, or the different kinds of influence operations you’re describing, are extraordinarily difficult to detect, which is part of what makes the national-security concerns represented by TikTok so significant.” While TikTok says it would not hand over user data to Chinese officials, the speed and force with which the House was able to muscle this bill over to the Senate in a presidential-election year underscores the degree to which the lawmakers who get the briefings don’t believe that.
TikTok did itself no favors by unleashing hysterical hordes of teenagers on the congressional phone lines in an attempt to stall the action. From Noah Rothman:
Members of Congress reported receiving threatening calls from incensed TikTok fans, some of whom threatened to kill themselves if the proposed bill advanced out of committee. Some promised to mete out violence against sitting members of Congress. Many sounded as though they were in their preadolescence — indeed, the sound of school bells could be heard in the background as they sought to cajole their representatives.
The campaign was a disaster. It presented tangible evidence to lawmakers not only that TikTok’s capacity to track the data and locations of their users was quite robust but also that those users were in the throes of a deep dependency. The application’s users made the case against TikTok better than its detractors ever could.
Trump’s advocacy, meanwhile, was not exactly convincing, considering he previously pursued a ban as president and transparently admitted, in reversing course, that he wants TikTok around to keep Facebook in check, among other considerations. Ramesh Ponnuru writes here about what to make of congressional Republicans’ split with Trump and the capacity they just showed — at least on this issue — to “tune him out.” The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and TikTok, will have a second chance to exert their influence in the Senate, where Jeff Blehar says Chuck Schumer should quickly schedule a vote. Jeff, play us out:
There are no substantive arguments for opposing the House TikTok bill. The national-security threat TikTok poses is evident; the proposed legislative solution is effective, constitutional, and carefully circumscribed to prevent later abuse; and for once this bill has genuine bipartisan approval the likes of which cut across both party lines and even the factions within each party. (The 352–65 vote in the House today, with support ranging from hard-line MAGA conservatives to ultra-progressives, is evidence enough of that.) A lot of people with a lot of money invested in Chinese industry over the past few decades are now applying pressure on both sides of the Senate aisle to save the Chinese Communist Party’s most valuable data mine, as a way of saving their own skins. Don’t let them win. In a legislative era characterized by quasi-nihilistic futility, the chance has now presented itself for Washington’s lawmakers to actually — in the clearest and least arguable way seen in decades — serve their country.
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On a different note, thank you deeply to everybody who has contributed so far to our webathon. It means a lot. But we’ve still got this thing running, so it’s not too late to chip in if you feel so moved. Every dollar — and every $500, by the way — helps.
NAME. RANK. LINK.
EDITORIALS
To sum up: A top U.S. elected official just called for the collapse of an ally’s democratically elected government over a war policy that their voters support: Chuck Schumer’s Attack on Israeli Democracy
The U.S.–Israel relationship is being tested like never before: Biden Is Failing the Israel Test
The NHS has second thoughts: Britain Rejects the Sinister Fiction of the ‘Transgender Child’
An important update in the Mann case: Michael Mann Owes Us $1 Million
ARTICLES
Christian Schneider: The Supreme Court Hands the Campus Surveillance State a Lifeline
Charles C. W. Cooke: Personal Responsibility Has Gone Extinct in American Politics
Zach Kessel: Jewish Northwestern Students Shocked by Glorification of Antisemitic Terrorism
Audrey Fahlberg: The Underdog Candidate Determined to Thwart ‘Big Jim’ Justice: ‘I’m Not Going Away’
Brittany Bernstein: Tough Timing: NY Mag Drops Essay Defending Child Gender Transition Days after Damning WPATH Documents Surface
Audrey Fahlberg & Brittany Bernstein: New RNC Leaders Look to Remedy Party’s Fundraising Woes
Jim Geraghty (reporting from Ukraine): Tales of Resilience from Inside Ukraine: ‘We Had 36 People Sleeping in My Parents’ House’
Philip Klein: Jonathan Glazer Is Only Comfortable with a Jewishness of Victimhood
Lathan Watts: ‘De-Banking’ Is No Joke
Jimmy Quinn: Inside One U.S. School’s Relationship with a China-Funded Confucius Institute
Dan McLaughlin: It’s Not Just Michigan. Biden May Be Worried about Minnesota, Too
Dan McLaughlin: The Laughable Campaign to Whitewash the Hur Transcript
James Lynch: ‘I Did Not Sanitize’: Special Counsel Defends Report Calling Out Biden’s Memory Problems in Congressional Testimony
David Zimmermann: Trump Clinches GOP Nomination, Setting Up Rematch with Biden
Wilfred Reilly: The ‘Detransition’ Time Bomb
CAPITAL MATTERS
Once again, Biden is not a deficit hawk no matter how he tries to present himself. From Dominic Pino: If the Economy Is So Great, Why Does Biden Want Another Huge Budget Deficit Next Year?
LIGHTS. CAMERA. REVIEW.
“To believe that Oppenheimer is the best film of 2023 is to believe that the United States deserves to be invaded and conquered and morally overturned (revolutionized) from within.” Armond White . . . does not hold back: Oppenheimer, the First Nihilist Oscar Winner
While we’re at it, Kayla Bartsch takes issue with another Oscar winner: In Honoring Poor Things, Hollywood Shows Its Cultural Poverty
Brian Allen writes on the highs (lows to come later) of the European Fine Art Fair: At the Zenith of Art Fairs, Pharaoh’s Red Sea Folly Is among the Stars
NO EXCERPTS? NO PROBLEM — HERE, HAVE SOME OF OURS
Christian Schneider reports on the dystopian landscape of weaponized grievance and paranoia that is the modern American college campus:
Under [“Bias Response Team”] systems, students are able — and often encouraged — to anonymously report each other to the university for any transgression that may make someone else on campus uncomfortable for any reason.
Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a case brought by Speech First, a pro–First Amendment group that had challenged the “Bias Intervention and Response Team” at Virginia Tech. The Court dodged the challenge on the basis of mootness (with a dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito), deciding that since Virginia Tech had made changes to the policy, the lawsuit was no longer applicable.
But the Court missed an opportunity to address the caustic BRT system that remains entrenched in colleges and universities around America, silencing students and professors who know they will pay a penalty if they say the wrong thing — “wrong” meaning going against or departing from campus orthodoxy. Campus community members are now aware that any utterance, either in a class or in a private conversation, that smacks of even the mildest dissent to someone who overhears it can get them hauled before a diversity panel or, in the case of professors, prompt a letter to be placed in their file. In some cases, these panels include members of the campus police force, quite literally making them, as Speech First argued, a “speech police.”
For three years, I investigated the Kafkaesque complaints students had filed against professors, students had filed against other students, and professors had filed against students. For instance, at the University of Utah, a female student filed a complaint against a professor who assigned too many economics books written by men, thus creating a “hostile learning environment.” When a University of Wisconsin-Madison sociology professor used the term “sacred cow” in class, he was hit by a complaint from an irony-deficient student claiming he was “condescending and racist” because, “in some cultures, cows are deemed to be sacred.”
“I would not feel safe around him, and feel that his confident lack of awareness perpetuates the unsafe white-centric and white-supremacist environment of UW-Madison,” the student added.
When students at Northern Iowa University held a “Peanut Appreciation Day” in the school’s dining hall, a bias complaint was filed because the event unfairly “targeted” peanut-allergy sufferers.
But perhaps the crowning achievement of the entire campus-offense industrial complex occurred when Oregon State University investigated its own Bias Response Team for bias, and found — you guessed it — bias. According to investigators, the school’s bias-reporting software was replete with “built-in biases, often against women and minorities,” adding that “such biases can impact how easily users can find critical information, perform work tasks, or even navigate web sites.”
Britain just tightened its ban on “puberty blockers” for minors. NR’s editorial explains why:
Just five years ago, the NHS website asserted that the effects of “puberty blockers” were “considered to be fully reversible.” However, whistleblower testimony, a high-profile lawsuit on behalf of a former minor patient who regretted taking the drugs, as well as an independent review led by Hilary Cass, former president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, (to name but a few) have rendered such claims indefensible. . . .
As for how trans activists captured the NHS to begin with, The Times of London notes that as far back as 2015, staff from the NHS gender youth clinic “told a select committee hearing that its treatment protocols were safe, regulated and based on guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health [WPATH].”
Recently leaked internal messages from WPATH destroy whatever credibility the organization had left. In the WPATH files, activist doctors admit that their young patients are incapable of giving informed consent. One prominent surgeon discusses children whose puberty is blocked never experiencing orgasms in adulthood while another muses on the potential links between so-called “gender-affirming” hormones and cancer.
In a recent cover story for New York Magazine, trans writer Andrea Long Chu argues that “everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history.” Of course, “sex-changing medical care” is at best a euphemism — what it offers is literally impossible. Chu nonetheless adds that children, as well as adults, “have a right to the hazards of their own free will.”
Which argument is more compelling? That children distressed by their sexual characteristics should be given counseling that acknowledges sex is immutable and aims to resolve their distress by treating its root psychological causes? Or the argument that asserts that sex can be changed, dismisses the cause of distress as irrelevant, and declares that any children who ask to have their sexual characteristics disfigured through drugs and surgeries should be given the go-ahead on the understanding that if they later regret it, it’s their problem?
Thanks to the tireless work of whistleblowers, journalists, and concerned citizens — the British public has given the only sane and responsible answer.
James Lynch & Co. were all over this week’s congressional testimony by Robert Hur. This covers the nuts and bolts:
Special counsel Robert Hur defended on Tuesday the observations he made about President Joe Biden’s memory in his final report on the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified materials.
Ahead of his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Hur delivered an opening statement addressing criticisms of his decision to comment on Biden’s apparent memory lapses in his report, explaining that the commentary was necessary to explain why he didn’t believe Biden should be charged with willfully retaining classified documents, even though he had determined that the president did in fact knowingly retain such material.
“There has been a lot of attention paid to language in the report about the President’s memory, so let me say a few words about that. My task was to determine whether the President retained or disclosed national defense information ‘willfully’ — meaning, knowingly and with the intent to do something the law forbids. I could not make that determination without assessing the President’s state of mind,” Hur said.
“For that reason, I had to consider the President’s memory and overall mental state, and how a jury likely would perceive his memory and mental state in a criminal trial. These are the types of issues prosecutors analyze every day.”
Joe Biden’s memory was an important consideration for Hur’s decision not to pursue criminal charges against the sitting president, Hur testified. While Hur did find evidence Biden “willfully” retained classified information about foreign policy and national-security issues, the special counsel did not assess that it would be provable beyond a reasonable doubt and predicted that a prosecutor would have trouble convincing a jury to convict given Biden’s advanced age and addled memory.
“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the President’s memory was necessary and accurate and fair. Most importantly, what I wrote is what I believe the evidence shows, and what I expect jurors would perceive and believe. I did not sanitize my explanation. Nor did I disparage the President unfairly,” Hur said.
Shout-Outs
Franklin Foer, at the Atlantic: The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending
Abraham Wyner, at Tablet: How the Gaza Ministry of Health Fakes Casualty Numbers
Grace Eliza Goodwin & Kelsey Vlamis, at Business Insider: ‘Inception attacks’ on Meta VR headsets can trap users in a fake VR environment, researchers found
CODA
Who’s up for some very-vintage Genesis? . . . Hearing no objections: This song has it all.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the weekend.