Conservative: The PAC Behind Zo & His Radicals
American Priorities, a new super PAC is “behind the surge of radical leftist candidates” in New York, reports Tablet’s Liel Leibovitz. “The group’s two largest donors,” Omer Hasan and Mohammad Waqas Javed, are alums of the “data company AppLovin.” Its largest shareholder, Hao Tang, reportedly has “deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party,” and JPMorgan Chase closed his account over “source of funding” concerns. “Hasan and Javed were the top donors” to Zohran Mamdani’s New Yorkers for Lower Costs PAC. While attention is focused on AIPAC’s impact, “the most prominent PAC on the scene right now is funded primarily by two veterans of a shady tech colossus with strong links to China and repeated allegations of ties to the Communist Party in Beijing.”
Military take: Ukraine’s Lessons on War
Ukraine is “imposing persistent strategic pressure” by attacking Russia’s “front lines, air defenses, fuel depots . . . and by trying to isolate occupied Crimea,” cheer David H. Petraeus & Clara Kaluderovic at The Wall Street Journal. Although “Ukraine almost certainly can’t destroy” Russia, its recent attacks have caused “Russia’s worst nationwide fuel shortages in years.” Kyiv is forcing Moscow “to defend everywhere” as it imposes “pressure simultaneously across many arenas.” “The U.S. should draw three lessons” from Ukraine’s “agile, software-driven, distributed warfare,” instead of relying on “hardware-heavy” warfare. Ukraine has “changed the central question of the war” to whether Russia can keep up with it’s the “pressure.” “That is a remarkable reversal.”
Education desk: The Drive To Kill Great Schools
New York’s teachers unions “have filed another lawsuit aimed at limiting educational options for New York families,” this time by trying stop a new school, Strive, from taking over a charter granted to the Success Academy charter-school network, laments Danyela Souza Egorov at City Journal. The suits never stop: “Ongoing declines in statewide enrollment have increased pressure to maintain teacher positions and their associated revenue for unions.” The lawsuit claims the transfer of the charter renders the state’s charter-school cap “meaningless”; it doesn’t — but the cap itself is “nonsensical,” since New York charters “are among the highest performing in the country” and primarily serve low-income minorities. A state that leads the nation in K-12 spending only to achieve “mediocre results” really should “encourage educational innovation, not try to smother high-performing charter-school operators.”
From the right: Death of a Conspiracy Theory
A “conspiracy theory” is about to “fall apart,” predicts The Free Press’ Douglas Murray, as preposterous claims about the murder of Charlie Kirk finally dissolve. “Some online commentators tried to ignore everything about the case,” blaming “the Israeli government, Egyptian spy planes, Kirk’s colleagues at Turning Point USA, his widow, and people in the crowd that day who were wearing maroon-colored shirts.” Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, “once close to Charlie Kirk,” promoted bizarre theories — to the point that their outright lies” could “taint the jury pool.” But “even the cold light of the courtroom will not make the conspiracy theories disappear forever” because “they rely on being unfalsifiable, constantly denied, and illogical.”
Labor beat: Unions Want Workers Kept Ignorant
Eight years after the Supreme Court ruled public employers can’t force employees to pay union dues, many employees still don’t know they have that option, thunders Aaron Withe at The Hill. Yes, 1.2 million public employees have canceled or declined union membership, costing “$720 million per year in union revenue nationwide.” But unions “have not accepted their verdict gracefully.” A new law in Oregon punishes organizations like Withe’s Freedom Foundation for reaching out to workers to inform them about their constitutional right to opt-out of union dues; New York is set to follow. For unions to truly serve workers, they must earn and “compete for dues,” not rely on “revenue extracted from people who never chose their representation in the first place.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board