Woke watch: Disney Bows to DeSantis
“It is rare to see the kind of conservative victory” that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just scored, notes Jeremiah Poff at the Washington Examiner — Disney “settled a lawsuit . . . seeking to restore the company’s ability to govern” the Disneyworld region. This is “a huge win for DeSantis, who took on Disney” by stripping it of its special status after the company vowed “to push for the repeal of a law that banned classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.” The settlement is “an admission by the company that it lost both the public relations and the policy battles against DeSantis.” “DeSantis, unlike previous generations of Republicans, stuck to his guns and forced Disney to blink.” “Republican leaders would do well to remember that.”
Israel war: Focus on Iran in Syria, Lebanon
“Failure to grasp” the Israel war’s “fundamentals” will lead to “calamity,” argues Seth Cropsey at The Wall Street Journal. Israel needs “to fight an attrition war” against Iran, and “the U.S. must accept the strategic requirements of its regional partner, despite the politically driven drivel” from President Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Congress. Forget the “public focus on Hamas and the Houthis”; the “decisive point of Iran’s campaign” is in Syria and Lebanon, and Israel and America can strike its military capacity there. They can also “rapidly degrade” those countries’ “state capacity,” forcing “Iran to assume direct control of both” or “shrink its defense perimeter to Iraq,” essentially “abandoning its ability to pressure Israel and the U.S.”
Ukraine desk: Russia Wants Power, Not Peace
“Calls for a forced agreement between Ukraine and Russia are naïve,” laments Mark Temnycky at The Hill, as they ignore Russia’s “history of violating ceasefires and international norms.” Decades after a negotiated end to its intervention in Moldova, “Russia maintains its presence in Transnistria, in violation of the terms of the ceasefire.” Some 16 years after ending the Russo-Georgia war and agreeing to a withdrawal from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, “Russian forces continue to occupy these two regions and show no signs of leaving.” The 2014 Minsk Agreements were supposed to end Russia’s invasion of Donbas, but Russia “maintained its military presence and violated the ceasefire repeatedly” before invading Ukraine in February 2022. “Lessons from Afghanistan and Chechnya show that only embarrassment and defeat will make Russia quit an invasion like the one in Ukraine.”
Media beat: Psaki Lies Through Her Teeth
MSNBC’s Jen Psaki, weighing in on NBC’s hiring of former RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, argued on-air that “the distinction between her and McDaniel was ‘truth versus lies,’ ” laughs The Federalist’s David Harsanyi, as Psaki is herself “proficient in lies big and small.” “Even considering the normal mendacious parameters of a White House press secretary, she excelled,” with inaccurate claims on inflation, abortion, assurances that the Biden team would evacuate “all Americans” during the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan — “a small sample of the former press secretary’s prodigious work.” Both women lied for political expediency, but McDaniel is a “piker next to Psaki.”
Libertarian: The FDA vs. Medical Innovation
“By insisting on its recondite approval procedures,” the Food and Drug Administration “at the beginning of the pandemic stymied the rollout of COVID-19 tests developed by numerous academic and private laboratories” — yet now the FDA “wants to apply its vast bureaucratic acumen to all other laboratory developed tests,” or LDTs, gripes Reason’s Ronald Bailey. These tests “can diagnose illnesses and guide treatments by detecting relevant biomarkers,” and “the FDA now wants to regulate these tests as medical devices that must undergo premarket agency vetting before clinicians and patients are allowed to use them.” Stacey Hughes of the American Hospital Association warns: “The unfortunate outcome” of the FDA’s plan “likely would be the decline in the rate of clinical innovation, which would negatively impact” the ability to “provide quality care to patients.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board