RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/10/17/open-society-foundations-closing-offices-laying-off-staff-n1735587

Have they tried turning the heat down? Putting on sweaters? Maybe couponing?

It may be a little premature to celebrate, but the Open Society Foundations are closing offices in Africa and laying people off. In fact, 40% of the organization’s offices on the African continent will be hanging out “Sorry, We’re Closed” signs, and the employees will be hitting the want ads. This is in spite of the fact that the organization is worth an estimated $25 billion. Closures also hit offices in Barcelona and Baltimore.

Bloomberg reports that earlier in the month, it obtained emails sent out to staffers announcing that the organization would be scaling back. One of those emails from Binaifer Nowrojee, vice president of programs, read, “With the decision by the board in June to cut the staff by more than 40%, our staffing size and footprint by necessity needs to diminish. We no longer have the bandwidth to operate multiple small offices, and thus the decision to further reduce our locations.”

In another email, Africa Executive Director Muthoni Wanyeki stated, “I’m very sorry that it’s turned out this way. It’s obviously not what any of us expected and I’m also very sorry that I didn’t have the information on this earlier,” she added, saying the changes aren’t what leadership ‘committed to two years ago.’” Grantmaker positions will reportedly be the hardest hit. Only three African offices will remain open. Programming positions outside of the United States will be pared down from 450 to 150 people.

According to Bloomberg, OSF announced that the offices in Spain and Baltimore were slated to be shuttered earlier in the year. The African offices have been in “transition” since 2021.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/17/hate-trump-all-you-like-the-gag-order-is-still-wrong/

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan overseeing United States v. Donald Trump issued a gag order prohibiting a leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, from engaging in speech aimed at “government staff,” among others, during his trial.

Listen, I understand the disdain some conservatives feel for the former president. I share the sentiment. But if you’re cheering on a judge who’s inhibiting political speech on rickety grounds, you’re no friend of the “democracy” or the Constitution.

“Mr. Trump may still vigorously seek public support as a presidential candidate, debate policies and people related to that candidacy, criticize the current administration and assert his belief that this prosecution is politically motivated,” Chutkan explained. “But those critical [F]irst [A]mendment freedoms do not allow him to launch a pre-trial smear campaign against participating government staff, their families and foreseeable witnesses.”

Who is Chutkan to dictate the contours of a presidential candidate’s political speech? What if one of the “participating government staff” or a family member is compromised by partisanship? Moreover, preemptively suggesting that without gagging, Trump will engage in a “smear campaign” is as prejudicial to the case as any of the inflammatory things Trump has thrown around. It implies that any accusation now aimed at prosecutors is untrue.

Trump contends that he is being railroaded by special counsel Jack Smith, the longtime federal prosecutor who works on behalf of Democrats and Joe Biden. You might believe the special counsel is a chaste defender of Lady Justice, but there’s ample evidence that partisan considerations are in play. Fears of a politicized justice department are real. As we speak, the head of the Democratic Party is being mollycoddled by the state in a very similar case involving classified documents.

Whatever the case, the Justice Department now plays a big part in Trump’s campaign for the presidency — and probably his legal case, as well. If the state’s accusations can be spread throughout the media before a trial, why can’t the defendant speak openly, as well?

https://victorhanson.com/woke-hits-the-wall-part-four/

Another tenet of woke was a veritable war on gas and oil. Note the same serial ironic theme: if Biden inherited a calm border, he had the luxury or rather the margin of error to demagogue it, destroy it, and not be swamped by illegals—for a while.

It was also easy to call for defunding the police and the BLM agenda, as long as such megaphones were safe—and they were until the full effect of their nihilism eventually rooted them out.

And so too it was easy to war on fossil fuels when Trump’s full-production agenda had given an incoming Biden seemingly limitless gasoline and natural gas at cheap prices, with a full strategic petroleum reserve.

But as in the case of illegal immigration and crime, Biden’s rhetoric of banning fossil fuels finally caught up with him. Grinding down the fracking industry, canceling and restricting federal energy leases, stopping pipelines, and freezing vast oilfields finally gave Biden what he wanted and most feared: record-high gas prices and an irate public that blamed him for its misery.

The iconic, jump-the-shark moment of his failed fossil fuels campaign was when Biden began draining the strategic petroleum reserve right before the 2022 midterms.

Biden’s woke subtext went something like this: “Because we curtailed production of our own horrific fossil fuels, we want to get our hands on more of the awful stuff by either draining what the evil Trump had stockpiled for us, or begging the illiberal Saudis, Venezuelans, and Iranians to produce the icky goo that we will not.”

What, then, is Biden’s energy policy? It is to virtue signal greenness and to damn the Saudis, the oil companies, and the MAGA Winnebago and snow-mobile crowd for two-year intervals.

And then before a national or midterm election, it is to turn on the oil spigots in order to get gasoline prices down before the mail-in-voting begins, by begging the now good Saudis and the noble Venezuelans and our partners the Iranians, draining the last drop out of the strategic petroleum reserve, and symbolically opening a new federal oil tract for leasing that likely has little oil beneath it.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/10/17/the-morning-briefing-another-trump-derangement-syndrome-2024-election-interference-update-n1735418

There is plenty of division to be found anywhere right of center on the American political spectrum. Republicans spend more time fighting other Republicans these days than they do going after Democrats. I don’t worry too much about that because I figure it’s better for everyone to get it out of their systems now rather than fight over dinner on election night next year.

One thing that a lot of people in this fractured coalition can agree on is that the Democrats are using corrupt, politically motivated prosecutors and judges to preemptively interfere with the 2024 presidential election. Even Republicans who are no longer fans of former President Donald Trump find themselves saying, “You’ve GOT to be kidding me!” every time a rogue prosecutor or judge absolutely mangles the law in an effort to keep him off of the ballot.

They’re interfering with the 2024 election because they say Trump tried to interfere with the 2020 election.

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

We’re usually talking about unhinged prosecutors when we’re covering stories like this. Today we are dealing with a judge who has publicly been in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome for a while now. Victoria covered this latest legal circus:

The hearing in Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s D.C. U.S. District Courtroom over whether to at least partially gag Donald Trump was at times contentious and at other times surreal and Kafkaesque. Chutkan ruled that Trump could not post or repost “attacks against Special Counsel, staff, court staff or personnel” as well as prohibited statements about witnesses or expert witnesses.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-to-visit-israel-on-wednesday-blinken-announces/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday evening that President Joe Biden will visit Israel on Wednesday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“On Wednesday, President Biden will visit Israel. He’s coming here at a critical moment for Israel, for the region, and for the world,” Blinken said during an official address following a meeting with Netanyahu on Monday evening local time.

“He is coming here to do the following: First, the president will reaffirm the United States’ solidarity with Israel and our ironclad commitment to its security,” Blinken said. “President Biden will again make clear, as he’s done unequivocally since Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,400 people — including at least 30 Americans — that Israel has the right, and indeed the duty, to defend its people from Hamas, and other terrorists, and to prevent other attacks.”

The secretary of state reiterated later in his speech the need to alleviate growing concerns about access to food, water, and energy in the Gaza Strip. “It is critical that aid starts flowing to Gaza as soon as possible,” Blinken said. However, “we share Israel’s concern that Hamas will take control of the aid that enters Gaza,” he added, asserting that the United States will seek to prevent the terrorist group from pilfering any supplies.

According to Blinken, the United States plans to help create “safe zones” within Gaza where civilians will be protected and humanitarian aid will flow unimpeded.

While visiting the region, President Biden is expected to stop in Amman, Jordan, to meet with regional political leaders, including Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian president Fattah el-Sisi, as well as King Abdullah II of Jordan.

News outlets have reported that the development appears to signal the postponement of Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. Israel Defense Forces troops and reservists have been massing along the southern border since the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas.

Earlier in the day, New York governor Kathy Hochul announced her intention to visit Israel to underscore her commitment to the Jewish state. “Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling to Israel for a solidarity mission where I plan to meet with diplomatic leaders and communities who have been devastated by the horrific Hamas attacks,” the Democratic governor said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ron-desantis-is-a-man-of-action-not-just-words/

Most politicians blather and bloviate; that style tends to work electorally. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is notably — and problematically for his national prospects — not one of them. He doesn’t do stand-up-comedian-style rallies or engage with ease in light banter. He doesn’t get up on a debate stage and start spouting half-considered college-dorm political theories. Instead, Ron DeSantis thinks and acts, and in his actions proves why people longing for executive competence in the White House continue to look to him as a better leader for the Republican Party than Donald Trump.

Aside from all the other madness that ensued after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, tens of thousands of Americans were left stranded in Israel, their flights canceled under wartime conditions. On Thursday, DeSantis signed an executive order authorizing the state of Florida, under its emergency-management laws, to extract as many Floridians as possible. His enemies soon dismissed “DeSantis Air” as little better than a crass publicity stunt. Ex-GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger, always eager for that next cable-news booking, haughtily mocked him, sounding like a Saruman-possessed King Theoden: “You have no power here!”

I hope DeSantis — like Gandalf in the The Two Towers — has released Kinzinger from his nihilistic delusions, because it turns out that a man with a plan and an idea of what can be achieved can get real things done. Last night, “DeSantis Air” landed in Tampa with 270 Americans aboard. All of them are grateful to be here, and they have the governor and his team to thank for the logistical work in getting them back without the State Department charging them thousands of dollars for the privilege. Those are concrete results, as measured in the real lives of American citizens. The guy gets things done.

What has depressingly gotten lost in the miasma of this ridiculous 2024 presidential campaign is that this is basically all Ron DeSantis does, all the time. DeSantis’s gubernatorial record has been covered in great detail here at National Review — his Covid and educational records are two highlights, and his natural-disaster management has been sterling as well — but simply consider what he has done since Hamas’s attack on Israel, balancing both the campaign trail with his duties as governor, to appreciate his abilities as an executive in charge of his brief. With the same executive order he used to authorize the above airlift, DeSantis also immediately ordered Florida state troopers to bolster security for Jewish schools and synagogues. Are you worried about the rising tide of antisemitism in academia across the country, as you very much should be? Not long ago, DeSantis appointed former Nebraska senator Ben Sasse the head of the University of Florida, and Sasse has fully justified his confidence, with a response to the Hamas atrocities that was the single most dignified public statement from a major university in the entire nation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/10/16/mccarthy-predicts-jim-jordan-will-be-elected-house-speaker-n1735341

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) expressed his confidence that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will secure the necessary votes to win election as the next House Speaker. McCarthy shared his optimistic view during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“I feel very good about where Jim Jordan is at. He has been an integral part of our team when we took the majority, helping us get the majority,” McCarthy told host Brian Kilmeade. “The real challenge here is, and I know a lot of people out there are afraid that will Republicans break off and go work with Democrats, the only reason anybody’s even talking about that is because eight Republican members worked with every single Democrat to remove me from speaker and put us into this tailspin and all based upon keeping government open.”

Jordan secured the Republican nomination for speaker on Friday, 124-81, but 55 House Republicans indicated that they wouldn’t support Jordan in a full House vote. Jordan can only lose four votes and still win the speakership.

For our VIPs: What the House GOP Can Learn From the Democrats

A floor vote is expected on Tuesday, and I wish I could be as confident about the outcome as McCarthy is. For starters, it’s not clear what, if anything, has changed since Friday. I can’t even argue that McCarthy might have inside knowledge on which to base his optimistic prediction because, frankly, his recent record on predicting the outcome of a vote hasn’t been very good. When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) first pushed to oust McCarthy, the then-speaker shrugged off Gaetz’s intentions, predicting he’d ultimately keep his job.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ta-nehisi-coates-signs-letter-defending-hamas/

You may remember Ta Nehisi Coates as America’s most prominent literary racist until Ibram X. Kendi came around.

He’s the guy who got a ton of awards for writing in “Between the World and Me” that the police officers and firefighters who died on September 11 “were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”

Now he’s taking that moral triumph and signing on to a letter, alongside Richard Ford, Molly Crabapple, China Miéville and a whole bunch of writers you don’t know, attacking Israel for bombing Hamas.

After 400 or so words attacking Israel, the letter gets around to mentioning what started all this only at the end.

“On Saturday, after sixteen years of siege, Hamas militants broke out of Gaza. More than 1,300 Israelis were subsequently killed with over one hundred more taken hostage—some of them friends and family of signatories to this letter. We deplore the loss of all innocent life and now, as we write this letter, Israel is executing the largest expulsion of Palestinians since 1948 as it bombs Gazans without discrimination.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4259079-cotton-calls-for-deportation-of-foreign-nationals-who-support-hamas/

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday calling for the deportation of foreign nationals who support Hamas. 

In the letter addressed to the agency’s secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, the GOP senator urged the department to deport any foreign nationals who have expressed support for Hamas’s attacks on Israel, including international students studying in the U.S. 

“I write to urge you to immediately deport any foreign national—including and especially any alien on a student visa — that has expressed support for Hamas and its murderous attacks on Israel,” Cotton wrote. “These fifth-columnists have no place in the United States.” 

The letter, obtained by The Hill, comes as activists and college students across the U.S. have faced pushback after organizations at multiple colleges put out statements that have been characterized as defending the killings in Israel.

Cotton suggested that the DHS starts with deporting international students who signed or approved the letter from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee. 

“Swiftly removing and permanently barring from future reentry any foreign student who signed onto or shared approvingly the anti-Semitic letter from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee on October 7 would be a good place to start,” Cotton wrote.