Biden’s weak hand-off, don’t blame inflation on Don and other commentary

Global order watch: Biden’s Weak Hand-Off

“Biden is handing over a world that is running perilously amok under a permissive environment that began with his disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan,” thunder Jonathan Sweet & Mark Toth at The Hill. “Wars in Ukraine and Israel,” Beijing threatening “Taiwan and the Philippines,” and “acts of sabotage” by Russia and China are the results “of a permissive environment created by the Biden administration.” “America needs to get back into the business of leading and winning” since our “adversaries understand strength.” In his first term, “Iran and Syria felt the wrath of Trump” and “Hamas got the message.” He “needs to apply ‘maximum pressure’ everywhere” to put an “end to Biden’s permissive environment.”

Eye on the Fed: Don’t Blame Inflation on Trump

After blaming inflation on COVID, Ukraine and supply-chain disruptions, the Federal Reserve’s now eyeing the promised Trump tariffs as well, marvels ex-Fed board member Kevin Warsh in The Wall Street Journal. No: Inflation “arose from a government that spent too much and a central bank that printed too much.” Trump inherits “a fiscal and monetary mess,” with inflation still “40% higher” than the Fed’s target. “Any inflationary effect of tariff policies will likely be of smaller magnitude than the disinflationary influence of deregulation and spending cuts” on Trump’s agenda. The Fed’s leaders should finally “take ownership of inflation” — and admit that “a smaller, less political, more effective Fed” can lead to “a brighter American future.”

Libertarian: Newsom’s Deregulation Moment

Reason’s Steven Greenhunt praises Gavin Newsom’s decision to spare Los Angeles wildfire victims from “onerous” government permitting and review requirements in rebuilding. It’s “smart politics and good policy,” but “why not take this approach further?” “If building regulations are an impediment during an emergency, aren’t they also an impediment during normal times?” Current law makes development a complicated process, with “any ‘stakeholder’” entitled to file a lawsuit against a project. And the California Coastal Commission has “near-dictatorial powers to approve or deny development”; it “even killed a proposed desalination project” citing “concerns over microscopic plankton.” Newsom should now reflect on the COVID-era regulatory changes, which “boosted commerce and individual freedom.” “One of the silver linings of that mess was that officials learned many regulations can be suspended with no ill effects.”

Conservative: The UN’s Prime Antisemite

UN special envoy to the Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese “is a figure of rare menace and depravity,” fumes Commentary’s Seth Mandel. “Albanese’s greatest hits” include “her insistence that America is ‘subjugated by the Jewish lobby,’” her “support for Hamas as recent as 2022,” and her work updating “Lex Takkenberg’s 1998 book on Palestinians and international refugee law” to rationalize the “trend of treating the UNRWA refugee classification as a legal imperative not until the Palestinians are repatriated but rather until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict itself is resolved.” Though her UN post “comes without a salary, the ‘world body’ for whom she speaks is funded disproportionately by America,” and thus she “implicates the Western world, its governments and its citizens,” in the spread of antisemitism.

From the right: Restore Justice, Restore Safety

Team Trump “should reverse all identity-based policies from the Biden era and refocus federal law enforcement agencies on combating crime and illegal immigration” to “guarantee an improvement in public safety,” argues City Journal’s Heather Mac Donald. The Biden Justice Department “made race and ethnicity the key factor in crucial criminal justice positions.” But “it is depolicing and deprosecution” “that create ‘harmful disparate impacts on people of color’ by failing to get criminals off the streets.” Team Trump “can restore a sense of safety by seeking only excellence,” not race or identity, “in its appointees, pursuing colorblind justice in its policies, conditioning federal dollars on public order maintenance, and enforcing the nation’s democratically supported immigration laws.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board