Kamala Harris campaigned on joyful vibes. But it was her opponent, Donald Trump, who actualized them. In just a few hours, Trump will be sworn in for the second time. And the vibes couldn’t be more different than 2016.
“Trump is more popular than ever,” writes the Free Beacon‘s Andrew Stiles. “The incumbent geezer is despised. What’s left of the #Resistance is exhausted and exhausting. Fair-weather fans have fled in droves. The pussy marchers and the boycotters are decimated; corporations and celebrities no longer cowed into submission. One gets the sense that some of Trump’s former opponents might be feeling a little embarrassed by their behavior over the past eight years, as they should be. There’s hope for change again.”
The seismic shift has manifested in many ways. Trump’s inauguration fund is filled to the brim with checks from big-name corporations and CEOs. Some of them, including Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, are set to join Trump on the dais during his ceremony. The Village People, after endorsing Kamala Harris and threatening Trump with legal action to stop playing their songs, will perform. Sixty percent of Americans are feeling optimistic about the next four years, per CBS News.
The Democrats, by contrast, are in submission. Take the so-called Women’s March, which drew more than a million attendees in 2017. This year, organizers rebranded the protest as the People’s March and estimated that 50,000 people would attend. “It almost certainly drew fewer attendees—the Washington Post reported that ‘thousands marched’ without disclosing a more precise figure,” Stiles notes.
“The massive swing reflects the public’s immense frustration at being lied to for years about the state of Biden’s cognitive health. The extent of the cover up is finally starting to come to light now that Biden is (almost) out of office for good. A New York Times report published Friday revealed how Biden’s inner circle ‘recognized his frailty to a greater degree than they have publicly acknowledged’ and went to considerable lengths to conceal his decline from the public.
“Trump returns to White House stronger than ever, with more allies than ever. America is on the verge of being fun again. The joy is back in town.”
Joe Biden or, more likely, someone tweeting in his name, declared the Equal Rights Amendment the “law of the land” in a tweet on Friday. Princeton University’s Robert P. George, a constitutional scholar, says the move is “laughable and meaningless”—but not harmless.
“For that reason,” George writes in the Free Beacon, “it should be forcefully condemned by Americans who believe in the Constitution and are loyal to it across the political spectrum.”
Although President Biden’s declaration will deceive many Americans into believing the ERA has been ratified or that his declaration itself constitutes certification of the failed amendment as part of the Constitution, even on its own terms the president’s statement was merely an expression of one man’s opinion. It has no legal force.
It will, however, mislead people and cause widespread confusion. It will lead other public officials to put out statements of their own “recognizing” or “acknowledging” that the ERA has been ratified. Indeed, Vice President Kamala Harris has already done this. And it sets what can only be described as an appalling precedent—one that will likely be seized upon by future presidents, possibly beginning with the one that is about to take office.
Biden’s risible, but far from innocent, stunt will further polarize an already dangerously polarized America, and it will further undermine those social goods—stability, predictability, broad agreement on the basic terms of social life—that the Rule of Law provides.
And to what end?
In actual litigation, courts will not treat the ERA as having become part of the Constitution. When the matter ultimately goes to the Supreme Court, the decision will likely be unanimous that the amendment failed of ratification and is not part of the Constitution. But this will not quell the passions that Biden will have so grossly irresponsibly enflamed. Some, perhaps even Democrats in high office, will deny that the Court’s judgment of the matter is binding. Some will accuse even the liberal justices on the Court of having “sold out.” Democratic presidential candidates, pandering to the enflamed base of the party, may run on promises to appoint justices who will “recognize” the ERA as part of the Constitution.
Read George’s full piece here.
The first round of Israeli hostages released under a tenuous ceasefire deal were released from Hamas captivity and returned to the Jewish state on Sunday. In Israel, friends of one of the released hostages, 28-year-old Emily Damari, lifted a reporter in the air on live television. In Gaza, armed Hamas terrorists paraded the streets, mobilizing a mob of civilian sympathizers around the ambulance carrying the hostages.
Though those terrorists “spent much of the past year hiding in tunnels and fighting in civilian clothes,” our Adam Kredo writes, “they wore uniforms as the hostages were released.” The show of force “served as a stark reminder that, even after a year of war, Hamas still controls the embattled Gaza Strip.”
“Those released include Romi Gonen, 24, Doron Steinbrecher, 31, and Emily Damari, 28,” reports Kredo. “They are the first of 33 hostages who will be returned to Israel during the first phase of a three-tiered ceasefire agreement. Israel has promised to release scores of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for each captive who is released.”
“Hamas’s emergence from the shadows on Sunday raises questions about how long the ceasefire will hold. The terror group is not permitted to participate in negotiations over Gaza’s future, yet it still remains a powerful political force in Gaza, even after it suffered heavy casualties in the war it sparked with its Oct. 7 terror attack.”
Away from the Beacon:
- Does Trump have a mandate? According to a pre-inauguration New York Times poll, 79 percent of Americans oppose biological males participating in girls’ sports, 71 percent oppose puberty blockers for minors, and 63 percent support “deporting immigrants in the country illegally who arrived during the recent wave of migration to the southern border over the last four years.”
- TikTok officially went dark on Sunday, the deadline for the video sharing app to decouple from its Chinese overlords or face a ban in the U.S. Then the Don expressed his intention to issue a legally questionable executive order extending that deadline, and TikTok scrambled to restore service.
- Speaking of executive orders, Trump will issue a “blitz” of them immediately following his inauguration, including one that would declare “a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border,” per the Wall Street Journal.
- Nancy Pelosi’s daughter has a message for Jill Biden: “If I was Lady McBiden, I’d put on my big girl pants, play the long game and think about my husband’s legacy. There aren’t many people left in America who have something nice to say about Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi is one of them.” Get your popcorn ready.
This article was originally published at freebeacon.com
