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‘Now do the border’

Andrew Egger in The Bulwark

President Joe Biden was “smart” to renew his call for a border-security bill as he signed long-delayed Ukraine-aid legislation, says Andrew Egger. “Earlier this year, Republicans spiked his border deal,” which was tied to Ukraine aid, “at Donald Trump’s behest.” Trump’s fellow Republicans knew “Biden was vulnerable on immigration and didn’t want to give him an election-year life preserver.” But with Ukraine removed from the equation, “their excuses for opposing it will become even less plausible.”

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John R. Lott Jr. in The Wall Street Journal

“Americans think crime is on the rise,” and they’re right, says John R. Lott Jr. “Journalists purport to refute this by citing official crime statistics showing a downward trend.” But they’re not taking into account that fewer victims are “reporting crimes to the police, especially since the pandemic.” Many people see no point reporting crimes because they “don’t believe criminals will be caught and punished.” But the number of Americans saying they’ve been victims has risen. 

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‘Tennessee Republicans want to turn teachers into gunslingers’

Mary Ellen Klas at Bloomberg

“If brains were bullets, Tennessee’s legislators would be shooting blanks,” says Mary Ellen Klas. A year after a former student “gunned down” three students and three staff at The Covenant School in Nashville, Republican state lawmakers “brainwashed by a cultural obsession with guns” decided the best way to protect “children from school shooters is to arm their teachers.” They even rejected an amendment to require locking up the guns to keep them “safe from inquisitive or troubled youngsters.” 

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‘Every day in court improves Trump’s chances in November’

Stuart Stevens in The New York Times

Normally, “taking your candidate off the road” during a tight presidential campaign “would be devastating,” says Stuart Stevens. “But ‘normal’ and Donald Trump live in different countries.” The time the Republican former president spends at his Manhattan hush money and election fraud case could be a “gift from the political gods.” It lets Trump play the victim, a “wronged man seeking justice,” which could drive the turnout among his base he needs to win.

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