From the left: Russiagate Never Ended
“For those who think Russiagate is ancient history,” warns Racket’s Matt Taibbi, “welcome to its second chapter, about Biden-era surveillance.”
Trump adviser Michael Caputo had “been monitored by the FBI” since 2023, after he began working for Team Trump.
In 2017, Caputo was “name-checked” by FBI Director James Comey in a House hearing and accused of “being too close to Russia.”
In 2023, when Caputo joined Trump’s “second re-election campaign,” aiming to design “federal government reform policy,” the US Attorney for DC then “issued a classified subpoena to Google” demanding access to Caputo’s emails and other data.
Caputo “worries that elements of the FBI” are still in place, “using spy tools far too easy to access, with too little oversight.”
From the right: Dems in the Wilderness
“Things have never been this bad for the party of hope and change,” snarks Joseph Curl at The Washington Times.
“Millions of voters are abandoning the party, approval ratings have hit a 30-year low and fundraising is in the dumper,” as “major Democratic donors have withheld contributions amid uncertainty about the party’s direction.”
Though some Democrats “are pushing for moderation,” others “continue to advocate for far-left positions.”
“The center-left think tank Third Way has one simple suggestion: Lose the woke,” but during a recent summer meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Democrats instead “doubled down on the woke and then made a hard-left turn.”
The party “just might spend the next 20 years in the wilderness, and it has only itself to blame.”
Economist: It’s Debt That Saps Fed’s Independence
“Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s independence have grown following repeated attacks by President Donald Trump, including this week’s decision to fire Fed Gov. Lisa Cook based on questionable allegations,” notes Veronique de Rugy at The American Spectator.
But the debate “is too narrowly focused on the president’s political pressure, ignoring a growing danger in our system”: the national debt — and Congress’ tax-and-spend policies, which create it.
“Pressure on the Fed will continue” no matter who’s president, “thanks to the fiscal trajectory that was locked in years ago, and Congress’ refusal to do anything about it.”
It’s not whether Fed boss Jerome Powell, or his successor, “will resist Trump’s demands,” but whether “Congress will behave in a way that allows the Fed to do its job.”
Libertarian: Lisa Cook’s Pro-Censoring Past
As Trump tries to fire Fed board member Lisa Cook, it’s worth revisiting 2020, when “Cook was involved in the effort to oust Harald Uhlig, then editor of the Journal of Political Economy, for crimes against wokeness,” flags Reason’s Robby Soave.
Uhlig “politely but firmly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement” for pushing to defund the police and was accused of once saying “something negative about Martin Luther King Jr.”
Cook called for Uhlig’s axing, posting that “that ‘free speech has its limits.’”
It’s “crazy” that a sitting member of the board “called on somebody to lose their job for such a trivial reason,” but the fact that most people would now recognize that this shows “the tides of wokeness actually have receded.”
Victim advocate: Trump Bail Order Welcome
“It’s hard to explain what it feels like to bury someone you loved” who died unnecessarily, observes Jennifer Harrison at The Spectator.
While families of victims of violent crime have gone “through the worst nightmare imaginable,” politicians have congratulated themselves “for ‘social justice’ reforms that only created more victims.”
Democrats rammed through “bail reform, stripping judges of discretion and unleashing chaos,” and bore with little regard for or “mention of the victims whose blood had been spilled.”
Money has “flowed into programs designed to support criminals.”
Trump’s executive order on cashless bail “is a long-overdue acknowledgment that public safety must come first,” though “the least our system can do is to offer a semblance of fairness and balance” to the families of the victims.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
This story originally appeared on NYPost
