‘Congress should force China to sell TikTok’
National Review editorial board
The House should pass its proposed legislation to force ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, to “divest itself of the company financially,” says the National Review editorial board. Yes, TikTok is a popular social media app. It also “is spyware” controlled by a “hostile rival superpower.” And China showed it “is willing to weaponize” TikTok against us when it pressured thousands of “wailing” young users into flooding congressional phone lines to protest against “their favorite toy being taken away.”
‘This is what happens when you smash great expectations’
Bryce Covert in The New York Times
The economy “seems robust on paper, yet Americans are dissatisfied with it,” says Bryce Covert. There are many reasons. Inflation has fallen but prices remain “uncomfortably high.” Obtaining basics like housing or child care has become harder. Republicans “may just not like an economy run by a Democratic president.” But a major factor is that “the country created the most robust safety net we had seen in decades” during the pandemic, then “took it all away.”
‘Trump and his MAGA movement stormed the Republican establishment. Now they have become it.’
Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times
The national Republican Party “is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Trumpism,” says Johan Goldberg. Former President Donald Trump has long dominated the GOP, but his clinching of a third presidential nomination supercharged his “takeover” of the party, “culminating with the Trumpian captivity of the Republican National Committee.” Now that his cronies and family control the RNC, the GOP establishment Trump set out to challenge is gone. MAGA is the Republican establishment now.
‘It sure seems like the courts have placed Christianity above other faiths’
Steve Kennedy in Slate
The conservative legal movement’s push for “religious freedom” has resulted in big wins for “Christian legal interests,” says Steve Kennedy. The courts have not been as kind to “religious practitioners outside of the ‘Judeo-Christian’ tradition.” An appeals court recently ruled against the nonprofit Apache Stronghold in its suit against the sale of sacred Apache land to copper mining interests. It is “absurd” to argue that selling land tied to a specific “spiritual practice” doesn’t inhibit religious freedom.
Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
