A series of commentary pieces this week highlights friction points for liberty-minded readers, from a surprisingly close Minnesota Senate race to warnings that French media are sanitizing riots tied to immigration.
In Minnesota, Wall Street Journal columnist Barton Swaim writes that Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the Democratic candidate for Senate, is running only three points ahead of Republican Michele Tafoya, a former NFL reporter. Swaim notes this is notable because Minnesota “hasn’t elected a Republican statewide in 20 years,” and Flanagan would “ordinarily glide to victory.” Her platform includes Medicare for All, abolishing ICE, and halting arms sales to Israel — positions Swaim calls “implacably progressive.” She is also linked to Gov. Tim Walz’s Medicaid scandal. Her campaign’s central strategy, according to Swaim, is tying Tafoya to President Trump, a bet that only pays off if “a majority of Minnesotans hate anything Mr. Trump does because he does it.”
France: Riots and the Fight Over Language
Across the Atlantic, commentator Heather Mac Donald writes on X that the mainstream press is attacking National Rally leader Marine Le Pen for “exploiting the French riots,” after Le Pen argued the unrest confirms warnings she has made for years about what she calls immigration from the Third World. Mac Donald says prestige outlets are mounting what she calls “an elite effort at euphemism,” using terms like “unrest” and “social instability” instead of describing the violence and destruction directly. She argues the scenes in French cities validate Le Pen’s description of a demographic crisis, writing, “If naming a deliberate attack on Western civilization by those who feel only resentment and envy earns one the title of far-right extremist or racist, so be it.”
Health Policy Claims Don’t Hold Up
Nationally, the Washington Post Editorial Board examined several Trump administration health policy moves that Democratic leaders had attacked as extreme. The board found the criticism didn’t match reality. When the administration canceled 760,000 Obamacare policies set up by brokers it says were acting improperly, progressives claimed it was an effort to strip Americans of health coverage. Only 51 of those removed from the rolls asked to be reinstated. Separately, ending a temporary Medicare Part D subsidy drew claims that the administration had “doubled prescription drug costs for millions of seniors,” but the Post board reports premiums will rise by less than a dollar on average. The board concluded the administration’s cost-cutting and anti-fraud efforts “look promising.”
Author J.K. Rowling also weighed in this week on her website, describing threats she has faced over her opposition to what she calls the dominant strain of trans activism — the position that a man who identifies as a woman is a woman. She wrote that women without the financial security to ignore the issue, including those who have needed rape crisis centers, don’t have “the luxury of pretending that their sex doesn’t matter.”
Separately, Reason’s J.D. Tuccille examined the property tax debate, warning that shifting the tax burden to the state level to relieve homeowners would concentrate more power at higher levels of government and weaken local control — even as he acknowledges annual property tax bills function like a perpetual rent payment that undermines homeowners’ sense of security.
