Jill’s power to save Joe Biden in 2024, censors never stop

From the left: The Censors Never Stop

“Substack is under attack again,” grins Racket News’ Matt Taibbi, as Atlantic writer Jonathan Katz argues for “deplatforming Substack contributors he doesn’t like.” Of 17,000-plus writers, Katz cites “16 whole sites, he says, that deploy some variation of a swastika on Substack, and despite these being both legal and a complete non-factor in the national discussion, their existence cannot be tolerated.” Facing past furors over “transphobia” and “anti-vaccine sentiment,” Substack’s leaders “have proven they won’t let outside groups dictate to them about content. This is why contributors like me, who have a lot to worry about on this front, are loyal.” Censorship is “always about who gets the power to evaluate, not what’s being censored. The choice isn’t between getting rid of a few obvious Nazis, or not. It’s between giving someone like Jonathan Katz . . . sweeping power over content or not. Americans have always understood the second danger to be scarier, for good reason.”

Culture critics: Give — With Due Diligence

“The pressure to give money without strings attached has been growing,” report James Piereson & Naomi Schaefer Riley at City Journal. “Benchmarks for success” and “due diligence have become passé, or even a sign of structural racism; the often-white donors should simply trust leaders of color to make decisions for themselves.” Yet “donors have lavished hundreds of millions” on “groups like Black Lives Matter, only to see most or all of those funds wasted or stolen.” That, and the current trend of “pulling funds from Harvard, Penn, MIT, and other schools” over antisemitism, prove “that donors should exercise diligence in awarding grants and evaluating them after the fact” — to build trust and ensure their purposes are carried out.

Centrist: Choosing Merit Over Race

“My grandparents and parents had every reason not to marry across the color line,” cheers Eli Steele at Newsweek, “but they chose love over their racial order.” He was later “faced with another kind of racial order,” told to “just check the box and you’ll get the upper hand.” Yet “checking the ‘black’ box on college applications would have forced me to enter what I call the Minority State of Mind,” a narrow “identity based on the politics of race.” “I pursued the path of merit” to avoid any race-based “claim over me.” His black grandfather, “a founding member of the Congress of Racial Equality,” rose “from poverty to a solid lower-middle class life despite living under segregation.” Why “betray this admirable progress for the empty promise of skin color”?

From the right: Jill’s Power To Save Joe in 2024

First Lady Jill Biden is the only “person in the country who might be able to dissuade President Biden from seeking a second term,” argues Douglas MacKinnon at The Hill. “Every single Republican or conservative I know is hoping and praying that Biden is the Democratic nominee in 2024,” while “every single Democrat I know is hoping that Biden steps aside.” Biden family members are “now regularly being dragged into the webs of corruption or influence peddling,” while Joe’s “alleged cognitive issues . . . now regularly produce ‘Biden’s Senior Moment of the Week’ video clips.” “At what point does someone with influence within the Biden family cry ‘uncle’ to save the president and the family further embarrassment?”

Ed desk: US School Failure Hurts Us All

“The latest findings from the Program for International Student Assessment are nothing short of alarming,” warns Bloomberg’s Michael R. Bloomberg. “US math scores fell by 13 points between 2018 and 2022”; “just 7% of 15-year-olds scored in the highest two levels.” “US students need more classroom instruction to make up for pandemic learning loss.” We must “bolster teacher quality, adopt more rigorous instructional materials and promote greater competition” via charters — not shy “from imposing more accountability on educators.” US failure to “keep pace with the rest of the world” in schools will leave us “poorer, less competitive and more unequal. Only voters can save the country from that fate.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board