Trump the anti-oligarch, UK’s anti-prayer tyranny and other commentary

From the right: Trump, the Anti-Oligarch

“Unused to having their authority challenged,” “deep staters” are attacking “the most populist president of our lifetimes as an authoritarian who threatens democratic norms,” thunders Rob Wasinger at The Hill.

“Is Trump using lawfare to prosecute and incarcerate his political opponents? Is he threatening academic freedom? Is he imperiling freedom of the press? Is he posing some sort of hazard to the independence of the judiciary?”

No: “Groups specifically engaged in the anti-democratic project of denying voters a choice at the polls are now citing Trump’s pushback” as “the real threat to democracy.”

“The deep state” has “become complacent about its ability to call the shots in Washington” — that’s why its “critique of the first serious assault on its heretofore unchallenged power” is “transparently ridiculous.”

Speech desk: UK’s Anti-Prayer Tyranny

“There should be no ban on expressing views about abortion, silent prayer or merely being present outside an abortion clinic,” argues Josie Appleton at Spiked.

Yet in the United Kingdom, Public Spaces Protection Orders — powers that allow local councils “to restrict just about any activity of their choosing” — have seen pro-life activists arrested for praying near clinics, silently holding up signs and just about “anything that could be construed as someone expressing their opinion on abortion.”

No: “The test should be whether the activists harm other people or impede them from going about their lawful activities.”

“Freedom cannot be protected with tyranny. Once the state is given the power to police our thoughts, that knife will fall on us all — whatever our views on abortion.”

Econ watch: Dems Faking on Free Trade 

“You have to smile at all the born-again Democratic free-traders,” chuckles The Wall Street Journal’s Allyisa Finley.

Calif Gov. Gavin Newsom’s doing empty theater around them; Sen. Liz Warren hates the Trump tariffs but pledged to use “‘economic patriotism to overhaul our approach to trade’ and punish countries that don’t adhere to U.S. environmental and labor standards” in her 2019 White House run.

Funnier still, “Democrat-led states would have a strong legal argument” that Trump’s tariffs “exceed a president’s powers.”

Yet no lawsuit. Why? To keep open the possibility of a carbon tax on imports, possibly, or maybe because their “Big Labor friends support tariffs.”

Time for Warren, Newsom et al. “to take their fight to court” — if they mean it.  

From the left: Oakland’s New Insurgent

Oakland mayoral would-be Loren Taylor “is no populist rabble-rouser,” reports The Free Press’ Leighton Woodhouse — but he’s nonetheless “the insurgent candidate” against the “Democratic Party machine” pick, ex-Rep. Barbara Lee.

The election comes as “crime is rampant, businesses are pulling out of the city, and residents are increasingly frustrated.”

Small wonder The San Francisco Chronicle endorsed Taylor, or that “he has outpaced Lee in fundraising.”

Disgraced former Mayor Sheng Thao’s “calamitous legacy” on police defunding and public corruption “is a liability for Lee, who is backed by many of her old supporters”: Even liberals now blame “activists for the city’s deterioration.”

“Oakland voters already rebelled” against the Dem machine by recalling Thao. Now “they might follow through on their frustrations” by rejecting Lee.

Conservative: Don’t Start a War With Israel

Former National Security Adviser Brett McGurk put it best when he said “Don’t start a war with Israel” is what the world should learn from Oct. 7, 2023, observes Commentary’s Seth Mandel.

Egypt, Lebanon and Syria have all tried it. The result? Egypt “had to negotiate to get its land back.”

The Assads figured out the “window of opportunity to defeat Israel in war had long gone by.” And “Lebanon is a basket case.”

Entities like Hamas and Hezbollah “that still start wars with Israel know the devastation that is headed their way from the start.”

Indeed, “the only reason anyone — and there are no modern exceptions to this, none — starts a war with Israel is to immiserate their own citizens as well as Israelis.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board