Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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May 5
The Washington Post says Congress must act to stop abuse of redistricting
Florida was of this year’s race to the bottom on redistricting. Yet a cacophonous encore is now playing across the South after a Supreme Court ruling last week.
The GOP started it in Texas last summer. A back-and-forth ensued, with Democrats redrawing maps in California and Virginia while Republicans did so in Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio.
Simultaneously, a long-running constitutional dispute over the Voting Rights Act came to a head last week when the high court while designing districts in Louisiana v. Callais.
The court’s ruling wasn’t about partisan gerrymandering, per se. It was about when states could be compelled to draw majority-minority districts under the VRA and the Constitution. In practice, those districts tend to be Democratic.
The decision lifts Louisiana’s need to have two majority-Black districts. But Gov. Jeff Landry (R) seems intent on maximizing his party’s gain from the decision, potentially with a map that picks up both of those seats for the GOP.
Making such changes so close to an election — primary ballots have already been printed — creates confusion. The Supreme Court announcing the VRA decision closer to the end of its term next month could have avoided this 11th-hour frenzy.
For prudential reasons, other states might have opted to hold off until 2028. Yet Tennessee’s legislature to eliminate its only blue district, based in Memphis. Alabama Republicans, too, are forging ahead with plans to knock out at least one of two Democratic seats, even though the state is to use its current map until 2030. Mississippi lawmakers to debate redistricting later this month.
Not everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) plans for a special session. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) before he leaves office at the end of the year.
Traditionally, states completed redistricting only once a decade, after the decennial census required by the Constitution. The process was still political, but it was a sensible norm that society took for granted. It helped create certainty for voters and spurred competition because politicians couldn’t predict how places or groups would shift over 10 years.
The most obvious way to stop this spiral from repeating itself every election cycle is for Congress to pass a law requiring states to only do redistricting after a census. As improbable as that seems, it’s more likely than either party unilaterally disarming.
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April 30
The New York Times says Iran has exposed that the U.S. military is losing its edge
On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about.
In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided. Iran of the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position.
That reality exposes the vulnerabilities in the American way of war. Tactical success has not yielded victory. Mr. Trump’s is one reason. But the problem is bigger than any single commander in chief. The United States has left itself unprepared for modern war.
America has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on ships and planes that are good at defeating competitors’ ships and planes but ineffective against cheaper, mass-produced weapons. The American economy to produce enough of the weapons and equipment it does need. And the country has struggled to fix these problems because of a and a that resists change.
Three months before Mr. Trump attacked Iran, we warned that the United States was at risk of . The last two months have shown that alarm was justified. The war in Iran, unwise as it is, should serve as a warning about the rising threats to American security and an incentive to fix them.
“Never in recorded history has a nation’s military been so quickly and effectively neutralized,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed on March 26. The next day, Iran and missile attack on an American base in Saudi Arabia that wounded more than a dozen service members, and damaged at least two refueling tankers.
The immediate debunking of Mr. Hegseth’s bombast points to the reform agenda that America’s military needs. There are four main priorities.
First, the United States needs to invest in counter-drone technologies, like those that Ukraine has developed in its war against Russia. The lack of such defenses is one reason that the vaunted U.S. Navy has been the closure of a vital waterway, the Strait of Hormuz.
Second, the United States needs more of its own cheap, disposable weapons like one-way attack drones and unmanned ships. Although much of the war in Ukraine has been fought by mass-produced drones, the Pentagon is pouring money into much more complex equipment, including pilotless “wingmen” that a piloted plane.
Third, the country needs larger and more flexible industrial capacity. Until recently, a single factory made all of America’s Tomahawk cruise missiles, and there is a constant shortage of Patriot missile interceptors. Congress should pass laws that help the private sector build up its manufacturing capacity. The Pentagon, for its part, needs to stop buying so many of its weapons from just five big weapons makers and start betting on dynamic tech companies that can quickly adapt.
Lastly, the United States with other industrialized democracies. Mr. Trump’s pleas for help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz from the very allies he spurned at the start of the war is just the latest proof that America can’t go it alone. In the years ahead, keeping pace with China’s economic and military expansion will require collaborating with like-minded democracies.
All of these steps are not merely about winning the next war. They also can help prevent it — by making our enemies believe they would lose any war they start.
Instead, the war in Iran has provided a road map for any country that wants to resist the United States in the future, including Russia and North Korea. For China, the country with the greatest potential to challenge American military might, the war validates its focus on new forms of warfare such as drones and cyber and space power.
The picture for the American military is not entirely grim. The Iran war has shown that it has an astonishing ability to find and destroy enemy targets. In the conflict’s first six weeks, the U.S. military hit over 13,000 military and industrial targets. American losses in the war, while tragic, have been limited, considering the scale of the attack and Iran’s resources: at least 13 service members killed and more than 300 wounded.
Mr. Trump has made some positive moves toward military reform. His administration has taken several steps to break the hold of major contractors on the supply of weapons to the Pentagon and has pressured some of them to increase production of much-needed missiles. The Army secretary, Daniel P. Driscoll, has moved to cancel outdated and failing programs.
But Mr. Trump’s chaotic, destructive approach to governance has undercut much of this progress. He , the “Trump class” battleships, even though they are vulnerable to air attack. Mr. Hegseth has fired a cadre of reformers and is feuding with Mr. Driscoll. In April, the administration proposed a $1.5 trillion budget that is likely to amplify our shortcomings rather than building on our strengths.
The good news is that Congress, the administration and the Pentagon can all now see our military shortcomings. The bad news is that our adversaries can see them too. Washington can no longer just talk about reforming the military. It has to do it, or risk making the disappointments in the Iran war become a preview of far worse.
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May 5
The Wall Street Journal on changes at FDA after Vinay Prasad’s departure
Good news: Vinay Prasad on Thursday served his final day at the Food and Drug Administration. Now the bad news: Commissioner Marty Makary has tapped Dr. Prasad’s deputy, Katherine Szarama, to replace him. Maybe the bigger problem at the FDA is Dr. Makary.
Recall that Dr. Makary tapped Dr. Prasad last May to oversee biologics, vaccines and gene therapies. The hematologist-oncologist quickly became a lightning rod by rejecting rare disease therapies. White House officials gave him the boot last July, but Dr. Makary brought him back. And what a blunder that was.
We’ve chronicled the innovative medicines Dr. Prasad has deep-sixed, including for the neuro-degenerative (UniQure), ( ), ( ), ( ) and ( ), among others.
Time and again, the FDA moved the goal posts for approvals and reversed prior guidance to drug developers. Dr. Prasad demanded that they conduct nothing less than double-blind randomized controlled trials in diseases for which such trials would be unethical or next to impossible because of their rarity. All of this undermined President Trump’s longtime support for the “right to try” new drugs for deadly or debilitating diseases.
The White House apparently had enough and pushed out Dr. Prasad a second time this spring. This brought hope that the agency might reverse its drug rejections and end its blockade on accelerated approvals. Maybe not. Ms. Szarama appears to share the same anti-innovation mindset as Dr. Prasad.
Ms. Szarama previously served as director of clinical trials at Arnold Ventures, an outfit launched by hedge-funder John Arnold that claims to support “evidence-based” policy. “Evidence-based” policy is code among the progressive healthcare crowd for restricting access to treatments that the left thinks aren’t worth the financial cost.
Mr. Arnold’s outfit financially supported Dr. Prasad’s academic work criticizing the FDA for approving too many novel medicines. Mr. Arnold took to social media last week to promote Dr. Prasad’s 2015 book “Ending Medical Reversal,” which argues that many medical advances are dangerous and useless.
In her job at Arnold Ventures, Ms. Szarama urged the FDA to restrict accelerated approvals. In an echo of Dr. Prasad, she wrote in an agency public comment that trial data should be “considered incomplete for evidence-based decisions when it lacks appropriate controls” and “relies on indirect measures of health,” as those for rare disease drugs often do.
An FDA visitor log shows that Dr. Makary met with representatives from Arnold Ventures in March to discuss “Collaboration Opportunities.” It’s not unusual for agency heads to meet with outside groups. The problem is that Dr. Makary has let the Prasad ideology dominate agency decision-making.
Ms. Szarama’s title will be “acting director,” so perhaps she’s a placeholder while the White House and Dr. Makary try to settle on a longer-term replacement. We’re told that White House officials have been reluctant to let Dr. Makary appoint an outsider to the post. But if Trump officials don’t trust his judgment, why is he in the job?
We had hoped Dr. Makary would restore credibility to an agency damaged by the Biden team’s pandemic equivocations and lack of transparency. But Dr. Makary’s deceptions about the agency’s drug reviews and rejections would make Anthony Fauci blush.
In a CNBC interview on Monday, he defended the agency’s rejection of Replimune’s melanoma cancer drug RP1 against our criticism. “I don’t work for Replimune. I work for the American people, and I stand by the scientists at the FDA,” he said. “Three independent teams arrived at the same conclusions.”
That’s false. The first review team recommended approval and was overruled by Dr. Prasad. A reviewer posted on social media that the staff had recommended approval but was later pushed out. When Replimune appealed the rejection, Dr. Prasad selected a new team to eliminate what the FDA referred to in its rejection letter as “bias” by the first team in favor of the drug.
It’s unclear what Dr. Makary means by “three” review teams since there have only been two. Replimune has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the review process, but the FDA has stonewalled its requests. So much for the radical transparency Dr. Makary has promised.
Dr. Makary has tried to dismiss his critics as in the pocket of industry, but we speak for desperately ill patients now and in the future. They need advocates, not bureaucratic dishonesty.
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May 3
The Philadelphia Inquirer says the Senate must use confirmation process to stand against presidential abuse of power
Kevin Warsh will likely be confirmed by the Senate next week as the head of the Federal Reserve after the Senate Banking Committee approved his nomination on Wednesday. Warsh, a Trump loyalist, threatens the central bank’s independence, but the story of his ascension illustrates both frightening presidential abuse of power and the importance of standing against it.
has made no secret that he believes the Fed, which includes setting monetary policy , should lower interest rates. The president rightly believes that a lower borrowing cost would give the economy — and his political standing — a boost. But he neglects the long-term side effects of a quick high.
Lower interest rates may spark growth by stimulating spending and investment, but they can also increase inflation as demand climbs. More importantly, trust in the U.S. financial system depends on an independent Fed able to make decisions free from political interference.
Trump is far from the first president to disagree with the way the Fed is handling interest rates. However, his pressure campaign against the central bank’s board and its current chairman, Jerome Powell, has grown into using the power of the federal government to bully and coerce.
After Trump’s unsuccessful attempt last year to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Fed governing board, over that she lied on a mortgage application, the U.S. Department of Justice into Powell over charges that he lied to Congress regarding the renovation of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters in Washington.
In in January, Powell, whose term as chair ends May 15, bluntly expressed why he believed he was targeted.
“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions, or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation,” he said.
Fortunately, in this case, political pressure cut both ways, as North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis, who sits on the Senate Banking Committee, made clear he would not support Trump’s nominee for Fed chair if there was an open investigation against Powell.
The gambit worked, and the DOJ probe was dropped on April 24.
In a bid to save face, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said she would “ ,” which prompted Powell to say that while he may be stepping down as chair, he will not follow in the tradition of leaving the board entirely. Instead, until the inquiry is “well and truly over with transparency and finality.” His term expires in 2028.
While Tillis is not seeking reelection and can risk Trump’s wrath, his actions should remind his congressional colleagues that when the president abuses his power, they have power themselves to push back.
Nowhere will this be more crucial than in the Senate confirmation of the next attorney general.
While Trump has so far failed to politicize the Federal Reserve, he has had no similar difficulty with the Justice Department. Under former Attorney General Pam Bondi, prosecutors pursued against former FBI Director James Comey, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, former CIA Director John Brennan, and New York Attorney General Letitia James, among others.
Still, this wasn’t enough for Trump, who reportedly fired Bondi, in part, because she wasn’t pursuing his political enemies . Never mind that it was the courts that offered an embarrassing dismissal of the prosecutions against Comey and James.
While the president has yet to nominate a replacement, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche seems intent on not repeating Bondi’s mistake. In less than a month on the job, Blanche’s DOJ has brought cases against David Morens, a former senior adviser to Trump foil Anthony Fauci, over , the Southern Poverty Law Center on charges related to the group to infiltrate hate groups, and Comey (again) — this time for the of threatening the life of the president in a social media post.
Tillis, who also sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has indicated he has about Blanche. That is heartening, but he should not be the only Republican willing to rein in an out-of-control administration.
Whether it is Blanche or some other Trump sycophant, senators must defend the independence of the Department of Justice, and remind the White House that the attorney general represents the people of the United States, not the president.
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May 5
The Guardian says SCOTUS continues to chip away at voting rights
In the late 19th century, after Reconstruction, US federal protections for Black voters began to erode. Southern states sought to reshape their electoral systems – – to consolidate political control for white supremacist politicians. Over decades this led to laws, under which most Black Americans in the south were effectively disenfranchised despite constitutional rights. The Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 was supposed to end that iniquity. The US supreme court is turning the clock back; reviving a system where formal voting rights for minorities remain, but political power does not.
What is striking today is the speed of the reversal: following last week’s court decision to substantially weaken section 2 of the VRA – the main federal limitation on gerrymandering in many red states – are to redraw maps, placing previously protected Black congressional districts at risk. Moira Donegan in the Guardian last week that the court’s 6-3 decision not only reflected its rightwing bias but completed chief justice John Roberts’s long project of dismantling the VRA. It’s hard to disagree.
In a city like , one of the “blackest” in America, a concentrated Black urban vote capable of electing a candidate in one district can now, it appears, be split across several. The result is that by “cracking” Memphis, Tennessee Republicans could win all nine House seats as opposed to the eight seats they currently hold. Repeat this over the south and Republicans could gain up to a by erasing “majority-minority” districts. The inbuilt advantage could be big enough for them to hold the House of Representatives even while losing the popular vote. That might help Donald Trump’s Republican allies keep power in Congress.
Both main parties in the US have shamefully engaged in widespread gerrymandering. But they have largely cancelled each other out. However the court’s decision means that while red states lose their main constraint, for partisan gains, Democratic – that is blue – states would have to respond with countermeasures. History suggests a new electoral arms race will take place. When Mr Trump last summer Republicans to launch a gerrymandering blitz to bolster their small House majority, Democrats responded – notably winning a referendum in Virginia to redraw the state’s congressional map. That could flip as many as four Republican-held seats. The matter is now being argued before a .
No one should be surprised that the supreme court now insists Louisiana – and any state – has no compelling interest to account for race when drawing maps. In when the court struck down another key VRA protection – which required states to get federal approval before changing any voting rules – chief justice Roberts insisted that “our country has changed” and the law’s “strong medicine” was no longer needed. The response was immediate: southern states implemented voter ID laws and restrictions that had long been blocked.
In a dissenting , justice Elena Kagan warned that the court’s majority decision puts at risk the many districts that have given minority voters – and especially African Americans – a political voice. She is right that such gains could quickly disappear. The current court is deeply compromised. Its decisions if left unchecked will undermine American democracy. The court must be confronted and transformed by the next Democratic administration.
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