New York City narrowly avoided freezing, Ukraine aid contributes to our success, and other insights
Energy desk: NYC Came ThisClose to Freezing
An “alarming” recent federal report warns that nearly half of Gotham almost lost heat for months last winter, flags The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.
It was “the fifth time in 11 years that power plant failures” jeopardized grid reliability.
Natural-gas wells froze, and “demand for electricity and heating surged,” leading to lower pipeline pressure.
Meanwhile, ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo blocked fracking, and “the climate lobby” has pushed heat pumps that stress the grid more.
“If New York City relied mostly on electricity for heat, millions could have lost both power and heat during the arctic blast.”
Yet even noting such possible disasters “is taboo” among those who want to rely “solely on electricity driven by wind and solar energy. Don’t say New Yorkers weren’t warned.”
Conservative: How Ukraine Aid Helps Us
“Funds that lawmakers approve to arm Ukraine are not going directly to Ukraine but being used stateside to build new weapons or to replace weapons sent to Kyiv from US stockpiles,” notes The Washington Post’s Marc A. Thiessen.
The American Enterprise Institute has “identified 117 production lines in at least 31 states and 71 US cities where American workers are producing major weapons systems for Ukraine.”
Indeed, “Our aid to Ukraine is not only creating American jobs but also reinvigorating our dangerously atrophied defense industrial base.”
It’s “forcing the Pentagon to rapidly increase the United States’ ability to produce weapons” and “modernizing the US military,” yet “31 senators and House members whose states or districts benefit from funding for Ukraine have voted to oppose or restrict that aid.”
From the right: ADL’s Clueless DEI Nod
A report based on the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International’s “survey of antisemitism on college campuses since the Oct. 7 attacks” reveals “a rise in anti-Semitic incidents” and a general dissatisfaction with how administrators are handling “increasingly aggressive pro-Hamas activism,” writes Commentary’s Seth Mandel.
The survey asks students: “Should DEI cover anti-Jewish prejudice?” A supermajority of “both Jewish and non-Jewish students say yes.”
Mandel notes “DEI is responsible for a fair share of the rise in anti-Semitism on campus.”
Instead of “encouraging Jewish students to lobby for a spot within a racial spoils system,” the ADL “should be leading the charge to dismantle it.”
Ethnic beat: Dems Share Univision’s Problem
The US “Latino population is changing, with parallel repercussions for two prominent American institutions: the Democratic Party and the media giant Univision,” argues Mike Madrid at the Los Angeles Times.
Both long prospered “on the notion that Latinos are primarily Spanish-speaking recent immigrants, an image increasingly disconnected with reality.”
Fact is, “exploding numbers of U.S.-born, primarily English-speaking Latinos” have the network’s viewership “in steep decline.”
And the Hispanic electorate is “moving away from the aggrieved immigrant narrative favored by Democrats and toward an assimilating, working-class identity that mirrors its non-Latino counterparts.”
Univision can adjust with moves like its recent airing of a long, friendly interview with ex-President Donald Trump.
But Democrats “are going to have to fight for a base they have always been able to take for granted.”
Campus watch: Address Antisemitism at the Roots
“Several college presidents have decried the presence of antisemitism and taken measures to protect Jewish students”; those steps “treat the symptoms of antisemitism, but not the root cause,” warns Alan Kadish at The Hill.
Under the rubric of intersectionality or moral relativism — the concept that in every major conflict there is an oppressor and an oppressed, and the oppressed should always be supported — college campuses became fertile ground for a rise in antisemitism.”
This “can create dangerous narratives — in this case, that Israelis are the oppressors or colonialists and Palestinians are the oppressed.”
“Institutions of higher learning must return to their original purpose: teaching, with a commitment” to “reasonable discussions” and “moral clarity.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
