The Expensive Impact of COVID Relief Funds, NPR CEO’s Censorship, and More: A Commentary

Libertarian: The High Cost of COVID $timulus

Attorney General Merrick Garland this month boasted of recovering more than $1.4 billion in stolen COVID relief funds, yet “that’s only a fraction” of even just the stimulus money “swiped by scam artists,” laments Reason’s J.D. Tuccille. The Government Accountability Office estimates funds stolen from COVID unemployment programs at up to $135 billion; the Small Business Administration’s inspector general cites $200 billion more from other programs — so the $1.4 billion is “chump change.” Plus, the $5 trillion in COVID money-printing and debt drove up inflation. Stimulus funds might’ve bolstered an economy hobbled by lockdowns — but at a high cost. Maybe it would’ve been better not to order harmful lockdowns in the first place.

From the right: NPR CEO’s Censorship

“It would be impossible to create a resume of a person more disconnected from Americans and more intertwined with the wealthy, urban, globalist elite” than new NPR CEO Katherine Maher, fumes the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll. “Her tweets prove she is the perfect person for the job,” as they reveal “she hates cars. And white men flying on planes. She supports race-based reparations, rioting, and the Black Lives Matter movement.” And “the scary part is how willing she is to use her ample power to snuff out dissenting voices.” By suspending NPR editor Uri Berliner for five days over his essay “criticizing the progressive bias of NPR’s journalism,” “the true queen of the Karens showed him.”

SCOTUS beat: Sotomayor Is Young for the Court

Fifteen years into her tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor faces “misguided and deeply flawed” calls from the left to retire, warns Raul A. Reyes at CNN. Liberals fear “the future of the court’s liberal wing” after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death led to a 6-3 conservative majority. Yes, Sotomayor has Type 1 diabetes, but “her health is her own business” and her age is not an outlier in the Washington gerontocracy. “Justice John Paul Stevens was 90 when he retired” and Justice Stephen Breyer was 83. “Sotomayor is only 69” and “has yet to reach the average life expectancy for an American (76), for an American woman (79), or for a Hispanic woman (81).” Since the justice shows no signs of slowing down, “calls for her retirement are disrespectful and unwarranted.”

Eye on Congress: Ukraine Aid Secures America

As Speaker Mike Johnson moves ahead with aid bills for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, “he deserves support from Members of both parties given what a potential Ukrainian defeat would mean for U.S. national security,” argue The Wall Street Journal’s editors. House Republicans threatening to oust him believe “they can defeat aid” and return to “pounding Joe Biden about the crisis at the southern border.” Huh: “Such delusions about the world are usually reserved for the progressive left.” Putin “has no incentive to negotiate now that he thinks the U.S. may abandon Ukraine” — and taking Kyiv would put him in a “stronger position to invade the Baltic states.” “Republicans have a binary choice between helping America’s friends in Kyiv or abandoning them to Mr. Putin’s empire.”

Crime desk: The Police Shooting ‘Crisis’

Progressive hyperfocus on police shootings, note James Varney & Abigail Degnan at RealClearInvestigations, aimed to “make all law enforcement officers, especially the bad ones, think twice before pulling the trigger.” Instead, we’ve seen “steady, incremental increases” since 2015. Why? Not “racist or trigger-happy police officers”: In 2023, “83% of people killed by police bullets were armed.” And per Harvard’s Roland Fryer, “Once the number of police encounters was factored in,” “police were markedly less likely to shoot at blacks and Hispanics than at whites”; overall US numbers “challenge the claim that there is a national crisis around police shootings.” Departments “can make meaningful adaptations to make a difference” but largely “aren’t doing so.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board