Transitioning from the ‘fringe’ to leadership: Democratic allies’ contentious battle against ‘No Labels’ and other commentary

Science beat: From ‘Fringe’ to . . . Boss

“Four years ago, Jay Bhattacharya was ostracized” by colleagues at Stanford and “censored on social media platforms” because the “public-health establishment” deemed him a “fringe” epidemiologist, recalls City Journal’s John Tierney.

Yet he’s “far from the fringe today” as Prez-elect Donald Trump just nominated him to head the National Institutes of Health.

If he’s confirmed, “it will be a major victory for science and academic freedom — and a serious threat to the universities that suppressed scientific debate and promoted disastrous policies during the pandemic, causing public trust in science to plummet.”

Why? Because at NIH, the “world’s largest funder of biomedical research,” Bhattacharya will “wield a potent tool to induce reform: money.”

Campus censors may “rediscover” the principles of academic freedom “once they contemplate their budgets.”

From the left: Dem Allies’ Slimy War on ‘No Labels’

A lawsuit by third-party outfit No Labels reveals “details of a plan to ‘shun,’ ‘stigmatize,’ and ‘destroy’” the organization, showing “groups aligned with the Democratic Party using dirty tricks and elaborate fakery to attack anyone in their electoral path,” reports Racket News’ Matt Taibbi.

The lawsuit was filed in December 2023 against “an irksome imitator who’d bought and begun to use the domain nolabels.com,” while promoting candidates and ideas that No Labels had not endorsed.

Discovery documents “give a picture of the surprisingly vicious and personal blueprint for vaporizing competitors employed by” Democratic allies to attack No Labels, including “finding ‘creative’ ways to associate the group with racism, extremism, and coded messaging.”

“Groups identifying themselves as ‘pro-democracy folks’ saw no contradiction in an organized effort to prevent people other than their candidate from participating in elections.”

From the right: CBS’ Shameful Election Coverage

“In an election where Americans finally began to tune out legacy media, CBS drove the decline,” snarks The Federalist’s Tristan Justice.

If, by hosting the VP debate, “CBS executives believed they could rehabilitate the media’s image as a trusted avenue of fair and balanced information,” they were “proven wrong by their own network.”

Neither moderator “seriously fact-checked [Tim] Walz, but rushed to interfere with [J.D.] Vance’s answer on immigration.”

“CBS’ election interference” continued in a “60 Minutes” interview of Kamala Harris where a “deceptive edit” cleaned up one of her worst “word salad” answers.

It all underscored “the currents of extremism running through CBS and undermining the credibility of the legacy media.”

Conservative: DOGE Must Aim To Decentralize

Moving “100,000 federal employees” to areas “outside of the Washington Swamp,” argues Fred Fleitz at American Greatness, “will save tax dollars and help depoliticize federal agencies.”

Most federal workers “can do their jobs more efficiently and economically in more affordable and less congested areas of the country” because modern technology makes it “unnecessary” for these agencies to be located near Washington.

Decentralizing federal agencies not only benefits “national security” but “also would help depoliticize them and fight the so-called ‘deep state.’”

Clearly, “DC’s entrenched bureaucrats and interest groups will fight hard to stop” the Musk-Ramaswamy Department of Government Efficiency — but “only a disrupter administration like the second Trump presidency can pull this off.”

Elex desk: How Trump Won Gen Z 

Donald Trump “has found a new fanbase” among younger people, giving “the Republican Party hope that Gen Z is not a drone generation of liberal activists,” reports the Washington Examiner’s Jeremiah Poff.

In a new poll, 56% of under-30s “are optimistic or excited about what [Trump] will do as president.”

Why? “Over the past eight years, Gen Z has been through a rough time. The cost of living has soared” after “COVID-19 wrecked their college experience, and social isolation left them feeling depressed and lonely.”

“It turns out young people are pretty much like everyone else.”

“They want a vision of America that makes them feel like they have an opportunity to succeed in building a life worth living.” 

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board