Conservative: Biden Owns the Ukraine War

After “thousands of unnecessary deaths,” President Biden is finally “providing Ukraine with the weapons it needs,” writes The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at last said the US goal is to “help Ukraine so decimate Russia’s military that it can no longer threaten its neighbors” — but it’s time Biden & Co. “understand something else”: “The fate of Ukraine and the fate of his presidency are inextricably linked.” By making up “for the paucity of US military aid with grit and determination,” the Ukrainians changed “Americans’ expectations,” which “raises the stakes for Biden.” If “Biden helps Ukrainians” beat Russia, “he will deserve the credit. But if Russia wins . . . he will deserve the blame.”

Schools watch: Why I’m Suing Our District

After finding a social media post on “materials for a new ‘Ethnic and Gender Studies’ class,” Carol Beth Litkouhi explains at Fox News, “I wanted to learn more.” But teachers and admins stonewalled her: “After several weeks of trying to get answers, I received nothing of substance” — even after a Freedom of Information request, so she’s gone to court. “Why all the efforts to keep parents in the dark?” After all, “questioning a class does not mean [being] opposed to it.” “Nothing taught in our schools should be under the cover of secrecy,” which is itself “a red flag.” “We have a legal right to know what our children are taught in school. And the public schools that we pay for with our taxes have a legal duty to tell us.”

Tech beat: No Government Action Needed

Twitter is changing ownership, Netflix is “bleeding subscribers,” CNN+ is “shutting down,” Facebook’s losing users and Google’s no longer “the world’s most popular” Web site, observes Reason’s Peter Suderman. All of which proves that “the marketplace for online communications, entertainment and news media is never stable,” as “even the most powerful players can be dethroned.” So calls for government action — supposedly the only way large corporations can be “checked or dislodged” lest they “wield outsize influence over public life forever” — are wrong. “Big doesn’t mean permanent. Powerful doesn’t mean monopolistic.” Competition and “directional change” happen without state intervention; it’s “the nature of the market”: “Today’s big powerful companies could become tomorrow’s also-rans, no government action required.”

Foreign desk: Why Brussels Fears Musk

European Commissioner Thierry Breton “lost no time in rattling his sabre at Twitter” after Elon Musk’s purchase, observes Ross Clark at The Spectator, warning it to “comply with our law.” Behind the “outburst”: “sheer envy” that America “has all the tech giants and that Europe does not have a single company to match the likes of Twitter and Facebook, let alone the far more impressive giants of Microsoft, Apple, Google.” Why? “Europe’s high-regulation, protectionist model simply doesn’t encourage the development of any new industry. . . . The EU has even more reason to fear Elon Musk now that Tesla is beginning seriously to eat into the luxury car market,” where “EU companies have led . . . until now.”

From the right: Joe’s Gift to the Rich

“President Biden is on the verge of rewriting a longstanding social contract by deciding that taxpayers should repay significant portions of student loans, instead of the borrowers who took out those loans and received the education,” gripes National Review’s Jim Geraghty. “The biggest beneficiaries would be white Americans under the age of 40 who have graduate degrees and live in high-income, majority-white neighborhoods — in other words, extremely online Democrats.” In essence, “Biden’s Hail Mary pass for the coming midterms is a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers to the Democratic Party’s activist class, and that will exacerbate the already-bad inflation crisis.” What happened to the understanding that if you borrow money, “you must pay it back, or you will suffer serious long-term financial consequences?”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board