Conservative: China’s Still US Enemy No. 1

While Vladimir Putin’s “barbarous invasion of Ukraine is a watershed moment in the return of history,” Americans can’t “devote the entirety of our attention to a single geopolitical challenge,” Sen. Marco Rubio warns at the Washington Examiner. We “must grapple with an even more powerful adversary: the People’s Republic of China.” For decades, the Chinese Communist Party has “undermined” the United States. And while the CCP has spent decades building “up its hard power” to “displace America as the world’s greatest power,” Americans have been “distracted by domestic politics.” To “prevail” against the CCP, we “need to revitalize our industrial capacity,” since “a nation dependent on hostile regimes for basic goods is not going to last long.” And we need “strong allies and partners” to prevent “Beijing’s dominion over its neighbors.”

Neocon: Putin May Win His Real Goals

“The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin catastrophically miscalculated,” notes The New York Times’ Bret Stephens. But: “Suppose for a moment that Putin never intended to conquer all of Ukraine” and that all he wanted were “the energy riches of Ukraine’s east” — Europe’s “second-largest known reserves of natural gas.” If so, “Putin doesn’t seem like the miscalculating loser his critics make him out to be.” Moreover, at home “the war has already served Putin’s political purposes.” And if “Russia’s military has embarrassed itself,” that’s “more likely to lead to a well-aimed purge from above than a broad revolution from below.” Bottom line: “It’s always wiser to treat your adversary as a canny fox, not a crazy fool.”

Libertarian: Your Big Bill for Buffalo Stadium

Gov. Hochul is giving the Buffalo Bills “the largest taxpayer-funded stadium subsidy in NFL history,” thunders Reason’s Eric Boehm. “State and local taxpayers will contribute about $850 million toward the estimated $1.4 billion stadium project.” But the public must also pay another $6 million a year “for the next 30 years to fund upgrades to the stadium and another $6.6 million for the next 15 years” for repairs. “That’s an extra $160 million in taxpayer funds” atop the $850 million price tag. Yet “New York’s combined state and local tax burden is the highest in the country,” so “America’s most put-upon taxpayers are now being asked to foot the bill for the Bills’ billionaire owners’ new stadium.”

Education beat: Real Reason for Florida Fight

If you “actually read the damn bill for yourself, you see how innocuous” Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law is, notes Chadwick Moore at Spectator World. It’s “a reminder, more than anything else, for educators to stick to age-appropriate topics” in classroom discussions and doesn’t preclude “one-on-one conversations between a student and teacher.” Why “the extraordinary outrage”? Simple: Progressives are “upset about losing their stranglehold over education.” Parents watching their kids learn remotely got “disgusted and outraged” with teachers pumping students full of critical race theory and “bizarre gender ideology.” Florida has “put the left in time-out, and Democrats are having an absolute conniption,” basically saying, “You’re not allowed to tell us what to do, especially in education.”

Green watch: SEC ‘Constitutional Overreach’

Don’t “be fooled” by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s claims that its proposal for “mandatory climate disclosure is solely about protecting investors,” advises RealClearFoundation’s Rupert Darwall. The real point: to direct capital to favored businesses and advance favored political and social goals. The commission can’t “openly admit” that, since that goal violates its “mandate to maintain fair, efficient markets” and “facilitate capital formation.” Indeed, the new rules would “push oil and gas investment from public to private markets and from Wall Street-listed companies to overseas ones,” especially those “immune” to climate activism. Now the debate will take place in the courts, where the SEC will have to “defend” its “constitutional overreach,” instead of in Congress, the more appropriate venue to weigh climate-policy trade-offs.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board