Elex beat: Florida Blacks Win Without Racial Gerrymander

“Republicans owe their razor-thin House majority to a decision Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made earlier this year that largely escaped notice outside the Sunshine State,” crows William Mattox in The Wall Street Journal. He vetoed the Legislature’s district maps then won support for a plan that avoided “racial gerrymanders.” And under the new maps, “Florida voters proved that black candidates don’t have to run in racially gerrymandered districts to get elected.” Despite losing four House seats, Democrats and those who believe in “a vibrant and responsive democracy should be pleased that Republicans like Mr. DeSantis are vying for black votes through issues like school choice.”

Neocon: Biden’s Abuse of Power

With courts striking down his student-debt giveaway as exceeding President Biden’s constitutional powers, the White House is undeterred, fumes Commentary’s Noah Rothman: It “never gave the law its due when it crafted its patently lawless subversion of congressional authority in the first place, so why start now?” One idea: “extending a Covid-related moratorium on student-loan payments well past its scheduled sunset” on Jan. 1. Yet: “The extension of the Covid emergency for this, little more than a handout to a favored Democratic constituency, subverts the democratic process in pursuit of the cheapest, most parochial of political goals.”

Border patrol: GOP Must-Dos on Immigration

High on the Republican House agenda must be stopping Biden’s “historic border crisis, securing the border and reducing illegal immigration,” argue former border officials Mark Morgan & Tom Homan at The Hill. First, “impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas,” who has shown no “willingness to re-think the policies that got us here.” Second, “conduct meaningful oversight” to “expose the extent of the Biden administration’s push for open borders, and the dishonesty with which administration officials have handled the crisis.” Third, “pass legislation that begins to undo the damage,” including immigration-system reforms “to eliminate rampant fraud and loopholes.”

School watch: Gates, Zuck Fund Woke Ed Takeover

“Some of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world are funneling millions of dollars into schools to push left-wing education initiatives at the expense of students’ academics,” reports Fox News’ Kristine Parks, citing Parents Defending Education’s investigation into foundation giving. Grants went “to advance initiatives promoting equitable grading, Social Emotional Learning (SEL) and Critical Race Theory instead of academics” in districts where kids were failing. “The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the Wallace Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Windward Fund” seek to foster “equity” in public schools.

From the left: The New Witch-Burning

“We burn witches in America. When heathens won’t convert,” snarks TK News’ Matt Taibbi, “we still burn the village freethinker.” He’s talking about noise from the Federal Trade Commission, the intel community and the White House about investigating Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover just because he’s “the new bête noire of the American consensus. He is the Negative Current Thing.” That is, he “has mild disagreements with Current Thing speech theology, and enough money to refuse to back down when threatened.” Plus, “Musk could probably explode the Washington blob just by airing all the dirty correspondence from governments, ours included, that sent censorship and surveillance dictates to Twitter over the years.” But: “If he is indeed holding that grenade, he should pull the pin now. He would go down in history as an American hero, remembered as the man who used his billions to buy the unmasking of a corrupt political establishment.” Indeed, “If the U.S. government is seriously going to dig up the corpse of McCarthy to go after Musk on national security grounds because he just voted Republican, . . . Musk should welcome that confrontation.” “The average person will see this for what it is, an illegitimate effort to seize a private business from one extremely powerful person for the crime of disagreeing with an even more powerful people in government.”

— Compiled by Michael Benjamin & Mark Cunningham