#Trump’s bid for suburban moms and other commentary

At the Washington Examiner, Bethany Mandel notes how liberal parents who back school reopenings think President Trump’s supportive comments hurt their case, at least among the left — because the left is so anti-Trump. Yet he might have been playing electoral politics: He knows which voters “hold the Holy Grail to his re-election: suburban white women,” who want their kids in school and learning, not “sitting in front of a computer screen pretending to learn.” Nor do these moms want to be forced to choose between their kids’ education and their jobs. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has pledged support to the teachers’ unions, which parents see as “in conflict” with their children’s best interests. Biden’s move may prove “a fateful error come November.”

China watch: The UK’s Huawei Fine Print

“As with any cell-phone contract, the devil is in the small print,” warns British Member of Parliament Bob Seely at Spectator USA. And so it is with the UK government’s announcement that Chinese telecom giant Huawei must be out of the country’s 5G network by 2027: Vendors can still use Huawei equipment bought this year until 2026, and “there is no rip-out date for old 3G or 4G.” Yet “if a week is a long time in politics, seven years is a veritable lifetime” — it’s possible “Huawei will sell as many kits as they can in the next six months” in Britain “and then seek to overturn the ban after the next election.” After all, “Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party are nothing if not tenacious.” And by 2027, “we will have moved onto 6G anyway.”

Pandemic journal: The Risk of More Lockdowns

A New York Times op-ed by John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza,” on the Spanish Flu pandemic, argues for another round of lockdowns — which National Review’s Jim Geraghty finds “frustrating” and dangerous. Barry wants fines for people who make “dumb decisions,” inanely paints New York as a “coronavirus success story” and fails to even mention the exceptions made for anti-racism protests. Nor does he acknowledge that lockdowns have “harmful effects” — prompting “drug overdoses, suicides, delayed cancer surgeries” and at-risk patients “staying away from hospitals until it’s too late.” Or that they’ll clobber the economy, even as many Americans are “wondering how they’re ­going to pay the rent.” His argument’s biggest flaw: failing to weigh “how many people will die without a strict lockdown in place” versus the number who will succumb if it’s restored.

Iconoclast: We’re Losing the New Cold War

The United States will need “internal cohesion” and “diplomatic acumen” to wage a cold war against “the genocidal tyrants in Beijing” — yet, The Week’s Matthew Walther sighs, it probably lacks both. Even if Americans were “willing to alter their consumption” of “Chinese plastic junk,” we’d still have elites who serve “Beijing’s interests” by railing against “beloved syrup and football mascots” while ignoring China’s genocide of Uighur Muslims. By contrast, China’s leaders have exploited the current pandemic, which they caused, and are expanding their ­influence via “infrastructure investment” in many of our NATO-ally nations. Beijing’s political aspirations will only bring more messes like the COVID-19 crisis in the years to come. And don’t “expect more favorable outcomes.”

Libertarian: A Modern Reign of Terror

Woke mobs branding opponents as racists and costing them their jobs remind Reason’s Robby Soave of the French Revolution’s Committee of Public Safety in 1793 — with “radical leaders” who believe “public safety requires public terror.” Critics of today’s radicals may not fear “being sentenced to the guillotine,” but “losing employment and social standing” is “no small matter.” Political scientist David Shor, for one, lost his job at the Democratic consulting firm Civic Analytics merely because he shared research showing nonviolent protests work better than violent ones. Too many social-media activists didn’t care whether his impulse was liberal or even “reflected reality”: They just “denounced Shor as a racist,” prompting his firing. This modern “terror” is all too similar to what the Jacobin committee instilled. “Call it the 1793 Project.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board