The Trump Administration has begun a more systematic campaign to counter Houthi strikes against commercial and military shipping in the Red Sea. Nancy A. Youssef, Saleh al-Batati, and Benoit Faucon report in the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. military officials described Saturday’s strikes as the beginning of a sustained campaign targeting the rebel group. The USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group is currently operating in the region and led the U.S. military response, a U.S. defense official said.

The operation included “precision strikes against Iran-backed Houthi targets across Yemen to defend American interests, deter enemies, and restore freedom of navigation,” U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for U.S. military operations in the Middle East, posted on X.

Trump said the strikes were also a message to Iran that it needed to immediately halt support for the group. If Iran threatens the U.S., “America will hold you fully accountable and, we won’t be nice about it!,” he said on his Truth Social platform.

Hours after the U.S. strikes in Yemen, Hossein Salami, the top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, rejected Trump’s allegations that Iran was backing the Houthis. Iran plays no role in the Houthis’ strategic and operational decisions but Tehran would respond if threatened, Salami was quoted as saying by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

Tehran also publicly denies that it supplies the Houthis with weapons, but United Nations inspectors have regularly traced seized weapons shipments back to Iran.

The Houthis began targeting commercial and military ships transiting the Red Sea and other nearby waters shortly after the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in what it described as support for the Palestinians. The group suspended those attacks in January, following a cease-fire deal reached by Israel and Hamas.

But in recent weeks, disputes over how to move to the next phase of that cease-fire have threatened to derail an already fragile deal.

Will these strikes be more effective than the Biden Administration’s program of retaliatory strikes against Houthi targets has been? Frankly, I doubt it. I cannot imagine that the area of Yemen in question is a target-rich environment.

The last several years has demonstrated rather conclusively that it’s much harder to maintain sufficient control of an airspace to prevent enemies from striking your commercial or military interests than it used to be. It doesn’t require a national-style air force to conduct such operations. They may be conducted by small groups or even individuals.

As I said at the outset of Houthi harassment of Red Sea shipping two years ago, actually eliminating the possibility of such attacks will require control of the territory from the Red Sea to a 100 km into the interior of the country. That’s 10% of the country or more. I suspect it would require ground operations and such operations have been avoided to date.

There’s a rather remarkable column in the New York Times from Zeynep Tufekci, undoubtedly motivated by the fifth anniversary of COVID-19. Here’s the meat of the piece:

The C.I.A. recently updated its assessment of how the Covid pandemic began, judging a lab leak to be the likely origin, albeit with low confidence. The Department of Energy, which runs sophisticated labs, and the F.B.I. had already come to that conclusion in 2023. But there are certainly more questions for governments and researchers across the world to answer. Why did it take until now for the German public to learn that way back in 2020, their Federal Intelligence Service endorsed a lab leak origin with 80 to 95 percent probability? What else is still being kept from us about the pandemic that half a decade ago changed all of our lives?

I found the use of the passive voice in the title amusing, given the tenor of the column itself: “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives”.

And, as Dr. Tufekci makes clear in her column, it was not just a case of knowing little about the virus at the outset but that physicians, scientists, and bureaucrats actively and knowingly lied about the virus and what they knew or did not know.

The German press recently has been full of stories about how the German intelligence service believes with high certainty that the pandemic was the consequence of a “lab leak” from the Wuhan laboratory. My own view, as I have said before, is that is a step too far.

We don’t really know what produced the pandemic—naturally evolving or lab leak—and we are unlikely to know unless the Chinese government miraculously becomes forthcoming about it. The only thing I can imagine that might cause that to happen, as I have said before, would be for our judges and political leaders to allow a civil suit against the Chinese government seeking in the vicinity of $30 trillion in consequential and punitive damages over COVID to proceed.

In the meantime I hope we learn how essential it is for professionals on whom we rely for their expertise be unswervingly honest in their public pronouncements. To be otherwise undermines public trust and, indeed, the very reasons that we rely on them. Furthermore, I hope we have learned that we should not subsidize “gain of function” research outside a place where we can control the safety measures put in place or how the knowledge is used.

Interceptions of eggs smuggled into the United States from Mexico or Canada have increased sharply this year, a response, no doubt, to the high prices. Jeanne Whalen reports at the Wall Street Journal:

The 64 pounds of meth stuffed into the seats and spare tire of a pickup truck caught the attention of border agents in El Paso, Texas, who seized the drugs last month. But it was the trays of eggs that really alarmed them.

As egg prices soar in the U.S., travelers have been stocking up on cheaper supplies in Mexico and, to some degree, Canada. The U.S. Department of Agriculture bans such imports because eggs not inspected through official channels can spread disease.

So-called egg interceptions are up 36% nationwide so far this fiscal year, compared with the previous year, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Along parts of the Texas border, they have risen by 54%, according to CBP’s Laredo field office. In San Diego, they have more than doubled, CBP has reported.

The restrictions on imports of eggs are not due solely to industry lobbying or avian flu. There are risks of salmonella and other diseases as well.

The editors of the Washington Post argue that Arab countries’ counter-proposal for ending the war between Israel and Hamas should be taken seriously and, indeed, should be supported by the U. S. as the only rational solution on the table:

His [ed. President Trump’s] head-scratching proposal put the onus on Arab and Palestinian leaders to come up with an alternative vision for Gaza’s “day after,” and they have done just that. Arab League leaders meeting in Cairo last week endorsed a realistic plan put forward by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi for a multiyear reconstruction of Gaza that would leave Palestinian residents in their homeland and commit the wealthy Arab countries to paying most of the rebuilding costs.

France, Germany, Italy and Britain, as well as China and the 57 Muslim countries represented in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, quickly backed the Arab plan. Predictably, Israel and the Trump administration rejected it. This is a shame, because the Arab plan — though incomplete and vague on key details, including the future role of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza — offers many sensible, workable ideas. It provides a useful starting point for talks on Gaza’s future and a clear road map for reconstruction, and attaches a price tag. It deserves serious consideration in the United States and Israel.

My own view is that I think that forcing people from their homes is unjust whether they are Israelis or Palestinians. But I question whether the Arab proposal is actually rational or a resolution at all. How rational is it for Israel to leave the military wing of an organization dedicated to the murder of its citizens in place?

As I have said any number of times before I do not believe there is a rational, just, and merciful solution to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The best that might be accomplished is an ongoing process of negotiations and that should be our immediate objective.

I think that Ruy Teixeira’s (and economist Thomas Piketty’s) hypothesis about today’s Democratic Party could use a bit of refinement:

The Democrats have become and remain today a “Brahmin Left” party. “Brahmin Left” is a term coined by economist Thomas Piketty and colleagues to characterize Western left parties increasingly bereft of working-class voters and increasingly dominated by highly educated voters and elites, including of course our own Democratic Party. The Brahmin Left character of the party has evolved over many decades but spiked in the 21st century. The chart below illustrates this trend.

How so? Consider the following:

• In 1960 7.7% of Americans had four year college degrees or better; today 37.5% do
• In 1960 2% of Americans had professional degrees; in 2018 3.47% did.
• Once members of the professions, those in finance, and graduates of selective institutions are discounted, the income benefit of a college education disappears
• It used to be the case that there was more than a standard deviation in IQ’s difference in IQ between college grads and non-grads. That is no longer the case.
• Between 1950 and 2010 the number of government employees increased almost four-fold, from 6 million to 22.5 million. After ten years without notable increases the number increased sharply during Joe Biden’s term in office.
• Total employees (including government employees) increased less than four-fold over the same period.
• The majority of union members now work for the government.

And none of that includes government contractors or grant recipients.

When you put all of those factors together I would submit two conjectures:

1. Today’s college graduates are pretty ordinary.
2. A significant proportion of today’s college graduates either will go on to work for government at one level or another or plan to.

or, said another way, people with college educations aren’t brahmins any more by any stretch and it’s completely unsurprising that a large percentage favor expanding government. They’re voting their pocketbooks.

Here’s another discouraging story. What do you think of the proposed ceasefire in the war between Russia and Ukraine? It’s very hard to make an intelligent comment in the absence of details of which I have seen none. That seems to be Russia’s position at present, too.

I’m skeptical that the Russians will accept any ceasefire given the conditions on the ground at present.

I have found the news coverage and commentary lately so dispiriting I have had difficulty in rising to post anything at all. I thought I’d make some remarks about the arrest of Columbia University Mahmoud Khalil, presumably prior to his deportation. I thought the legal aspects of this case were discussed pretty well by Andrew R. Arthur in this post at the Center for Immigration Studies. Many are focusing on the First Amendment issues but, as the linked post makes clear, there are issues to consider other than freedom of speech. Here’s his conclusion:

As you can see, I’ve relied on a lot of suppositions and guesswork to get to the conclusion that Khalil was arrested by ICE because the secretary of State has concluded that his presence in this country “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

If I’m right, expect to see the Trump administration rely more heavily on the foreign policy removal charge in section 237(a)(4)(C)(i) of the INA in response to pro-Hamas activity in the United States — and also expect a raft of legal challenges to follow.

I suggest you read the enter post. It’s not terribly long and quite informative.

Going beyond the legal and human rights issues at stake in this case, one of the things that struck me was how well this particular case supported my views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s a “wicked problem“. As I see it there are only three possible resolutions of the conflict: the Israelis can kill all of the Palestinians or expel them from their homes, the Palestinians and kill all the Israelis or expel them from their homes, or their can be a negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians.

Clearly, Hamas is a major impediment to the third alternative (negotiation). Its explicit raison d’être is the second resolution. Does the full-throated, unconditional, uncritical support of the U. S. government for Israel make the third alternative more likely? I don’t think so. I think it’s a barrier to the Israelis negotiating. I suspect that the sad reality is that our interests in the conflict are more domestic political ones than they are any particular commitment to either the Israelis or the Palestinians but they are domestic political interests held both by Republicans and Democrats.

There is, of course, another way of looking at this case. Do we really want to import professional activists from other countries into the United States? I don’t think so. The number of hypothetical comparisons is practically endless. How do you think the United States would have acted if a Nazi activist were granted a student visa and spent his time agitating against our support for Britain in 1940?

That in turn raises another question. Is it possible for a Palestinian to be pro-Gazan without being pro-Hamas? Given that Hamas is in fact the elected government of Gaza I think the answer is “no”.

I wanted to call your attention to this highly informative post on the history of Poland’s borders from Tomas Pueyo at Uncharted Territories before it becomes inaccessible. Cutting to the chase over the last 500 years the lands in the “European plain” that crosses Europe from northern France to the Urals have changed hands dozens, possibly hundreds of times. Poland is right in the middle of it. Part of the time it was Poland, sometimes it was Germany, occasionally Russia. Here’s a map illustrating the greatest extent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 17th century:

For me the point is that this is history but it’s not our history. American history has little to do with the claims and grievances of the various peoples of Europe.

I believe that forcing people from their homes is wrong and I don’t think it makes much difference whether they’re Germans, Poles, or Ukrainians.

Here’s the meat of David Ignatius’s most recent Washington Post column:

The diplomatic agenda was summed up well by Keith Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who’s serving as Trump’s Ukraine envoy. “What you are seeing now are urgent efforts to bring both sides to the table to get to a peace settlement. Bringing both sides to the table means applying pressure points and incentives — sticks and carrots,” he said in a talk Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations.

So far, Zelensky has been getting all the sticks. Trump pounded him in an Oval Office shouting match last Friday — and that ugly scene produced the concessions Trump wanted: Zelensky sent a message this week offering to halt air and sea attacks on Russia, and to immediately sign a deal giving the United States a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth. He lamented the “regrettable” fracas at the White House. “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible,” he said.

Okay, Putin, how about you?

There are some good words for President Trump:

Give Trump this much: He’s right that the time has come to end the horrific Ukraine war, and he’s right, too, that the United States needs to reestablish a relationship with the Kremlin to play an effective mediating role.

as well as some criticisms:

But beyond that, he’s winging it. As one Trump associate put it to me, his foreign policy is like jazz: It’s free-form, with no structure and constant improvisation. It could save lives — or get lots more Ukrainians and Russians killed.

and a soupçon of realism:

Here’s the paradox at the core of the negotiations: Though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has bristled at Trump’s pressure, he badly needs a ceasefire. His forces are tired and depleted and could begin to buckle in the next six months. As for Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has welcomed Trump’s embrace — but he doesn’t want a ceasefire unless it gives him the victory he hasn’t won on the battlefield.

What I deeply miss from Mr. Ignatius’s column is any inkling of how to square that circle. What is the resolution that will bring a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine without “rewarding Putin” for his aggression?

Let me put it this way. If the only choices are a complete subordination of the entirety of Ukraine to Russia or starting a nuclear war, which do you choose? If you don’t think those are the only choices, what choices do you think are at hand? Please make sure that your answer comports with your characterization of Putin.