Republicans Ask End to Biden-Harris “Partial Arms Embargo Against Israel”
Plus, Warren and the Fed; Garber’s extension; why religious teens are happier; Gershkovich; UAW, Gaza, and Harris
The weaker the executive branch leadership, the greater the role of Congress in national security matters.
It’s quite a letter out today to President Biden from Senate Republicans—Tom Cotton, Tim Scott, and 46 of their colleagues:
We write once again to protest your administration’s partial arms embargo against Israel. The actions of the Biden-Harris administration run counter to our long history of robust military cooperation with Israel and cast doubt upon the reliability of the United States as a long-term security partner. Your actions also violate the will of Congress as expressed in the recent supplemental that funded emergency military support to Israel.
When Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly raised the weapons hold in June, your administration adamantly denied the accusation. You ignored Congressional inquiries, including a May 6, 2024, letter from Senator Marshall, a May 6, 2024, letter from Senator Ernst, a May 14, 2024, letter from Senator Risch and a June 20, 2024, letter from Senator Cotton. All the while, you were deliberately delaying the delivery of weapons, ammunition, and equipment to Israel. These include 120 mm tank ammunition, 120 mm mortar ammunition, light tactical vehicles, air-to-air missiles, F-15s, F-35 engines, joint direct attack munition kits, 2,000 pound bombs, rifles, and guided missile systems….
Your stalling tactics are endangering our greatest ally in the Middle East and jeopardizing the lives of our American servicemembers stationed in the region. We urge you to use every available emergency authority to expedite the physical delivery of all weapons and ammunition to Israel that have been approved by Congress.
Your administration must stop accommodating Iran and its terrorist allies now.
Biden has acknowledged holding up the 2,000-pound bombs—eight of which Israel reportedly used to kill Hamas military leader Mohammad Deif. The other items are news. Israel is moving to start making some of the material itself domestically. The best way for Biden and Harris to blunt this as a political issue would be to expedite the arms deliveries, but they seem unwilling or unable to do that.
Warren presses the Fed: If it were a few months before the presidential election and President Trump were haranguing the Federal Reserve chairman to cut interest rates, the cries about “norms” and about the grave dangers of “politicizing the Fed” would be all over the left-leaning press. Yet Senator Warren tweets “Powell needs to cancel his summer vacation and cut rates now — not wait 6 weeks,” and somehow no one is concerned?
It’s a double standard, as the Democrats are hoping that Trump’s Federal Reserve chair appointee, Jay Powell, will do what the Biden-Harris tax-borrow-regulate-and-spend economic policies haven’t been able to do, which is provide Americans with a feeling of prosperity, growth, and economic confidence.
Alan Garber gets a little less time than Alex Cora: The senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, Penny Pritzker, just back from a July 29 visit to Ukraine, announced that Harvard would launch a presidential search in 2026 and that the interim president, Alan Garber, “will carry forward as president through the 2026-27 academic year.”
That effectively extends Garber’s term through June 30, 2027.
The Red Sox recently announced that their manager, Alex Cora, would be extended through the 2027 baseball season, which runs through September 2027, or longer if the Red Sox make the playoffs. Cora will reportedly make more than $7 million a year. He managed the Red Sox in 2022 and 2023; both years the Red Sox finished last in the AL East with 78 wins and 84 losses.
Optimists have focused on some hopeful signs around Harvard, most recently the decision to add a new question to the college application essay: “Describe a time when you strongly disagreed with someone about an idea or issue. How did you communicate or engage with this person? What did you learn from this experience?”
The whole situation has a back-to-the-future feel. It was February 2018 when Harvard named Larry Bacow, 68, who’d been a member of the Harvard Corporation, to what turned out to be a 5-year stint with the idea that he could stabilize the place and shape it up for the next president to really make a long term impact. Now we’re in 2024, and the Corporation has named Garber, 69, who was Bacow’s provost, for another stint as insider-caretaker president with the job of stabilizing the place and shaping it up for the next president to really make a long term impact. Modern universities run with strategic planning processes followed by five to ten year capital campaigns. It’s hard to see that getting started with a three-year time horizon, the last year of which Garber will be a lame duck.
Harvard looks a lot like the Red Sox—change-averse, risk-averse. I guess you could say the Harvard board tried gambling on Claudine Gay, and it didn’t work out too well.
The most hopeful scenario is that by the time the 2026 search rolls around Ben Sasse’s wife’s health situation is dramatically improved to the point where he becomes available. Another possible scenario is that in 2027, the Harvard Corporation names as president Garber’s provost, John Manning. Manning will by then will be 66—just old enough to serve a five-year stint while Harvard renews its search for the next transformative, long-term leader in the mold of Derek Bok or James Bryant Conant.
Boston Globe on why religious teens are happier: Zach Rausch, the lead researcher for Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book The Anxious Generation, writes in the Boston Globe, under the headline “Why are religious teens happier than their secular peers?”:
Teens without a religious affiliation across the political spectrum started reporting that they felt lonely, worthless, anxious, and depressed at much higher rates starting in the early 2010s. However, religious teens, especially those who report being more conservative, did not.
How did this one group of young people manage to mostly buck the trend?...what are religious conservative teens doing differently?
The secret is likely not any particular belief system itself but the way organized religion and shared beliefs bind communities together….
Tight-knit communities provide a stable network of peers and adults (not just parents!) whom children can trust, collaborate with, and learn skills from. They also offer connections with supportive, trusted adults who act as guardians and mentors and can help a child through hard times during adolescence.
WSJ on Biden and Gershkovich: Buried deep in the Wall Street Journal’s long account of the struggle to free its reporter Evan Gershkovich is this anecdote, suggesting President Biden may be confused about what he has or hasn’t communicated to foreign leaders, and needs minding from Secretary of State Blinken:
[Evan’s mother] Ella was at her second White House Correspondents’ Dinner that month and joined Biden’s handshake line to deliver another backchannel message, this time with more specificity. An official from Carstens’ office had told her to ask Biden to call the German leader to move things forward. And one of her sources had told her that it would be bad for Scholz to back out after making a commitment. To make her case, she’d have only seconds.
“We need more,” she said to the president. “Can you please call Chancellor Scholz?” Biden said he had made that call. Blinken, standing next to the president, looked down, then gently clarified, saying they would make the call. “I promise, I promise, I promise,” Biden said, before the handshake line moved on.
I guess you can credit Biden for getting Gershkovich out, though it was also on Biden’s watch that Gershkovich and several other Americans were detained by Russia. But it’s not exactly a confidence-inspiring story about Biden’s mental abilities. The White House Correspondents’ Dinner happens outside the 10 am to 4 p.m time window where Biden’s aides have claimed he is “dependably engaged.” At least Blinken appears to be up to speed and to be close enough at hand to keep Biden on task, though Blinken isn’t the individual the voters elected.
The Harris UAW endorsement: The New York Times has an illuminating account of the decision by the United Auto Workers to endorse Kamala Harris for president. The Times cites “a person familiar with the U.A.W. board’s deliberations”:
the group wanted indications that Ms. Harris understood the importance to the union of two key issues before endorsing her: continuing Mr. Biden’s agenda of investing in U.S. manufacturing jobs, and being more outspoken on the need to end the war in Gaza and attach strings to U.S. aid to Israel.
Mr. Fain and Ms. Harris spoke about these issues after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race, and the union was encouraged by the conversation.
…The union also represents tens of thousands of graduate students and other academic workers, many of whom have been outspoken in their opposition to the war in Gaza.
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