Trump is beating bureaucracy, a return to vaccine sanity and other commentary

From the left: Trump Is Beating Bureaucracy

“Shattering the job security once afforded to the permanent government” will be one of President Trump’s “signal and lasting achievements,” predicts Semafor’s Ben Smith: When top officials at federal agencies buck him, Trump has them fired immediately. He’s now a one-term president with no time to waste. And “powerful pockets of the US civil service — from the Pentagon and intelligence services to the agencies responsible for health and safety” — have their own “internal cultures, values and loyalties that can often involve resisting political leadership.” Trump’s “victories against the bureaucracy have appalled many Democrats,” but others on the left “are ready for the change” and believe “the brakes on democracy represented by the bureaucracy” are “no longer viable.”

Health watch: A Return to Vaccine Sanity

Recently, the Food and Drug Administration “approved Covid-19 vaccines” for people over 65 and those “at high risk of severe Covid.” FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary explains in The Wall Street Journal that this “regulatory framework brings the U.S. in line with peer nations.” For the first time, “the FDA is demanding that all companies run a clinical study assessing whether the new Covid shots improve outcomes in healthy subjects.” This “new framework essentially ends mandates” and returns the agency “to an evidence-based standard.” It also “preserves vaccines for those who might most plausibly benefit,” while gathering evidence about whether an “annual booster campaign” is warranted.

Mideast desk: Mamdani’s ‘Antinationalist’ Dad

As “a world-famous antinationalist academic,” Zohran Mamdani’s father and intellectual mentor Mahmood Mamdani “has called for a political future in which every nation state including the United States would be ‘deconstructed’,” notes John Aziz at Quillette. Mahmood’s “argument is that the great tragedies of the twentieth century were not excesses but the logical outcomes of nationalism itself.” Yet beyond this, “Mahmood Mamdani’s treatment of Israel stands out.” Though “most Palestinians are not demanding a ‘post-national’ arrangement,” but a nation state of their own, Mahmood demands that Israel dissolve itself in favor of a “single political entity that goes beyond nationalism altogether.” But “the world is becoming more nationalistic not less,” and Mahmood’s ideas “go against the direction in which history is currently moving.”

From the right: Vanity Fair’s Silly Melania Snub

“If any first lady were cover girl material, you’d think” former model Melania Trump would “top the list,” but “Trump Derangement Syndrome encompasses her, too,” fumes USA Today’s Ingrid Jacques. “It recently came to light that Vanity Fair’s new global editorial director, Mark Guiducci, wanted to put Melania on the cover of the magazine,” but “that didn’t go over so well with the staff.” Oy: “There’s something especially silly about eschewing the first lady from a culture and fashion magazine like Vanity Fair — or its sister Condé Nast publication Vogue,” which featured both Michelle Obama and Jill Biden multiple times. Nor does snubbing Melania “seem a smart business decision,” since “77 million Americans voted” for her husband. “The Vanity Fair staff may not want to admit it, but half the country loves Melania Trump.”

Urban beat: Make DC Transit Great Again

Union Station in Washington “operated for 100 years as a monument to the greatness of American commerce, ingenuity, and connection,” but became “an embarrassing epicenter of our capital’s crime crisis,” laments Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy at The Hill. Stores closed, vagrancy became rampant. Riders “no longer feel safe.” President Trump “and I are now working to reverse this decline,” including “immediate improvements to security.” But that’s just “one piece of the puzzle to make D.C. great again”: Transit crime “remains deadly.” In the past few weeks, the National Guard and federal law enforcement have driven crime down, but local “government must do more.” Leaders must change “juvenile justice laws to ensure that violent crimes” carry “serious, enforceable penalties.” And Metro security must be “strengthened.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board