Don repeating Ron’s success, Newsom’s his own worst enemy and other commentary

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MAGA hats are hung on a wall as traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on February 20th.

Table of Contents

Eye on the economy: Don Repeating Ron’s Success

The Dow “crossed 50,000 for the first time on February 6, 2026 — fittingly on the 115th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth,” cheers Michael Toth at Civitas Outlook. “When Reagan took office, the Dow was basically dead. The index stood at 950.”

But then “investors from around the world began flocking to the U.S. market as American businesses generated enormous profits, aided by tax and regulatory relief ushered in during the Reagan administration.”

Indeed, since Reagan and Margaret Thatcher’s “supply-side revolution,” it’s been clear that “free markets drive economic growth.” President Trump’s delivering too: In his first term, his “regulatory rollbacks and corporate tax rate reductions delivered broad-based economic progress.” Now the same “policy successes” are again producing stellar results.

MAGA hats are hung on a wall as traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange during morning trading on February 20th. Getty Images

Republican: Newsom’s His Own Worst Enemy

In telling Europeans “Trump won’t be president after Jan. 20, 2029,” Gov. Gavin Newsom forgets that “the effects of his presidency will remain long after he departs the Oval Office,” sniffs Karl Rove at The Wall Street Journal. “The same is true for Mr. Newsom”; he’s “out as governor next Jan. 4” but the grim “effects of his eight years as California’s chief executive will linger as well:”

The Golden State is no longer a “magnet for jobs and commerce.” US News & World Report’s “annual ‘Best States’ ranking puts California at No. 32 on its economy, 42 on fiscal stability, 45 on growth, 46 on employment, and dead last for opportunity.”

Conservative: Literary Lovers of Blacklists

“The author Arundhati Roy is boycotting the Berlinale film festival,” because organizers won’t slam Israel, marvels Commentary’s Seth Mandel. Yet shouldn’t “free speech” also apply to those who’d seek to avoid politics?

Roy and a group of 81 actors and others whine that the Berlinale refuses to “affirm” anti-Israel narratives. Beyond that, they “want an anti-Jewish blacklist. In the name of free speech and anti-fascism. And they want Germany to lead the way.”

Jewish writers are already “iced out” of the publishing field, while “anti-Israel polemics get published no matter the content or quality.” The pro-boycott crowd “claims that the world is living a re-run of the 1930s, but the real complaint is that it’s not enough like the 1930s.”

Speech beat: Labour’s Censorship Schemes

An “immigration case playing out in a New York federal court” has “significant implications” for “the ongoing debate over global censorship,” reports Paul D. Thacker at RealClearInvestigations.

The State Department means to deport foreigners “who have allegedly censored Americans” via “influential” British nonprofit called “the Center for Countering Digital Hate,” a Labour Party affiliate that pushes government action to fight “the spread of harmful misinformation.” The CCDH was a “key collaborator” in “weaponizing” the US “national security” apparatus “to censor U.S. citizens and pressure U.S. companies into censoring.”

Its “influence extends throughout [Kier] Starmer’s government,” and it has worked to “influence EU censorship laws” and was a prime advocate of the “Online Safety Act,” which Veep JD Vance warns is leading the UK down a “very dark path” of online censorship.

Waste watch: Reduced, Targeted Foreign Aid Pays Off

The bipartisan congressional foreign-aid package “underscores that lawmakers on both sides of the aisle seek to safeguard America’s influence in fostering a safer, more prosperous world through targeted international engagement,” explains Bjorn Lomborg at The Hill.

It aims to ensure “that the money is well spent, so American generosity achieves the most it can in the world.” That’s why “Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stressed the need to preserve programs that ‘make us safer, stronger, and more prosperous.’”

E.g., it’s wise to spend on “global health”: “Eradicating smallpox” pays “dividends” at home and abroad. “Just $1.1 billion annually” in malaria prevention and treatment “can prevent 200,000 deaths each year, while enhancing productivity and stability in poor countries.”

Although generous, Americans expect “that their tax dollars are being spent well.”

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