Posted on July 23, 2026 by John Hinderaker in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Trump Foreign Policy

No Deal?

Earlier today, President Trump threw an apparent monkey wrench into the announced Saudi nuclear deal by adding a condition that the Saudis join the Abraham Accords, thus recognizing Israel. Not having followed this issue closely, I found the context in the linked article helpful:

Negotiations for a Saudi nuclear power plant began in earnest under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, who envisaged it as part of a broader deal that would also include a security pact with the kingdom in return for it establishing ties with Israel.

Those talks foundered after Israel refused to commit to recognising a Palestinian state, a key Saudi condition on normalising relations.

The Saudi agreement, as originally announced, didn’t include either of those terms. Now Trump has added the requirement that Saudi Arabia recognize Israel:

Riyadh appeared to have been taken by surprise by Trump’s statement on Thursday. A source familiar with the talks that led to the signing on Tuesday said there had been no suggestion from Saudi Arabia that it would recognise Israel in exchange for the nuclear deal.

Jon Alterman, of the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: “It’s a strange thing to have left out of the announcement if it was intended to be included. It makes you wonder about the process.

“One possibility is that [Trump] is trying to walk it back, one is that the president misunderstood a vague Saudi promise sometime in the future, another is that he was never completely in the loop.”

We will have to see what happens.

Posted on by John Hinderaker in Conservatism, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

Red States Win, Going Away [Updated]

I think it is generally understood that red states outperform blue states by any possible measure. The Committee to Unleash Prosperity offers a new analysis that reaches that conclusion. This approach is unique because it tries to eliminate other variables, and isolate the importance of political philosophy:

[W]e needed to use more sophisticated statistical analysis to account for these other, non-political factors. We want to be able to say with a high degree of certainty that “Other things else equal Red States have higher rates of economic growth.” Specifically, in order to more confidently examine the issue we needed to use modern multivariate techniques such as regression analysis to isolate from other explanatory factors. After better controlling for such non-political factors as temperature or the presence of oil or gas deposits, does being a Red State still mean that the welfare-enhancing growth in incomes exist? Do politics really matter?

The answer is a resounding “yes,” as the report below indicates.

I suspect that this analysis actually understates the red state advantage. The chart above relates to personal income, which I assume is taken from Census Bureau numbers. The issue here is that conventional personal income data include income from three sources: wages and salaries, return on capital, and government transfer payments. In some blue states, nearly all personal income growth in recent years has come from government transfer payments.

By including welfare and other such payments in personal income, the personal income data systematically put a finger on the scale in favor of blue states. Welfare payments are not only counted as income, they are in effect double counted, because the numbers for wages and salaries and return on capital are pre-tax. So your wage is counted once when you earn it, and counted again when your state’s government gives it to someone else as a welfare benefit. If this bias were corrected, the red state advantage would be even greater.

In any event, people know where to go for opportunity, and it isn’t to blue states:

UPDATE: Economist John Phelan points out another reason why these personal income data probably overestimate the incomes of people in blue states:

I suspect you’d get a bigger adjustment in favour of red states if you adjusted for inflation and the cost of living using IRPDs for the states. Do that and North Dakota’s average wage is higher than Minnesota’s, for example.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Illegal immigration, Minnesota, Republicans

The Lindell road to GOP ruin

It turns out that Trump-endorsed Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Mike Lindell has a plan. It’s a six-month amnesty plan for illegal aliens. The Washington Examiner reports: “Mike Lindell proposes six-month amnesty for illegal immigrants if elected Minnesota governor.”

Fortunately, Mike Lindell will never be elected governor of Minnesota. Unfortunately, if he prevails in the August 11 primary, he may bring down Republicans in state and federal races all over the state.

In the video clip below Lindell breathlessly explains his big plan.

This guy is a one-man Republican wrecking crew. Does President Trump know about this?

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Gender Follies, Sports

Sophie points the way

ESPN profiles WNBA Sophie Cunningham in “Love her or hate her, Sophie Cunningham won’t be ignored.” With her ostentatious defense of Indiana Fever teammmate, Caitlin Clark, I have been on the love side of that particular binary.

In the ESPN profile I would point my finger this way:

You say she’s a “MAGA Barbie,” as some corners of the internet have taken to calling her? Projection, she says, because of what she looks like and where she’s from. She’ll weigh in on how to “protect women’s sports,” she says, because she’s in that world and feels qualified to speak to that world. “I got a lot of negative feedback about me hating trans. And I’m like, ‘I never once said that,'” she says. “I think that I am here to extend love. But I also think with that love is truth, being honest. And I want to protect young girls in a locker room, or young girls in sport who shouldn’t have to go against biological men.”

I wrote at great length about the issue in the series “A lift Too Far” series. The series addressed male self-identified woman JayCee Cooper’s lawsuit to compete against women weightlifters. Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve idiotically supported Cooper. When the trial judge ruled in Cooper’s favor, Reeve celebrated the outcome in the Star Tribune column “Ruling is a powerful lift for transgender rights.”

It wouldn’t take many male self-identified women to destroy the WNBA if they could force their way into the league à la JayCee Cooper. Unfortunately, the Star Tribune has never bothered to follow up with Reeve for her thoughts about that.

The quoted passage in the ESPN profile was all over X yesterday. Sad but true, it takes a form of courage to stand up for reality in certain circles.

UPDATE: I don’t know how I missed Andrew Stiles’s Free Beacon profile “Meet Sophie Cunningham.”

Posted on by Scott Johnson in 2020 Presidential Election, Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialists, Democrats

Bloomberg vs. Bernie

in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Best of the Web column Bloomberg vs. Bernie, the Rematch,” James Freeman salutes Michael Bloomberg — for his effective needling of Bernie Sanders during the 2020 Democratic primaries. He writes that “many news consumers may recall Mr. Bloomberg’s 2020 campaign for president as an expensive failure, but he did an an enormous public service at a moment when Vermont’s socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders was leading in some public opinion polls.” Now the Sandernistas are taking over the Democratic Party.

Freeman asserts that “there was a widespread and flawed perception that as destructive as the Sandernista agenda is, Mr. Sanders at least offered a sort of authenticity. Mr. Bloomberg exposed this fallacy.” He cites the Mediaite story “Mike Bloomberg Gets Bernie Sanders to Claim It’s Totally Normal to Own a ‘Summer Camp’” (video accompanies the Mediate story).

If Sanders an inauthentic socialist, he might be be an improvement over an authentic socialist. Unfortunately, Sanders is an effective advocate of authentic socialism. His destructive power remains undimmed if it is not in fact expanding every day.

Freeman draws attention to Bloomberg’s current column criticizing Sanders’s promotion of government ownership of artificial intelligence companies. Bloomberg’s condemsn it as a terrible idea.

I find it it to be a persuasive column. However, President Trump seems to be interested in practicing some form of what Sanders preaches. Freeman writes: “[L]et’s hope that Mr. Trump will abandon this awful idea.”

As for the 2020 campaign, Freeman finds another Bloomberg contribution. “[B]y flaming out quickly as a candidate Mr. Bloomberg inadvertently debunked the Sanders claim that billionaires can buy U.S. elections.” Linking to the video below, Freeman continues: “So the former New York City mayor definitely had his moments.” There was only so much of the Democratic debates I could take and I missed this at the time. Bloomberg inquired of his Democrat competitors, “I’m the only one here who’s ever started a business — is that fair?” The question generated a rare moment of silence.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Corporate America, Science

Treating advanced breast cancer: An update

The home page of the Star Tribune currently features the story “With FDA approval, Celcuity sees big future for its new breast cancer drug.” My friend Brian Sullivan is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Celcuity.

In 1998 Brian was the founder and CEO of Recovering Engineering, his first company. He also served as the chairman of our state Republican Party’s platform committee. Brian appointed John Hinderaker and me committee members. We wrote the audacious platform that Brian assured us he would get approved at the party convention, as he did. We have been friends for a long time.

I previewed the FDA approval reported in the story here last month. The FDA approved Celcuity’s gedatoslib (Revtorpyk) in combination with fulvestrant for adults with what I understand to be the most common form of breast cancer in its advanced form.

I missed the FDA approval. The FDA announcement is posted online here. I learned of it from the Star Tribune story, which further includes Brian’s hope that Revtorpyk also will serve to combat prostate cancer, “which shares a similar biology to breast cancer…”

The Star Tribune story also observes that Celcuity is already conducting clinical trials exploring Revtorpyk as a first-line therapy for patients who haven’t yet received breast cancer treatment. The drug in any event promises to alleviate the suffering and extend the lives of many women with advanced breast cancer. It’s not the focus of the Star Tribune story, but it does quote Brian to this effect: “I’m very confident we’re going to really affect a lot of women’s lives because of the drug that we’re offering.”

Posted on July 22, 2026 by John Hinderaker in Iran, Trump Foreign Policy

Trump’s New Iran Policy

President Trump has been hitting Iran hard, following that country’s attacks on our troops and our allies. He has now announced a new policy on the Strait of Hormuz:

I approve of this policy. In fact, not only do I approve of it, it is precisely the policy that I have been advocating for something like the last two months: every time they attack a ship, bomb a power plant or a bridge.

It won’t stop the attacks overnight, but over a relatively brief period of time, it should be effective. And it might even discredit the IRGC enough to bring about a popular revolt, although everyone understands how difficult that is when you have a disarmed population.