Voters remembered Laken Riley, Trump’s new cabinet approach: commentary

Conservative: Voters Remembered Laken Riley

Laken Riley’s “murder was a direct result of Biden’s border policy,” thunders the Washington Examiner’s Byron York. “Biden and top administration officials had pretty much ignored the case” until the the State of the Union Address, when he still “mangled Riley’s name — he called her ‘Lincoln’ — and then angered his own progressive Democratic supporters when he ad-libbed that Riley had been killed by ‘an illegal.’ ” Donald Trump “mentioned Riley’s name often in his campaign appearances,” promising “a border crackdown, and everybody knew he would do it because, in his first term, he enormously reduced the number of illegal crossers.” Now her killer’s trial has shown “both the appalling consequences of an open border and why the issue was important for so many millions of voters.”

From the right: Trump’s New Cabinet Approach

President-elect Donald Trump’s plan for his Cabinet is “far more consistent, and potentially transformative,” than many realize, argues Ben Domenech at The Spectator: He’s picking “communicators, not administrators” whose skills “are less about the unsexy business of corralling bureaucrats” and more “about being experienced advocates to a public audience on behalf of Trump’s agenda.” He can pair them “with solid deputies expected to do the tough behind the scenes work of upending the administrative state.” That is: “Leave policy making to the nerds” and “pick the people with the capability to make the best case for” those policies.

Republican: Unleash the Wrecking Ball

With progressives in retreat, a second Trump administration can “take a wrecking ball to the Washington establishment” as well as make “deep cuts to federal spending and an overhaul of the bloated bureaucracy,” cheers USA Today’s Nicole Russell. That wrecking ball will be “Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.” If DOGE cuts a fraction of the “$2 trillion in government spending — it could provide a remarkable boost for our economy.” To make it worthwhile, “Trump and Congress will need to actually cut the programs” recommended by DOGE. Sure, Democrats will “whine” but “Republicans should ignore them,” focus on “saving taxpayers’ money,” controlling the “deficit,” and “saving America” from certain “economic disaster.”

DOGE dudes: We’ll Slash Red Tape

People we elect are supposed to run government, but that’s not “how America functions today,” argue Elon Musk & Vivek Ramaswamy at The Wall Street Journal. “Most legal edicts aren’t laws enacted by Congress” but mere “ ‘rules and regulations’ promulgated by unelected bureaucrats” — civil servants who “view themselves as immune from firing thanks to civil-service protections. This is antidemocratic and antithetical to the Founders’ vision. It imposes massive” costs on taxpayers. Yet “with a decisive electoral mandate and a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court,” the new Department of Government Efficiency “has a historic opportunity for structural reductions.” Elon & Vivek will suggest “regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.” Of course, that will trigger an “onslaught from entrenched interests.” Yet they’re “prepared” — and “we expect to prevail.”

Woke watch: The DEI Cash Cow

The amount spent on DEI “will exceed $15 billion by 2026,” notes City Journal’s Christopher Rufo — and US “government contractors have turned a profit on this fad.” Initial analysis suggests “that DEI principles were attached to more than $1 billion in federal contracts last year,” up from $27 million in 2019. That’s all thanks to “the Biden administration’s ‘whole-of-government’ equity agenda.” “Agencies across the federal government participated in the gold rush.” In practice, this meant contracts that “funneled millions to outside vendors” enforcing “the DEI creed” at NASA, DHS, Labor, Treasury and elsewhere. Such contracts, “and the racialist ideology on which they are predicated, do nothing to serve the national interest.” “The second Trump administration must put a stop to these contracts immediately.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board