Untie Ukraine’s hands, lessons of the TikTok ban: commentary

War watch: Untie Ukraine’s Hands

President Biden fails “to comprehend” that Ukraine “will never prevail if it cannot fight back,” warn Jonathan Sweet & Mark Toth at The Hill. Washington must loosen restrictions on Kyiv to let it strike “Russian targets that present a clear and imminent threat, regardless of their physical location, with weapons provided by the US and NATO.” “Consider the bipartisan proposal presented” to OK “retired pilots from the NATO alliance and the U.S. to be hired by Ukraine to fly their newly acquired F-16 fighter jets.” “The Biden administration’s persistent need to examine, re-examine and consider Ukrainian requests” only enables Russia. “Zelensky has a plan to win the war” that he’ll present at the UN General Assembly this month. “The question is whether anyone in the Washington establishment will embrace it.”

Congress beat: Lessons of the TikTok Ban

“Is there a way to replicate the success” of Congress’ surprising action on TikTok? asks Philip Wallach at City Journal. The platform became “a target for American politicians because of its connections to China and the Chinese Communist Party,” but becomes “more menacing when we add concerns about its ability to collect and transmit to the CCP data” on users. The bipartisan Select Committee on the CCP created “a united front for action” so that the full House “passed the bill 352-65 (with mostly progressives in opposition).” And the Senate followed after a compromise guaranteeing “TikTok’s American operations would continue past the 2024 election” won Democratic support. “Creating select committees to push along legislators’ thinking is likely to be helpful on high-importance issues where partisan enmities have not yet set in but intelligent policy solutions exist: artificial intelligence comes to mind.”

Eye on the economy: Harris Is Biden 2.0

“Democrats dumped Biden for Kamala Harris” because Americans gave him “little credit” on the economy, observes The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger. Yet “what, really, has changed?” Her plan is but more Biden policy, but with a “daily dose of ‘joy.’ ” Harris’ spending, “rerouted” as tax credits, includes $25,000 for “first-time home buyers,” higher child tax credits and housing subsidies, and “one may assume” she wouldn’t cut Biden’s “staggering” $7.3 trillion 2025 budget or $5 trillion tax hike “by one nickel.” At Tuesday’s debate, Donald Trump should ask her to name “one way in which you disagreed with Mr. Biden on spending and taxes the past 3  ½ years.” And: “Why shouldn’t anyone believe your presidency would simply be more of the same?”

From the right: The New ‘Barbarians’

“The realm of right-wing ideas” has seen “the rise of a cohort of writers, pseudo-scholars, and s - - t­posters dedicated to reviving some of the darkest tendencies in the history of thought,” fumes Sohrab Ahmari at The Free Press. These include “the idolatry of strength,” the “notion of supposedly ‘natural” hierarchies,’” “IQ-based eugenics,” and “overt racism and antisemitism.” “Call them the Barbarian Right,” like pseudohistorian Darryl Cooper (who went on Tucker Carlson’s show to blame Churchill for World War II). “There is no limit to how far the Barbarian Right will go in seeking to delegitimize the actually existing American order. The rest of us — especially those on the right who adhere to the precepts of Abrahamic faith and dare not venture beyond good and evil — must say no.”

Libertarian: Slash Permitting Red Tape

“Our permitting regime is a web of red tape that stifles innovation, slows growth, and leaves Americans poorer” and “less free,” argues Reason’s Veronique de Rugy. “Take housing. Some areas like California and New York City face a crisis largely due to onerous permitting processes”; the “delays add years to construction and inflate costs by tens of thousands per unit.” More: “Important infrastructure — pipelines, wind farms, grid modernization — is being held up for years by endless environmental reviews, public comments, and lawsuits.” The fix: “Environmental reviews should be streamlined by radically reforming the National Environmental Policy Act process” and “state-level reforms should be encouraged through federal incentives, and a ‘presumptive approval’ system should be implemented for routine projects.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board