“Biden Lifts Restrictions on Police, Voter Participation Increases, and Other Insights”

Eye on DC: Taking Biden’s ’Cuffs off Cops

Harmeet K. Dhillon, who serves as the assistant attorney general for civil rights, asserts in The Wall Street Journal that the Biden Justice Department employed “questionable legal approaches related to disparate impact” to swiftly place local police departments under federal oversight.

This surge of legal actions aimed to bring at least ten cities under “extensive, highly detailed consent decrees.” Such decrees would potentially hinder local law enforcement for many years, jeopardize public safety, and burden local taxpayers with substantial costs.

After an evaluation initiated by President Trump, Dhillon expresses “doubt regarding the data and methods utilized by the Biden administration.” Consequently, she is in the process of reversing these legal actions.

She’s moved to dismiss “last-minute Biden-administration lawsuits” against Louisville, Ky. and Minneapolis, Minn., and has closed Biden-era investigations into six other police departments.

Under Trump, the Justice Department “will work with, not against, our brave police.”

Elex desk: Voter Turnout Is Rising

Election data analysis shows US voter turnout is “at historically high levels,” reports New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore.

Why? 1) widely available “voting by mail and/or in-person early voting”; 2) “competitive elections tend to produce higher voter turnout”; 3) higher spending on “voter mobilization and persuasion in national election cycles.”

Even without Trump’s name on the ballot, midterm election turnout jumped nationwide from 37% in 2014 to 50% in 2018 (“dropping only a bit” to 46% in 2022) for “one of the largest and most astonishing jumps in voter engagement” in years.

The “impression that Americans have grown tired of politics, and even government, during the Trump years hasn’t translated into [an] unwillingness to vote.”

Entrepreneur: How To Boost Health Science

The National Institutes of Health “commands an annual budget of nearly $50 billion” but “our nation’s health and biotech outcomes are faltering” because the NIH functions “as welfare for underperforming labs and scientists,” fumes Joe Lonsdale at Substack.

To fix it, “all political and ideological mandates” must be stripped away “from NIH funding criteria,” and “decisions must rely solely on scientific rigor, originality, and real-world potential to solve scientific problems.”

For its funding models, the agency should “experiment boldly, drop failing approaches swiftly, and prioritize proven methods that reward creativity and deliver breakthrough results,” such as shifting “grants to milestone-based funding.”

It should also “prioritize its internal research efforts to those that only government-level resources can handle.”

Repairing the NIH “requires an earnest commitment to excellence, transparency, and meritocracy.”

Liberal: Dems’ Coalition Collapsing

The latest data on the 2024 elections illustrates “the extent of the Democratic coalition’s decline since 2012,” notes The Liberal Patriot’s  Ruy Teixeira.

In 2024, Democrats lost non-college, working-class voters “by a solid 10-point margin.” Among non-white working-class voters, Dems’ “margin was down to 32 points.”

Barack Obama’s “38-point advantage in 2012” with Latino working-class voters “crashed to a mere 6-point advantage” for Kamala Harris.

“Obama carried voters under 30 by 25 points; in 2024, the Democratic margin fell to 11 points.” And the widening gender gap since 2012 is “entirely attributable to Democrats doing worse” with men, “not better” with women.

“The ‘rising American electorate’ strategy has failed”; guess “we’ll see if the Democrats have a Plan B. On current evidence, I’m not optimistic.”

Hate watch: Face Down Rising US Antisemitism 

“What’s most shocking and horrifying about” the murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim “is just how unsurprising” it was, seethes Nathan Miller at The Hill.

“From 2010 to 2013, I was an American employee of Israel’s Mission at the United Nations in New York. There were frequent reminders of potential threats,” and “the stigma of serving as Israeli diplomatic staff was made abundantly clear to me in certain corners of New York society.”

Yet, “over the last decade or so” antisemitism has gone mainstream as “Jews are demonized and dehumanized.”

Question for America: “Will the monsters continue to be heard and justified, or will this — the murder of a young couple — wake us up?”

—Compiled by The Post Editorial Board