From the right: Europe Goes Back to Work
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s announcement that Germany will start returning to work next week, as other countries on the Continent have, is “the best economic news Europe has heard in months,” writes The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board. Small shops will reopen with social distancing, and schools restart May 4. Other countries — Austria, Denmark, even hard-hit Spain and Italy — “are coming back to life, too.” The decisions behind these moves weren’t “politically easy,” and “concerns” are “understandable.” But Europe’s “economies have been in lockdown for months,” and the “economic and social costs aren’t sustainable.” A “big-bang” reopening isn’t feasible, but “making it past the peak disaster” for hospitals and “avoiding excessive stress on health-care systems” is allowing “a phased return to whatever the post-virus normal will be.”
Foreign desk: Why WHO Lost Its Funding
While President Trump’s decision to stop funding the World Health Organization has been “roundly and swiftly condemned,” Bloomberg’s Eli Lake reports that the decision came “after senior US officials pleaded with WHO leaders to make good on a list of reasonable requests — and those leaders refused.” The asks included letting Taiwan take part in the World Health Assembly, “pressing China to provide US public-health agencies with the complete set of early samples of the virus and providing greater transparency into how the virus initially spread within China.” Washington will no longer “look the other way when China” employs “strong-arm tactics,” Lake notes, while officials say they will “try to mitigate” the impact on public health by redirecting the cash not sent to WHO.
Pandemic watch: China’s Corona Lies
At The Washington Examiner, Rebeccah Heinrichs dismisses a 30-page document Beijing’s Communist regime claims is “the definitive timeline of events” in the coronavirus outbreak as a mere “propaganda effort to rewrite history.” Beijing’s account doesn’t mention, for example, the many doctors who warned about the disease early on or the government’s decision to greenlight Wuhan’s 40,000-family “Lunar New Year banquet” even when it knew about the virus — not to mention the regime’s brutality in “silencing dissent.” Given China’s “lies and misinformation,” no one should believe it is “a trustworthy partner in this fight.” On the contrary, we should force the Communist Party to “pay a high price” for its “continued lying about COVID-19” — which “continues to this day.”
Media beat: Kavanaugh Deserves an Apology
Left-wing pundits and journalists “really want” Tara Reade’s sexual-harassment allegations against Joe Biden to “die” — which shows, The Post Millennial’s Libby Emmons and Barrett Wilson sigh, “how absurd” the media’s #MeToo posturing has been. After all, these allegations are “no flimsier” than Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, yet “leftist commentators” blasted the high-court nominee back then, even as they now defend Biden. That double standard just “confirms what logical, rational observers have been saying for years”: “Kavanaugh got a raw deal, and the #MeToo movement was always political and never about justice.” If “the entire liberal media establishment is going to provide cover for Joe Biden,” the writers snap, it should “issue an apology to Brett Kavanaugh for putting him through hell over virtually the same thing.”
Conservative: The Media’s Newfound Federalism
The “overwhelmingly liberal” media establishment, which “loathes President Trump and his more than 60 million voters,” has suddenly decided to “embrace federalism,” snarks the Chicago Tribune’s John Kass. Media elites blasted Trump for claiming he had “total” authority over the pandemic response, noting that the US Constitution reserves “powers not delegated to the federal government” for the states — a pillar of American federalism. Of course, they are praising “governors and some mayors who are acting like true coronavirus dictators.” But at least they are starting to acquire some basic constitutional literacy. Too bad their “newfound appreciation for limited federal powers” will disappear “the minute a Democrat is elected to the White House.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board