◼ Biden just put $6 billion of student debt from 78,000 public employees on the shoulders of taxpayers. Lay off the 78,000 public employees, and we’ll call it even.

◼ President Biden has been getting increasingly hostile in his rhetoric toward Israel in recent weeks, particularly when it comes to Israeli plans to finish the job against Hamas by invading Rafah, a town in southern Gaza. Vice President Kamala Harris chastised Israel for the planned offensive, claiming, laughably, that she had “studied the maps” and decided that Israel’s plan to evacuate civilians from the area wasn’t feasible. Then the administration betrayed Israel at the United Nations by allowing the Security Council to pass a resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza while Hamas remains in power and still holds 130 hostages. The resolution makes no mention of the October 7 massacres, and while it “also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” it does not make the cease-fire contingent on their release. Unsurprisingly, Hamas rejected the cease-fire proposal hours after the resolution passed. Why make any concessions knowing that the U.S. is pressuring Israel to give up its fight anyway?

◼ If Biden hoped to embarrass Israel when he announced that the U.S. would construct a makeshift pier in the Mediterranean for humanitarian aid, his plan has been complicated by the fact that the only people who seem to like the idea are the Israelis. Humanitarian organizations have condemned it as insufficient. So, too, has U.N. secretary-general António Guterres. But Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant welcomed the proposal. And this week, we learned that the Israel Defense Forces have acceded to U.S. requests to establish a “security bubble” around the makeshift harbor to protect what Politico said would be the “U.S. personnel building the pier as well as the individuals involved in offloading and distributing the aid.” Yes, Biden’s jetty ties up Israeli resources and frustrates its tactical goals in this war. But it also relieves the pressure on the IDF, whose soldiers are disbursing humanitarian assistance in Gaza at considerable risk. What’s more, Biden’s plan directly involves the U.S. in aspects of the Israeli campaign, coupling American policy with Jerusalem’s and even leaving open the possibility that Biden will have to backtrack from his pledge that there would be “no U.S. boots on the ground” in Gaza. From the Israeli perspective, what’s not to like?

◼ In September 1986, the Kremlin nabbed a correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, Nicholas Daniloff. The Soviets imprisoned him for 13 days. He was a hostage, essentially. The U.S. government traded for him. In March 2023, the Kremlin nabbed another correspondent, this one for the Wall Street Journal: Evan Gershkovich. He has been imprisoned for a year with no end in sight. A Russian court (if “court” is the word) has just extended his “pre-trial detention” to June 30, at the earliest. Vladimir Putin and his dictatorship are lawless. They are anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-human, as they demonstrate day after day, in multifarious ways. Any lingering illusions are perhaps undispellable.

◼ A New York appellate court slashed by two-thirds, down to $175 million, the amount that Trump must post to bond to block the state from enforcing an astronomical $454 million judgment against him for fraud. Judge Arthur Engoron, an elected progressive Democrat, set that judgment at a recent civil-fraud trial in which Attorney General Letitia James proved no fraud victims. The reduction was a setback for James, another progressive Democrat who vowed to use state power against Trump and who had been chirping about the still-mounting judgment (on which interest was accruing at more than $112,000 per diem) while publicly coveting Trump’s New York properties. The appellate ruling means James will not be able to force Trump to sell some of his real estate (likely at fire-sale rates) or seize his properties to auction them off. The court’s intervention was appropriate. There is substantial evidence that Trump exaggerated the value of his assets, but the wildly disproportionate “disgorgement” penalty for this wrong is grist for an Eighth Amendment claim.

◼ The mandate that the EPA has granted itself to remake the U.S. auto industry is a step too far legally and many steps beyond what the government should be doing as a matter of principle. While it does not, strictly speaking, ban the sale of “traditional” cars (that’s surely on the drawing board for another day), it will make it increasingly difficult for Americans to buy many types of cars that they like and that have served them well. It takes little account of consumer choice or of economic, technological, logistical, or geopolitical reality, an exercise in arrogance that will have highly destructive consequences. Adding pointlessness to injury, the mandate will do little or nothing for the climate. China’s electric-vehicle makers, however, will be grateful.