An AIDS funding crisis that isn’t, faculty unions drive Jew-hate and other commentary

Foreign desk: An AIDS Funding Crisis That Isn’t

“A major campaign” aims to reverse federal “cuts to global HIV/AIDS funding” in the PEPFAR program to avoid “killing millions,” “causing global turmoil” and “advancing China’s global agenda,” reports Max Primorac at The Hill. “That sounds grave. Fortunately, it’s completely untrue.” Six months into the funding freeze, there’s “no news” that “thousands” have died; no nation has “imploded.” Rather, Africans are taking care of their own people. “Equally absurd” is the China angle: 19 of the top 20 aid recipients “were already members of China’s Belt and Road Initiative before any of this.” In fact, the “real driver of this campaign” is the waste-fraud-and-abuse-riddled foreign-aid industry itself. If Congress cut PEPFAR aid in half, it could “empower Africans” to step up. That’s the “industry’s worst-case scenario.”

Campus watch: Faculty Unions Drive Jew-Hate

Campus labor unions are “running amok” with anti-Israel activities and targeting Jewish faculty who won’t follow the program, fumes Nathan McGrath in The Wall Street Journal. Israeli faculty at UC Berkeley were “barred from union working groups” and “excluded from union communications” about plans to demand a boycott of the Jewish state. Plus, union leaders complained Jewish members would “mess up” their work. At CUNY, a Jewish professor resigned from his union after it held meetings on the Jewish sabbath and pledged to help Jews “unlearn Zionism.” Jewish faculty face a “Catch-22”: Either “join the union and face harassment and discrimination, or leave the union and lose any voice in the workplace.”

Libertarian: Trump Can’t Control the Weather

After devastating floods, “some local and state officials in Texas were quick to point the finger at the federal National Weather Service,” notes Reason’s Christian Britschgi. “This criticism was accepted by liberal commentators and Democratic elected officials,” such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Democrats rush to blame the “Department of Government Efficiency cuts to the agency, which did leave some local Texas NWS positions unfilled.” But NWS says it had “adequate staffing” and “adequate technology,” while “independent meteorologists have also defended NWS’s performance.” In short, “The Trump administration’s cuts to NWS didn’t affect this most recent disaster in Texas.” Reality check: The agency “can only do so much in the face of a 1,000-year flood that causes a river to rise 30 feet in a few hours in the middle of the night during the prime recreation season.”

Conservative: Obama Drove the Russia Hoax

President Barack Obama stands out as the one who “directed the intelligence community to interfere in the peaceful transition of power to his successor — Donald Trump,” argues The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland. The new CIA report on the notorious 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment that fueled the “Russia hoax” indicts a host of familiar characters, but Obama “was behind the entire plot to portray Putin as seeking to help Trump win the 2016 general election.” Obama didn’t just give the nod to the sham, “he knew what he was doing and he knew who would do his bidding.” As the mastermind and ringleader behind the plot, Obama deserves to be a “pariah” and “forever ostracized.”

Mideast beat: Times’ Wishcasting ‘Analysis’

A New York Times front-page story announcing that Israel’s war success has “deepened its isolation” is a “claim that doesn’t even hold up,” grumbles Commentary’s Seth Mandel. That “Jerusalem and Damascus are in negotiations” for peace, plus Israel’s use of Arab airspace “to take out Iran’s air defenses,” are signs “not of isolation but of integration.” The Times claims the response to the Oct 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack “cemented the view of Israel as a pariah” — yet the paper has been “warning of Israel’s ‘pariah’ status for nearly 20 years.” “Most of Israel’s bad press is made of 100 percent recycled material.” Simply put: “Israel won a defensive war” and “its enemies and critics are struggling to cope.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board