DEI spurred US recruitment crisis, perilous anti-ICE incitement and other commentary

Military beat: DEI Spurred US Recruitment Crisis

The “racist ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion” spurred a US military “recruitment crisis” by driving away thousands of white men, conclude Mike Gallagher & Kevin Wallsten at The Wall Street Journal. Brass under President Joe Biden worked “to make our military less white”; the result: “Between 2013 and 2023, annual male enlistments in the Army fell 35%”; from 2018 to ’23, “white Army recruits dropped from 44,042 to 25,070. No other groups saw such steep declines.” Happily, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s “reset,” scrapping DEI, “is working, with the Pentagon announcing its ‘best recruiting numbers in 15 years.’ ” Yes, our “successful” Iran operation and various reforms also helped drive the turnaround, “but it’s clear that stressing identity over mission drives young people away.”

Conservative: Perilous Anti-ICE Incitement

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York warns “of a new wave of tough-guy progressivism in which state and local Democratic officials around the country apparently hope to intimidate” agents from enforcing “federal immigration law.” This expletive-filled “tough-guy anti-ICE talk” is “rampant on social media,” and Dem authority figures’ “belligerence” has “trickled down to street protesters,” risking “serious consequences.” Beware: “The anti-ICE crusade seems to have spawned a corps of amateur warriors who believe they can stick it to law enforcement officers without consequence.” Democrats and their “resistance warriors have arrayed themselves for battle against federal law enforcement,” so “the Minneapolis incident will likely not be the last to end badly.”

Media watch: A Dangerous ‘Drive!’ Mistake

The “near-universally repeated narrative that” Becca Good “shouted, ‘Drive, baby, drive!’ in the split second before” an ICE agent shot her wife Renee in Minneapolis is just wrong, fumes RealClearPolitics’ Frank Miele. “I’ve listened to the audio hundreds of times by now,” and it seems that Becca “screams in panic either ‘Do not drive!’ or more likely ‘Don’t drive!’ “ This is backed up by “playback and spectrogram analysis” by ChatGPT. “Deciding whether” Officer Jonathan Ross “was justified in shooting Renee Good does not hinge on what Becca Good said in a moment of panic,” but “public judgement” of Becca clearly has. This “should be a lesson” on “making judgments and especially to beware of media narratives that try to simplify complicated events.”

From the right: Bob Weir, American Icon

“Contrary to what non-Deadheads might expect, conservatives across the country” mourned “the death of Bob Weir, Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist,” notes Ann Coulter at The American Conservative. Only America “could have produced music like this, a synthesis of blues, R&B, country, folk, rock, even a little jazz,” and “Bobby himself was deeply American, a lover of cowboy culture.” “The band was wildly individualistic and self-reliant,” and the Deadhead fans boast an “obsessive attention to detail.” This “would not be surprising to Critical Race Theory devotees, who claim characteristics like independence, self-reliance, hard work, and linear thinking are markers of “white supremacy,’ ” yet while the crowds at Dead shows were largely white, “there was little else to distinguish them: college students, doctors, lawyers, politicians, hippies, and preppies — all well represented.” Weir’s death bookends “an American phenomenon.”

Urbanist: It’s Illegal To Shut Rikers ‘on Schedule’

“Enormous delays in the construction” of “a smaller network of safer modern jails” hinder New York City’s plan to shutter Rikers Island, observes Christian Browne at City Journal: Indeed, closing it before they’re built is illegal. Per state law, no local government can close a jail “without providing a functional replacement.” The city’s far behind schedule on the new jails, which (more important) will have “insufficient capacity,” holding at most “4,000 inmates.” The borough-based jail system was “deliberately designed to force ‘decarceration,’ ” but state law mandates that local jails “detain persons held for trial” and confine “persons convicted of crimes” and given shorter terms. “Local jails exist to facilitate, not frustrate, the proper operation of the criminal-justice system.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board