Dems’ failed makeover, ‘In-N-Out’ of Cali and other commentary

Conservative: Dems’ Failed Makeover

Democratic leaders hoped to “reverse the party’s hard-left drift and reconnect with working-class voters” after the election, but Democrats instead ran “straight back into the arms of their radical base,” marvels Mike Howell at The Blaze. They “poured money and institutional support into the No Kings protests,” for example — and these “weren’t fringe outbursts. In fact, they revealed the party’s core.” The Oversight Project compiled the Instagram activity of “one key protest organizer, a group called 50501,” and “tracked who its social media managers followed, and what emerged was a clear pattern of associations: communist, neo-Marxist, anti-American, and foreign-aligned groups.” “These protests didn’t bubble up from the grassroots. They were built from the same radical networks that have long tried to destabilize the country from within.”

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West Coast watch: ‘In-N-Out’ of Cali

Fast-food burger chain In-N-Out’s owner, Lynsi Snyder is leaving “deep blue California for the friendlier environs of red state Tennessee,” where her company is building a second corporate headquarters, reports USA Today’s Nicole Russell. “Snyder said she’s leaving the West Coast for the Mid-South for the sake of her family and her business,” just as “hundreds of thousands of regular people” and businesses like Tesla, Chevron and Hewlett Packard have done, seeking “better lives and better business opportunities in other states.” California has “pushed tax rates and the cost of living to ridiculous extremes even as residents’ quality of life has declined.” “People and companies are not just fleeing California — in many cases, they are relocating to red states with a drastically different approach to politics and policy.” It’s “another indicator of California’s decline.”

Tech beat: The Push for Unbiased AI

President Trump’s new executive order banning the federal government from buying “woke AI” gives tech executives “powerful incentives” to develop “unbiased AI models,” argues Christopher Rufo at City Journal. All AI has “ideological” formulas — some, including concepts like critical race theory, transgenderism and DEI — “baked” into their code. “The question is not whether an AI system will be built upon a set of values; the question is which set of values the programmers will select.” Yet Trump’s EO stipulates that the government will purchase only software that is “’truth-seeking’ and committed to ‘ideological neutrality.’” The president and his advisers “have shifted the direction of artificial intelligence away from woke — and toward a vibrant American future.”

From the right: A Kamala Run Scares the Left

“California Democrats are rubbing their temples” at the thought of Kamala Harris running for governor, quips National Review’s Noah Rothman. She’d be the heavy favorite, but the ex-veep might owe that “less to her political acumen” than to “California voters’ bovine insouciance.” She’d have to defend Joe Biden and “her role in the failed” coverup of his decline. And “in the absence of any measurable charisma and “notable risks” to the party overall, many Dems are attacking her. One state-level official even says she’d ruin the party’s chance to “win the House and hold on to three seats that we just flipped in 2024.” So “Harris could get herself elected,” notes Rothman, “while still serving as a net negative for her party.”

Legal expert: Media’s Russiagate Blinders

Newly declassified material from the Russian collusion investigation reveals “how high-ranking officials in the Obama Administration seeded” the false collusion narrative “with the help of an eager, unquestioning press corps,” thunders Jonathan Turley at Fox News. Ex-CIA director John Brennan “was the key figure insisting on the inclusion of the Steele dossier” in the Russian interference assessment. Ex-FBI director James Comey knew “the Steele dossier was an unreliable political hit job,” yet he “lied to a federal court to maintain” the investigation. “The public is now learning about the real Russian conspiracy and its key players,” but “the same media that pushed the false claims” are “imposing a news blackout as they did with the Hunter Biden laptop.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board