From the right: Trump Voters Have Just Been Vindicated

Marc Thiessen at The Washington Post salutes conservatives who voted for Donald Trump solely because of the Supreme Court. Trump’s nomination of Neil Gorsuch preserved the status quo, but Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement now “gives him a chance to do something much bigger” — extend the conservative majority and transform the court “for a generation.” Which is why Thiessen says he must “break the mold of his Republican predecessors” and appoint a “reliable conservative,” even though his pick “will face a barrage of attacks unprecedented even by the standards of past confirmation brawls.” But “so long as Republican senators stick together, Trump’s nominee will be confirmed.”

Foreign desk: Symbolism of Germany’s World Cup Exit

Germany’s disgraceful elimination from the World Cup was more than a soccer defeat, suggests Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky: It feels more like “an anxious, luckless moment” of national “hesitation and uncertainty.” The 2014 championship German team, he recalls, “promised the vision of a country recreated, enhanced by the creativity of newcomers, cured of a horrible past with its hatreds and divisions.” Four years later, the same “bumbling angst” seen on the soccer pitch “permeates politics and government.” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s “negotiating magic has failed,” and “other European leaders sense her weakness.” Still, he argues, “angst is only temporary.” And “this is just a moment of hesitation that comes before regrouping and rebuilding, on and off the pitch.”

Media critic: The First Amendment Is Not Under Attack

National Review’s Kyle Smith says Kasie Hunt of NBC News’ tweet on the First Amendment was “of such breathtaking inanity that it amounted to pundit malpractice.” She opined: “The last person to rule America who didn’t believe in the First Amendment was King George III.” Talk about “historical illiteracy.” John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts “led directly to the arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Americans for expressing ideas.” Abraham Lincoln “issued an executive order “to close two New York newspapers he hated and had their editors arrested.” Woodrow Wilson’s Sedition Act “made it illegal to use ‘disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language’ about the government.” And FDR set up an “office of censorship.” The First Amendment is actually “in the strongest shape it’s ever been in.”

Conservative: The Lies We Tell To Advance Greater Truths

When public attention “is captured by an episode of blatant racial hatred or primitive bigotry and that episode turns out to be a hoax,” notes Commentary’s Noah Rothman, the hoaxers inevitably claim they were just “ ‘raising awareness’ of an issue of grave public concern that is surely happening somewhere.” We’re seeing this same “sordid impulse to advance a noble cause upon the back of malicious falsehoods” in a Thompson Reuters Foundation survey of 550 “experts” who ranked the US among the top 10 most dangerous nations for women. This is pure “intellectual perversion,” says Rothman, placing America alongside despot nations that use rape “as a tool of state-sponsored deterrence.” These so-called experts “wanted to make a statement” about American “misogyny and prejudice” and convinced themselves that, to do so, “they had to lie.”

Political scribe: Dems’ Mixed Messages on Economy

With the midterm elections in full swing, Democratic congressional candidates are sending different messages on the economy, contends Adele Malpass at Real Clear Politics. That’s not surprising, she says, given that the minority party always faces an uphill climb “during robust economic times.” But progressives, having “absorbed the Bernie Sanders playbook,” are calling for “free college tuition, free single-payer health care, and a jobs guarantee program for all,” to be financed by taxing Wall Street and millionaires. Traditionally liberal Dems have been offering a “more nuanced . . . glass-half-full” message that doesn’t clamor for “massive government giveaways” and instead argues “that the recent tax cuts have produced less than advertised by the Trump administration.” But after the stunning upset of Rep. Joe Crowley by a self-professed socialist, mainstream Democrats are “in shock.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann