From the left: Kennedy Conspiracy Theories Are Hogwash

Liberals are so deeply shocked by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s resignation they can’t even accept that his decision “was on the up and up,” suggests Mark Joseph Stern at Slate. Which is why many are grasping at one detail in a New York Times article reporting that Kennedy’s son worked at Deutsche Bank when it loaned Donald Trump $1 billion a decade ago. ThinkProgress calls the connection “suspicious”; the New Republic labels it “shady.” But “each flavor of this conspiracy rests on a series of assumptions that, when subjected to any real scrutiny, quickly fall apart.” Simply put, “it didn’t require blackmail” to ease Kennedy off the court; he “retired under Trump because he’s happy to leave his legacy in Trump’s hands.”

Foreign desk: It’s Not Cheating If There’s No Deal

Time was, recalls Commentary’s Noah Rothman, when all sides agreed that “time was not on our side” when it came to North Korea and the West “had to act fast.” Post-Singapore-summit, though, “the urgency of the crisis . . . suddenly dissipated” and the watchword became “wait and see.” Now the Trump administration’s patience may be “wearing thin.” Reports confirm the existence of a previously unknown uranium enrichment site as well as Pyongyang’s production of more road-mobile ballistic-missile launch vehicles. Yet these revelations “do not represent the violation of any kind of denuclearization agreement because no such agreement exists.” Still, “no one who truly cares about the dissolution of North Korea’s nuclear program should be happy with this process so far.” Team Trump has “prioritized the diplomatic process over what the process was ostensibly supposed to achieve.”

Strategist: Thapar Is the Perfect SCOTUS Pick

President Trump can “make history” by naming Judge Amul Thapar of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to the Supreme Court, suggests Scott Jennings at Real Clear Politics. The son of Indian immigrants, he would be “the first person of any Asian heritage appointed to the Supreme Court.” And he would be “a dream choice” for conservatives: an originalist, in the mold of Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Indeed, Trump can “shatter the stereotypes liberals throw at Republicans by having Thapar join Thomas to defend” the Constitution. Moreover, he’s “someone from the middle of Trump Country who knows his way around” Ivy League campuses, where he’s “treated like a rock star” by aspiring conservative lawyers. For an unexpected president, Thapar is “the perfect unexpected choice.”

Student: What the New Integrationists Fail to See

A liberal consensus has decided that “American schools must be more thoroughly integrated before black and Hispanic students can perform at the level of their white peers,” notes Coleman Hughes at City Journal. But where segregation once meant a “state-enforced policy of keeping whites and blacks apart,” today’s term involves people of different groups tending to “live among one another for various reasons.” So why do “neo-integrationists see a problem?” Because the Supreme Court’s 1954 declaration that “separate is inherently unequal” doesn’t differentiate between them. But if this edict were true, “we wouldn’t see all-black schools that perform at the level of all-white or racially mixed schools.” Yet “such schools have existed for decades.” Fact is, “the neo-integrationist agenda offers fake help that would lead to even faker progress, and blacks and Hispanics should reject it roundly.”

Political scribe: Socialism Won’t Save the Democrats

Does the future of the Democratic Party run through socialism? Don’t bet on it, says The Week’s Damon Linker — no matter how excited and emboldened its left wing now appears. For no matter how compelling a candidate like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may seem to be, “there simply aren’t enough left-wing voters in this country” for “democratic socialists to prevail in a big way at the national level.” True, the left points to Republican successes in running base-centered campaigns. But, again, polls show “the numbers just aren’t there.” An Economist/YouGov poll found only 19 percent of Democrats saying their party’s ideology is not liberal enough. So the left is proposing that Democrats “embrace a politics of the hunch and the fervent hope.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann