From the right: Meet AOC’s Brain

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “cadre of far-left first-termers known as ‘the Squad’ ” have been at the center of “increasingly acrimonious infighting” among House Democrats, notes David Catron at The American Spectator. But the true “prime mover” behind the chaos is one Saikat Chakrabarti, the co-founder of Justice Democrats who has “now set up shop in the House, ostensibly as AOC’s chief of staff.” He has also been vocal on Twitter, berating “the Democratic leadership for its shortcomings” and calling out Speaker Nancy Pelosi in particular. Chakrabarti’s insolence is a clear sign that he doesn’t fear “any serious consequences,” Catron argues, despite Pelosi’s personal warnings in a “closed-door meeting.” He is using his position to “engineer a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party” by working “behind the curtain, furiously pushing buttons, spinning dials and pumping the smoke machine” for AOC and her “outrageous” comments.

Trade guru: Prez Keeps His Manufacturing Vow

Candidate Donald Trump promised to “Buy American, Hire American.” As president, he’s keeping that promise, crows White House trade-policy expert Peter Navarro at Fox News. The Buy American Act, an executive order Trump signed on Monday, will “require federal agencies to procure domestic iron, steel and other materials and products for federal projects like airports, roads and bridges.” Such procurement rules “provide good manufacturing jobs at good wages, propelling more workers into middle-class prosperity,” what propelled Trump to the White House in the first place. Expect a “renaissance in American manufacturing,” per Navarro.

From the left: What Dems Should Say About Guns

If Democrats want to “seize the initiative on guns,” Glenn Altschuler at The Hill suggests they accept that, “although a substantial majority of Americans want to protect their right to own guns and rifles, many also support specific gun-control proposals.” Democrats can use “these apparent contradictions” to remind the country that “like gun possession, gun regulation is as American as apple pie.” The United States is by far “the world capital of firearm homicides, suicides and mass shootings.” Historically, “gun-control legislation has received bipartisan support,” since lawmakers were determined to decrease the “massive disparity between gun violence in the United States and every other country.” Accepting that gun ownership is part of the fabric of American life, Democrats can then pursue a “common-sense” bill to ban assault rifles and impose stringent background checks.

Foreign desk: France’s Chilling Forced ‘Suicide’

Last Thursday, “the world was informed that Vincent Lambert had died,” Ed Condon reports in First Things. “He died of starvation and dehydration, after a French court sided with his wife and doctors and decided that this was the right choice.” A car accident left Lambert severely disabled more than a decade ago — yet, as his parents insisted, Lambert was not in a fully vegetative state and could minimally interact. In too many such cases, Condon worries, judges decide who should live and die, “not according to an objective set of truths or moral norms, but according to their own best lights, however barbaric we may find the results.” Bottom line: “When all our morality is relative, so too is our justice.”

Culture desk: The Left’s ‘Fundamentalist’ Book-Banning

Amazon’s ban on books by Dr. Joseph Nicolosi points up the left’s “new fundamentalism,” argues The Federalist’s Glenn Stanton. What makes Nicolosi’s books “so abominable,” he notes, is that “they help people who have unwanted same-sex sexual attractions deal with those feelings.” The left deems that particularly outrageous at a time when merely “not being all-in for things gay” isn’t even tolerated. Fact is, the gay community wields enormous cultural influence, Stanton notes: “When you can dictate what books someone can have access to” and get hardly any blowback in the mainstream press, “that is a frightening amount of power.” Meanwhile, Amazon freely sells works by Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, David Duke and assorted anti-government white supremacists. “But thank goodness” it has “the moral fortitude” to keep books “that some gay activists dislike from falling into anyone’s hands.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board