2020 watch: Three Ominous Signs for Trump

Three big developments last week could hurt President Trump’s re-election chances, warns Bloomberg’s Joshua Green. The president’s reluctance on gun control in the aftermath of mass shootings could “exacerbate collapsing Republican support” in the suburbs. Then there are his tariffs. He “owes much of his electoral victory to his strength in farm states,” but many there are reeling from Chinese retaliation. Finally, Trump vowed to “foster a Rust Belt renaissance,” but his Chinese talks have “backfired”: Beijing’s move to weaken its currency will “reduce Chinese demand for US goods and impose further economic stress on states Trump needs to help.” In short, Trump has alienated “farmers, suburbanites and Upper Midwest voters” — three crucial groups he needs to win.

Culture critic: The Wrong Film for Our Times

Madeline Fry at The Washington Examiner finds it hard to “imagine a worse film for our current political climate” than “The Hunt,” which “pits liberals and conservatives against each other in a violent, ‘Hunger Games’-esque encounter.” The film’s release was indefinitely canceled after the El Paso and Dayton shootings as well as criticism by President Trump and some of his supporters. True, it’s not the “anti-GOP screed” the Trump folks think it is, and it wouldn’t be “a major contributor to gun violence.” And if those are the reason its opening was canceled, Universal should “release the film later.” Still, it’s unlikely the film’s “brand of satire would really end up with any positive results.” And frankly, asks Fry, is this “really the film we need right now?”

Conservative: Epstein Got the Demise He Deserved

The terror Jeffrey Epstein must have felt in his final hours on earth was “a punishment more brutal than any justice system can give out,” observes The Federalist’s David Marcus. When a federal judge denied him bail, “he had no more calls to make, no more chips to cash in, no way off the hook.” Thus there was “a poetic justice to Epstein’s demise, notwithstanding the frustration of losing whatever secrets were stored in his demented mind.” After all, “this was a man who imprisoned young girls and made them feel powerless, who convinced them that they could not fight back. But, suddenly, he was the prisoner; suddenly, he was the one with no means to fight back.” Marcus concludes: “We can take some measure of comfort that in those final moments of his life, he was made to see the monster he was, that he looked, perhaps for the first time, into a mirror in his mind that could no longer hide his evil blemishes.”

Neocon: Anti-Israel ABCs at Cali Schools

At The Washington Free Beacon, Adam Kredo reports that “the California Department of Education is facing backlash after permitting a host of anti-Israel activists to build a statewide educational curriculum that demonizes the Jewish state.” The new lessons — which frame Israel as part of “interlocking systems of oppression” and endorse the campaign to boycott the Jewish state — are “the result of an effort by several leading educators who have expressed both anti-Israel and anti-Semitic viewpoints.” Among these is Samia Shoman, a Palestinian-American teacher in San Mateo whose “lesson plans on Palestinian history have been featured as a teaching tool by the Qatar Foundation International.” As one activist told Kredo, “this is an attempt to make anti-Semitism institutional.”

Parent activist: Schools Railroad Gender-Confused Kids

In April 2016, Jay Keck’s daughter, then 14, resolved that she was boy. As he recounts in USA Today, “in my attempt to help her, her public school undermined me every step of the way.” The girl, who is on the autism spectrum, had exhibited no discomfort with her biological sex until she was approached by a classmate “who had recently come out at school as transgender.” Thereafter, the school only “affirmed her,” by “referring to her with her new name,” by “using male pronouns” and “giving her access to a gender neutral restroom”—all over the Kecks’ objections. Four years later, the girl “is more convinced than ever that she is a boy, and that testosterone may be necessary for her to become her authentic self.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board