Virtually every person on the planet now recognizes that they are simply going to have to live with the coronavirus from now on, in the same way that we have learned to live with the seasonal flu. Even countries that clung to China’s mass containment model well into 2021, such as Australia, New Zealand and Germany, are now abandoning it.

Yet the Chinese Communist Party continues to pursue the impossible dream of COVID Zero.

Now, you might say that no political organization likes to admit it was wrong. In fact, when asked recently why China refused to recognize that COVID was now endemic, a top official of the National Health Commission simply said, “If we stop all containment measures now, it means all the previous efforts are for nothing.”

But at an even deeper level, I see the Chinese Communist Party’s insistence on lockdowns as an expression of its drive for total control.

I am reminded of the CCP official who, in 1980, at the very beginning of the one-child policy, confidently proclaimed: “We are a socialist country. We can control reproduction in the same way we control production: under a state plan.”

Now Xi Jinping’s attitude seems to be: “We are a socialist country. We can control the replication of a virus in the same way we control production: under a state plan.”

The decades-long honeymoon between Democrats and charter schools was too good to last.

Starting in the Reinventing Government era, Democrats like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama praised public charter schools for their innovations. Many “No Excuses” charters, in particular, succeed in teaching low-income African-American and Hispanic children when many traditional public schools fail, as decades of research demonstrate. //

But now, with Democrats going woke and a new president in town, the US Department of Education has declared war on charter schools, using obscure bureaucratic rulemaking to kill the federal charter-school program without having to explain why. //

The administration’s proposals clearly took months to prepare, and their publication not even 24 hours after the key funding vote cleared the Senate, and after important House and Senate votes gave charter supporters in both parties less clout to bargain for changes, was timed to get as little notice as possible.

The administration is also employing a truncated comment process. That may sound arcane, but here’s why it matters for democratic governance. In accord with the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act, to ensure transparency, proposed new regulations are published in the Federal Register, with lengthy public-comment periods before rules are finalized. This gives time for experts, interest groups and the public to offer input, making regulations both more legitimate and more realistic. //

For less-controversial proposals, a two-month public-comment process is the norm. Yet the Biden administration has allowed just one month for input on its proposed charter-school rules, from their publication March 11 to the closing of public comment April 13. For charter opponents, the fix is in, with devils in the details. //

As my own research shows, big charter networks such as the Knowledge Is Power Program schools have the lawyers and connections to survive more regulations, but regulations reduce the numbers of charters started by educators of color and disproportionately shutter schools that serve students of color. In practice, regulations purported to advance equity do exactly the opposite.

One of the bogus reasons that Vladimir Putin laid out for his incompetently executed invasion of Ukraine was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Against all evidence and commonsense, he claimed that Ukraine’s membership in a defensive alliance like NATO posed a direct threat to Russia. Putin and his acolytes would have us believe that NATO has just been lying in wait for the chance to bring Ukraine into NATO so NATO can invade Russia or something. Instead, in something of a geopolitical “own goal,” the invasion of Ukraine has created a de facto expansion of NATO to include Ukraine, and a de jure expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden is only months away //

A very insightful statement came from Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, “I think the deal that Ukraine is offering is fair. You give us weapons; we sacrifice our lives, and the war is contained in Ukraine.”

All of the actions taken by NATO countries indicate they have agreed to Mr. Kuleba’s deal.

What is happening in Ukraine is far more than a proxy war; it has turned into a low-key way of bringing Ukraine into NATO. //

Why is the sale of 16 artillery pieces a big deal? Three silly millimeters. Russian artillery uses a 152mm projectile. The NATO standard is 155mm.