“Tesla Takedown” Activists Are Fooling Everyone

To read mainstream press coverage, one might assume the attacks on Tesla properties are isolated incidents—random acts by lone wolves, disconnected from the broader protests against Elon Musk. But in a new piece, Christopher Rufo and David Reaboi argue that Tesla is the latest target of a well-established activist ecosystem the Left has spent decades building.

Rufo and Reaboi describe a “diversity of tactics” framework that allows nonviolent protestors and violent actors to pursue a shared goal—each reinforcing the other’s efforts. The so-called “Tesla Takedown,” they write, follows this script precisely. “The campaign’s architects knew that neither protests nor arson alone could delegitimize Tesla,” they observe. “But together—through contrast, escalation, and repetition—they could push public opinion, dampen consumer enthusiasm, and threaten capital flow.”

Read their analysis here.

Markets have been unsettled since Donald Trump announced a sweeping slate of tariffs on foreign imports. While many of the steepest levies have been temporarily suspended, a 10 percent “reciprocal tariff” remains on goods from dozens of countries—and a 125 percent tariff still applies to China.

In a new editorial, Judge Glock argues that such measures could be defensible if aimed at pressuring other nations to lower their trade barriers. But the longer tariffs stay in place, he warns, the more likely they are to turn American factories into “useless relics,” much like those in Argentina.

Read why Argentina’s experience could be a cautionary tale for Americans.

In 2019, then-mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council voted to close the Rikers Island jail complex and replace it with four new borough-based jails. The plan has faced persistent setbacks, yet, as Manhattan Institute senior fellow Nicole Gelinas notes, “no Democratic mayoral contender has proposed a serious alternative.” Her recommendation: scrap the replacement plan and build modern, humane jail facilities on Rikers itself.

A much-discussed new report from the nonprofit AI Futures Project warns that runaway artificial intelligence could soon lead to human extinction—and the group is spending millions to shape policy around that fear. But as Brian Chau argues, such doomsday scenarios are rooted more in science fiction than science fact. Far from accelerating without limit, as the alarmists claim, AI is beginning to hit the same constraints that all fields of research eventually face. That’s why a growing number of bipartisan lawmakers are rejecting apocalyptic rhetoric and advocating for a more grounded, evidence-based approach to AI governance. Unless cooler heads prevail, overregulation could stall AI progress before it has a chance to fulfill its real promise.

In 2023, Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb told the New York Times that the Met would prioritize contemporary works by living composers, with each season’s opening-night gala featuring a new opera. But the strategy isn’t paying off. Ticket sales for these works have been weak, and the Met’s 2023–2024 box office revenues reached only 64 percent of their full-price potential, largely due to steep discounts. “Signs of financial catastrophe are on the horizon,” says Paul du Quenoy, president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.

Read his take on what may lie ahead for the Met here.

Neetu Arnold joins Brian Anderson to discuss how Houston’s public schools have halted Covid-era learning losses as a result of direct instruction and a no-nonsense approach to discipline. 

Oh, the humanity!

Or lack thereof, according to journalist Jonathan Capehart.

In his forthcoming memoir, Capehart, a Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor, recounts the 2022 incident that ended his 15-year tenure on the Post’s editorial board. Never one to miss an opportunity to shout “racism” in a crowded theater, Capehart was in high dudgeon over a Georgia law aimed at bringing greater coherence to the state’s early, absentee, and mail-in voting. As the editorial board deliberated what to say about the law, the board’s leader, Karen Tumulty, “disturbed” Capehart by casting doubt on the Biden Administration’s claim that the law was “Jim Crow 2.0.” Her offense? Asking, “How could it be voter suppression if all these people are coming out to vote?” (Georgia’s midterm elections that year had set records for turnout.)

Tumulty, a veteran reporter and opinion writer, had committed an unpardonable sin: expecting journalists to contend with facts that challenge their preferred narratives.

Adding insult to injury, the Post’s published editorial openly rejected the Jim Crow canard—leaving Capehart with no choice, it seems, but to resign from the editorial board and report Tumulty to Post HR. When the poor woman showed up for her re-education session, she had the temerity to stand by old-fashioned journalistic principles—and to show empathy for actual victims of racism. “I have a rule,” she explained. “No one should be called a Nazi unless they were an actual Nazi … So for President Biden to call the Georgia voter law ‘Jim Crow 2.0,’ well, that’s an insult to people who lived through Jim Crow.”

Cheapening the experience of those who faced firehoses and lynchings to secure their rights? Pshaw. In Jonathan Capehart’s world, it’s always about Capehart. With her statement, he writes, Tumulty “took an incident where I felt ignored and compounded the insult by robbing me of my humanity.”

For someone “robbed of his humanity,” Capehart appears to have done pretty well by the Post. In his memoir, he notes that he hadn’t written editorials for 13 of his 15 years on the editorial board. These days, he’s looking in the rear-view window at various canceled interview shows and writing occasional columns that showcase his incredible journalistic drive to nail the hardest stories …  like interviewing a Post intern. Nevertheless, he remains a Post Associate Editor, a title bestowed on institutional luminaries like … Bob Woodward.

If not for his smearing of a colleague for upholding professional standards, violating the confidentiality of the Post’s editorial board deliberations, and launching a racialist intimidation campaign against his own employer, it might be tempting to pity Capehart—whose gut-wrenching reveal reads more like a desperate bid for relevance.

But save your pity for the Post, which still cuts a paycheck to a man seemingly devoid of self-awareness or irony. The tagline on his now-defunct podcast?

“Opinion writer Jonathan Capehart talks with newsmakers who challenge your ideas.”

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If you have Face Palm candidates—embarrassing journalism or media output; cringe-worthy conduct among leaders in government, business, and cultural institutions; stories that make you shake your head—send them our way at editors@city-journal.org. We’ll publish the most instructive with a hat tip to the source.

Photo credits: NurPhoto / Contributor / NurPhoto via Getty Images