8 | http://www.nationalreview.com OCTOBER 30 , 2017THE WEEK
announced plans to rescind
the so-called Clean Power
Plan, which is what the Oba -
ma administration called its
scheme to destroy the Amer -
i can coal industry. The CPP
combined severe limits on
carbon dioxide emissions
with subsidies for politically
favored energy producers to
deliver on Barack Obama’s
promise to “bankrupt” coal-
fired power plants. Pruitt
argues that the CPP is an
effort to pick winners and
losers in the marketplace rather than to secure environmental
interests per se, and that it exceeds the agency’s statutory au -
thor i ty. He is correct on both counts: The Clean Air Act, under
which the CPP was promulgated, empowers the EPA to police
air pollution. It does not empower the EPA to sign the United
States up for a worldwide global-warming crusade. If Dem o -
crats want the United States to adopt a national climate-
change program, then let them offer a detailed bill in Con gress,
campaign on it, debate it, and, if they can, pass it. Meanwhile,
Scott Pruitt’s EPA is implementing the law that we have, not
the law that environmental activists wish we had.nNick Ayers, chief of staff to Vice President Pence, told a
group of party donors that Republican congressmen who were
fighting President Trump’s agenda should be “purged” and that
donations to Republicans should be withheld absent legislative
success. It is not clear that these remarks should be taken as a
guide to a serious White House strategy. If there were a strategy
at work, presumably the administration would go after Senator
Rand Paul, who voted against the health-care bill when it
counted, rather than Mitch Mc Con nell or Jeff Flake, who voted
for it. Yet Trump is famously chummy with Paul, cool at best
toward McConnell, and hostile to Flake (who has harshly crit-
icized the president). Most likely Ayers is just popping off, fol-
lowing the administration practice of reacting to failure by
relying on threats and finger-pointing.nA Buzzfeedreport casts a harsh light on Milo Yiannopoulos,
the former Breitbartwriter. Yiannopoulos, it seems, did more
than just court the approval of the white-supremacist movement:
He was part of it. Yiannopoulos asked white supremacists for
line edits to his writing: “Alt r feature, figure you’d have some
thoughts,” he emailed Devin Saucier, an editor of American
Renaissance. He went to karaoke nights with such luminaries as
Richard Spencer, singing “America the Beautiful” while Spen cer
gave the Roman salute. Yiannopoulos even kept his Internet pass-
words on-brand, one of them beginning with “Long Knives1290”:
references to Hitler’s purge of his enemies in the SA and the year
King Edward I expelled the Jews from England. If this was an
ironic exercise in role-playing, it was an elaborate one. But it’s
hard to give Yiannopoulos—who, years ago, up loaded photos of
himself wearing the Iron Cross—the benefit of the doubt.nHurricane Maria flattened Puerto Rico. The federal gov-
ernment responded quickly to the disaster, dispatching NavynThe multiple acts of apparent bullying and sexual predation
committed by producer Harvey Weinstein had been piling up,
like kindling, for years, so once the fire started, it blazed sky-
ward quickly. An initial New York Timesexposé of the lewd
propositioning of actresses, always under the whip of having
their careers made or ruined, was followed by ever more of the
same, as well as graver accusations, including that of rape.
Was Weinstein nuts? Or a cosseted predator? His career teach-
es us that small worlds (and Hollywood is a tiny world) pro-
tect their own. When wrongdoers wield media clout (by hiring
journalists as consultants or optioning their stories) and polit-
ical clout (by donating generously to campaigns and espous-
ing socially acceptable ideology), their protection doubles and
trebles. So wrong gets done for decades. These are not lessons
only for Hollywood, as Fox, Washington, D.C., and scandal-
ridden private schools and dioceses attest.nThe House has passed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Pro -
tec tion Act, which would protect babies after the 20th week of
pregnancy. The ghastly clinical title of the bill speaks to the
ghastly question at its heart: What is it likefor an unborn child
to be surgically dismembered in the course of being put to death
through abortion? There is a lively debate about the develop-
ment of the human sensory apparatus and the unborn child’s
capacity to experience pain. Pause for a moment and meditate on
the fact that the progressive argument in this debate is: “Don’t
worry too much about chopping up your unborn children—they
might not feel a thing!” The act would leave the United States
with a more permissive abortion regime than those that prevail
even in such socially liberal countries as France and Sweden,
and would contain the usual exemptions for cases of rape and
incest and those in which the life of the mother is in medical
peril. The Senate should take up the bill and put it on the presi-
dent’s desk for signing as quickly as possible. We expect the
Democrats to oppose it, given their insistence upon permitting
any abortion, at any stage in the pregnancy, for any reason,
preferably with public funding.nSuccessful conservative tax reforms have combined supply-
side reforms to foster growth with middle-class tax relief. The
“framework” for reform announced by the White House and
congressional Republican leaders is strong on the first ele-
ment. Its changes to the taxation of business—especially its
reduction of a corporate tax rate that is now the highest in the
developed world—would make America a more attractive
place to invest. The effect of the framework on middle-class
tax bills is less clear: Some provisions raise them, others lower
them. The key question is how much the final legislation will
increase the tax credit for children. The framework calls for a
“significant” expansion. Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio
argue, rightly, that it will have to be at least doubled from its
current level ($1,000 per child). If they prevail, and the overall
package is designed so as to avoid large increases in the deficit,
Republicans will be in an excellent position to deliver a tax
reform that is both pro-growth and pro-family.nScott Pruitt is implementing a radical agenda at the Environ -
mental Protection Agency: He is trying to ensure that the EPA
operates within its legal authority, an idea that is, unhappily,
BRENDANSMIALOWSKIalien to the agency’s ambitious activists. Most recently, he/AFP/GETTYIMAGESweek-FINAL_QXP-1127940387.qxp 10/11/2017 2:45 PM Page 8