Zelensky pulls a Trumpian trick, how to save public housing and other commentary

Volodymyr Zelensky “did exactly what Trump has done on dozens of occasions” during the Oval Office blow-up last week, argues Christopher Caldwell at The Free Press.“He ignored the time-honored format of such occasions” and “reshaped it to suit his needs.”Zelensky “understands these events the way Trump always has: Two parties are going to sign something in a closed room.

And all the voters will ever know about it will come from TikTok, Twitter, and gossip.”After the meeting, Trump’s people “didn’t feel as if they’d been bested in a new kind of debate.They felt as if they’d been lied to.

But it was both.Zelensky had played a Trumpian trick.

And he had won a Trumpian victory.For now it looks like a Pyrrhic one.”The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s plan to mandate “time limits and work requirements” for public-housing tenants would “benefit subsidized housing residents by encouraging upward mobility” as well as “those in need of housing by helping to clear long waiting lists for subsidized apartments,” cheers Howard Husock at the Washington Examiner.HHS’s $8 billion welfare-assistance program “comes with a work requirement and five-year time limit.”Yet HUD’s $30 billion “housing choice voucher” and public-housing programs don’t.

San Bernadino’s housing authority has seen its tenants “move up and out of public housing before the five-year limit.”“It’s time to move tenants from dependency toward upward mobility.A time limit for new tenants is the right place to start.”Arab leaders in private are “candid about the necessity of solving the problem of Hamas,” Ahmad Sharawi notes in The Hill — but are paralyzed by fear of “backlash” at home.Yet President Trump’s audacious plan to resettle 2 million Palestinians and turn Gaza into the new Riviera “has laid down a challenge.”In an “emergency summit” this week, the Arab League “will attempt to hash out a counter to Trump�...