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The Democratic embrace of vaccine mandates is running into resistance from some prominent Black athletes and activists, an unforeseen political side effect with implications for the party’s grip on a crucial voting bloc ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. A bevy of NBA stars has spoken out against the COVID-19 vaccination requirements. Golden State Warriors veteran Draymond Green defended vaccine-hesitant teammate Andrew Wiggins by arguing that mandating the shot “goes against everything that America stands for.” “I think you have to honor people’s feelings and their own personal beliefs, and I think that’s been lost when it comes to vaccinated and unvaccinated,” Mr. Green said Friday at a press conference. “You say we live in the land of the free. Well, you’re not giving anyone freedom b...

A key Democratic senator and a former Facebook employee on Tuesday argued that the social media company knowingly harms children similar to the tobacco industry’s past exploitations. The line of attack comparing cigarettes to social media emerged during a Senate hearing featuring the testimony of Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee and self-described whistleblower, on how Facebook and its Instagram product operate. She said Facebook is determined to increase its audience “by hooking kids” on an “addictive experience.” “The bullying follows them home,” she testified. “It follows them into their bedrooms.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, said Facebook and other large technology companies are facing a “Big Tobacco moment, a moment of reckoning.” He said accusations that ...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: As the southern border crisis rages, the Taliban regain control of Afghanistan, Dr. Anthony Fauci declaring Christmas may have to be canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats infighting over a $3.5 trillion social welfare bill, inflation spiking, supply-chains disrupted, and the U.S. possibly breaching its debt limit, our Vice President Kamala Harris is MIA. On Friday, Ms. Harris took a stealth trip to Palm Springs, California, with the White House not disclosing the reason for her non-public visit. The following day she was gone. The trip confused some Biden allies, who have wondered why the former senator hasn’t been more present in President Biden’s effort to pass his embattled welfare bill on Capitol Hill.  On Sunday, Ms. Harris and her husband Doug Em...

Democrats are being thwarted by strong party divisions over how to move forward on key parts of President Biden’s economic agenda as lawmakers face the harsh reality that they must cut the president’s $3.5 trillion social welfare bill to secure its passage. Mr. Biden held a virtual meeting with liberal House Democrats on Monday afternoon to try to negotiate a lower price tag on his $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” package, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said. Later this week, the president will have a virtual meeting with centrist House Democrats. Mr. Biden will travel to Michigan on Tuesday to pitch the centerpieces of his economic agenda. Ms. Psaki said the discussions focus on “the path forward, which includes recognition that the package is going to be smaller than originally prop...

The West’s inglorious exit from Afghanistan has sparked a long-awaited reckoning for NATO and has fueled major questions about the role the alliance is capable of playing in the 21st century — and to what degree it can rely so heavily on U.S. leadership and U.S. military assets. With NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg making his first visit to Washington this week since the fall of Kabul in late August, alliance watchers see a deep sense of unease across Europe. High-stakes issues rose to the surface in a matter of months and threatened some of NATO‘s cohesiveness and core tenets. President Biden’s decision to pull all American troops from Afghanistan immediately forced other NATO nations to do the same, confirming that the alliance cannot conduct major military and intelligence missi...

Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin is hammering Democrat Terry McAuliffe‘s comments about limiting parents’ role in education, in hopes of turning out outraged families to vote. Mr. Youngkin formed an initiative Monday, dubbed Parents Matter, that is seeking to mobilize families and parents to “reject Terry McAuliffe‘s attempts to silence parents and stand between them and their children’s education.” “Terry McAuliffe showed us his heart when he said that ‘parents don’t matter.’ He immediately disqualified himself from office,” Mr. Youngkin said in a statement. “I believe that parents matter, and I’ll never put government bureaucrats or politicians between parents and their kids. As governor, I’ll empower parents and restore excellence and commonsense in education.” Mr. Youn...

ANALYSIS/OPINION: President Biden’s administration really is an aging rock band that hasn’t had a hit in memory. Or ever. Even worse, the rock star who once fronted the band has long left, and the only guy who remains can’t sing and sure can’t play the guitar. Nothing is sadder than watching Mr. Biden up on stage all alone, desperately trying to channel that one-hit wonder, Barack Obama. “Republicans just have to let us do our job,” Mr. Biden wheezed at the White House Monday. “Just get out of the way. If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way, so you don’t destroy it.” It’s those damned Republicans again! Yes, those Republicans who literally control nothing in all of Washington. It’s all their fault. Mr. Biden’s gambit Monday echoed Mr. Obama’s schtick from years ago ...

The U.S. government is building expensive tools to fight enemies that use tweets and memes instead of bullets and bombs. Instead of the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan, the battleground is on technological platforms such as Twitter, where the Defense Department’s research and development arm says America is fighting an “asymmetric, continual, war of weaponized influence narratives.” The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said it plans to spend $59.5 million in the next four years on researchers making algorithms and gathering content including tweets, memes, political ads and blog posts for the government’s Influence Campaign Awareness and Sensemaking (INCAS) program. INCAS program manager Brian Kettler said the goal is to give the government tools to provide an “early warning”...

President Biden downplayed the leftist activists who followed Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into a bathroom and videotaped her, calling such actions part of politics. The president condemned the harassment, in which an illegal immigrant demanded that Ms. Sinema support Mr. Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill. But in the same breath at a Monday news conference, he said such attacks happen to everyone. “I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody,” Mr. Biden told reporters. “The only people it doesn’t happen to are people who have Secret Service standing around them. So it’s part of the process.” White House press secretary Jen Psaki quickly sought to clarify the president’s soft-pedaling of the incident, saying Mr. Biden “shorthanded” his objections.  Ms. Psaki called ...

China’s military stepped up provocative aerial incursions near Taiwan on Monday with its biggest sortie to date, sending 58 warplanes, including 12 nuclear-capable bombers, inside the island’s air defense zone, the Taiwanese Defense Ministry said. Flights on Friday and Saturday traveled into the same southern air defense zone in what Chinese state media called practice for a military assault on Taiwan, an island state 100 miles off the southern Chinese coast. Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of its sovereign territory. The incursions Monday, in two waves, were the largest so far in what appears to be a Beijing-directed campaign of coercion. The flights bring the total aircraft flying into the air defense zone since late last week to 136 and represent a People’s Liberation Army escalatio...