Elise Stenfanik — announcing her run for NY Governor — uses Zoran Mamdani's word: "affordability."

"There's no question New York is facing an affordability crisis.... Kathy Hochul made New York the most unaffordable state in the nation, crushing families with sky-high taxes, unaffordable rent, soaring energy costs, and record high grocery bills and cozied up through a defund the police, tax hiking anti-semitic communist.... Elise Stefanik will make New York affordable and safe.... We are the most unaffordable state in the nation because of single party Democrat rule led by Kathy Hochul. As a working mom, congresswoman, and fighter, Elise knows families need more help, and she'll make New York affordable.... With everything on the line, we need someone who will deliver results and make New York affordable and safe for families and small businesses to not just survive, but thrive...."

So Mamdani just got elected on the promise of making NYC affordable, and he needs to work with Hochul if he is to get anywhere toward fulfillment of the promise, and Hochul has Stefanik hot on her heels, so Hochul is powerfully motivated to help progress toward this affordability in the coming year, running up to the 2026 election. Hochul must act. Stefanik will say she's doing it all wrong, and with Mamdani — "the communist" — as her partner in affordability-seeking, she probably will be. 

"These are horrific crimes"/"They're horrific crimes that are committed on your watch."

Elise Stefanik versus Kathy Hochul:

Transcript: "Stefanik Exposes Kathy Hochul on Sanctuary State Policies, Kathy Hochul Heartlessly Does Not Even Know Illegals Who Burned Alive, Raped, Molested New Yorkers."

Why did Hochul not take the precaution of committing these names and stories to memory? She knew the subject matter of the hearing. She chose to look out of touch. Perhaps it was a rational choice. If she'd said she knew, she'd have been forced to recite the details and pressed about any detail she omitted. 

"New York Rep. Elise Stefanik has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offerto be his enforcer as United Nations ambassador...."

The NY Post reports.

The 40-year-old upstate Republican, who helped force out two Ivy League presidents with her sharp questioning on campus antisemitism, will the lead Trump’s “America first” and pro-Israel message in Turtle Bay... Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican, has been a close Trump ally, including serving on his ceremonial defense team in 2020 during his first impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to investigate alleged Biden family corruption.

I love that little smile she gets when she sees the opening and how many openings she sees.

She’s way above the average member of Congress in how she questions a witness. Most give speeches or ask prepared questions without an ability to follow up. VP? https://t.co/DBAKc0GYMw

— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) May 15, 2024

Did the 3 university presidents fall into "Ms. Stefanik's prosecutorial trap"?

I'm reading "Questioning University Presidents on Antisemitism, Stefanik Goes Viral/The No. 4 Republican, a Harvard alumna with a fraught relationship with her alma mater, had a confrontation over campus responses to antisemitism that resonated across the political spectrum" (NYT).

The NYT writer, Annie Karni, is characterizing an interview with Stefanik:

On the subject of anti-Semitism, "I'd like to speak not from the heart, but from the thesaurus...."/"And could you rephrase that in an even more academic way?"

I like the freeze frame. All 3 have the same head tilt and arrogant smirk.

The actual sketch is hardest on Elise Stefanik though, unsurprisingly.

"Ms. Stefanik’s aggressive appeals to the far right typically delight Republican hard-liners. But in the hearing, Ms. Stefanik achieved the unthinkable..."

"... prompting many Democrats and detractors of Mr. Trump to concede that an ideological culture warrior with whom they agree on nothing else was, in this case, right. Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said on social media that he was 'no fan' of Ms. Stefanik. But, he added: 'I’m with her here. Claudine Gay’s hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends.'... That Ms. Stefanik emerged as the voice of reason in the hearing was a sobering thought for many of her detractors. More than any other member of Congress, Ms. Stefanik represents to Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans the worst of what happened to the G.O.P. under the sway of Mr. Trump...."

Writes Annie Karni, in "Questioning University Presidents on Antisemitism, Stefanik Goes Viral/The No. 4 Republican, a Harvard alumna with a fraught relationship with her alma mater, had a confrontation over campus responses to antisemitism that resonated across the political spectrum" (NYT).

Where the university presidents went wrong was not in defending pure speech and distinguishing pure speech from conduct. That was good. Their mistake was the rote repetition of stock phrases in place of real engagement about the line between speech and conduct. There should have been a frank discussion of whether the universities draw the same line for anti-Semitic speech that they draw for speech that is hostile to other groups, such as black people.

I think that by "conduct," the presidents meant the kind of speech that is aimed at individuals and constitutes a true threat or an incitement to imminent violence. These presidents seemed unable or unwilling to talk about freedom of speech and bigotry. I suspect that they didn't dare risk speaking substantively because either they really don't understand the law and philosophy of freedom of speech — a shameful deficiency in a university president! — or because they know the facts are against them and they have not been maintaining the strong free-speech position that they want to take now — now that the offensive speech is hateful toward Jews.

WaPo acknowledges the rise of a new GOP star: "Elise Stefanik emerges in impeachment hearings as key Trump defender — and GOP celebrity."

The piece — by Mike DeBonis — begins with Stefanik's record as a "maverick" — voting against the 2017 tax bill and supporting LGBT rights and DACA. But at the impeachment hearings, we're told she's "a complete team player."

Early in Friday’s hearing with former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, Stefanik sought to make a point by speaking up during a period of questioning reserved only for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and his counsel under rules that passed the House on a party-line vote last month.

“The gentlewoman will suspend,” Schiff said. “You are not recognized.”

“What is the interruption for this time?” she shot back in an exchange calculated to underscore Republican objections to a process controlled by Democrats. “This is the fifth time you have interrupted members of Congress, duly elected members of Congress.”...

“This is a matter of constitutional importance, and I’m asking substantive, fact-based questions to the witnesses,” she said [later, in an interview]. “I have one of the top 10 percent most bipartisan records in this House and one of the most independent records. But when it comes to constitutional matters, we should focus on the facts. We should not let this be a partisan attack the way Adam Schiff is conducting himself.”

A woman was testifying, and Stefanik is the only GOP woman on the committee. She's also the youngest GOP woman in the House. (She's 35.) WaPo has a quote from a Democratic woman on the committee, insinuating that Stefanik is being used because she's a woman: "When they are badgering a female witness who is a career Foreign Service officer with an impeccable record, and they want to badger her, I think it’s a better look when a woman is taking the lead on that." And then there's Matthew Dowd who tweeted that Stefanik is "a perfect example of why just electing someone because they are a woman or a millennial doesn’t necessarily get you the leaders we need." That was stupid to say out loud, and he deleted it.

WaPo recognizes a tweet from the Daily Caller that "compared the performance to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2017 move to silence Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — an exchange that went viral among Democrats":

She was warned

She was given an explanation

Nevertheless, she persisted pic.twitter.com/7GQSyRTqiM

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 15, 2019

ADDED:

Part 2 👇 pic.twitter.com/0Tium6g9aO

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) November 15, 2019