Opinion
By Jeff Childers
10/4/25
Good morning, C&C, it’s Saturday! It’s time for the Weekend Edition roundup: President Trump’s Middle East peace plan picks up steam and Democrats don’t know what to say or do about it; Kavanaugh’s attempted assassin, who just came out as transgender, gets minimum sentence from Biden judge who’s been recently reversed by SCOTUS; slight sentence sends significant message to Supremes; in wake of Iryna Zarutska’s brutal train murder, North Carolina Republicans pass the toughest and broadest criminal justice reform package in the state’s history.
🌍 WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🌍
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Democrats have so far succeeded in burying Trump’s flurried peacemaking, but they won’t be able to bury this. Early this morning, the New York Times ran a disgracefully stingy story headlined, “Israel Says It Will Work With Trump Gaza Plan; Hamas Says It Will Release Hostages.”
You’ll recall that last week, President Trump announced his 20-point Middle East Peace Plan, while standing alongside Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who sort of agreed. But Middle East Peace Plans are a dime a dozen. They’re everywhere you look; you practically trip over them walking outside the check for your Amazon package.
On the other hand, peace deals are rarer than Democrats at a barn dance.
There’s no deal yet, but this time is different. This time, nearly every Muslim leader has already told Trump they’d back the deal. Every one but Hamas, which admittedly was kind of an important holdout, since that angry terror group is the one that has to actually sign, cough up hostages, and get out of Dodge. Last week, Trump gave Hamas 72 hours to choose: the easy way or the hard way. Corporate media sneered that, even if Trump got the whole world to agree, Hamas would never go along.
Yesterday afternoon, Hamas announced it would go along with Trump’s plan. Five hours later, Israel followed suit.
🚀 Unlike the Times’ emotionless reporting, the Jerusalem Post sounded downright euphoric. JPost reported Trump’s immediate calling on Israel to halt the bombing “so the hostages can be released quickly.” Sources close to U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff described “cautious optimism,” while Israeli officials assured N12 News that the terms were final and that “we have passed the negotiation stage.” Even Netanyahu, reportedly surprised by Trump’s bluntness, seems to have accepted that the United States now holds the pen. JPost’s headline:
On the other side of the ideological and theological divide, Al Jazeera was equally optimistic. The Arab news network catalogued a global chorus of reactions that would have been unthinkable a month ago:
As Eeyore —sorry, I mean the Times— was quick to point out, the 20-point plan is more like a letter of intent rather than something that can be “accepted” per se. They still need to draft some kind of final contract or treaty— and the devil is in the details. (Satan is practically racing around the Times’ newsroom in a red costume and cursing a blue streak.) But the Grey Lady was forced to admit that Trump’s plan now shows more promise than anything else in living memory.
At the very least, it appears that after two long years, the unjustly held hostages will soon come home; some to their parents’ embrace, and some, sadly, to bury.
🚀 In 1947, in the grisly aftermath of the Second World War, the United Nations voted to partition dusty, British-controlled Palestine. It thereby formally recognized the reconstituted country of Israel, the first time an ancient nation has ever been resurrected from the ashes of history. The plan split the land into two states, with Jerusalem subject to international control. The Jews accepted; the Arabs refused. They haven’t agreed on anything since.
That fledgling conflict launched a chain of wars and failed peace proposals, eventually birthing the world’s stickiest problem child— the perpetual Middle East conflict. The first war erupted right after partition in 1948, was followed by another major war in 1967, then decades of terrorism, proxy battles, and failed summits, all culminating in Hamas’s barbaric October 7, 2023 invasion— the event that blasted the entire region back into open war.
It can fairly be debated whether tiny Israel —the size of New Jersey— weilds outsized world influence, or whether America’s steadfast commitment to the region’s only non-Muslim country is fully justified by any reciprocal benefit received from the Jewish state. But those are side issues, because the truth is that the United Nations’ topmost concern, almost an obsession, appearing on nearly every agenda, has become Israel.
Between 2015 and 2023, for example, the General Assembly adopted 154 resolutions concerning Israel, compared to only 71 resolutions directed at all other countries combined.
Why does Israel remain such a central world concern? It’s hard to account for it rationally. Many other conflicts have been bloodier, costlier, and more oppressive — from Rwanda to Sudan to Syria to North Korea — yet none has consumed the world’s diplomatic and moral bandwidth like Israel and Palestine.
The Israel fixation crosses borders, defies party affiliations, and transcends politics. It’s universally polarizing; no one is neutral. And every new flare-up there becomes a kind of global psychodrama, drawing in nations, movements, and ideologies that have little material stake but feel spiritually compelled to take sides. How else can you explain “Queers for Palestine?”
The Israel-Palestine conflict seems to operate on a deeper frequency, where theology, identity, and history overlap into obsession.
🚀 That’s what makes Trump’s breakthrough so extraordinary. He isn’t just working between Israel and Hamas — he’s mediating the world’s oldest-running argument, the one that keeps college campuses fractious and military monitors sleeplessly attentive. Every nation, every ideology, every creed thinks it owns some tiny slice of the Holy Land’s deed.
So when Trump steps into the bargaining ring, he isn’t just negotiating with Netanyahu and Hamas; he’s horse-trading with history, theology, and the collective neurosis of mankind itself.
For whatever reason, every country on Earth brings an opinion and demands a seat at the table. Trump isn’t merely trying to satisfy two enemies — he has to satisfy everyone. That is why, in Israel’s 77-year modern incarnation, no one has ever pulled that off. No one has even come close.
CLIP: Trump announces “unprecedented” progress and thanks leaders who helped (1:10).
🔥 The New York Times’ coverage was remarkable mostly for what it left out. The paper’s report this morning was a study in understatement. It did not mention of the jubilant tone in the Jerusalem Post. It did not mention the cautiously hopeful reaction from Al Jazeera and the Arab world. You’d never guess, from reading the Times, that both sides of the planet’s worst conflict had just tentatively agreed to end a two-year war and potentially end a world-shattering historical dispute.
Instead, the Grey Lady buried the lede under curt paragraphs about “remaining details” and “unresolved disputes,” as though peace breaking out were merely a scheduling inconvenience.
But the Times’ silence underscored this historic story. Democrats are, once again, in a tough spot. Unable or unwilling to praise Trump’s progress, they are also hamstrung by a fear of opposing the global momentum toward and desire for peace. Worse, they are intellectually bankrupt, with no plan or even an idea of a plan to offer. Laughably, Biden’s useless Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is making the rounds, taking credit for leaving the fully-formed deal “in a drawer” for Trump’s team and babbling that he’s glad they ran with it. It’s Biden’s deal!
When Al Jazeera and The Jerusalem Post are both saying nearly the same thing —that Trump’s plan may soon end the war and free the hostages— and the New York Times can’t bring itself to say it at all, you know something historic just happened.
If President Trump can close this deal, regardless of whether the elites deign to award him the Nobel, he will have secured his spot in history by delivering peace —not just to the Holy Land, and not just to the Middle East— but to the whole world.
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This followup story requires calliope music playing in the background. The Hill ran its article below the headline, “Kavanaugh’s attempted assassin sentenced to 8 years in prison.” The insanity began almost instantly, as the article began by referring to Nicolas John Roske as “Sophie,” calling him “her,” and omitting his picture and legal given name. Now you know why Roske got the minimum sentence from his affluent, female, white, liberal judge. This isn’t the first time lately Judge Boardman’s been in the news.
Like Will Ferrell in Zoolander, in reporting this story, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. After years of corporate media whining about the erasure of transgender people, nearly every corporate media platform erased his image. You can’t find a single picture of Justice Kavanaugh’s attempted assassin.
Instead, yesterday’s stories were packed with pictures of Kavanaugh, pictures of the judge, pictures of the courthouse, or —like the Hill— with no picture at all. Roske became a ghost. In think their conundrum was that, since Roske never came out publicly as transgender until just before his sentencing hearing, there aren’t any pictures of him in drag.
Even more ridiculous, on the very same day, the Times —which only ran an image of a generic courthouse for its Roske coverage— ran a similar sentencing story about Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, but this one with the sentencee’s picture:
Corporate media blanketed the bylines with pictures of Trump’s attempted assassin, Ryan Routh, when he was sentenced last month.
The double-standard was so obvious, and so dumb. If progressives’ principle really is that gender identity is an internal truth, then why does it need outward accessories — lipstick, wigs, earrings, and dresses — to be “validated”? Isn’t that just re-inscribing the very social stereotypes activists claim to dismantle?
Why do they erase transgender women when they present as men?
Try to follow me here. If a man can become a woman with a declaration, then his scruffy face — unadorned — should be just as legitimate as any other woman’s. By ducking the mugshot and only printing his alias, “Sophie,” the media tacitly admitted they don’t actually believe their own dogma: they know their readers expect “visual cues” to make the identity stick.
Obviously, the cowardly media is desperately trying not to highlight that hormonally addled Roske is transgender, that his trans identity was recently acquired to lower his sentence, or that full-on men can “identify” as women without props. They were hoping we wouldn’t notice that it’s almost impossible to find a recent photo of the attempted assassin anywhere.
Even when corporate media did include his picture —before he transed himself— it was middle-school yearbook photos and other ancient snaps. They used his childhood pictures. Even though he’s twenty-nine.
You have to go to X to find a more recent photo:
Oh well. But you know who I’d bet is paying very close attention to all this bizarro-world, double-standardized, trans-washed coverage of Mr. Roske? Supreme Court judges.
🔥 Roske was sentenced yesterday by federal Judge Deborah L. Boardman, a 2021 Biden appointee. Before that, she was a federal public defender. In June, 2025, the Supreme Court overturned one of Boardman’s decisions, in which she’d held that forcing elementary kids to sit through lessons on LGBTQ material did not overly burden their religious rights.
“Mere exposure in public school to ideas that contradict religious beliefs does not burden the religious exercise of students or parents,” Judge Boardman wrote. In June, the Supreme Court overturned her decision 6-3. Federal judges are supposed to take reversals in stride— but nobody enjoys being overruled, least of all by a Court that frames your reasoning as constitutionally defective. It’s a career bruise that lingers quietly in every subsequent high-profile case.
So when Boardman presided over sentencing the man who tried to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh, the optics were inescapable: a recently rebuked judge deciding the fate of someone who targeted the very institution that had just overturned her. And she gave Kavanaugh’s attempted assassin the minimum legal sentence. I’m just saying.
Throughout Roske’s sentencing, Judge Boardman —virtue-signaling like a pro— consistently referred to Mr. Roske as “Sophie” —even though he’s never changed his name or even used that name until shortly before sentencing— and primly called Roske “she” and “her.” Judge Boardman found Roske’s transgender identity to be a heartwarming silver lining: “I am heartened that this terrible infraction has helped the Roske family accept their daughter for who she is.”
I did not make that quote up. She called it an “infraction”— as though the attempted assassination of a sitting Supreme Court justice were just a parking ticket on democracy’s windshield. (Legally speaking, an infraction is the mildest category of offense — below a misdemeanor. Like having a taillight out, overfilling your curbside garbage can, or keeping a pet squirrel.)
As a mitigating factor in minimizing Roske’s sentence, Judge Boardman mentioned President Trump’s executive order that requires transgender inmates to be housed by their biological sex, and worried about how a male-facility prison placement might inconvenience Mr. Roske.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has already appealed the sentence, calling it “woefully insufficient.” The Fourth Circuit, which upheld Boardman’s LBTQ curriculum case, seems likely to affirm her. In other words, Boardman is headed back to SCOTUS.
Now let’s ponder what the Supremes might be thinking about all this sanctimonious judicial charity.
🔥 Comparisons between the two attempted assassins Ryan Routh and Nicolas Roske are inevitable. The President leads the Executive Branch; the Supreme Court heads the Judicial Branch. Attempted assassinations of either should carry equal weight — both were direct attacks on co-equal pillars of government.
Yet Ryan Routh, who tried to kill a sitting president, faces a likely life sentence. Nicolas Roske, who set out to murder a Supreme Court justice, got eight years and supervised release.
The contrast isn’t just legal; it’s cultural. Routh’s judge, Aileen Cannon, is known for a strict reading of federal criminal law. Roske’s judge, a former public defender recently rebuked by SCOTUS, leaned into compassion and identity politics. Two assassination attempts, two branches of government, two defendants — and two utterly different interpretations of justice.
Roske’s sentence sends the exact wrong message in several directions. It tells the public —and anyone else inclined to target judges— that an attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice is treated less as an existential threat to the Republic and more as a troubled-youth episode. The double standard is clear: In a liberal court, threats from the progressive fringe will not be treated as domestic terror, but pathologized and humanized.
Copycats watching from the sidelines may conclude that attacking a justice might cost them less than a decade, provided they can present as confused, remorseful, or socially fashionable. The entire judiciary —including every Supreme— knows it, too. The security services know it. And —most worryingly— the next unstable ideologue knows it too.
The district court should have sent an unmistakable message: any attempt to intimidate, threaten, or harm a justice of the United States Supreme Court will draw the harshest punishment the law allows. The act isn’t just an assault on one man’s doorstep — it’s an assault on the rule of law itself.
Instead, the message Judge Boardman sent was muddled and indulgent. A 29-year-old man who packed a Glock, zip ties, and a knife, planned his attack online, then told police he came to kill a Supreme Court justice, will spend less time in prison than many nonviolent offenders. All because he decided to “come out” as transgender right before sentencing.
Roske’s minimum sentence will sting the Supreme Court. You can bet the justices —left and right alike— are watching closely. They already live under armed protection, behind fences and bulletproof glass, yet they’ve now watched one of their own nearly murdered and his would-be killer walk away with a sentence that could pass for aggravated shoplifting or tweeting a meme in Great Britain.
That must change how the Court views the world. Every future case touching judicial security, sentencing discretion, or political violence will carry a quiet echo of Roske. The conservative justices will feel vindicated in their warnings about cultural rot; the liberals will have to live with the knowledge that the ideology they’ve nurtured just winked at attempted judicial assassination. Either way, trust inside that marble building just got a little colder.
Most of all, Roske’s insultingly squishy sentence will probably draw the conservative justices even closer together. It will certainly affect future decisions related to transgender issues. It could even influence every subsequent decision, far beyond criminal law.
It could be that progressives badly overplayed their virtue-signaling hands this time.
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On the other hand, we also had some terrific criminal justice news yesterday. Fox ran the story headlined, “North Carolina governor signs ‘Iryna’s Law’ after Ukrainian refugee’s brutal train murder.” Democrat Governor Josh Stein waited almost ten days —after which the bill would have automatically become law— to sign the Republican crime bill. It’s one of the biggest criminal justice reforms in North Carolina history.
Among other things, “Iryna’s Law” bans no-bail releases for many violent crimes and for most repeat offenders; it limits the magistrates’ and judges’ discretion in making pretrial release decisions; it allows the state’s chief justice to suspend magistrates; it requires more defendants to undergo mental health evaluations before release; and it includes language aimed at restarting capital punishment and expediting death penalty appeals.
Judges and magistrates in North Carolina must now make detailed findings explaining their reasons in writing whenever they grant defendants accused of violent crimes a pretrial release. If they don’t, they can be suspended or removed.
🔥 In case you’ve been stranded on the International Space Station and just got back, Iryna was a 22-year-old Ukrainian refugee who came to America to flee the war, and immediately went to work, trying her best to be a good citizen. Last month, the young woman was riding Charlotte’s light rail system back home after a shift at the pizza parlor, when a repeat offender brutally cut her throat from behind without warning. It was all captured on camera. As he exited the train, Iryna’s murderer gloated, “I got that white b—tch!”
Ukraine’s government called North Carolina officials and offered to accept Iryna’s body, but her parents asked that she be buried here instead, since “she loved America.”
Like Charlie Kirk’s assassination, it is difficult to adequately enunciate the grief, frustration, and spiritual anguish many people felt over Iryna’s killing. Though corporate media tried its best to obscure the story, her death was far more meaningful than a local crime update. Now, thanks to North Carolina Republicans, the ripples of her killing crested into one of the most significant and toughest crime reform packages in the state’s history.
We should pause to reflect on how significant social media —especially Twitter/X— was in ensuring Iryna’s death did not vanish into a city council spreadsheet. Absent citizen journalism and online discussion, corporate media would’ve successfully buried her tragic story, and you probably never would’ve heard of her. Certainly, this bill would never have happened.
It’s progress —good progress— but it’s just the start. We’re far from done, and we won’t stop. We’re taking the train all the way to the end this time.
Have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy your first October breezes and do not overdose on pumpkin-flavored beverages. C&C will return on Monday morning, with an exciting roundup of essential news and commentary.
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The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida
