The "new alliance" between New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani marks them as "the face of the Resistance in the second Trump administration," sniffs the Washington Examiner's Byron York. This alliance is "also about the leadership of the Democratic Party": A Mayor Mamdani won't compromise on his "pro-Palestinian advocacy" but "might ascend to another level of national leadership," alongside "anti-Trump governors like California's Gavin Newsom and Illinois's JB Pritzker." However "the alliance between Letitia James, the lawfare warrior, and Zohran Mamdani, the pro-Palestinian activist running the nation's largest city" proceeds, expect "some unexpected turns as the second generation of Trump resistance goes forward."

Conservative: Trump's Risky 'Revenge Lawfare'

"The lawfare Democrats waged against Donald Trump" was "one of the main reasons behind his comeback," contends The Wall Street Journal's Gerard Baker yet he still "seems intent on repaying his enemies in kind." That "moral absurdity," sadly, "corrupts the legal process, corrodes public faith in civic institutions, and invites further leaps up the partisan warfare escalator." It's also "politically unwise": "Being the object of a dubious, politically inspired lawsuit may be among the best things that could happen" to Trump's enemies. More broadly, targeting political foes is part of the current constraint-free "personalist system of government." "Americans don't seem to care as much as they should about abuses of power. They'll be less forgiving if they wind up the losers."

Media watch: Lefties' Beloved . . . Dog Torturer

Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer "beloved by the far left for his stupendously bloodthirsty anti-American and anti-Israeli politics," sits in the "basement of his comfortable Southern California mansion and reads through the news of the day," observes National Review's Jeffrey Blehar. Since his views go up when his Siberian husky is on screen, Piker "has attached a shock collar incredibly tightly to his dog's neck, and he shocks it to keep it in place, in fear." The public's reaction to this "vile animal abuse" has been "negative, to say the least." Evidently "the world will happily tolerate -- even elevate -- a vicious antisemitic moron" who said that America deserved 9/11, but "it won't stand for" "a guy who shocks his dog" to make it function as a prop for his podcast.

Domestic terror beat: Dems' Antifa Denial

Like FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's "stubborn denial" of the existence of the mafia, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) Democrats "seem to be adopting a Hoover-esque wilful blindness about another violent group: Antifa," smirks Jonathan Turley at The Hill. The denial "is meant to deflect the discussion of the rising violence on the left," "even as Antifa deploys its signature black hoodies and masks." Yet some progressives confess "to having coordinated violent protests with Antifa groups." Dems may think they're using "the violent group for political advantage" -- but "Antifa is unlikely to have much use for establishment liberals once it gains more power." For now, "Antifa can count on" Democratic enablers "to give them cover in denying that they exist."

Wall St. review: Sarbanes-Oxley's Hidden Cost

The 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act "is considered a success" since "no major corporate accounting scandals" have hit since, but its "massive unintended consequences" are "more severe than if existing laws and self-correcting market forces were used to deal with the deceptive accounting" exposed in the Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, etc. scandals, argues Jared Dillian at Reason. The law "is very expensive to comply with, typically costing companies millions of dollars per year, on an ongoing basis, and thousands of man-hours," which discourages companies from going public. We've dropped from more than 6,500 US public companies in the '90s to about 4,700 today. And companies now don't go public until they've matured, so "most of the gains are captured by venture capitalists and private investors rather than by ordinary investors who might once have bought in shortly after an initial public offering."

The new resistance, Trump's risky 'revenge lawfare' and other...