Fast Takes: French leftys cold calculations, feeding the anti-ICE flames and other commentary

France’s ugly riots are “ostensibly about declining public services,” observes The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board — “but the presidential election next April figures into the protest calculations.” If the riots help far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon “consolidate support on the left, he could be the one” to “emerge from the first round of voting to get to the two candidate runoff,” likely against National Rally’s Marine Le Pen, “leading in current presidential polls” while Mélenchon “is in a three-way tie with two candidates on the center-left.“If that sounds cynical, this is French politics.” “France is in a violent democratic funk, and it will probably get worse.

Don’t think it can’t happen in the U.S.given the current state of American politics.”“If there is a lesson to be learned” from the ICE shooting of an illegal migrant in The Bronx, “it’s that the usual critics of law enforcement will never waste an opportunity to undercut the institutions charged with keeping us safe,” warns City Journal’s Rafael Mangual.

“The anger over the shooting before the conclusion of an investigation into its lawfulness is senseless” — politicians simply “seized on the shooting because they thought it could help amplify their message.” If they “really cared about the well-being of actual New Yorkers, they’d have been just as upset about the Dominican NYPD detective, Jose Mercedes, who was stabbed.” Instead, “elected progressives are once again fanning the flames.”After just a few years, lawmakers who ended the “tip credit” that had reduced minimum-wage requirements in restaurants are facing the “predictable, economic results,” observes Reason’s C.Jarrett Dieterle — prompting many to make “an about-face” on its elimination.

In 2022, DC “repealed the tip credit and required servers to be paid the District’s full statutory minimum wage by 2027”; it soon “saw a close to 5 pe...