Terror attacks in France just keep on coming. In late September, two people were seriously wounded in a knife attack by a young Pakistani refugee outside the former office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which had just republished cartoon caricatures of Muhammad. In 2015, the initial publication of the images sparked an attack that outraged much of the West—the massacre of 12 people at the magazine's newsroom. In mid-October, an 18-year-old Chechen Russian refugee who had grown up in France beheaded Samuel Paty, a teacher, for having shown the cartoons in a civics class devoted to free speech. Paty was slaughtered for "blasphemy" just outside his school in the Paris suburb of Yvelines. The country was still reeling from his brutal murder when, less than two weeks later, a 21-year-old Tunisian killed three people and injured many more at Notre Dame Basilica in the southern city of Nice. The assailant, who had been in the country less than a month, slit the church sacristan's throat, cut a woman's neck so deeply that the police described it as an attempt to decapitate her, and stabbed a third victim multiple times; she died after staggering out of the neo-Gothic church. Only four years earlier in that same city, another Tunisian had driven a truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on July 14, killing 86 people.

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In what he had billed as a "big announcement" at the White House at 2:22 am Wednesday, President Trump could have chosen to highlight some of what he had achieved in his race for reelection. He could have boasted about having won more popular votes this year than in 2016. He could have talked about his campaign giving Republicans a strong showing in U.S. Senate races, where the GOP has a good shot at retaining its majority.

Trump could have talked about flipping possibly as many as six Democratic seats in the House. He could have gloated about his impressive appeal to Hispanic voters, especially in Florida, and his having helped some women Republican candidates secure House seats.

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The decision by Facebook and Twitter to block discussion of a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's emails during his work for a Ukrainian energy company has become a bigger story than the article itself.

George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley called the social media giants' decision to limit distribution of the story "perfectly Orwellian" and "quite chilling" for free speech. George Freeman, on the other hand, the executive director of Media Law Resource Center, called it "responsible" and long overdue.

Which is it?

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President Trump's hospitalization Friday with the deadly coronavirus could dramatically affect his political future, and even his policies, if history is any guide.

Usually, Americans have rallied around an ailing leader. But in this most divided of countries led by the most divisive president in modern times, universal empathy has not been forthcoming.

Most Democratic politicians have had the good sense to respond sympathetically to Trump's illness. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden immediately suspended negative advertisements about Trump, a gesture the Trump campaign has yet to reciprocate, and publicly wished his rival a speedy recovery.

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The shock of Tuesday night's awfully chaotic and chaotically awful presidential debate has been replaced by news that President Trump and his wife have both tested positive for the coronavirus. Obviously, no one should be pleased that the man whose mishandling of the virus helped enable the death of more than 200,000 Americans has joined the ranks of the infected.

While we hope for the Trumps' return to health, the choice Americans now face in deciding between Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden has not changed. Neither has he.

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