Cross-Examination

• Mike Johnson just might be your next speaker: The 51-year-old four-term Louisiana Republican is the speaker designate, and a floor vote is scheduled for noon today. Johnson, the current GOP conference vice chair, outpolled Florida’s Byron Donalds head-to-head in a secret ballot last night after Tennessee’s Mark Green and Texas’s Roger Williams withdrew their names from consideration. Johnson is a Freedom Caucus member with a strong 91 American Conservative Union rating, and he’s also a past president of the highly influential Republican Study Committee, the largest committee in the GOP conference. He’s a smart, likeable, Christian conservative, and he’s good in front of a camera. He was on Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team, but the support he’s already received from across the Republican conference indicates that he isn’t a polarizer. As Florida Congresswoman Kat Cammack posted this morning: “Congratulations to my friend Mike Johnson! As our new Speaker designee, he has already made incredible strides bringing our conference together. He is a good man and a constitutional conservative. He believes in #WeThePeople! Together, we serve on the Weaponization subcommittee. The new era of vision, faith, and freedom is here. Let’s do this!”

• Tlaib keeps the hospital lie going: When a Jew-hating “Palestinian” congresswoman tells you who she is, believe her. Detroit Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who early last week jumped to convulsions when she claimed, “Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that,” is refusing to walk back that hysterical and blood-libelous lie. As we noted shortly after the explosion, it wasn’t an airstrike, it didn’t hit a hospital, it didn’t kill hundreds, and Israel didn’t do it. But other than that, the reporting was accurate. Having doubled-down on her lie later in the week, Tlaib is still denying the truth of the wayward Islamic Jihad rocket that landed in the parking lot outside the Al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza and didn’t do significant structural damage to the hospital itself. “Media outlets and third-party analysts have raised doubts about claims and evidence offered by both Israel and the Gaza Ministry of Health, and I agree with the United Nations that an independent investigation is necessary,” Tlaib said. Perhaps someone needs to tell her that the UN is hardly an unbiased observer of Middle East affairs and that the Gaza Ministry of Health is run by Hamas and is therefore one of the terrorist organization’s most powerful propaganda tools.

• A massive and bipartisan antitrust suit against Google: Last month, to relatively little fanfare, a trial began between Google on the one side and the Department of Justice and 50 state attorneys general on the other. At issue is what to do about the death grip that Google has built on Internet search through its exclusive agreements with cellphone carriers, handset manufacturers, and the like. The case, which is expected to last 10 weeks and was filed in 2020 by the Trump administration, reflects “a broad reappraisal in Washington of the common wisdom that the Internet is open by nature and therefore can self-regulate through free-market competition,” according to The Washington Post. It’s also a relatively straightforward one, hinging on Google’s ability to monopolize the market on data collection. As former Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson notes: “It is no secret that Google has a durable monopoly over general search online. … Simply having a monopoly does not violate our antitrust laws. But monopoly conduct to control the vast majority of consumer data through exclusionary contracts, as opposed to fair competition, does.” Should Google, for example, be allowed to ink a deal with Apple that makes its search engine the default option on all iPhones? That, in a nutshell, is what’s at stake.

• Forty-one states are suing Facebook’s parent company: In another feel-good story about Big Tech finally being taken to task, 41 states filed a lawsuit yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that Meta designs its products to — no shocker here — addict young users, and that the company “hid the amount of damage its apps caused to teenagers and youth, including addictive behaviors and physical harm,” according to the Washington Examiner. Industry groups say that the suit infringes on matters of free speech and privacy, and Meta says it’s added new tools to allow parents to regulate what their kids see on social media. But let’s be real: Just how interested is Facebook in limiting the access of its future customer base? According to the filing: “Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its Social Media Platforms.” Regarding Meta’s efforts to mislead the public, it sounds almost like the Big Tobacco lawsuits of a generation ago.

• Team Brandon turns loose 96% of illegals who use its CBP One app: And all this time we thought the border was closed. Apparently, though, the federal government’s CBP One™ mobile phone app — which is a creation of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, was launched October 28, 2020, and is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play — is allowing “inadmissible aliens to make an appointment to fly directly to airports in the interior of the United States, bypassing the border altogether,” according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies. This sounds to us like an impeachable offense. CBP One serves “as a single portal to a variety of CBP services,” according to the agency. “Through a series of guided questions, the app directs each type of user to the appropriate services based on their needs.” Between January 12 and September 30, “fully 95.8% of the illegal aliens who scheduled appointments to claim asylum through the CBP One app were issued a ‘Notice to Appear’ and then were paroled into the interior of the U.S.,” according to The Daily Signal. Nothing like a sternly worded memo to strike fear into the hearts of illegal border-crossers.

• Another Trumper pleads guilty in GA: On Tuesday, Donald Trump’s former campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis pleaded guilty to felony charges tied to her alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 Georgia election results. Ellis admitted to one count of aiding and abetting false statements, and she’s now the fourth to plead guilty of the 19 people charged in the alleged plot. Ellis was sentenced to five years probation, a $5,000 fine, 100 hours of community service, and to write an apology letter to the state of Georgia. Furthermore, she can be called upon to testify in upcoming trials related to the case. In offering her plea, Ellis tearfully admitted that she “failed to do my due diligence” and that “if I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump in these post election challenges.” Sadly, Ellis seems like a good person who unfortunately is suffering for Trump’s refusal to accept the 2020 election results while he benefits with solid and growing support.

• Trump cleared in FBI relocation tiff: The Justice Department recently concluded a four-year investigation into allegations made by congressional Democrats who claimed that Donald Trump illegally sought to intervene to prevent the FBI from moving its headquarters out of Washington, DC, into the suburbs. The Democrats alleged that Trump’s motive for objecting to the FBI move was financial — that he wanted to protect his DC hotel from competition. The FBI move never happened, but according to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, “We found no evidence that the FBI’s decisions were based on improper considerations or motives.” He added, “Specifically, we found no evidence that in making the decision to seek to have the new FBI headquarters remain at its current [downtown] site, Director Wray and others at the FBI considered the location of the then-named Trump International Hotel or how President Trump’s financial interests could be impacted by the decision.” The Biden administration is looking to relocate FBI headquarters to a new site in either the Maryland or Virginia suburbs surrounding DC.

• $50K more for EVs without tax dollars: What are the true costs of electric vehicles? Thanks to a recent comprehensive analysis from the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), that figure has now been quantified. The TPPF report found that without government subsides (read: taxpayer dollars), the cost of an average EV in 2021 would be an eye-popping $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period. This cost increase includes $11,833 per EV over a decade in added strain on the U.S. electrical grid. The report notes, “It is not an overstatement to say that the federal government is subsidizing EVs to a greater degree than even wind and solar electricity generation and embarking on an unprecedented endeavor to remake the entire American auto industry.” It further warns, “It’s time for federal and state governments to stop driving the American auto industry off an economic cliff and allow markets to drive further improvements in cost and efficiency.”

• Detransitioner lawsuit: Isabelle Ayala, a 21-year-old woman who detransitioned after having undergone “transgender” hormone therapy as a teenager, recently filed a lawsuit against the American Academy of Pediatrics alleging that the organization lied to her regarding the medical dangers associated with so-called gender-affirming care. Ayala claims that the AAP pushed youth “gender transition” and knowingly misled the public regarding the negative effects of this gender-bending malpractice. The suit says that the AAP’s “affirmative model” for gender dysphoria “included immediate, no-questions-asked ‘affirming’ of a child’s desired gender and quickly placing them on a conveyor belt of life-altering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or experimental surgeries.” This is the first time the AAP has been named in a lawsuit directly related to “transgenderism.”

• Bad news: NHL caves to the Rainbow Mafia: Two weeks ago, the National Hockey League announced a new policy banning player promotion of LGBTQ “pride” before or during games. Notably, the policy banned players from wrapping their sticks with rainbow-colored tape. Perhaps predictably, the NHL has backtracked on its ban after a player chose to defy the ban and wrapped his stick in “pride tape.” A new policy will permit players to voluntarily make their sticks gay. At least the NHL is no longer forcing players to bow to the Rainbow Mafia by donning “pride” warmup jerseys, but it’s still disappointing to see sexual deviancy overtake even our sports.

Headlines

• Israel slams UN chief for saying Hamas attack “did not happen in a vacuum,” calls for his resignation (Politico)

• Hamas used landline phones in Gaza tunnels to evade Israeli intelligence for two years while plotting attack (New York Post)

• Palestinian Arabs overwhelmingly support Hamas and its genocidal aspirations (The Federalist) | “Just as cruel as the terrorists”: Many ordinary Palestinians joined in Hamas’s atrocities against Israel (Free Beacon)

• DeSantis administration instructs Florida universities to suspend pro-Hamas student groups (National Review)

• More illegal crossers apprehended at northern border sector in 2023 than previous 11 years combined (Just the News)

• Strike costs GM $200 million in third quarter, automaker now taking $200 million hit weekly (Washington Times)

• “Slap in the face”: Gavin Newsom hammered for showing off $160K Chinese EV during China trip (Fox Business)

• It seems the UFC has forgotten about Mulvaney-Gate because it’s partnering up with Bud Light starting in 2024 (Not the Bee)

• ACLU: Giving people HIV intentionally is no big deal (Hot Air)

• Policy: The United Nations is rotten from the top down (National Review)

• Humor: Republicans place House Speaker job on ZipRecruiter (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.