Cross-Examination

• Biden threatens to veto House Israel bill: In a rare primetime address to the nation two weeks ago, Joe Biden tried to make the case that Israel’s war with Hamas and Ukraine’s war with Russia were two peas in a pod, equally worthy of our attention and our taxpayer dollars. House Republicans aren’t buying it. The president’s ask is for a princely $106 billion, including $61.4 billion for Ukraine, $14.3 billion for Israel, $13.6 billion for border security, $9 billion for “humanitarian” aid, and $2 billion or so for Taiwan. House Republicans, though, led by new Speaker Mike Johnson, have proposed something completely different. As the New York Post reports: “The $14.3 billion [House] bill would decouple aid for Israel. … The spending measure would also strip humanitarian aid for Palestinian civilians … and would be paid for in part by cuts to Internal Revenue Service funding allocated under the president’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act.” A Biden spokesman says he’ll veto such a bill. “I think President Biden is bluffing,” said Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. “I like what Speaker Johnson has done. I think it’s the conservative thing to do. … Friend or foe, whoever we’re giving the money to, it ought to be paid for, because our national debt is threatening our national security.” In sum, this is a smart, shrewd move by House Republicans, and it exacerbates a growing rift between the Democrats’ “Hamas” wing and the main body of the party.

• Hamas now allows Americans to leave Gaza: In a weird reinforcement of its own propagandists’ claims that the Gaza Strip is an “open-air prison,” Hamas has been imprisoning hundreds of Americans there, blocking them from leaving the territory through the Rafa crossing that connects Gaza to Egypt. That changed earlier today, however, with a deal hammered out among the U.S. State Department, Qatar, and Egypt. As CBS News reports: “Hundreds of foreign passport holders and the wounded trapped in Gaza started leaving the war-torn territory Wednesday as the Rafah border crossing to Egypt opened to them for the first time since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.” The opening clears the way for some 545 foreigners and dual nationals to leave, as well as injured Gazans seeking medical attention. According to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, those heading through the crossing include some of the “more than 15,000 wounded in retaliatory Israeli strikes, which the ministry says have killed more than 8,500 people, two-thirds of them women and children.” Meanwhile, 15 Israel Defense Forces soldiers have been killed so far.

• Musk says Republicans were suppressed 10x more than Dems: We knew the social media censors had it out for the Right, but we didn’t know it was this bad. During a recent appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” X owner Elon Musk shared the grim news. “The degree to which Twitter was simply an arm of the government was not well understood by the public,” he said when asked by Rogan about the transparency efforts of the Twitter Files, which were released in late 2022 and early 2023. Musk said Twitter was “propped up” and compared it to Soviet news agency Pravda, saying that Twitter was “a state publication.” As for where Twitter drew the censorship line, Musk’s assessment is even more grim: “There was basically oppression of any views that would even, I would say be considered middle of the road, but certainly anything on the right. And I’m not talking about like far right, I’m just talking about mildly right.” Granted that Musk isn’t a perfect messenger for free speech; he’s a bit too cozy and accommodating of China for that. But it’s hard to imagine what conservative speech would be like today had the Tesla billionaire not put his money where his mouth is last year.

• Maine law enforcement was alerted to assailant: In the fallout from the mass murder in Maine last week that left 18 people dead and 13 wounded, it was learned that weeks prior to the assailant’s attack, the U.S. Army Reserve had alerted local law enforcement officials to “veiled threats” he had made against the Army base. Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry responded to the warning by sending officers to the threat-maker’s home, but were unable to locate him. Merry issued a statewide “awareness alert.” Receiving the alert, Saco Police Chief Jack Clements responded by sending officers to patrol the local Army base for two weeks, as it was the presumed target of the threat. However, “the guy never showed up,” Clement observed. The problem, Clement contends, was that the alert was a “generic thing that came out saying, hey, you know, we’ve had some report that this guy’s made some veiled threats.” He added that his department “never came in contact with [the suspect], never received any phone calls from the reserve center saying, ‘Hey, we got somebody who was causing a problem.’ We never got anything.” Unfortunately, for leftists, realizing that the system doesn’t always work causes them to push harder for wider gun confiscation.

• Yale’s “Holocaust denial”: The nation’s oldest independent student newspaper, the Yale Daily News, was recently accused of “Holocaust denial” after it edited an article submitted by sophomore Yale student Sahar Tarak. Tarak, who is no stranger to writing, as she serves as an editor for the Yale Free Press, responded to pro-Palestinian protesters celebrating Hamas’s murderous October 7 attack on innocent Israelis with an article titled, “Is Yalies4Palestine a hate group?” In her article, Tarak observed that Hamas terrorists had raped and beheaded some victims. Well, that factual information was evidently a bridge too far for the Yale Daily News, as editors removed Tarak’s references to rapes and beheadings and included a note stating, “This column has been edited to remove unsubstantiated claims that Hamas raped women and beheaded men.” The fact of the matter is there are multiple credible reports of rapes and beheadings, as well as evidence on the bodies of victims of torture and rape carried out by Hamas terrorists. To deny this is to deny truth in favor of pushing a false narrative that paints Hamas as freedom fighters and not the inhumane terrorists that they are. The paper later almost acknowledged as much, retracting the editors notes.

(Updated)

• China scrubs Israel from its online maps: Evidently, for those living in China, the nation of Israel no longer exists, at least on online maps. Searching the world map online in China ever since Hamas’s October 7 murderous attack, the name “Israel” failed to show up. Yet nations like Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon are present and accurately noted. The fact of the matter is that Beijing has long played these political games with maps. For example, earlier this year, India leveled an official complaint against China over a so-called “standard map” wherein part of India’s territory that Beijing has laid claim to just happened to be depicted as part of China. In this latest move of scrubbing Israel, Beijing is placating its largest trade partner in the Middle East, Iran. By the way, China still refuses to recognize Taiwan as a separate nation and pressures the rest of the world to follow suit.

• NJ Gov. Murphy’s taxpayer-funded Taylor Swift party: Recent reporting from Politico exposed one way New Jersey Democrat Governor Phil Murphy used funds from the governor’s office account — provided by taxpayers to be used for “Official Receptions, Official Residence, and Other Official Expenses,” but not to be used for “personal purposes.” Roughly $12,000 was used from the account to pay for such things as food and drink at a Taylor Swift concert and a number of sporting events at MetLife Stadium dating to as far back as 2018. According to Murphy’s office, the taxpayer money will be reimbursed by the state’s Democrat Party. The question is, why is this reimbursement taking so long, and would it ever have been offered without media exposure?

Headlines

• Comer: Joe Biden got $40K from bro James in “laundered” China funds (New York Post)

• Biden will meet Xi Jinping face to face in San Francisco, White House confirms (Fox News)

• FBI Director Wray warns terror threat to Americans at “whole other level” amid Hamas-Israel conflict (Fox News)

• Man in body armor with guns, extra mags, and “improvised explosives” found dead at Colorado amusement park alongside cryptic note (Not the Bee)

• Cornell student faces five years in prison after allegedly making online threats to Jewish students on campus (Daily Wire)

• DC freshens up “Black Lives Matter” street art despite Hamas endorsements (Daily Signal)

• LA County wants its social workers to ask kids as young as 10 about their sexual orientation (Not the Bee)

• Policy: How climate alarmists’ obsession with overpopulation wrecks human welfare (The Federalist)

• Humor: Secret Service mistakenly spends four hours protecting Halloween butler decoration (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.