Cross-Examination

• ChiCom cash for Big Guy Joe: It might not seem like much, but Joe Biden took $40,000 in laundered money from a ChiCom-linked energy company, CEFC China Energy, back in September 2017, according to a memo from Republican Congressman James Comer, who chairs the pesky House Oversight Committee. As the New York Post reports, “The 2017 transfer from first brother James Biden and his wife Sara to the future president allegedly involves the same business deal in which Joe Biden was called the ‘big guy’ and penciled in for a 10% cut — and would be the first proven instance of the commander-in-chief getting a piece of his family’s foreign income.” That’s the key part here: an influence-peddling transaction that went straight (well, via laundered channels) to Joe Biden, and it did so just weeks after Hunter famously threatened his dad’s wrath via an angry Snapchat message to a Chinese business associate. “I’m sitting here with my father,” texted the indignant first son. “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows, and my ability to forever hold a grudge, that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.” But, no, Joe Biden never discussed his overseas business dealings with his son.

• Biden’s New Hampshire blunder: Why on earth would a gaggle of Democrat organizers be urging New Hampshire primary voters to cast write-in votes for Joe Biden when the state holds its Granite State primary in January? Simple: because Biden isn’t on the ballot. This is called blowback, and it’s what Biden is feeling in response to his trashing of the age-old tradition of Iowa and New Hampshire holding the nation’s first presidential primary votes, and his slotting of South Carolina into the first position instead. Recall that Biden was a dead man walking in the early stages of the 2020 primary season, having finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire before being resuscitated and propped up by Congressman James Clyburn and his fellow South Carolina Democrats. Thus, with the Democratic National Committee having reorganized the calendar, Biden didn’t even put his name on the ballot in New Hampshire. “His advisers and the DNC made a big mistake,” said longtime Democrat strategist Terry Shumaker. “This was not necessary.” Indeed, it wasn’t necessary, and it might result in Biden getting precisely what he’d hoped to avoid by displacing New Hampshire: an embarrassing primary challenge, which will come in the form of the newly announced candidacy of Congressman Dean Phillips.

• Biden calls for “pause,” Hamas calls for more October 7’s: “I think we need a pause,” said Joe Biden yesterday in response to a heckler who’d interrupted him at a campaign event in Minnesota. Then he clarified: “A pause means give time to get the prisoners out. Give time.” Thus came another infuriating flip-flop and another glaring example of irresoluteness concerning Israel’s war with Hamas. We suspect the Jewish state will take the advice under advisement and then continue to do what it must do to destroy its mortal enemy. As for Hamas, its position remains crystal clear: “Israel is a country that has no place on our land,” said Ghazi Hamad, Hamas’s top spokesman, on Lebanese TV recently. “We must remove that country. We must teach Israel a lesson, and we will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa flood [i.e., the October 7 attack] is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth, because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight.” Biden’s waffling seems like a political pander to Arab-American voters, who are displeased with even his suspect support of Israel. As the Associated Press reports, Democrats are fearful that Biden’s heretofore pro-Israel position on its war with Hamas could cost him the votes of Michigan’s sizable Arab-American community and thus Michigan’s 16 crucial electoral votes.

• SPLC’s awful statement: Weeks after Hamas’s murderous October 7 terrorist attack against innocent Israelis, the self-designated leading “anti-hate” organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center, finally weighed in. However, in doing so, the SPLC once again demonstrated that the real reason the leftist organization exists is not to combat hatred, specifically racially motived hatred, but instead to smear as haters anyone who refuses to bow to their leftist worldview. SPLC President Margaret Huang released the following statement: “Earlier this month, we watched in horror as Hamas led an unconscionable attack against Israeli civilians, killing more than 1,000 people and kidnapping hundreds.” One would have expected Huang to then issue a condemnation of Hamas over its anti-Semitism, but one would be wrong. Instead, Huang added, “The tragedy has only continued as Palestinian civilians in Gaza — many of whom are children — have been targeted with airstrikes and cut off from food, clean water, medical care and lifesaving supplies.” Evidently after some blowback for this statement, the SPLC edited Huang’s statement by replacing the words “targeted with” with “killed by.” Of course, that version avoids condemning Hamas’s racist, hate-filled ideology, which is entirely responsible for igniting this war in the first place. Texas Senator Ted Cruz explained the SPLC’s equivocating in the face of blatant racially motivated hatred by noting, “The SPLC is entangled with racism, sexual harassment, domestic terrorism, and outright hate.” Therefore, “It’s no surprise they would take the side of Hamas and downplay the extremism of terror-supporting groups like Students for Justice in Palestine.”

• Tuberville gets flack from fellow Republicans: Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has held the line against Joe Biden’s illegal use of American taxpayer dollars to ensure abortion access for U.S. military personnel by refusing to green-light blanket support for military promotions. This has resulted in a backlog of high-level military promotions. The situation could easily be solved by Biden backing down, but he has thus far refused. Furthermore, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could hold floor votes for each individual nominee, but the Democrats don’t want to do so, even as they ridiculously insist that Tuberville’s stand is threatening national security by affecting military readiness. Now, some of Tuberville’s Republican colleagues are echoing the Democrats’ narrative, and they are pressing Tuberville to end his stand after recently confirmed Marine Corps General Eric Smith suffered a serious medical emergency. Tuberville, though, refuses to bend, stating on Wednesday: “They’re really looking for something to blame it on other than themselves. They could have had all these people confirmed if they had just gone with the Constitution. They’re just looking for any possible way to get themselves out of a jam.”

• Debunking deep state disinformation: The clock may well run out on Republican efforts to hold the Biden Crime Family accountable for its influence-peddling schemes, but it won’t have been for lack of trying on Jim Jordan’s part. Jordan, the Ohio congressman who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and the House Weaponization Select Subcommittee, opened a probe into alleged obstruction by U.S. intelligence agencies during a 2020 Senate inquiry of the Biden family. At issue is a so-called “defensive briefing” that two Republican senators, Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, received on August 6, 2020, when, as National Review reports, two FBI officials claimed that the GOP’s assertions of malfeasance on the part of the Bidens were Russian disinformation. It wasn’t Russian disinformation, though. In fact, the defensive briefing itself was disinformation, meant purely to seed a false narrative among Congress and the mainstream media that Republican investigative efforts were tainted by Russian subterfuge. When the House GOP created their Weaponization Subcommittee, it appears they knew what they were doing.

• Minimum wage, maximum prices: It’s simple math, yet too many people still fall for the flawed claim that the minimum wage needs to be a “living wage.” Every time the minimum wage is raised, prices rise with it, and everything gets more expensive for everyone. Case in point, California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed into law a mandate that increased fast food workers’ minimum wage to $20 an hour effective April 1, 2024. Guess what will also be going up — fast food prices, at least according to McDonald’s and Chipotle. Thanks to Bidenflation, fast food prices have already been rising — up nearly 25%. A Big Mac value meal at McDonald’s can run as high as $18. And in California with Newsom’s minimum wage hike, who knows how much a Happy Meal will cost. One thing’s for certain: Fast food chains will be looking to invest in more AI tech to replace increasingly costly low-skill workers.

• Taliban gets big bucks: Every two weeks, the terrorist-harboring and Afghanistan-controlling Taliban receives roughly $80 million in aid from the U.S. and other United Nations countries. The money is ostensibly going to provide civil services such as food and medicine. Making matters worse, since Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal and surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban, his administration has allocated $2.5 billion in “humanitarian operations” to the jihadi-controlled country. Exposing that this cash is not only going for humanitarian purposes, the latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says USAID reports that “some of their partner staff members had been detained this quarter by local Taliban authorities because of the staff members’ efforts to prevent the diversion of aid to non-eligible individuals.” Shocker. With all the objections being raised in Congress over sending aid to Ukraine and Israel, where are the voices objecting to the continued sending of billions in taxpayer dollars to the Taliban?

• Democracy dies in Venezuela, with Biden’s stamp of approval: Two weeks ago, the Biden administration lifted sanctions against socialist-controlled Venezuela in exchange for a promise that strongman Nicolas Maduro would hold free and fair elections next year. However, with recent presidential primary elections in the South American nation showing that Maduro’s primary opposition party candidate Maria Corina Machado is very popular — too popular — Maduro had the Supreme Court suspend the primary. The court then ratified a ban on Machado’s candidacy. So much for a commitment to free and fair elections. So, will Joe Biden reimpose sanctions against Venezuela? That’s doubtful, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken refused to even agree that Maduro has reneged on the deal.

• Gutless Gretch cancels visit to Dearborn Recently, we noted the sizable Arab-American population in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, as well as the unique status of nearby Hamtramck, which is the nation’s only Muslim-majority city. So it’s not surprising to us that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer just chickened out of a planned visit to Dearborn due to threats of protest due to her attendance earlier this month at a massive pro-Israel rally at a suburban Detroit synagogue. As the AP chidingly reports, “None of [the pro-Israel rallygoers] attended a rally in nearby Dearborn the next day to show support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who were being killed or forced from their homes by the Israeli military’s response.” Again, we’re not surprised by Whitmer’s cravenness. She’s first and foremost a political creature, and she’s governing a state that’s crucial to the Democrats’ hopes of retaining the White House next year.

Headlines

• Over 20 Republicans join Democrats to kill censure resolution against Rashida Tlaib (Fox News)

• GOP-led measure to expel George Santos defeated in House vote (Axios)

• The Biden DOJ just tapped this anti-Israel group for a “United Against Hate” initiative. They say Israel is guilty of genocide. (Free Beacon)

• “Groomed to say ‘Yes’”: Survivors of porn industry, sex trafficking testify on Capitol Hill (Christian Post)

• Nation’s largest Christian university fined $38 million for misleading students on tuition costs (New York Post)

• Carjackers made a deadly mistake when trying to steal an armed citizen’s vehicle (RedState)

• Not satire: God rewards only team that doesn’t have a Pride Night with World Series win (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.