Cross-Examination

• Manchin is out: In a video released Thursday on X, West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin announced that he would not seek reelection in 2024. “I’ve made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate,” Manchin stated. However, it appears that Manchin is not ready to hang up his political spurs just yet, as he added, “But what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there’s an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” Manchin’s announcement comes as little surprise given the fact that he faced an uphill battle to retain his seat, with recent polling showing him trailing Republican challenger and current Mountain State Governor Jim Justice by double digits. As hinted above, Manchin may be contemplating a third-party presidential run, as several months ago he teamed up with Republican and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman to speak at a No Labels town hall event. Meanwhile, this likely solidifies a Senate seat for Republicans in the 2024 election, which already has Democrats defending 20 seats (arguably 23 with three “independents”) to Republicans’ 11 seats.

• Israel agrees to “humanitarian pauses”: “The fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, “but in specific locations for a given period, a few hours here, a few hours there, we want to facilitate a safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fighting. And we’re doing that.” Not surprisingly, Joe Biden took credit for the mini ceasefires, which began yesterday and which would ostensibly allow Gaza civilians to flee southward. “It’s critical, absolutely vital,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, “that humanitarian supplies and assistance are expanded in the areas where people are moving, in this case, southern Gaza.” This is all well and good for the Biden administration, which is seeking to placate the pro-Hamas wing of the Democrat Party and keep Arab American voters from defecting ahead of the 2024 elections. But, as Netanyahu stressed, “The fighting continues and there will be no cease-fire without the release of our hostages.”

• Another ridiculously stupid “fact-check”: What a miserable life a “fact-checker” must lead. Imagine waking up every morning and realizing that your job is to masquerade as a truth-teller while knowing in your heart that you’re nothing more than a partisan hack and a liar to boot. During Wednesday’s Republican debate, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was commenting on the Biden administration’s inept response to Hamas’s hostage-taking in Israel: “Biden’s neglect has been atrocious,” he said. “We had Floridians that were over there after the attack. He left them stranded; they couldn’t get flights out. So I scrambled resources in Florida. I sent planes over to Israel and I brought back over 700 people to safety.” That’s good stuff, governor, but not according to the “fact-checkers” at NBC News, who rate this claim as only “half true.” Apparently, DeSantis didn’t personally pilot any of the planes, nor did he personally script every last detail of the operation. Instead, he did what successful leaders always do: He deliberated, he decided, and he delegated. But that’s the difference between a can-do governor and a can’t-do partisan. “There’s no half truth here,” posted DeSantis Press Secretary Jeremy Redfern. “He sent planes to Israel, and he brought back over 700 people.” Clearly, someone needs to fact-check these “fact-checkers.”

• Prices are higher, but inflation is … not? In one sense, you’ve got to hand it to Leftmedia propagandists — they’ve been handed a turnip and are trying to convince the American public that it’s actually an ice cream cone. That turnip is Joe Biden’s dismal economy, created primarily by his administration’s massive spending policies that sent inflation skyrocketing to 40-year highs. And, of course, with high inflation comes higher prices on everything because the value of the dollar is sinking. It’s Economics 101. Attempting to deny or spin away from this reality, Vox’s Emily Stone wrote an article effectively lamenting that people don’t recognize that the economy is actually pretty good because they’re living in 2023 but want 2019 prices. Talk about gaslighting. Americans judge a good economy by seeing their bank accounts growing and not shrinking, seeing their buying power increasing and not decreasing. In short, a good economy is when expenses for living decrease relative to earnings. Inflation is a hidden tax that robs Americans of their wealth, as it continuously eats away at the value of their savings and buying power. Whatever leftists do to take the onus off of Joe Biden and Democrats is simply false.

• Conspiracies and Pelosi’s attacker: Weird doings at the trial of lifelong leftist David DePape, 43, who just over a year ago attacked 83-year-old Paul Pelosi in his San Francisco home with a hammer. “Where’s Nancy?” DePape apparently demanded of Pelosi before the cops arrived; when they did, he wrested the hammer from Pelosi’s grip and bludgeoned him. Why did he do it? According to DePape’s defense attorney, he “truly believed he was trying to save the world from a secret cabal of high-profile pedophiles.” Apparently, the homeless, nudist, drug-addled, anti-Semitic, BLM-supporting Berkeleyite is actually a QAnon conspiracy theorist who, according to his defense team, took to the Internet and became aware that “the ‘liberal ruling class’ spread lies and abused children.” We’re not sure where this is headed, but we suspect DePape’s defense team thinks their best chance is to paint Pelosi’s assailant as a fringy right-winger rather than the lifelong leftist that he always has been. “Journalism,” quipped David Burge of IowaHawk some years ago, “is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.” And nowhere is that sentiment more spot-on than with the reporting around David DePape and Paul Pelosi.

• Hamas screening brawl: The images and the footage are deeply disturbing, but Israeli actress Gal Gadot believes they must be seen — which is why she organized a private screening in Los Angeles Wednesday evening of “Bearing Witness to the October 7 Massacre,” a 43-minute compilation of videos shot by Hamas terrorists themselves. The footage, which was taken during their barbaric attack on the men, women, and children of Israel, shows “graphic images of murder and destruction, including children being shot and killed in their pajamas.” We understand the need for journalists to view and thereby attest to such grisly footage, but we’re not sure why anyone else would want to. Of course, we’re not a Hollywood “elite.” The screening took place at the Museum of Tolerance, where, ironically, a show of pro-Hamas intolerance erupted outside the theater shortly afterward. As National Review reports: “One hour after the event was over, a small group of demonstrators returned to the same location. Those demonstrators became involved in a physical fight [before officers] returned to the area and peace was restored.” As journalist Eve Barlow, who saw the film, posted: “Tonight I bore witness. … Outside the [theater], a violent pro-Palestine mob’s chants could be heard in the theater. They can’t drown out the truth.”

• Is population decline coming? The lie of global overpopulation, a concept made popular by the 1968 book The Population Bomb by Stanford biology professor Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne, has deceived generations of Westerners into thinking that “too many people” is an existential threat to humanity and the planet. The reality is the exact opposite. Fewer people results in greater deprivation of resources rather than exploitation of them. The threat facing much of the developed world is depopulation. The U.S. Census Bureau released its estimates for the nation’s population, and the report predicts that by the year 2080 the U.S. population will have peaked, and by 2100, for the first time in American history, the population will be in decline. The Census Bureau projects that without a “high-immigration scenario,” the U.S. population will decline to 319 million by 2100. Today’s current U.S. population is over 340 million. The impact of our current ballooning national debt on a shrinking population will become even more acute, as we’ll have an aging population with fewer working-age people to tax to pay for it.

• The result of COVID vax mandates: This is why government mandates are dangerous. On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of parents opting out of giving their children routine childhood vaccines has reached an all-time high. In the 2022-2023 school year, 3% of children going into kindergarten were granted vaccine exemptions by their states, the highest on record. Across the country, 40 states saw childhood vaccine exemption rates rise, and in 10 of those states the exemptions rose above 5%. “There is a rising distrust in the health care system,” observed Dr. Amna Husain, a pediatrician and spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics. The rates of childhood vaccine exemptions, er, shot up over the last three years — prior to 2020, just two states had exemption rates over 5%. Can anyone guess the reason? The obvious culprit is the federal government’s draconian response to the COVID pandemic and the decision to mandate a novel COVID vaccine for the American public as the only solution, while at the same time waging a smear and censorship campaign against any medical professionals who dared to raise objections or even questions. By choosing to make the response to the pandemic a political issue, Washington is most at fault for sowing the distrust.

Headlines

• Democrats’ plan to issue subpoenas in Supreme Court ethics probe hits roadblock (NBC News) | Dems vow to continue probe into wealthy donors’ ties to Thomas, Alito after GOP stalls subpoenas (National Review)

• Third GOP debate draws fewer than seven million viewers on NBC (The Hill)

• Jill Stein announces 2024 presidential bid (Breitbart)

• Senator Blackburn subpoenas Jeffrey Epstein’s estate for flight logs (PM)

• CNN cuts ties with freelancer after photo emerges of him sharing a kiss with Hamas leader (National Review)

• Former Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby found guilty of perjury (ABC News)

• Feds bust “high-end” prostitution network that had politicians, Pharma execs, and military officials as customers (Daily Wire)

• IRS adjusts tax brackets by 5.4% amid still-high inflation (Fox Business)

• SpaceX wins reprieve from DOJ suit alleging hiring discrimination (Fox Business)

• Michael Oher was paid more than $138,000 from “The Blind Side” book and movie, court filing says (NBC News)

• Glamour magazine names “transgender” model among “Women of the Year” (Daily Signal)

• Vatican says “transgender” people can be baptized and serve as godparents (Not the Bee)

• Astronaut Frank Borman, commander of the first Apollo mission to the moon, has died at age 95 (AP)

• Policy: Biden’s weak response to Iran in Syria (National Review)

• Humor: Gavin Newsom quickly bans high-capacity assault high heels (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.