Cross-Examination

• Biden hedges on running in 2024: Joe Biden made news yesterday at a Boston fundraiser when he reiterated that his mission in life is to beat Donald Trump. What was different, though, was how he said it: “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running. But we cannot let him win for the sake of the country.” Was this equivocation just another gaffe, or was it the cleverly orchestrated makings of an off-ramp for bowing out? Biden’s remark arrogantly implied that he is the only person who can defeat Trump. At some point, the polling that now consistently shows Biden losing to Trump and has his fellow Democrats in full freak-out and fearmongering mode will become impossible to ignore. By now, everyone besides Biden realizes that the ruse is up; that the American people are now wise to the decrepit old guy they propped up to beat Trump in 2020. The challenge for the Democrat establishment, then, is to convince this stubborn and dementing president that he’s not the best guy to beat Trump. Asked by Fox News’s Sean Hannity last night at a town hall in Davenport, Iowa, whether he thought Biden would be the Democrat nominee, Donald Trump also made news with his reply: “I personally don’t think he makes it. … I think he’s in bad shape physically. Do you remember when he said, ‘I’d like to take him behind the barn’? If he took me behind the barn, and I went like this [makes a blowing sound], I believe he’d fall over.”

• Tuberville backs down: It was a good fight, but a lonely one. Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, the former Auburn football coach who put principle before party by putting a months-long hold on nearly all military promotions in order to protest the Biden Pentagon’s unlawful policy of allowing troops time off and travel funds for abortions, has called an end to the battle. In doing so, as The Wall Street Journal reports, he clears the way “for hundreds of officers to move forward immediately while still demanding individual votes for about a dozen four-star generals and admirals.” The same Pentagon that fixates on white supremacy and funds sex-change operations for its “warriors” claimed Tuberville’s protest hurt our military’s readiness, but intelligent folks could always see through those crocodile tears. “I’m not going to hold the promotions of these people any longer,” the senator told reporters yesterday. “We fought hard. We did the right thing for the unborn and for our military, fighting back against executive overreach and an abortion policy.” Indeed, the coach fought hard, and he fought the good fight. Too bad none of his fellow Republicans saw fit to join him.

• The deadly reality of a “safer” drug: We ignore the law of unintended consequences at our peril, and another example of this comes via a study showing that a reformulated version of the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin — a reformulation meant to make the drug harder to crush and therefore harder to snort or inject — actually led to an increase in suicides by children. As Reason’s Jacob Sullum writes: “The root cause of such perverse effects was the substitution that occurred after the old version of OxyContin was retired. Nonmedical users turned to black-market alternatives that were more dangerous because their potency was highly variable and unpredictable — a hazard that was compounded by the emergence of illicit fentanyl as a heroin booster and substitute.” We’ve come to expect this sort of disastrous do-goodism from Big Government, but we expect better from private industry. As for the confounding nature of addictive drugs, Sullum sums it up: “The fallout from the reformulation of OxyContin is one example of a broader tendency: Interventions aimed at reducing the harm caused by substance abuse frequently have the opposite effect.”

• Team Biden finally investigates a locker room outrage: It’s funny — not funny — how quickly Democrats will compromise their principles in a swing state, especially with a presidential election looming. Such was the case in Wisconsin recently, where the Biden administration finally, after six months of dithering, opened a Title IX investigation into a Wisconsin school district’s handling of an 18-year-old “transgender” male student who’d been exposing himself to female freshmen in the girls’ locker room. As The Federalist reports: “East High School officials failed to investigate the incident at the time. … It took more than a month for school officials to hold an in-person meeting about the locker room incident.” What’s more, in its complaint to the Department of Education, The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a Milwaukee-based civil rights law firm, says that no one from the school district contacted the girls “to offer supportive measures or an opportunity to file a formal complaint of sexual harassment until after [the law firm] became involved.” With behavior like this, it’s a wonder that Democrats continue to get overwhelming support from women at election time.

• Pandemic wealth: The COVID pandemic hit hard not only against the U.S. economy but the global economy writ large. Federal and state governments shut down large swaths of the economy, and then Congress almost indiscriminately passed out cash to Americans across the board, inevitably leading to current high inflation. A recent survey from Pew Research found that wealth surged during the pandemic, but it also notes that the poor effectively got poorer. Funny how not being able to work for months will negatively impact a person’s bank account. But who got richer? Well, those who were able to continue working, especially those who already had higher-paying jobs that often allowed them to work remotely. But those who have benefited most from the federal government’s COVID relief funds just happened to be state governments and special interest groups. Recently, the Treasury Department enacted a rule change relaxing how states can use money from the $350 billion Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund, which was part of Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The rule change amounts to what the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) describes as a “Bidenomics slush fund.” According to EPIC, “In essence, Treasury is offering a slush fund pathway to state and local governments as a way to ensure at least the covered billions of SLFRF dollars are not left on the table when it could be spent on the salaries of local bureaucrats and other loosely administrative or compliance expenses.” And what have these state governments and municipalities been using this cash for? Well, everything from golf courses to legal services for asylum seekers.

• Supreme Court hears arguments on wealth tax: The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a tax case that has generated a lot of fearmongering headlines from the Leftmedia. As Forbes headlined it, “Supreme Court Will Hear Case That Could Upend The Current Tax System.” Well, to many fiscal conservatives, upending America’s current bloated tax system would be music to their ears. The issue in Moore v. U.S. is essentially definitional: what constitutes income? Back in 2005, Charles and Kathleen Moore invested in a friend’s company to distribute farm equipment in rural India. The Moores’ earnings on their investment was never received or payed out, but was immediately reinvested in the company. However, in 2018, thanks to Congress passing a one-time “mandatory repatriation tax” (MRT) in 2017, the Moores were hit with a $14,729 tax bill over $132,512 in “income” from their stake in their friend’s company. Since they had neither controlled nor taken any return from their initial investment in the company, the Moores challenged the tax bill, but the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against them, asserting that “realization of income is not a constitutional requirement.” Now, the justices have an opportunity to clearly define what is “income.”

• China’s credit rating slips: China’s economy is slowing thanks in large measure to the country’s national debt that has been piling up significantly. Indeed, China’s growing debt has gotten so concerning that on Tuesday Moody’s Investors Service lowered its outlook for China’s credit rating down from stable to negative. By some estimates, cities and provinces in China are holding as much as $11 trillion in off-balance-sheet debt. Of Moody’s downgrade, a Beijing spokesman said, “We are disappointed.” Meanwhile, the other two big credit-rating firms, S&P and Fitch, have continued to give China an A+ rating and a stable outlook.

• Affirmative action ain’t dead yet: While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that the use of race in admissions considerations is illegal, leftists who view affirmative action as a sacred cow have developed a workaround. That workaround is seen in the increasing practice of ending merit-based testing requirements for admissions. Using the excuse of seeking greater equity via racial demographic representation, or what is termed “racial balancing,” advocates have leveled attacks against merit as simply being “racist” because the student body that qualifies on testing merits often doesn’t meet the Left’s racial diversity quota. A recent example of this anti-merit racism at play comes from New York State Assemblywoman and Brooklyn Democrat Party chair Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, who wrote an op-ed published in the Daily News blasting New York City’s eight specialized high schools as bastions of segregation due to their using “the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) [as] the sole admission factor.” Some baiters never quit.

Headlines

• Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy will retire from Congress at end of year (Washington Post) | Former interim Speaker Patrick McHenry joins mass exodus from Congress (Fox News)

• Four GOP candidates on stage today for fourth presidential debate (CBS News)

• Four key takeaways from FBI Director Chris Wray’s Senate testimony (Daily Signal) | Wray says terror threats elevated to all-time high since October 7: “Blinking lights everywhere” (Fox News)

• Congress releases report on FBI’s targeting of traditionalist Catholics (Washington Stand)

• Hunter Biden attorney says monthly transfers to Joe Biden were reimbursement for car payments (National Review) | Biden was in direct contact with Hunter’s business partners using email alias as VP (Fox News)

• House votes to “strongly condemn” anti-Semitism; nearly 100 Democrats vote "Present" (Daily Wire)

• Top university presidents balk when asked if genocidal chants against Jews violate codes of conduct (Daily Wire) | Just 4% of American universities condemned Hamas terror attack on Israel as anti-Semitic (Free Beacon) | “I do not feel safe”: Jewish students call out anti-Semitism on campus (Free Beacon)

• Netanyahu to women’s rights organizations: “Where the hell are you?” (Daily Wire) | Hostages given tranquilizers to “look happy” upon release from captivity (Jerusalem Post)

• Newsom cancels public Christmas tree lighting amid planned pro-Palestinian protests (National Review)

• Senator Blackburn says Democrat-led Senate committee chair blocked Epstein flight logs subpoena (Daily Wire)

• Federal appellate court sides with Douglass Mackey in meme case, drops prison sentence until after appeal (PM)

• Soros flooded Big Tech censorship pressure group with millions during midterm elections (Washington Examiner)

• We’re learning more about the owner of the house that exploded near DC — and it’s disturbing (PJ Media)

• Policy: Pass Ukraine aid and address the border (National Review)

• Satire: Jews advised to protect themselves from violence by not being Jewish (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.