Cross-Examination

• “I have to run,” says unhinged Joe: Events continue to overwhelm Joe Biden, the president whom columnist and one-time stand-up comedian Kurt Schlichter called “a crusty, desiccated old pervert who was stupid to begin with but is now senile.” After mumbling at a Boston fundraiser Tuesday that if Trump weren’t running “I’m not sure I’d be running,” the Self-Anointed Trumpslayer tried to do some damage control yesterday by saying that “probably 50” Democrats could beat Trump but again insisting, “I have to run.” Some in the mainstream media, though, have determined that Biden is damaged goods politically, and they’re starting to turn on him by asking good questions as opposed to tossing scripted softballs. Get a load of how he comes unglued at the audacity of a question about his interactions with “so many of your son and brother’s foreign business associates.” Rather than calmly answering the question, Biden first stumbled, “I’m not going to comment,” and then he seethed: “I did not and it’s just a bunch of lies. They’re lies. I did not. They’re lies.” Of course, they’re not lies. As House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer points out: “Joe Biden dined at Café Milano with oligarchs from around the world that sent his son money. Joined by speakerphone with Biden family associates over 20 times. Used aliases as vice president to email with his son’s business associate. POTUS just continues to lie.”

• McCarthy is leaving Congress: In a surprise development on Wednesday, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that he will not seek reelection next year. Furthermore, he will retire from Congress come January. Despite having the ignoble distinction of being ousted from the position by every Democrat and eight members of his own party, McCarthy’s announcement contained no animosity for Republicans. Rather, he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The Republican Party is expanding every day, and I am committed to lending my experience to support the next generation of leaders.” McCarthy’s decision to leave office a year early will set up a special election in California, though it will likely not be held until the summer, leaving the seat vacant and therefore shrinking the House Republicans’ slim majority.

• House censures fire-alarmist Bowman: This morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson pounded the gavel and demanded that Jamaal Bowman “present himself in the well” to be officially censured by the House for having pulled a fire alarm to obstruct an official House proceeding — namely, a vote to prevent a government shutdown. The vote was 214-191, with three decent Democrats crossing over to vote for censure. Bowman, a full-on “Squad” member and a former middle school principal, had laughably claimed that he was “rushing to make a vote” and “trying to get through a door” and that he “thought the alarm would open the door.” Uh-huh. When that didn’t work, Bowman and his surrogates went full Godwin, saying that House Republicans “need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.” The censure was thus a brief moment of decency and justice within the People’s House, and it flew in the face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s ridiculous claim yesterday, in defense of Bowman, that pulling a fire alarm to obstruct a House vote is hardly more serious a matter than “jaywalking.”

• GOP senators blocks Ukraine aid: Mitch McConnell’s grip on the Senate’s GOP caucus ain’t what it used to be. Yesterday, as Just the News reports, Republicans in the upper chamber “blocked a procedural vote on a supplemental spending bill that included billions in foreign aid to both Ukraine and Israel, preventing the measure from advancing to the floor for consideration.” It was a close vote, 49-51, with strange bedfellow Bernie Sanders joining Republicans to oppose the bill, but it would’ve needed 60 votes to clear the Senate’s filibuster hurdle. Senate Republicans, like their House colleagues and the American people more generally, have become increasingly frustrated by the billions of taxpayer dollars being spent in Ukraine with seemingly so little to show for it. But this particular vote must be seen in its full context: The GOP is seeking to separate aid to Israel from aid to Ukraine, and to couple the latter with more spending to secure our porous southern border. Even McConnell has come grudgingly along, noting that now is “the time to pay attention to our own border in addition to these other important international concerns.”

• Did House J6 Committee collude with Atlanta prosecutor? It’s no secret that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is a sleazy and unscrupulous Trump-hating hyper-partisan. But would she go so far as to collude with Nancy Pelosi’s rigged J6 Committee to prosecute her case against the former president? It seems so, and House Republicans are trying to get to the bottom of this alleged violation of Donald Trump’s Sixth Amendment rights with an inquiry into whether the January 6 Select Committee provided Willis with documents and materials to aid her criminal case against Trump. Naturally, Willis has been uncooperative. As a letter to her from House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan tells it: “Recently, the Committee became aware of cooperation between your office and the partisan January 6 Select Committee. We are in possession of a letter, dated December 17, 2021, and enclosed herein, from you to Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, Chairman of the partisan January 6 Select Committee, requesting access to congressional ‘records that may be relevant to our criminal investigation.’” The charges against Trump and his associates include forgery, racketeering, and soliciting a public official to violate their oath of office. Sounds more like a description of Willis and congressional Democrats.

• Attack at UNLV: In Nevada, a former college professor with an MBA from Duke University targeted and attacked staff at Lee Business School on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus, killing three people and wounding others before being killed by police. According to early reports, the 67-year-old assailant had applied for work with UNLV’s Lee School but had been rejected. Notably, the lockdown response to the attack continued for hours after the Las Vegas PD announced the assailant had been killed. It also included a ground stop of all flights at Las Vegas International Airport, a shutdown similar to the recent Thanksgiving Day closure of Buffalo International Airport after a false report of a “terrorist attack” at the Niagara Falls bridge. Astoundingly, and typical of the asinine tone-deaf posts by major social media platforms, the UNLV assailant’s LinkedIn page noted, “In memory of Tony Polito — This account has been memorialized as a tribute to Tony Polito’s professional legacy,” though it appears LinkedIn eventually took it down.

• Billions allocated, no chargers installed: Back in 2021, under pressure from Joe Biden for the furtherance of his climate change agenda, Congress allocated $7.5 billion for the construction of hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle charging stations across the country. Two years later, the program has not constructed a single charging station. And Biden wants everyone driving EVs by 2040? Of that $7.5 billion, $2 billion has been sent by federal officials to the states, with fewer than half the states having even begun taking contractor bids for constructing charges. At this rate, the federal government will have built exactly zero charging stations by 2030, when Biden wants half the cars on America’s roads to be EVs. Welp, so much for saving the planet.

• Gender fight in Congress: During a House hearing addressing the Biden administration’s proposed changes to Title IX that would effectively redefine sex to include “gender identity” as opposed to biological reality, Democrat Representative Summer Lee (PA) preemptively attacked and smeared the panel of witnesses, including former NCAA swimmer and women’s rights advocate Riley Gaines. Lee inferred they’re guilty of espousing “transphobic” and “hateful misinformation.” Gaines took the smear in stride, expressing her competitive spirit by hitting back at Lee in her opening statement: “If my testimony makes me transphobic, then I believe you’re opening monologue makes you a misogynist.” That triggered Lee, who demanded that Gaines’s words be stricken from the record. Gaines countered by asking, “Can I just ask how it’s fair to be called transphobic?” To which Lee disingenuously responded, “I never called you anything.” After a bit of back and forth with the chair, Lee’s request was denied.

• Sneaky nuns bully Smith & Wesson: A group of Second Amendment-opposing Catholic nuns recently filed a lawsuit against firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson in an effort to prevent the company from making AR-style rifles. The same group of anti-2A nuns first engaged in a sneaky effort to buy up stock in the company and then file shareholder proposals to end the manufacturing of the rifles. The nuns, who are members of four different congregations, effectively deny reality when they claim that AR-style rifles “have stolen the lives of so many innocent people and devastated communities across the nation.” Furthermore, they falsely claim, “These rifles have no purpose other than mass murder.” Vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation Lawrence Keane called the nuns’ lawsuit “frivolous,” observing that “this same group has been filing shareholder proposals and losing so I guess they’re trying a new tactic.”

Headlines

• Republican debate: Winners and losers of fourth GOP matchup in Alabama (Washington Examiner)

• FDA delays menthol ban following lobbying war (Roll Call)

• Union workers at Jeff Bezo’s WaPo plan walkout as insiders question billionaire owner’s role in newsroom drama (Fox News)

• U.S. migrant population reaches largest share in history (The Federalist)

• U.S. military grounds entire fleet of Osprey aircraft following a deadly crash off the coast of Japan (AP)

• DOJ brings first war crimes charges against Russians accused of torturing U.S. citizen in Ukraine (Washington Times)

• Jewish woman kicked out of cafe after complaining about anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled all over bathroom, getting berated by workers (New York Post)

• Israeli forces have started flooding Hamas’s terror tunnels with seawater (Townhall)

• Venezuela orders drilling in Guyanese territory, raising prospects of conflict (Washington Examiner)

• French farmers protest taxes with manure (Not the Bee)

• Humor: Keeping you safe: Here are 10 more dangerous J6 criminals the FBI just arrested (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.