Cross-Examination

• New Hampshire primary today: The Republican presidential race is now a two-person race, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis having dropped out over the weekend. It’s Donald Trump versus Nikki Haley, the self-proclaimed anti-establishment candidate versus the establishment. Ironically, however, the Republican establishment has lined up to endorse Trump, not Haley, with South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace being the latest to throw their support behind Trump. Recent polling shows Trump with a strong lead, with many theorizing that a landslide victory over Haley could lead to her dropping out and coalescing party support behind the former president. Will Trump put things to bed and wrap up the nomination, or will Haley have a strong showing and gain momentum going into Nevada and then her home state of South Carolina? The Granite State is also fielding the Democrat primary today, which promises an interesting result since Joe Biden is not on the ballot after he sought to make South Carolina the party’s first primary. As a result, the Biden campaign has pushed a write-in effort with the hopes of defeating Representative Dean Phillips (MN) and Marianne Williamson, who are on the ballot.

• Rigged J6 Committee deleted key files just before losing House: We’ve maintained all along that Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 Committee was a rigged affair, as it lacked any real Republicans in its composition, and it lacked any desire to get to the whole truth of that day. Today, we have more evidence of Democrat duplicity, as House Republicans continue to dig into a story we first covered in August: the Democrats’ deletion of more than 100 encrypted J6 files just days before the GOP took control of the House. “It’s obvious that Pelosi’s Select Committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing certain documents produced in their investigation,” said Georgia Republican Barry Loudermilk, who chairs a House oversight subcommittee. “It also appears that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney intended to obstruct our Subcommittee by failing to preserve critical information and videos as required by House rules.” A House GOP forensics team has determined that 117 files were both deleted and encrypted just days before committee chairman Thompson’s team was required to transfer the data to the new GOP committee, but the good news is that the forensics team recovered all 117 files, and Loudermilk is now demanding passwords to access the data. “The American people deserve to know the full truth,” said Loudermilk, “and Speaker Johnson has empowered me to use all tools necessary to recover these documents to get the truth, and I will.”

• Retired warriors warn of EVs as a national security risk: Some time ago, we noticed that the Left was misleading us on electric vehicles. Instead of presenting a balanced picture of the pros and the cons, we were being sold only the upside. But a funny thing happened on the way to Joe Biden’s coal-powered EV dream: The American consumer refused to cooperate. And the news about EVs isn’t getting any better. As Fox News reports, a group of 17 retired military officials sent a letter last week to Joe Biden and his Environmental Protection Agency warning that their regulatory initiatives aimed at getting folks to buy EVs will “intensify America’s vulnerability to political interference by the Chinese Communist Party.” How so? By making us utterly dependent on parts and materials that are only being produced in China. “In order to be able to make these electric vehicles operate the way they need to, you need lithium, you need gallium, and you need a lot of other rare earth minerals that we don’t have, we can’t process,” said retired Navy Captain Bob Carey. “You don’t make transitions like this by taking away fossil fuel cars, internal combustion engines.”

• Women take the lead in homeownership: While popular culture and the mainstream media reference the notion of supposed cultural patriarchy as if it were undeniable reality, the actual data on the ground tells another story. A case in point is the current rate of homeownership for single women. Across the country as of 2023, a higher percentage of single women own homes than single men, roughly 13% to 10%, respectively. Indeed, in all but three states, single-women homeowners outnumber single men. Furthermore, when it comes to total leadership at home, a majority (51%) are now female-headed. This is a significant shift from 1990 when fewer than a third of all American homes were headed by women. Some 43% of married households are now reportedly female-led. Back in 1990, that number was 8%. These measures aren’t everything, but despite the MSM narrative, women are doing quite well in America.

• Joe Biden fights for women — just not in Afghanistan: Speaking of women, a major focus of Joe Biden’s campaign will be on women’s rights and, more specifically, promoting abortion. However, one of the most negative consequential fallouts from Biden’s disastrous surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban has been the erosion of women’s rights. According to a recent UN report on Afghanistan under the Taliban, women cannot hold a job if they are not married, they are banned from most public spaces, and if they are unmarried they are forbidden from traveling without the accompaniment of a male guardian. All these restrictions against women have occurred since Biden’s Afghanistan debacle, despite assurances from Taliban leaders that they would be more moderate with their rules for women.

• Violence in Vermont: In just one year, from 2021 to 2022, the number of shootings in Vermont jumped by 185%. Over that same year, the city of Burlington experienced five murders, which may not sound like a lot, but as Mayor Miro Weinberger observed, “We are not used to this level of violence in Vermont.” The question is, what has caused this spike in violence? The short answer is the resettlement of Somali refugees in Burlington. According to the data, the vast majority of those responsible for the uptick in shootings are Muslim male teenagers. What the issue boils down to is one of cultural impact. Many of these Somali refugees have evidently brought lawlessness from Somalia with them. More specifically, the children of these Somali refugees are the ones most responsible for creating a violent crime problem in Burlington. The trouble is that fear of being labeled a “racist” has allowed for the problem to metastasize rather than be directly confronted.

• A cancel culture reversal: school board reinstates Native American mascot: It was called a “Lexington and Concord” moment on the Long March to political correctness, and perhaps there’s something to that assessment. Instead of doing away with its high school’s traditional Native American “warrior” mascot, a local school board has instead voted by a resounding 7-2 margin to restore it. As Fox News reports, “A Pennsylvania community reclaimed its local Indigenous history and a school’s popular tribesman mascot last week, just two months after five new school committee members won elections and ran on pro-Native American platforms.” Elections have consequences, as all seven school board votes in favor of restoring the warrior logo and mascot came from board members who’d been elected since a previous board had voted to eliminate the mascot. In a statement, the North Dakota-based Native American Guardians Association, which had made its mascot-preservation case to the Southern York County School District school board, said, “The SYCSD school board stands as a role model and blueprint for other communities fighting for their Native names and imagery.”

• UFC’s Dana White on free speech: Canada is a liberty-loathing mess of a country, and Dana White doesn’t seem to want its vile influence to seep into his highly successful UFC franchise. During a press conference, White was asked by a Canadian journalist about the recent pre-fight comments of one of his UFC fighters, Sean Strickland, who last week let loose on a Canadian journalist with a blistering critique (language warning) of Canadian wokeness. When a reporter asked White about Strickland’s comments and about the “long leash” he gives to his fighters regarding their comments, White shut him down (language warning) in no uncertain terms: “I don’t give anybody a leash,” said White. “A leash? Free speech. To control what people say and to tell people what to believe? I don’t f***ing tell any other human being what to say, what to think, and there’s no leashes on any of them. … It’s ridiculous to say I give somebody a leash. Free speech, brother. People can say whatever they want, and they can believe whatever they want.” Kudos to White. What’s more to be said?

Headlines

• Supreme Court allows federal agents to cut razor wire Texas installed on U.S.-Mexico border (New York Post)

• Mom of girl strangled in home by alleged MS-13 gang member sues Homeland Security for $100M (Not the Bee)

• Harris, Biden deliver fiery message on abortion “rights” (Washington Post)

• More unsettling aviation news: Virgin Atlantic cancels flight when passenger notices missing wing bolts (Not the Bee)

• The chickens come home to roost for Chuck Schumer as pro-Hamas radicals target his daughter (RedState)

• Harvard’s co-chair of their new anti-Semitism task force once said “veins of hatred run through Jewish civilization” (Not the Bee) | Harvard campus littered with anti-Semitic graffiti ahead of new semester (Daily Wire)

• Senior Hamas officer openly rejects two-state solution, calls for Israel’s demise (New York Post)

• Hamas says “no chance” of hostage release without complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza (National Review)

• IDF finds Gaza tunnel where 20 hostages, including five-year-old, were held in “inhumane conditions” (New York Post)

• Israel has only killed 20-30% of Hamas terrorists, U.S. intelligence says (New York Post)

• “Transgender” golfer Hailey Davidson wins women’s event, increasing chances of potential LPGA card (OutKick)

• “Satire”: Supreme Court rules it’s illegal for National Guard to guard nation (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.