Cross-Examination

• DeSantis nixes Florida paying Trump’s legal fees: Florida State Senator Ileana Garcia recently put forward a bill that would have given up to $5 million to Donald Trump for his legal fees. While Garcia’s sentiment may have been in the right place, as Democrats have used the courts as a campaign weapon against Trump, the idea of Florida taxpayers effectively funding Trump’s legal defense would have amounted to a back-door campaign-financing gambit. In any case, Governor Ron DeSantis quickly threw cold water on the idea. Linking to a Politico headline that read, “Some Florida Republicans want taxpayers to pay Trump’s legal bills,” DeSantis posted, “But not the Florida Republican who wields the veto pen…” Hours later, Garcia withdrew her bill and gave the following explanation: “My concern was the political weaponization against conservative candidates, and while @JimmyPatronis brought me this bill at a time when all candidates were committing to campaign through the primary, one frontrunner now remains, and he can handle himself.” Given Trump’s wealth and notoriety, he is well-positioned to handle the legal fees. In fact, the Democrats’ legal targeting of Trump has proven to be a campaign boon for the former president.

• Illegals arrested in Chicago for mass looting: We’re continually told that the illegal aliens who’ve been pouring across our southern border are doing so for economic opportunity. And perhaps they are, if “economic opportunity” includes shoplifting. As Fox News reports, one Chicago suburb has been a proving ground for this theory: “From Oct. 23 to Jan. 17, a total of 47 migrants were arrested in Oak Brook, Illinois, mostly for alleged property crimes, according to Brian Strockis, the chief of police for the Oak Brook Police Department. Most of the migrants who were arrested were charged with retail theft and burglary. … The latest incident involved an Ecuadorian migrant who resides in Chicago and is accused of stealing more than $3,000 worth of merchandise from retail stores and evading Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) supervision by cutting off his electronic monitoring device.” The local Macy’s seems to be a popular target. And lest anyone think we’re picking on Ecuadorians, we’ll add that two Venezuelan illegals were recently arrested for cleaning out the same Macy’s of roughly $3,000 in high-end cosmetics. Oakbrook, we should note, is a relatively tiny town of approximately 8,000. And if any of its residents are still inclined to vote Democrat, then they’re getting exactly the government they deserve.

• Texas follows the Biden method: Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the Biden administration regarding its cutting of razor wire placed by Texas along its southern border, Governor Greg Abbott is taking a page out of Joe Biden’s playbook and simply moving forward with his aim to secure the southern border. Far from abandoning the border, the Texas National Guard has continued to install razor wire and released the following statement: “The Texas Military Department continues to hold the line in Shelby Park to deter and prevent unlawful entry into the State of Texas. We remain resolute in our actions to secure our border, preserve the rule of law, and protect the sovereignty of our State.” Abbott further explained: “The Texas National Guard continues to hold the line in Eagle Pass. Texas will not back down from our efforts to secure the border in Biden’s absence.” If Biden can thumb his nose at the Constitution that requires him to maintain the security of our national borders, then Abbott feels free to ignore Biden’s efforts to thwart his responsibility to maintain Texas’s security.

• Biden has blown $20 billion on resettlement: Every Democrat knows that walls don’t work, but perhaps it would’ve been worth testing that truism on our southern border just to be sure, just to see if the current calamity could’ve been lessened or avoided altogether. And perhaps, to fund that little border wall experiment, we could’ve used some of the $20 billion or so that Joe Biden has blown in the past two years on “resettlement” of the many millions of illegal immigrants who’ve thumbed their noses at our laws and our national sovereignty. Indeed, according to a watchdog report, Team Biden spent $8.925 billion in fiscal year 2022 and $10.928 billion in fiscal year 2023 to care for and transport these illegals around the country. As The Daily Caller adds: “Illegal immigration at the southern border has hit record highs under the Biden administration with federal authorities recording more than 2.2 million encounters of migrants crossing illegally in fiscal year 2022 and more than 2 million in fiscal year 2023, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.” In case you’re wondering how all these illegals are being resettled in communities near you, we apparently have an agency for that. It’s called the Office of Refugee Resettlement. And those are your tax dollars at work.

• Funding cuts for med schools that push DEI? Perhaps it’s an idea whose time has come. Earlier this month, there was a little dust-up involving a Johns Hopkins University “diversity” officer whose monthly “Diversity Digest” email characterized white people — and specifically white males and Christians — as “privileged.” And now, perhaps spurred on by the obvious destructiveness of pitting one group of Americans against another via so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, one lawmaker is inclined to take action. Maryland Republican Congressman Andy Harris, who himself is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, suggests that Congress should use the power of the purse. Harris thinks medical schools are a good place to start. “This is a very dangerous trend,” he warned. “We are supposed to be absolutely colorblind to the greatest extent into the broadest definition of the meaning when we take care of patients. And whenever again, health professional starts talking about this, about classes that one should be perhaps wary of. This is very, very worrisome.”

• Illinois governor brags about record-setting pot sales: “For the third year in a row,” crowed Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, “Illinois had record-setting growth for adult-use cannabis sales. We’re building the most prosperous and accessible cannabis industry in the nation — taking steps to repair the damage of the past and creating real opportunity for all Illinoisans.” What a sad state of affairs, huh? The sitting governor of a deep-blue and deeply troubled state has been reduced to bragging about his citizens’ growing dependency on dope. As Tom Bevan of RealClearPolitics quipped, “Thanks to JB’s leadership, pot and abortions are the two hottest growth industries in the state of Illinois.” Hot Air’s David Strom, though, is decidedly less glib: “Smoking marijuana,” he laments, “is bad for you and bad for society. The tradeoff we made was objectively bad for the health of the society, and possibly bad for the individual health of people. We will have to see the long-term effects of mass marijuana use on individual health, which hasn’t been studied much yet at a mass scale, but creating a generation filled with schizophrenics is not a prospect I look forward to.”

• Bay Area troubles: An In-N-Out Burger will soon be totally out of its location in East Oakland, California. “We have made the decision to close our In-N-Out Burger location in Oakland, California, due to ongoing issues with crime,” said COO Denny Warnick. “Despite taking repeated steps to create safer conditions, our Customers and Associates are regularly victimized by car break-ins, property damage, theft, and armed robberies. Our last day of business in Oakland will be Sunday, March 24, 2024.” It’s hard to blame the restaurant, as police records show that since 2019 there have been 1,335 crime-related incidents immediately around the store’s location. Speaking of crime-related incidents, across the bay, San Francisco set a new record for drug overdose deaths last year with a total of 806. The previous record of 726 overdose deaths was set three years ago. Roughly 80% of those who died from overdoses were men, but fewer than 30% were homeless.

• Insulting California: It’s no secret that increasing numbers of Californians have been fleeing the state for greener (read: more politically and economically friendly) pastures. As the exodus of Californians continues, Los Angeles Times letters editor Paul Thornton has apparently gotten sick of the negative attitudes against the Golden State being espoused by the people leaving. Thornton published an article last Sunday titled, “Commentary: If you want to leave, fine. But don’t insult California on the way out.” He apparently doesn’t understand why people are leaving. After noting how a relative of his who has moved to a small town in another state was told by the locals not to bring in “those weird California ways,” Thornton obtusely responds: “And which ways would those be? Perhaps it’s our embrace of LGBTQ+ Californians. Or it’s our liberal politics, with the state Republican Party shrunk to irrelevance after its vicious attempt in 1994 to marginalize immigrants with Proposition 187.” Yes, California’s woke politics are exactly why folks from other states that have not gone over the crazy leftist cliff are warning those residents now fleeing the Golden State to leave California politics behind. And the truth is, many of those fleeing California are doing so precisely to get away from California Crazy.

Headlines

• Trump cruises to victory in New Hampshire as Haley declares GOP primary “far from over” (National Review) | Biden bests long-shot challenger Dean Phillips as write-in candidate (National Review)

• Conservatives blast Biden as “election denier” after he calls McAuliffe the “real” governor of Virginia (Fox News)

• Turkey’s parliament approves Sweden’s NATO membership, lifting a key hurdle (AP)

• Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin makes first public appearance since secretive hospitalization (ABC News)

• Two dozen Israeli soldiers killed in single deadliest day of fighting in Gaza (National Review)

• AOC-affiliated Democratic Socialists of America in “financial crisis” (Washington Examiner)

• U.S., Chinese researchers wanted to engineer virus similar to COVID one year before pandemic outbreak, internal docs show (National Review)

• Jeff Bezos has paid $15.5M of the $100M he promised Maui after wildfires — but no one knows where it went (New York Post)

• Megan Basham dug into the new David French and Russell Moore Bible study about politics and found some VERY interesting financial backers (Not the Bee)

• Humor: Nation beginning to fear Taylor Swift can’t be stopped (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.