Cross-Examination

• GOP governors side with Texas in border dispute: Joe Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration law and effectively leave the U.S. southern border wide open is why Texas Governor Greg Abbott has had enough. Even after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration in its dispute over Texas’s placement of razor wire along the border, Abbott doubled down, refusing to let Biden open up Texas’s southern border, specifically at Eagle Pass. Abbott argues that Texas has a “constitutional right to self-defense,” and now he’s got the backing of 25 Republican governors. “We stand in solidarity with our fellow Governor, Greg Abbott, and the State of Texas in utilizing every tool and strategy, including razor wire fences, to secure the border,” a statement from the Republican Governor’s Association reads. “We do it in part because the Biden Administration is refusing to enforce immigration laws already on the books and is illegally allowing mass parole across America of migrants who entered our country illegally." Meanwhile, despite Texas’s actions to secure its border, Biden is turning hat-in-hand to Mexico for help with the migrant crisis. While Donald Trump was president, he pressured Mexico into meeting his demands; Biden, on the other hand, effectively begged for Mexico’s "help,” despite our southern neighbor doing little to stymie the flow of migrants.

• Jail for subpoena avoidance? Now do Hunter Biden: Congressional subpoenas are a big deal. Just ask Peter Navarro. But don’t ask Hunter Biden. Navarro, 74, who served as assistant to the president and director of trade and manufacturing policy in the Trump administration, was just sentenced to four months in prison for having defied a House subpoena to appear before Nancy Pelosi’s now-disbanded January 6 Committee. Navarro was originally indicted by a federal grand jury in June 2022 after his case was referred to the Justice Department. As National Review reports, he was ultimately convicted in early September on two counts of contempt of Congress “after a prolonged battle by the former Trump ally to invoke executive privilege and protect himself from testifying.” As for Hunter Biden, he too has been subpoenaed by multiple congressional committees, but to this point, he’s made a mockery of the process. As we noted last week, he recently agreed to testify in late February, but who can take him seriously? “They are playing for time,” said National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, himself a former federal prosecutor. “Simultaneously, they are making it much harder for Republicans to hold the younger Biden in contempt.” We wonder: Where’s the outrage regarding this blatant example of two-tiered justice? And why haven’t congressional Republicans demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland give Hunter the “Navarro” treatment?

• Abortion lobby tall tales in Texas: While everything is bigger in Texas, that is apparently also true when it comes to pro-abortion lobbyists’ lies about the number of rape-related pregnancies in the Lone Star State. The Houston Chronicle recently reported a dubious study conducted by the Austin-based pro-abortion lobbyist outfit Resound Research for Reproductive Health. That study claimed that there have been “an estimated 26,313 rape-related pregnancies” in Texas since it outlawed abortions 16 months ago. First of all, the statistics are hypothetical and the math is impossible given that there were 16,510 reported rapes in Texas last year. But the article also quotes one of the study’s authors, Dr. Kari White, who asserts that these estimates “are only going to increase while this total abortion ban is in effect.” Why would the supposed number of rape-related pregnancies increase because of an abortion ban? Do the existence of laws banning abortions elevate the probability that a rape will result in pregnancy? The obvious answer is no. This study is a classic example of gaming the data to support a predetermined outcome. Rather than rely on actual available data and police reports, the researchers effectively created their own data that produced grossly inflated estimates. In other words, they juiced the numbers.

• The ADL’s new target: conservatives: Time was when the Anti-Defamation League was a respectable organization largely focused on rooting out anti-Semitism all around the globe. That’s no longer the case, though, as the ADL has lately been obsessed with defending the Rainbow Mafia and anyone who would question its efforts to advocate for the mutilation of gender-confused children. As The Daily Signal reports, the ADL “is specifically pushing law enforcement to scrutinize viral dissenters against transgender ideology, such as The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo,” adding, “The ADL has described content pushing back against transgender ideology as both ‘dangerous’ and ‘false,’ claiming that this content inspires ‘real-world extremist activities, threats, and even violence.’” It’s rich indeed — and deeply depressing — that the once-proud ADL is now calling conservative efforts to protect our children from undergoing permanent life-altering medical experiments “extremist activities,” but that’s the world we’re living in.

• Plastic bag bans and unintended consequences: Sometimes the best intentions of the do-gooders fail. In fact, that’s basically the story of the entire climate movement. “Save the planet,” end up making life more expensive for everyone while doing little to save anything. The latest example is New Jersey’s ban on stores distributing plastic bags, enacted in 2022. According to Freedonia Custom Research (FCR), a business research division for MarketResearch.com, “Following New Jersey’s ban of single-use bags, the shift from plastic film to alternative bags resulted in a nearly 3x increase in plastic consumption for bags.” Oops. Long story short, most consumers don’t find reusable bags helpful, and they end up collecting unnecessary bags. Instead, they’re buying disposable ones … made of plastic.

• A good question: With the pandemic long past, and the 2024 presidential election year upon us, will the COVID-era voting rules remain in place? Many recall that several states used the pandemic as an excuse to engage in emergency powers to impose Democrat-favorable election rules — like bulk-mail ballots — often going around state legislatures to do so. These were only supposed to be temporary due to exceptional times. But, predictably, Democrat lawmakers have sought to make these “temporary” election rules permanent. Republican-led states like Georgia and Texas have passed election integrity legislation, but Republican lawmakers in other states, such as Wisconsin, have not been successful in election integrity efforts. Now, with the abuses of 2020, seeking to secure election integrity in 2024 will be a big issue.

• Have EVs jumped the shark? These are difficult days for Joe Biden and his fellow green-dreamers, and perhaps nowhere is this being felt more acutely than where electric vehicles are concerned. Having recently reported that people aren’t buying what Biden is selling, and that EVs can’t seem to keep a charge when cold winter weather sets in, we can now report that the Left’s headlong push for EVs and its concomitant push for the elimination of the internal combustion engine appear to be going the way of the recycling push of the late ‘80s and early '90s. Indeed, the EV push is now being seen by many as environmentally dubious. As Steven Hayward writes: “Counter-productive recycling programs persist because of mandates and incumbent client groups that fight savagely for their perpetuation. The climate fanatics hope the same can be accomplished with E.V.s over time. If the Biden administration or its successors persist in the E.V. mandate and subsidy mania, it will create the next great immigrant opportunity for Cuban auto mechanics who know how to keep gasoline-powered cars running for decades.”

• Holocaust Remembrance Day: Saturday is Holocaust Remembrance Day, which seems more poignant following Hamas’s October 7 massacre and calls for “river to the sea” genocide. A recent report indicates that, nearly 80 years after the Nazis inflicted genocide against Jews, roughly 245,000 survivors of that horror remain alive today. Almost half of these Holocaust survivors live in Israel, with another 18% living in Western Europe, 16% in the U.S., and 12% in Eastern Europe. The vast majority of these Jews are “child survivors” born after 1928, and their numbers are quickly dwindling with their median age now 86 years old. They were born into a world that wanted to see them eliminated, and sadly in the West today, we are witnessing a resurgence of this same anti-Semitism that eventually resulted in the murder of millions of Jews. The reason for Holocaust Remembrance Day is to teach younger generations about the horrors of that genocide so as to prevent such anti-Semitic hate from ever rising to power again. Will people remember?

Headlines

• It’s (almost) official: U.S. bugging out of Iraq (PJ Media)

• Investigators uncover Bowman deception in fire alarm probe (Daily Wire)

• House J6 Committee files shielded from GOP due to “national security,” top Democrat says (Washington Times)

• Amazon no longer allowing police to solicit Ring doorbell video (Fox Business)

• Alabama executes inmate by new nitrogen gas method for 1988 murder of pastor’s wife (AL.com)

• White House halts enormous natural gas projects in victory for ecofascists (Fox News)

• Prices are up 17.6% since Joe Biden took office (PJ Media)

• Bye-bye, Boomers: Retirement will create labor crunch for pilots, doctors, and teachers (Washington Times)

• DEI hires pushed onto the FBI are putting the country’s safety at risk for the sake of being “woke” (New York Post)

• White Americans are quiet quitting our leading institutions (American Greatness)

• Survey: Nearly 30% of Zoomer adults now identify as “LGBTQ” (Not the Bee)

• The largest religious group in the U.S.? People who don’t believe in anything (Not the Bee)

• Policy: Governor Abbott is right: Texas has the right to defend itself and secure its border (The Federalist)

• Humor: Ted Cruz grows out mutton chops in preparation for civil war (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.