Cross-Examination

• Mayorkas hit with two articles of impeachment: On Sunday, House Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee announced two articles of impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “His lawless behavior was exactly what the Framers gave us the impeachment power to remedy,” stated committee chairman Mark Green (R-TN). He added that these articles “lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case” for impeaching Joe Biden’s bungling secretary. The two articles charge Mayorkas with failing to enforce the nation’s border and immigration laws and knowingly misleading Congress and the American public over his willful non-enforcement. Mayorkas “has willfully and systemically refused to comply with immigration laws enacted by Congress,” Green contended, and “has breached the public trust by knowingly making false statements to Congress and the American people, and obstructing congressional oversight of his department. These facts are beyond dispute, and the results of his lawless behavior have been disastrous for our country.” Under his watch, America has endured a massive influx of illegal aliens unlike anything ever before experienced in our nation’s history.

• Trump hit with massive defamation verdict: A nine-person jury in New York City handed E. Jean Carroll an $83.3 million damages verdict in her second defamation case against Donald Trump. That is 16 times more than the defamation civil trial wherein a jury found Trump guilty and awarded Carroll $5 million in damages last May. Frustrated by that decision, Trump continued to publicly disparage Carroll, specifically on the campaign trail. So, Carroll sued again, though she sought only $10 million in damages. Instead, a New York jury and judge saw this as an opportunity to smash Trump. While Trump’s legal team is sure to appeal the verdict, Trump would be wise to avoid any further mention of Carroll. Democrats see their lawfare as an effective way to bleed Trump dry and discredit him before the general electorate.

• Seattle rewards lawlessness: Seattle city attorney Ann Davidson agreed to a $10 million settlement with Black Lives Matter rioters who clashed with police in 2020 following the death of George Floyd. Davidson justified the decision by noting, “The case has been a significant drain on the time and resources of the City and would have continued to be so through an estimated three-month trial that was scheduled to begin in May.” As part of the settlement, the city admits to no wrongdoing. Recall that during the 2020 summer of love violence, Seattle was one of the cities to see significant violence, as BLM and antifa thugs took over a 16-block area of the city and dubbed it the Capitol Hill Occupied Zone (CHOP), where law enforcement was barred from entering for days due to city leaders’ unwillingness to stand against the lawlessness. As a result, CHOP crime was rampant with reports of rapes, robberies, and violence. And now the city is paying the rioters a bundle of cash.

• NSA may be secretly spying on you: Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is that rarest of creatures: a Democrat who actually cares about the surveillance state run amok. Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is accusing the highly secretive National Security Agency of buying Americans’ Internet browsing information from commercial data brokers without warrants, and he has the receipts to prove it. As Fox News reports, “NSA director Paul Nakasone provided newly unclassified documents [to Wyden] revealing that the agency buys Americans’ data, including information about the websites they visit and the apps they use.” The letter is dated December 11 but was only made public on Thursday. “The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal,” said Wyden in a letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Thursday. “Such records can identify Americans who are seeking help from a suicide hotline or a hotline for survivors of sexual assault or domestic abuse.”

• U.S. pauses UNRWA funding: The United Nations secretary-general is begging countries to continue to fund its relief agency in Gaza even as it became known that employees of that organization appear to have taken part in the murderous October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. Antonio Guterres’s claim — that the “tens of thousands of men and women” who work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East “should not be penalized” for the actions of a few pesky terrorists among them — doesn’t sound terribly persuasive. Israel has reportedly provided the Biden administration with a dossier that outlines this participation. Apparently, one UNRWA staff member kidnapped an Israeli woman, one staff member took part in the raid on an Israeli kibbutz, and another doled out ammo to Hamas fighters. In all, 12 UN employees were involved in the October 7 attacks, and 10% of its Gaza staff has ties to Islamist militant groups. So far, a dozen of the nations that fund UNRWA have suspended their funding: the U.S., Australia, Austria, Canada, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK. Our question: What about all the other countries? As for the Biden administration, it did suspend UNRWA funding on Friday, but only after having sent more than $1 billion to the corrupt agency since April 2021, after the Trump administration had suspended U.S. funding in 2018. Your tax dollars at work.

• Is Ohio really paying kids to attend class? This sounds like a bad joke, but it isn’t. A bipartisan piece of legislation in Ohio will begin paying students as young as five merely for attending school. As the New York Post reports, “Under a pilot program, the state would make biweekly $25 cash transfers to select kindergarten and 9th grade students just for showing up to class nine out of 10 days in the two-week span.” The measure is meant to fight what lawmakers deem rampant absenteeism, a problem that went from bad to worse during the COVID pandemic. “We went from 15% pre-pandemic to over 31% in this most recent school year,” said State Representative Dani Isaacsohn, a Cincinnati Democrat. “That’s almost a third of our ninth-graders that spend their first year of high school missing more than 10 percent of their school days. This is the number one issue we are facing in education.” Running the numbers, the program would pay students with a 90% attendance rate $150 at the end of each quarter and $700 at year’s end. Nice work if you can get it. Not everyone is a fan, though. As Sylvania Republican Josh Williams sardonically asks, “I mean, are we going to get to the point where we are paying rapists not to rape?”

• Why do the ChiComs still control 150K acres of U.S. farmland? Eighteen months ago, we called attention to the appetite that the Chinese Communist Party clearly has for American farmland, and we can understand why: China is home to 1.3 billion people, or 20% of the world’s population, and yet it accounts for just 10% of the world’s farmable land. But it’s not just food that the ChiComs are interested in; they’re also interested in spying. As CNN (of all news organs) reported in July 2022, “Since at least 2017, federal officials have investigated Chinese land purchases near critical infrastructure, shut down a high-profile regional consulate believed by the US government to be a hotbed of Chinese spies and stonewalled what they saw as clear efforts to plant listening devices near sensitive military and government facilities."  And now we learn that the all-American-sounding Smithfield Foods is the vehicle through which the ChiComs are operating: "Concern over what the growing amount of U.S. farmland owned by Chinese companies could mean for national security is rising. But what has garnered less attention is the fact that the vast majority — over 80 percent — of U.S. farmland owned by Chinese corporations or investors is owned by Smithfield Foods. Located in Smithfield, Virginia, Smithfield was purchased by the Hong Kong-based WH Group for $4.7 billion in 2013. At the time, it was dubbed ‘the biggest Chinese takeover’ of a U.S. corporation, one of the U.S.‘s biggest producers of industrial meat.”

• Bud Light’s Super Bowl Hail Mary: In the hopes of winning back consumers who abandoned the former number-one-selling beer in America over its marketing decision to promote “transgender” activist Dylan Mulvaney, Bud Light is shelling out $14 million for a 60-second commercial spot during Super Bowl LVIII in two weeks. Featuring the tagline “Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy,” Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch states, “The brand is back with a humorous spot introducing a new character to the Bud Light universe and some familiar faces from the platforms the brand has been passionate about for years.” Will this effort win back the millions who have boycotted the brand? Time will tell, though Bud Light has never genuinely apologized to consumers who were clearly offended by its decision to push the gender-bending “transgender” ideology. Until then, the once-iconic brand may not fully win back consumers.

Headlines

• Three U.S. service members killed, at least 34 injured in drone attack in Jordan by “radical Iran-backed militant groups” (New York Post)

• DHS reports worst border numbers in history (Washington Times)

• FBI luminaries starkly warn Congress that U.S. being invaded at border (Just the News)

• Senate immigration deal would allow nearly two million illegal border crossings, documents show (Washington Free Beacon)

• Snopes reverses “fact-check” claiming Joe Biden didn’t wear hard hat backwards (PM)

• Georgia Senate approves investigation of DA Willis amid accusations of “unprofessional relationship” (National Review)

• INSANE: The U.S. relies on China and Russia for its ammunition supply (RedState)

• “Law & Order” features white woman who won’t press charges against black man who violated her because of her privilege (Not the Bee)

• After 12 years, Mark Steyn finally faces off against Michael Mann in defamation suit (National Review)

• Americans say they pay too much in taxes and get little in return, poll finds (Fox Business)

• Climate activists throw soup at the Mona Lisa at the Louvre (National Review)

• Humor: Texan has been waiting for this moment his whole life (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.