Cross-Examination

• Mayorkas absorbs Biden’s impeachment: It’s long overdue, but Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is finally being held to account for his malfeasance. We were calling for this guy’s impeachment more than a year ago, and we’re not sure what kept House Republicans from doing their duty, but here we are. Mayorkas didn’t waste any time dismissing the proceedings: “I assure you that your false accusations do not rattle me and do not divert me from the law enforcement and broader public service mission to which I have devoted most of my career and to which I remain devoted,” he wrote in a letter to Tennessee’s Mark Green, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee. The New York Times, for its part, dutifully absolved Mayorkas, weakly suggesting that this was Joe Biden’s fault, but also buying Biden’s phony line that the Republicans “refused to provide resources, blocked efforts to update laws and openly defied federal officials charged with maintaining security and order along the 2,000-mile border.” Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal editorial board can’t seem to see the sense of holding government officials accountable. As it meekly observes: “House Republicans are marking up articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and the question is why? As much as we share the frustration with the Biden border mess, impeaching Mr. Mayorkas won’t change enforcement policy and is a bad precedent that will open the gates to more cabinet impeachments by both parties.” Translation: Leave him alone. We like the cheap labor.

• NYC cops attacked and beaten by illegals: If only someone had warned us that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.” If only someone had, years ago, recognized the problem of rampant illegal immigration across our southern border and told us: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with [them]. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime.” If only. On Saturday, the wreckage of Joe Biden’s open border revealed itself to two New York City cops near Times Square as they tried to disperse a crowd of illegals. As the New York Post reports: “The footage shows an NYPD officer and lieutenant initially telling the migrants to move along around 8:30 p.m. Saturday on West 42nd Street in Manhattan — before things quickly get rowdy as a scuffle breaks out between the cops and a suspect who is wrestled to the ground.” The footage is stunning in the reckless disregard it shows for law and order and the violence it shows toward the two cops. This wasn’t a case of some rowdy hoodlums getting into a shoving match with cops. This was a case of illegal immigrants alternately kicking and head-stomping the officers. It gets worse. As The Daily Wire reports, “Four illegal immigrants were eventually apprehended and identified,” but “all four were reportedly released without bail after being charged with assault.” We’re sure that’ll teach ‘em.

• Our nation’s capital is a crime-ridden leftist hellhole: A man might think he’d be safe in the heart of our nation’s capital, waiting to pick up his wife late in the afternoon in DC’s bustling City Center area. But, sadly, he’d be wrong. Mike Gill, a married father of three and a former Trump administration official, is now in critical condition fighting for his life after having been shot during an attempted carjacking. About 70 minutes later, the assailant shot and killed another driver, 35-year-old Alberto Vasquez Jr., himself a father of two. “He would never hurt anyone,” said Vasquez’s father. That the alleged murderer was later shot and killed during a confrontation with DC cops is surely of little consolation to the families of Gill and Vasquez. Indeed, the Gill family statement is heart-wrenching: “Mike is a catalyst for unity and friendship. The most important thing about Mike that all of his friends know is how much he loves his family and how proud he is of his three children. You can’t know Mike without hearing proud stories of each one of his kids and hearing about his love and respect for his wife, Kristina.” DC Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser unhelpfully called the crimes “indiscriminate” and “unthinkable.” According to The Washington Post, this was just the latest incident to plague the nation’s capital city, which has seen carjackings more than double from 2022 to 2023 to 950 incidents.

• Cori Bush under criminal investigation: House “Squad” member Cori Bush (D-MO) is being investigated by the Justice Department for allegedly misusing taxpayer funds to hire her own private security. We’ve previously noted Bush’s blatant hypocrisy over her advocacy of the “defund the police” movement while then hiring her own private security service. Last year, a Federal Election Commission complaint was raised against Bush after it was discovered that she had married one of the members of the private security firm she used hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to hire. Since 2019, Bush has spent over $750,000 on private security. Bush’s husband has received at least $74,000 of those campaign funds for his security services. The nonpartisan Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust raised a complaint against Bush to the FEC last year. “It appears Rep. Bush’s campaign may have made payments for services that were unnecessary or above fair market value because of her personal relationship with the payee,” stated the organization’s executive director, Kendra Arnold. “If so, these payments would qualify as either impermissible payments to a family member or an impermissible gift.” Perhaps the FEC agrees.

• Chicago illegals evade eviction: Chicago Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson recently backed off the planned removal of migrants from a shelter in the city that is intended to serve as a temporary place for migrants to stay. Johnson had created his 60-day policy in an effort to free up space in shelters. However, due to growing outrage from these illegal aliens over potentially being forced to move from the shelter, especially during the middle of winter, Johnson has reversed course. “We have made the decision to extend the shelter stay policy based on original exit dates from mid-January through the end of March,” Johnson stated in a news conference. The extension allows 5,673 migrants originally scheduled for eviction on January 16 to stay until March 16. Johnson came up with his 60-day shelter eviction policy after the city abandoned plans to build new shelters due to high costs. Chicago leaders wrestling with this growing migrant problem can thank Joe Biden for creating this crisis thanks to his open-border policy.

• Biden admin tells SCOTUS that racial profiling is “necessary” for military: On the eve of Black History Month, Joe Biden continued his party’s ongoing insult of whites as irredeemably racist and blacks as patently inferior and in desperate need of government intervention. This latest episode concerns his administration’s efforts to continue counting by race despite the Supreme Court’s ruling last year that such race-based discrimination is unconstitutional. As The Washington Times reports: “The Biden administration, in a filing on Tuesday, asked the Supreme Court not to halt West Point from considering race in its application process. U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing on behalf of the federal government and West Point, told the justices that a 'diverse officer corps is necessary for an effective fighting force.’ ‘For more than forty years, our Nation’s military leaders have determined that a diverse Army officer corps is a national-security imperative and that achieving that diversity requires limited consideration of race in selecting those who join the Army as cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point,’ she wrote.” To say that our military can’t succeed unless it puts race before merit is either a purposeful lie or a lazy, ridiculous, demonstrably ignorant falsehood. Diversity doesn’t make great fighting forces. Merit makes great fighting forces. Leadership makes great fighting forces. Courage and cohesion and integrity and indomitable spirit make great fighting forces. If only we had a commander-in-chief who understood this.

• Reaping what you sow: Roughly 12,000 UPS workers will soon be handed their walking papers, which may come as a surprise to them since this comes just months after the Teamsters labor union representing UPS employees agreed to a new labor contract. Under the new labor agreement, UPS drivers’ average annual pay and benefits will rise to $170,000 by the end of the five-year contract. That’s good news for 340,000 of UPS’s roughly 500,000 workers covered under the deal, yet thanks to a downturn in revenue last quarter the company is reducing its employee headcount to cut cost. As UPS CEO Carol Tome explained, “We are going to fit our organization to our strategy and align our resources against what’s wildly important.” Tome also noted that office-based UPS employees will soon be ordered to actually return to the office five days a week.

• Corruption in … Ukraine?! It’s tough to fight a war when government officials steal funds intended to purchase weaponry for the war effort and instead line their own pockets. That is what five Ukrainian officials are accused of doing, as they allegedly stole almost $40 million in funding intended for the purchase of military equipment. These five members of Ukraine’s defense ministry allegedly conspired with a Ukrainian arms firm to embezzle tens of millions in funds intended for the purchase of mortar shells. With the U.S. having already sent billions of dollars in equipment and military aid to Ukraine, and this type of blatant corruption by government officials, any sensible person would think twice about giving the war-torn country more aid without first ensuring that a stringent system of oversight is in place to track every bullet and dollar. And yet Congress has still not demanded this as a requirement for any potential future military aid sent to Ukraine, nor has Congress required an accounting for the billions already spent.

Headlines

• “I hold them responsible”: Biden says he’s made a decision on response to attack in Jordan (USA Today) | Iran threatens to “decisively respond” to any U.S. strikes (New York Post)

• Calls grow for Ilhan Omar to be expelled from Congress after she says she’s advocating for her homeland of Somalia (Daily Wire)

• Speaker Johnson faces backlash from blue-state Republicans over tax deal (Washington Times)

• Is Biden losing New Mexico — and Hispanics? (Hot Air)

• Pro-life demonstrators found guilty, face up to 11 years in federal prison (Daily Wire)

• Utah is the latest state to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on campus and in government (AP) | Utah joins 10 other states in regulating bathroom access for “transgender” people (AP)

• FBI violated hundreds of Americans’ constitutional rights in Beverly Hills raid, appeals court rules (Fox News)

• More bad news for Harvard as its finances take another massive hit (RedState)

• Stacey Abrams’s organization is in danger of going belly-up despite $100 million in seed money (National Review)

• Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla compensation voided by judge (CNBC)

• Policy: Biden’s destructive decision to stymie natural gas (National Review)

• Humor: Conservatives uncover Democrat plot to turn Taylor Swift into an international pop star and the Kansas City Chiefs into a dynasty so Swift could date a Chiefs player and leverage the collective media coverage to get Joe Biden reelected (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.