Cross-Examination

• James Biden circles the wagons: How are we to tell when a Biden is lying? Simple: We check to see whether his lips are moving. And so it was with James Biden, who was on Capitol Hill yesterday to testify that his big brother, President Biden, “has never had any involvement or any direct or indirect financial interest” in his business ventures. It was a closed-door deposition for Joe’s younger brother, who delivered a prepared opening statement to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. But we have to wonder whether James elicited any guffaws among the congressmen when he said this about his relationship with the Big Guy: “Because of my intimate knowledge of my brother’s personal integrity and character, as well as my own strong ethics, I have always kept my professional life separate from our close personal relationship.” But beyond the comic relief, the witness also contradicted himself. As Fox News reports: “The president’s brother initially said he was not part of a deal with his nephew Hunter Biden and business associates Rob Walker, Tony Bobulinski, and James Gilliar, according to a source familiar with the interview. But when presented with an agreement with his signature on it, Biden changed his story, saying he did not recall signing the agreement.” Florida Republican Matt Gaetz might have summed things up well when he told reporters, “There are a lot of things that Mr. Biden is saying that are directly contradicted by documents.”

• Shrinkflation or inflation? Joe Biden has been fruitlessly attempting to convince Americans that the economy is good. Yet Americans aren’t buying it because everything they buy costs more. While the rate of inflationary growth has eased, that doesn’t mean things have gotten cheaper, and that’s especially so when it comes to food. The cost of food is at a 30-year high, with Americans now spending 11.3% of their disposable income on food, which nearly matches the 11.4% of disposable income households were shelling out in 1991 to feed themselves. While Biden blames shrinkflation on greedy companies, the reality is that, thanks to sustained high inflation, the cost of not only raw goods but also labor has risen. Last year, the price of meals at restaurants rose an average of 5.1%, and grocery costs have risen 1.2%. Biden blaming “greedy” companies for having to raise their prices due to his own fiscally irresponsible policies may deceive some folks, but it will do nothing to actually reduce the cost of food.

• Good news: Appellate court strikes down NYC’s noncitizen voting law: New York City’s attempt to enfranchise some 800,000 of the city’s noncitizen legal residents was struck down as unconstitutional by New York’s Appellate Division’s 2nd Department. By a 3-1 majority, the court upheld a lower court’s ruling against the law, a decision Mayor Eric Adams and the city council had appealed. Writing for the majority, Judge Paul Wooten observed, “Article IX provides that the elected officials of ‘local governments’ shall be elected by ‘the people,’ which incorporates by reference the eligibility requirements for voting under article II, section 1, applying exclusively to ‘citizens.’” Wooten further reasoned that if noncitizens were allowed to vote, then they should also be allowed to run for mayor. Representative Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) praised the court’s decision, noting, “There is nothing more important than preserving the integrity of our election system, and in today’s age, the government should be working to create more trust in our elections, not less.”

• Ford’s DEI buyer’s remorse: If quality is still Job 1 for the Ford Motor Company, its leadership has sure had a funny way of showing it. In recent years, the automaker seems to have been more committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion than making the best vehicle it can make. Last week, CEO Jim Farley seemed to admit as much, telling Automotive News, “I wish I had the same laser-focus on transforming our industrial system,” adding: “The capability atrophy in engineering, supply chain and manufacturing at Ford … needed a much more fundamental reset than I had realized. I think we all have regrets, and that’s a big one for me. It’s a humbling thing.” Farley didn’t come out and blame the company’s focus on DEI as the reason for it having taken its eye off the quality ball, but he didn’t need to. PJ Media’s Athena Thorne points to the “insidious internal effect that prioritizing ‘diversity’ can have on a company,” noting that it wastes money on annoying wokeness, squanders staff time on divisive indoctrination, and prioritizes “meaningless immutable characteristics over competence when hiring and promoting employees, resulting in a less effective workforce.” Ford began buying into DEI back in 2018, and it has the recalls to prove it. But Farley says he’s now focused on returning to a merit-based system. Better late than never.

• No charges for Riley Gaines incident: Remember when, last April, those Rainbow Mafia thugs assaulted women’s rights champion Riley Gaines and held her for ransom after she spoke at San Francisco State University about her experience competing against male swimmer Lia Thomas? At the time, we noted that the grueling pre-dawn practices, the six hours in the water every day, and the endless laps in the pool had no doubt prepared Gaines for battle against the most vicious of foes in a cause of surpassing consequence — the foe being the cult of transgenderism and the cause being women’s athletics. Upon her escape, Gaines let SFSU have it: “The campus police did nothing. The dean of students was there and did nothing. There will be no repercussions unless I have something to do with it. I will be pursuing legal action. These people need to face repercussions.” As to that legal action, Fox News now reports, “The San Fransisco State University Police Department has suspended its investigation into women’s sports activist and former NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines’ hostage incident and assault last year, saying the alleged charges are ‘unfounded.’” We guess the video evidence of Gaines’ assailants turning off the lights, physically attacking her, shouting a stream of obscenities at her, and chasing her into a room where she was barricaded for three hours is all just “unfounded.” Shame on San Francisco State University. And shame on its gutless “police” department.

• Indiana parents lose custody of trans kid: We’ve come to expect the legal attacks on parents of “transgender” kids in the blue states because that’s the home turf of the cult and its cultists. But Indiana? There, in that deep-red state, a Catholic couple is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to “hold the state accountable for keeping their child out of their home after they declined to use his chosen name and pronouns.” In the case of M.C. and J.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services, Mary and Jeremy Cox say they were investigated by state officials for refusing to refer to use their son’s preferred name and pronouns, both of which are inconsistent with his biological sex. Pursuing the case on behalf of the Coxes is Becket, a nonprofit legal organization committed to religious liberty for all faiths. The state, meanwhile, says that the real reason it took the Coxes’ child was an “extreme eating disorder” that had gotten worse due to the family’s gender dysphoria disagreement. As Indiana’s Republican Attorney General, Todd Rokita, put it: “We always protect parental rights and religious liberty. Neither we nor the Indiana courts believe that the State can remove a child because of a parent’s religious beliefs, views about gender identity, or anything of the sort.” SCOTUS: Waiting on you.

• California’s reparations bills: California’s Legislative Black Caucus introduced a package of 14 reparations bills on Wednesday in its effort to seek to have Golden State taxpayers foot the bill for making restitution for America’s past history of slavery. Never mind the fact that California never allowed slavery. None of the bills includes cash payments. As the caucus’s chairwoman, Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, explained: “While many only associate direct cash payments with reparations, the true meaning of the word, to repair, involves much more. This year’s legislative package tackles a wide range of issues, from criminal justice reforms to property rights to education, civil rights, and food justice.” In short, the list of bills amounts to little other than an effort to infuse race-based welfare socialism into the California law code.

• Good news: Fired TX biology professor reinstated: Dr. Johson Varkey, a professor of biology at St. Philips College’s Joint Base San Antonia-Lackland for 20 years, got his job back after he successfully sued the school for wrongful termination. Varkey was fired a year ago after the school received complaints over his teaching the biological reality of human binary sexuality. Varkey was accused of “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter” in his biology class, but no evidence was submitted to substantiate the dubious claim. What Varkey believes triggered the complaint was his statement that “sex was determined by chromosomes X and Y,” after which four students walked out of class. Varkey was represented by the nonprofit First Liberty Institute, which noted in the lawsuit that he was fired “based on nothing but unsubstantiated complaints” and that administrators “accused Dr. Varkey of an ethics violation and acted with animus toward Dr. Varkey’s religious beliefs.”

Headlines

• House GOP leaders jettison promise to vote on 12 individual spending bills (Fox News)

• Teamsters gives GOP first major donation in years with $45,000 to RNC (Washington Post)

• Presidential historian reveals Jill Biden is the reason Joe ran again: “She likes power,” wants "revenge" (Daily Wire)

• Biden’s dog has attacked Secret Service dozens of times during presidency (Daily Wire)

• FBI reportedly investigating controversial Democrat mayor who schmoozed with Biden last month (Fox News)

• 9/11 fire commissioner blasts Jamaal Bowman as imbecile for peddling conspiracy theories (Washington Free Beacon)

• SCOTUS declines high school affirmative action case; Alito, Thomas issue scorching dissent (RedState)

• Harvard probes despicable anti-Semitic cartoon shared by faculty (Washington Free Beacon)

• Google apologizes for AI bot generating inaccurate images of “diverse” historical figures (Washington Examiner)

• Chicago education board moves to pull cops from schools (National Review)

• The head of Boeing’s 737 Max program has resigned following the Alaska Airlines door incident (Not the Bee)

• Iran sends Russia hundreds of ballistic missiles (Reuters)

• Israel submits report to UN on Hamas’s mass weaponization of rape (Times of Israel)

• “Satire”: “Trump is the greatest threat to America,” says man overseeing invasion of America (Babylon Bee)

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