Cross-Examination

• Catastrophic bridge collapse in Baltimore: At approximately 1:30 this morning, a large container ship hit a column of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, causing the bridge to partially collapse into the Patapsco River. The Key Bridge serves as part of the Interstate 695 beltway around Baltimore. Several vehicles were reportedly on the bridge when it collapsed. Thus far, only two individuals have been rescued, with a yet-to-be-determined number missing. Rescue efforts are underway to locate anyone who may still be alive in the frigid water. The 22-member crew of the Singapore-flagged container ship Dali have all been accounted for, alive and well. There is no indication that there was any nefarious intent behind the crash. It reportedly lost power and appeared to catch fire before hitting the bridge. The Key Bridge was opened almost 47 years ago to the day on March 24, 1977.

• Florida bans social media for minors under 14: On Monday, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill that bars children under the age of 14 from having social media accounts. DeSantis contended that the law was needed to protect children’s development. “Being buried in those devices all day is not the best way to grow up,” he said. “It’s not the best way to get a good education.” Florida House Speaker Paul Renner echoed DeSantis by explaining: “A child, in their brain development, doesn’t have the ability to know that they’re being sucked into these addictive technologies and to see the harm and step away from it. And because of that, we have to step in for them.” With this legislation, Florida becomes the first state to enact an outright ban on social media access for kids. Objections to the new law have been raised by some who claim it violates free speech and privacy rights. Renner anticipates that lawsuits will be raised against the law, but he said, “We’re gonna beat them, and we’re never, ever gonna stop.”

• Boeing CEO will resign: Boeing has been having a bad couple of years. And this year, the string of inflight incidents with its airplanes — highlighted by Air Alaska’s door blowout — culminated in former quality control engineer-turned-whistleblower John Barnett turning up dead of an apparent suicide. Thanks to these incidents, Boeing has seen its stock drop by 25% since the beginning of the year. Furthermore, the company is facing a National Transportation Safety Board investigative hearing in August. Something had to give, and on Monday, what gave was CEO Dave Calhoun, who announced his resignation effective at the end of the year. Will Calhoun’s exit be enough to turn Boeing’s fortunes? Not according to Ray Goforth, executive director of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace. “The problems in Boeing’s executive suite are systemic,” he contends. “Nothing is going to change for the better without company leadership acknowledging their failures and thoroughly committing to fixing them.”

• Question pro-abortion pill studies: After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, sending the issue of abortion back to the states, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) conducted a study on at-home abortion pills. The recently released study purports to show that an increase in the demand for such pills offset the decline in the number of abortions performed in 2022. The study is intended to support the Biden administration’s decision to pull back regulations on the at-home abortion pill. A case that is before SCOTUS today concerns whether the FDA’s policy change to permit greater access to these abortion pills is constitutional. The trouble with the study is that it relies heavily on data that is either estimated or self-reported. Furthermore, the study’s conclusion is undermined by increasing birthrate numbers in places like Texas following the state’s adoption of heartbeat legislation that has prevented most abortions. This JAMA report is an example of politics influencing/determining research outcomes rather than research influencing politics.

• Rebutting Everytown’s “kids shooting” fiction: It’s a story that’s of a piece with the gun-grabbing Left’s fun-with-numbers inclusion of gang-bangers among its “child” death-by-gun counts. In this case, the topic is accidental shootings, and the NBC News headline reads, “Children unintentionally shot and killed at least 157 people last year, Everytown says,” and the subhead reads, “In many cases, the children shot themselves, while others killed siblings or friends, according to the gun control advocacy group.” Or at least that’s what they’d have us believe. But then, some inconvenient facts trickle in and spoil a perfectly good piece of anti-gun propaganda: “The children who pulled the trigger,” NBC News continues, “were most often teenagers ages 14 to 17 or children ages 5 and under, according to Everytown’s data, which is compiled from media reports.” One of the problems is that those initial media reports tend to be incomplete, often due to the emotional state of the witnesses: Many are either traumatized by what happened or are trying to hide their own complicity in what may not be an accident at all. Another problem is that these older teen assailants are often gangsters, and they shoot a lot more people intentionally than unintentionally — which is the supposed topic of Everytown’s report. As The Truth About Guns responds, “As long as the left and the legacy media control refuse to cull out shootings by gang members, their data will always be suspect.”

• James Carville tells more uncomfortable truths: It’s an election year, and that means many things, one of which is that James Carville, the crazy ol’ uncle of the Democrat Party, is once again ranting and raving about what’s become of his once-proud party. Carville’s recent wisdom about what ails the Democrats has often been spot-on, but it never fails to go down like ipecac syrup. For example, when he was asked about Joe Biden’s consistently terrible poll numbers, the Ragin’ Cajun said: “When I look at these polling numbers, it’s like walking in on your grandma naked. You can’t get the image out of your mind.” Carville will likely never again utter anything as trenchant and memorable as “It’s the economy, stupid,” but naked granny is close. On the matter of today’s Democrat Party causing white males — and men generally — to recoil in disgust, he said: “A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females” saying, in essence, “‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you. … Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’” Carville laments this hostile female takeover in other ways: “If you listen to Democratic elites — NPR is my go-to place for that — the whole talk is about how women, and women of color, are going to decide this election. I’m like: ‘Well, 48 percent of the people that vote are males. Do you mind if they have some consideration?’” Finally, after a predictably unhinged attack on Donald Trump, he returned to the wokeness of his own: “No one wants to live like this,” he said. “Who ever thought it was a good idea to tell people you can’t hug them, or you’ve got to be careful, or you’ve got to think about names to call them other than the name you know them by? There’s nothing wrong with me being white or you being white or them being black or me being male or you being female. It’s a giant, stupid argument.”

• Massachusetts has its priorities: Boston, that beacon of northeastern liberalism, has a bad history on race. One need only revisit the busing riots of the 1970s to confirm this. But sometimes, the pendulum can swing back too far, and that’s precisely what appears to have happened recently, as “civil rights” activists are asking the city’s white churches to join the interfaith movement for reparations. “So we call on the white church in Boston,” said one black clergyman, “to join us in supporting a black reparations movement.” This won’t end well, but it won’t have been for lack of audacity. Indeed, it appears that they’re asking Beantown to cough up $15 billion in penance. As Not the Bee helpfully reminds us: “Slavery has been illegal in Massachusetts since 1783. A full generation before that in the 1750s, slaves were 2.2% of the population.” So there’s that. But $15 billion for starters, cracker. “We point to them in Christian love to publicly atone for the sins of slavery and we ask them to publicly commit to a process of reparations where they will extend their great wealth — tens of millions of dollars among some of those churches — into the black community,” said “Reverend” Kevin Peterson. We’re sure the good, hardworking people of Boston will get right on that, reverend — especially those grizzled old Irish Catholic Southies. If this weren’t enough, The Boston Herald reports that the Bay State “is spending about $75 million each month on state-run shelters, a massive jump in expenses that comes as Gov. Maura Healey’s administration is expected to run out of cash for emergency services in early to mid-April without another financial infusion.” Good to know Massachusetts has its priorities in order.

• Just Stop Oil’s intersectionality dilemma: A funny thing happened in the Global Left’s headlong race to eliminate fossil fuels: Intersectionality. To elaborate, it seems that a British activist from the radical group Just Stop Oil told her colleagues during a meeting that they needed to fix their flawed reputation as “a white, middle-class group of activists and focus more on being inclusive to all.” As The Blaze reports: “The activist, known only as Olive, has been pictured in anti-oil protests including when the group halted traffic on the London Bridge in June 2023. A reporter infiltrated the eco-group’s weekly strategy discussion over meeting software Zoom, where the team of environmentalists opined about its public image.” It appears that the group also has a soft spot for the Palestinian people, and an accompanying enmity for Israel, as evidenced by its plan “to work with more Muslim groups, including a group called Palestine Action.” We’re not sure what to make of all this other than reminding ourselves that things here could always be worse.

Headlines

• Israeli prime minister cancels Washington delegation after U.S. abstains from UN ceasefire vote (National Review) | Briefings get testy as Biden deserts Israel on key UN vote (Townhall)

• Trump’s $454 million judgment bond slashed by more than half in appeals court ruling (Fox News)

• Trump’s net worth hits $6.5 billion, making him one of the world’s 500 richest people (Bloomberg)

• Team Biden building mass operation to take down third-party candidate RFK, who they fear could cost him election (Daily Caller)

• House Republicans probe CIA interference in Hunter Biden investigation (The Federalist)

• Bidenflation and Bidenomics are deeply unpopular with women (Breitbart)

• Church attendance has declined in most U.S. religious groups (Gallup)

• 4,000 acres of solar panels were destroyed in one Texas hail storm. Locals are now worried about groundwater poisoning. (Not the Bee)

• Policy: Biden’s latest housing proposal is like a bad credit card promotion (National Review)

• Humor: Trump announces he will pay entire bond using bags of nickels (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.