Cross-Examination

• Blinken says Ukraine will join NATO: We’re not sure what Joe Biden’s grand plans are for ending the war in Ukraine — or at least putting a stop to the depletion of our treasury and our military stockpiles in seemingly endless support of it — but we tend to think that pronouncements of Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO are unlikely to bring the Russian bear any closer to the negotiating table. Nevertheless, “Ukraine will become a member of NATO,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday at a meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba at the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels. “Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.” Blinken didn’t break any new ground with the announcement. Instead, he reaffirmed the agreement of NATO’s membership, made at last year’s summit in Lithuania, that Ukraine would eventually gain membership. Blinken was also no doubt laying the groundwork for NATO’s next annual summit, which will take place in Washington in July. The devil is in the details, though, and that’s certainly the case with Ukraine’s membership, which is predicated on certain conditions being met. As The Hill reports, “The deliverables are consequential amid concerns over waning U.S. commitment to supporting Ukraine, with House Republicans holding up additional American assistance and fears that the return of former President Trump to the White House could see a retreat of the U.S. from its commitments to allies and partners.” Whatever these fears of Donald Trump might be, supporters of the Biden administration’s policy in Ukraine should remember that Vladimir Putin didn’t invade his neighbor on Trump’s watch. He did so on Biden’s watch, and he continues to ruin Ukraine on Biden’s watch because the American president’s weakness is provocative.

• No Labels is a no-go: The center-left No Labels party announced on Thursday that it would not be running a candidate for the 2024 presidential election. The party “would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House,” explained party founder and CEO Nancy Jacobson. “No such candidates emerged so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.” Apparently, what took the air out of No Labels’s sails was the recent passing of founding chairman and former Senator Joe Lieberman, who died on March 27 at the age of 82 after suffering a fall. Furthermore, No Labels surmised that a third-party candidate would have no real chance of winning the election, and doing so would only help Donald Trump’s election prospects. It’s clear that given the option of a Trump or Biden presidency, the No Labels leadership prefers Biden. This decision doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the road for No Labels. “I wouldn’t rule anything out,” party board of advisors member Andy Bursky stated. “The organization has not been beaten by this effort, it has been strengthened by this effort.” Sure thing.

• A voter registration wake-up call for the GOP: Voter registrations have kicked into high gear across the country, but the numbers in three states should be especially troubling for Republicans. Those states are Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona. In just one week in March, 386,422 individuals attempted to register to vote. Even more concerning is the number of registration attempts made in Texas without a photo ID. Some 277,077 registration attempts were made, with 196,578 being registered and the remaining 80,499 being rejected. In Texas, one can request a mail-in ballot using just the last four digits of a Social Security number. The trouble is that illegal aliens have been receiving SSNs “with DHS authorization.” Democrats appear to be using the same playbook in Texas and Arizona that they used in California to turn a once rather evenly split state deep blue. The Democrats did it through the use of illegal immigration. This is why voter integrity laws matter.

• Nebraska’s 2nd congressional district could decide the presidency: We’re not sure who the Nebraska knuckleheads were whose bright idea it was to enact a state law back in 1991 that apportions the Cornhusker State’s five electoral votes based on how each of the two major party’s presidential candidates perform in each of the state’s three congressional districts, but it needs to be repealed, like, yesterday. Nebraska is uber-reliably Republican. It went for Donald Trump by nearly 20 points in 2020, and yet it coughed up one of its precious electoral votes to Joe Biden. Not a bad deal for a guy who can’t even muster 40% of the state’s vote. As The Federalist reports: “The law has twice sent one of Nebraska’s electoral votes to a Democrat presidential candidate thanks to the 2nd District, which contains Omaha. The 2nd District voted for Biden in 2020 and for Obama in 2008.” This is why the state legislature needs to get its act together and pass LB 764, which would repeal that Democrat-friendly winner-doesn’t-take-all state law and thereby deny Joe Biden a potential path to 270 electoral votes. As The Federalist continues: “Nebraska’s split vote could end up being crucial. If Biden were to win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin but lose Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona, for example, he could still reach 270 — so long as he received one of Nebraska’s electoral votes.” The state’s legislative session ends on April 18, so the clock is ticking. If you’re interested in learning about why it hasn’t yet happened, knock yourself out.

• Another murder by a serially deported illegal and a stunning statistic: Another day, another murder by a guy who should never have been in our country. The latest casualty from Joe Biden’s Open Borders America comes to us from Ohio, where a serially deported Mexican illegal wouldn’t take “no” for an answer and finally ended up killing someone. Fermin Garcia-Gutierrez, 46, was charged with aggravated murder, using a weapon while intoxicated, possession of drugs, and more after officials determined that a body found in an alley was, in fact, a homicide and that Garcia-Gutierrez was responsible for it. “Garcia-Gutierrez has been deported 7 times and he has been in our jail 11 times using 7 different names and 3 different [dates of birth],” the Butler County Sheriff’s Office reports. “This is a perfect example of what the sheriff has been saying all along. Illegal immigrants are a danger to our country.” They don’t say. As Donald Trump once said, “They’re not sending us their best.” In case anyone was still wondering. In other immigration news, The Federalist reports a grim statistic that helps put Joe Biden’s border malfeasance into perspective: “In nearly four years in office, President Joe Biden has let in nearly the same amount of illegal foreign citizens that Ellis Island accepted legally in 60 years. Democrats don’t want, however, to acknowledge all the problems with such an influx because they can use a ballooning foreign-born illegal population to fundamentally alter U.S. elections.” It’s no wonder that immigration is the most important issue to the American people in this election cycle.

• Biden distorts MLK to mark his assassination: An opportunistic Joe Biden marked April 4 as the grim anniversary of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.‘s assassination on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. “Dr. King and generations of foot soldiers known and unknown,” Biden read, “embody a patriotism that continues to inspire generations of Americans, including me.” He added: “But on this day, and in this time, we all do well to remember another essential lesson about Dr. King’s life and legacy. All Americans — regardless of party or background — should be able to reject political violence and hate-fueled violence in any form. We must condemn it, not condone it. We must confront it, not whitewash it. As we do, we must teach history and make history, not erase history. We must choose community over chaos.” Just when we think Joe Biden’s handlers can’t stoop any lower, they hand us their beers and conflate the January 6 riot with the cold-blooded murder of the nation’s leading civil rights figure. As for whitewashes, we’d note that some 1,200 J6 rioters and Capitol tourists were arrested, charged, and convicted for their actions, while 214 rioters during Trump’s inauguration in 2017, who were responsible for injuries to six cops that day, had every last one of their charges dropped by the Department of Justice.

• It’s not child abuse if you’re black: On Tuesday, a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, announced that in order to not perpetuate “structural racism” it would avoid reporting potential instances of child abuse and neglect to the authorities in cases of positive illicit drug tests if the mother is black. The reason, according to Mass General Brigham (MGB), is that “black pregnant people are more likely to be drug tested and to be reported to child welfare systems than white pregnant people.” The nonprofit healthcare system added, “As a part of our United Against Racism effort to achieve health equity for patients and communities across our system, we … are addressing policies that may unwittingly perpetuate structural racism.” So, according to MGB, it’s racist to hold black mothers accountable for illicit drug use that may be harming their children because a higher percentage of black mothers are drug users. Evidently, concern over the welfare of the child is secondary when it comes to upholding the woke ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The irony here is that the hospital’s old policy was absolutely devoid of any racial considerations. The new policy is to file with child welfare agencies only “if there is reasonable cause to believe that the infant is suffering or at imminent risk of suffering physical or emotional injury and that 'substance exposure’ alone, including treatment with methadone or buprenorphine for opioid use disorder, does not require a report of abuse or neglect in the absence of protective concerns for the infant.” In other words, now the race of the mother will be a deciding factor in whether the hospital elects to contact the authorities.

• Barr sues California over EV truck mandate: Former Attorney General William Barr now represents the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce and has filed a lawsuit against California over its EV truck mandate. “California’s attempt to effectively abolish the internal combustion engine by forcing Americans to buy EVs is not only illegal but a threat to our American free enterprise,” Barr argued. “This mandate is unlikely to produce any net reduction in carbon emissions, and even if it does, any benefit will be negligible in comparison to the massive costs these mandates impose on our economy and individual American families.” He added, “We filed this suit to protect Californians from government overreach and to ensure they have continued access to affordable, reliable, and accessible fleets.” Democrat lawmakers in California have pushed a radical climate agenda to the detriment of the state’s economy in an effort to force residents into purchasing EVs. California’s Advanced Clean Fleets law requires fleets managed by state and local governments to be 50% zero emissions by the end of this year and 100% zero emissions by 2027, and all commercial truck sales to be zero emissions by 2036.

Headlines

• Biden urges Netanyahu to agree to “immediate ceasefire,” says U.S. support contingent on steps to reduce casualties (National Review)

• “Stop it now”: Jill Biden privately urges an end to conflict in Gaza (New York Times)

• Blinken: Israel risks “becoming indistinguishable” from Hamas terrorists (Daily Wire)

• IDF dismisses two officers over unintentional strike on aid workers, admits “serious failure” (National Review)

• Job growth zoomed in March as payrolls jumped by 303,000 and unemployment dropped to 3.8% (CNBC)

• Ford delays production of new electric vehicles by years as consumers sour on EVs (Daily Wire)

• Biden moves to protect federal workers from Trump “deep state” purge (Washington Examiner)

• Federal judge rejects Trump’s effort to throw out classified documents case over his claims he had a right to take the files (Daily Mail)

• Nearly one-third of Americans think neither Trump nor Biden would be good president (National Review)

• FCC plans to restore net neutrality repealed by Trump (Roll Call)

• Humor: Biden still polling well with 3 AM mail-in ballot demographic (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.