Cross-Examination

• Trump trial continues amid gag-order threats: As former President Donald Trump returns to court today in his hush-money trial in Manhattan, the focus is not on the prosecution’s unfortunately named witness, David Pecker, but rather on accusations from snowflake prosecutors themselves — including hard-left DA Alvin Bragg — that Trump has violated Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order 10 times. (Translation: Trump has exercised his First Amendment rights 10 times.) And so, a thin-skinned pro-Biden judge will likely do the prosecution’s bidding and warn Trump that he could go to jail for 30 days and be fined $10,000 if he keeps saying unkind things about them. This judge, though, is on thin ice if he wants a conviction and wants it to stick. The gag order “is objectionable in two ways,” as former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy told Fox News. “First … it creates this uneven balance, where people can talk about [Trump], and he can’t talk about them. … There’s an election going on here, and Trump is in a situation where everyone he is competing with in the contest is able to talk till their hearts’ content about all the allegations, and he can’t speak about them. That’s a problem not for the administration of justice; that’s a problem for the principle that the public should have robust debate in connection with a political campaign and that we want our elections decided at the ballot box and not the courtroom.” Apparently, Judge Merchan doesn’t understand that there are other constitutional considerations that he must abide by within his courtroom, even if he and his Demo-fundraising daughter don’t like the defendant.

• Jew-hating Squadster steps in it: Someone should’ve advised Jew-hating Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Somalia) to sit this one out. Alas, though, the Pride of Minneapolis couldn’t help herself, so she came to the “defense” of her fellow Jew haters there on the Columbia University campus to decry the real villains of the Mostly Peaceful™ protests. “Throughout history,” the historian Omar intoned, “protests were co-opted and made to look bad so police and public leaders would shut them down. That’s what we are seeing now at Columbia University. The Columbia protesters have made clear their demands and want their school not to be complacent in the ongoing Genocide in Gaza. Public officials and media making this about anything else are inflaming the situation and need to bring calmness and sanity back.” So, you see, it’s not the Jew-hating pro-Hamas thugs who are to blame for “inflaming the situation” there at Columbia, but rather the “public officials and media.” Incidentally, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, was among the rabble who were suspended and detained last week for their hate-filled activities on campus.

• SHOCKER: Student loan scams are on the rise: Actions have consequences, even for decrepit Democrat presidents, and Joe Biden’s vote-buying student loan transfer scheme is no exception. Indeed, Biden’s continuing promises to unconstitutionally “forgive” the debts of deadbeat borrowers are coinciding with an increase in scams about just that very scheme. As the Washington Examiner reports: “The Federal Trade Commission is warning about scammers targeting people with promises to cancel their student loans, and critics say President Joe Biden fueled the fire himself. Biden has been pledging to cancel student loans since the 2020 presidential campaign and has rolled out a wide range of programs and proposals toward that end. While his actions so far have affected 4.3 million of the 44 million people with student debt, his headline-grabbing announcements have created an expectation that scammers are eager to exploit.” And so, it appears that yet another act of naked government redistributionism has attracted the attention of opportunistic fraudsters. Who could’ve imagined?

• Mistrial declared for AZ rancher: After days of deliberation, the judge in the second-degree murder trial of Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly declared a mistrial after the jury was unable to reach a decision. Kelly was accused of killing a Mexican national illegally in the country who was found shot to death on his property. According to Kelly, who had repeatedly reported the problem of illegal aliens on his land, he shot his rifle in the air to scare them off. Later, when he called the sheriff to report the incident, a dead Mexican national was found on his property. The prosecution argued that Kelly’s rifle was the weapon used to kill him. The defense contended that the Mexican national had a history of being deported, was known to have been involved in drug running, and was likely a victim of one of the drug cartels. The prosecution had earlier offered Kelly a deal to plead guilty to one count of negligent homicide, which he rejected. The state will now decide if it will seek a retrial or drop the issue.

• NYC high school soccer game canceled due to migrants: At a field in East Harlem, two high school boys soccer travel teams showed up for a scheduled game only to have it canceled due to a group of migrants who refused to leave the field. Erik Johansson, coach of one of the boys’ teams, observed, “I directly asked them to leave, and some of them kind of took it into consideration, but then four or five of them said, ‘You know what, f**k it, we don’t have to leave, we can do whatever we want.’” The game was scheduled for 5:00 PM, and roughly 40 high school boys showed up in uniforms ready to play. Despite this, the African migrants who spoke little English refused to leave, even after the police showed up. With the conflict escalating and time for playing the game running out, Johansson and the other coach agreed to cancel the match. “Even when the game is over,” he explained, “you don’t know if they’re waiting for you, so even if the cops kicked them out, it may not be over. So we just all agreed, this is too dangerous.” Johansson, who hails from Sweden, noted, “I have seen this before, [and] I know how bad it can get.”

• New York wind farm fails to launch: New York hit another setback for its planned offshore wind farm as the state’s Energy Research and Development Authority pulled out of contract negotiations with three different wind developers over turbine maker GE Vernova’s announcement that it could not provide 18-megawatt turbines. When the offshore wind farm project had first been drawn up, it was based on GE’s plan to produce 18-megawatt turbines. However, the company has since downgraded the size of the turbines it will produce to a maximum of 16.5 megawatts due to the high cost of repairs for the bigger turbines. GE’s renewable energy business lost $1.44 billion last year. So, despite massive federal government handouts from the Biden administration for its green energy agenda, the costs are so prohibitive that it is effectively impractical. Furthermore, this is despite New York regulators agreeing to pay a price of roughly $150 per megawatt hour to wind farm developers. To put that in perspective, the cost of natural gas-generated power comes in at around $30 per megawatt hour. New York residents will be forking out more of their hard-earned dollars to pay for leftist politicians’ enforcement of their climate cult ideology.

• SHOCKER II: Self-checkout thefts are on the rise: Speaking of the ingenuity, opportunism, and irrepressibility of America’s criminal class, it seems that all those self-checkout lines in the big-box grocery stores might be coming up on their freshness date. As CBS News reports: “Walmart is joining the ranks of retailers rethinking self-checkout, with the industry giant in the process of removing the self-service lanes at a store in Missouri. The return to registers staffed by humans at the Walmart store in Shrewsbury, a suburb of St. Louis, comes a month after Target announced only those buying 10 items or less could use the self-checkout lane at its stores, and Dollar General reduced self-checkout at thousands of its locations.” The latter didn’t mess around with half-measures. Instead, it removed the self-checkout option entirely at 300 locations most plagued by shoplifters. In a perverse way, it’s hard to blame folks, especially given how much more it costs to fill up a grocery cart in Joe Bidenflation’s America.

• Israel’s intel chief resigns: On Monday, Major General Aharon Haliva announced his resignation from serving as Israel’s head of military intelligence. Haliva pointed to Hamas’s surprise terrorist attack on October 7 and his failure to prevent it as the reason for his resignation. “The intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with," Haliva explained. "I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the horrible pain of the war with me forever.” Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant accepted Haliva’s resignation and thanked him for his 38 years of service. The timing of and the unprecedented scope of Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel on October 7 has given rise to a number of dubious conspiracy theories seeking to explain how the Israeli government could have been caught so off-guard. A number of other Israeli intelligence and security officials are expected to resign in the coming days and weeks. Meanwhile, Israel continues its war in Gaza as it works to bring justice and wipe out Hamas.

Headlines

• Judge rules against NY attorney general, says Trump’s $175 million judgment bond will stand (Fox News)

• Biden has his “very fine people on both sides” moment (Townhall)

• Columbia professors declare solidarity with student protesters and call for Minouche Shafik’s resignation (Washington Free Beacon) | School moves to hybrid classes for rest of semester (NY Post)

• Dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Yale, NYU (Washington Post)

• Harvard suspends pro-Palestinian student group (National Review)

• Supreme Court rejects Kari Lake’s voting machine lawsuit (Washington Examiner)

• PA middle school girl confronts school board when they ignore warnings of trans student assaulting others (RedState)

• Satire: Columbia University students reject a two-campus solution (Babylon Bee)

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