Cross-Examination

• Cali pols get a taste of their own soft-on-crime medicine: How many times do we have to tell these soft-on-crime Democrats not to leave valuables in their cars when they’re back home in their lawless districts? Such was the case last Thursday when California Democrat Congressman Adam Schiff’s car was burglarized in a downtown San Francisco parking garage. Schiff, the inveterate liar and likely senatorial replacement for the deceased Dianne Feinstein, was in town to raise money for his campaign when the thieves relieved him of his burdensome luggage. As the Associated Press reports: “With his formal clothing gone, Schiff ended up at a fundraising dinner Thursday for his U.S. Senate campaign dressed like he was headed to a Los Angeles Dodgers game — in shirt sleeves and an insulated vest. Others who attended the event were mostly decked out in suit jackets and ties.” Alas, Schifty Schiff must’ve missed the memo that the criminals are now in charge of The City by the Bay. Also last week, and far more chillingly, hard-left Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s gated mansion was broken into during a shift change in security. At the time, Bass was home with her daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild. Fortunately, the perpetrator, who was apparently targeting Bass, was nabbed without incident. He “jumped over the fence quickly and was able to break in through the back of the house,” according to interim LAPD Chief Dominic Choi. “And to my understanding, this happened so quickly that even if somebody had been there, he probably still would have been able to access the inside of the residence.”

• Nationwide protest arrests, while protesters want amnesty: After weeks of putting up with pro-Hamas/anti-Semitic protests on university campuses across the country, school administrators finally had enough. Over the weekend, law enforcement was sent in to crack down and remove these protesters’ tent cities, with hundreds of these student rabble-rousers getting arrested in the process. Meanwhile, beyond calling for an end to Israel and its war with Hamas, some of these student protesters have added a new demand: personal amnesty and the erasure of their arrest records. One student, a junior at Columbia University, serves as an example. Following her arrest by New York City police for her refusal to heed their instructions and disperse the protest tent city set up on Columbia’s campus, she not only found herself suspended from the school but also sporting an arrest record. Suffering the repercussions of her ill-conceived anti-Semitic activism, she is one of many activist students who now want their record wiped clean. She fears how her activism will impact her future career opportunities. This may be the only lesson she learns during her time at Columbia, but decisions have consequences. Or, as the kids say today, “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” Still, Joe Biden isn’t exactly setting a good example, “forgiving” student loans as he has.

• “We will not comply”: Joe Biden’s Department of Education recently published a Title IX rewrite that effectively erases women since it expands the definition of women to include males who identify as female. The states of Florida and Oklahoma announced their rejection of the change. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis put it bluntly: “We are not going to let Joe Biden try to inject men into women’s activities. We will not comply.” DeSantis’s comment came after Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. sent a letter directing that “no educational institution [in the state] should begin implementing any changes,” as he argued that the Biden administration was trying “to gaslight the country into believing that biological sex no longer has any meaning.” Diaz added, “As legal challenges unfold, and the Department has the opportunity to analyze this rule, I will release guidance on how to implement it in a way that is consistent with our goal to keep Florida #1 in education.” In Oklahoma, State Superintendent Ryan Walters sent a letter forbidding “any district policy changes based on the new Title IX regulations” due to the new regulations being “illegal and unconstitutional.” Walters reasoned that the Biden administration’s Title IX rewrites “violate the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedures Act, and longstanding civil rights protections for women and girls.” The Education Department, he said, “has not been given the legislative or judicial authority to redefine ‘sex,’” so he expects “there will be litigation filed soon challenging the validity of these rules.” Both Florida and Oklahoma have recently passed legislation protecting female-only spaces.

• First bank failure of 2024: Federal regulators seized Republic Bank on Friday. The Philadelphia-based bank’s failure marks the first of 2024. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) explained to Republic Bank depositors that they “can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards” and that “checks drawn on Republic Bank will continue to be processed and loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.” Fulton Financial will be taking over the bank’s 32 branches located across New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. As of January 31 of this year, Republic Bank had $6 billion in assets and $4 billion in deposits, making it the fourth high-profile bank to fail since the spring of last year. Silicon Valley and Signature Banks failed in March 2023, which was followed by First Republic’s failure two months later. With total combined assets of $440 billion, those banks marked the second-, third-, and fourth-largest failures in the Great Depression. The Federal Reserve denies that its increase in interest rates was responsible for any of these bank failures.

• WH palace coup fails to oust Baghdad Bob: They say it didn’t happen, but one afternoon of watching Karine “The Binder” Jean-Pierre fumble her way through a White House press conference suggests otherwise. The “it,” in this case, was an attempt to defenestrate Jean-Pierre, thereby relieving Joe Biden’s press secretary of the vital role she plays within the administration: namely, behaving with such jaw-slackening stupidity that she makes her boss look sentient by comparison. According to the New York Post: “Top aides to President Biden secretly hatched a plan this past fall to replace White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre by recruiting outside allies to nudge her out the door. … Jean-Pierre, who made [a tiresome version of woke] history in May 2022 by becoming the first black and first openly gay person to hold the position, had developed the exasperating habit of reading canned answers directly from a binder to reporters at her regular briefings — offering what her superiors viewed as a less-than-compelling pitch for the 81-year-old Biden as he readied his re-election campaign.” And here we thought she was doing Biden a favor by behaving so incompetently. The Post continues, “De facto White House communications chief Anita Dunn, 66, the wife of Biden personal attorney Bob Bauer, told colleagues she had decided to call in prominent Democrats to explain to Jean-Pierre, 49, that the time was ripe to move on.” Lies! Lies! says KJP’s errand boy, Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates. “Karine was never approached by anyone with such a message. She spends four hours preparing every day.” Welp, that settles it then.

• Another credit-rating agency downgrades China’s financial outlook: Perhaps Bidenomics isn’t just an American thing. According to Fitch Ratings, a leading provider of credit ratings and analysis for global capital markets, China’s financial situation isn’t as glorious as the ChiComs might want us to believe. “Fitch is worried about Chinese finance,” writes The Epoch Times’s Milton Ezrati. “Earlier this month, while reaffirming China’s still high A+ rating, the credit-rating agency downgraded what it calls the country’s ‘outlook.’ In this, Fitch has followed another rating agency, Moody’s, which did the same thing last December.” The downgrade, however, still allows China to keep its high credit rating. Ezrati continues: “Predictably, Beijing’s finance ministry objected, asserting that Chinese economics and finance are in fine shape and likely to improve. None of this should come as a surprise to readers of this column, which has, over the last 18–24 months, chronicled and explained China’s severe economic and financial challenges. If anything, Fitch and Moody’s did not go far enough.”

• Seinfeld blames the Left for killing comedy: In a recent interview published in The New Yorker, longtime funnyman Jerry Seinfeld excoriated the political Left for its attack on humor. Noting how, in years past, Americans looked to comedy like TV sitcoms as a needed escape, Seinfeld fretted that those days are gone. “It used to be, you would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, oh, ‘Cheers’ is on. Oh, ‘MAS*H’ is on. Oh, ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ is on. ‘All in the Family’ is on. You just expected there’ll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight.” He then observed: “Well, guess what — where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people. When you write a script, and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups — ‘Here’s our thought about this joke. Well, that’s the end of your comedy.” Elon Musk responded to the interview by posting on X, “Make comedy legal again!” Indeed.

• Trump leads Biden 49-43 in latest CNN poll: The 2024 presidential election is still six months away, but if the Democrats really did try to ensure that Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee, it might go down as one of the face-plantiest own goals in American political history. We say this as a new CNN poll provides the most alarming numbers yet for Joe Biden in his rematch with Trump. Indeed, the poll’s six-point margin in favor of Trump is a worsening for Biden from the previous version of the poll, taken in January, which had Trump ahead 49-45. Biden’s problem, though, isn’t just Trump’s lead, which is now well outside the margin of error; it’s that he’s far below the 50% threshold that incumbents consider safe because incumbents know that late-deciding voters tend to break for the challenger. The numbers are even more grim for Biden when third-party candidates are added. With RFK Jr., Cornel West, and Jill Stein in the mix, Trump leads Biden by nine points, 42-33. Perhaps the most revealing (and alarming, for Biden supporters) question in the poll found that 55% of Americans now view Trump’s presidency as a success, while 61% view Biden’s presidency as a failure. Interestingly, time appears to have at least partially healed the wounds of January 6. As CNN notes, “In a January 2021 poll taken just before Trump left office and days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, 55% considered his time as president a failure.” It’s remarkable what a bit of distance can do to one’s perspective on presidential success and failure.

Headlines

• Biden complains about “disinformation” — while spreading disinformation at White House Correspondents’ Dinner (Daily Wire)

• Biden says “I’m happy to debate" Trump (Daily Wire)

• House GOP raises alarm over Biden family’s alleged business with Qatari officials (Daily Wire)

• South Dakota governor writes in new book about killing her dog (AP)

• FCC reinstates net neutrality (Fox Business)

• Ford reports loss on every EV sold in first quarter (Washington Examiner)

• GWU protester carries sign with Nazi "final solution” call for extermination of Jews (NY Post)

• Sheryl Sandberg’s new film testifies to Hamas’s brutal sexual violence on October 7 (Times of Israel)

• Who funds Hamas? You do, thanks to Joe Biden (PJ Media)

• Olympic officials announce that Palestine will be represented as a country at the Olympics (Not the Bee)

• Veteran CNN anchor Poppy Harlow to exit network (NY Post)

• New York Democrats pass “welfare for journalists” credit program (PM)

• Britain’s NHS is banning terms like “chestfeeding” and creating rules to ensure the “privacy and protection” of women (Not the Bee)

• U.S. intelligence community pronounces Putin totally not involved in ordering Alexei Navalny’s prison death (RedState)

• Humor: To avoid falling, Biden to traverse lawn in giant hamster ball (Babylon Bee)

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