Cross-Examination

• Judge postpones Trump classified docs trial indefinitely: Hoooo-boy, is this one ever making the Trump-hating, lawfare-loving Left lose its, er, excrement. Aileen Cannon, the Trump-appointed judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, has postponed the former (and perhaps future) president’s classified documents trial, which had been set to begin on May 20, with no new date for its resumption. As Judge Cannon explained, “The Court … determines that finalization of a trial date at this juncture — before resolution of the myriad and interconnected pre-trial and [Classified Information Procedures Act] issues remaining and forthcoming — would be imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court, critical CIPA issues, and additional pretrial and trial preparations necessary to present this case to a jury.” This doesn’t mean Judge Cannon’s courtroom will grind to a halt, though. On the contrary, she’s scheduled a hearing for today, a hearing for May 20, and another for May 22 to hear defendant Waltine Nauta’s motion to dismiss. In addition, as Fox News reports, she’s “scheduled deadlines for reports on May 31, June 10, June 17, and another nonevidentiary hearing on a motion to dismiss on June 21, ‘based on unlawful appointment and funding of special counsel.’” This, of course, is Hatchet Jack Smith’s trial, and it’s the one that legal experts believe most imperils the former president. And that’s why the news is especially delicious for those who think the conduct of lawfare against one’s political opponents is a grave threat to our Republic and those who see two tiers of justice at work in the dueling classified docs cases of Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

• House budget puts annual net cost of illegal immigration at $150B: With all the mainstream media’s attention having been drawn to the leftist rabble running roughshod over our nation’s college campuses, we seem to have taken our eye off of what was heretofore the number one issue of American voters: illegal immigration. And, come to think of it, perhaps that’s by design, given that the issue is a political killer for the Democrats. Still, that doesn’t mean things on the border have gotten any better or that our country is somehow binding up the wounds from this unprecedented invasion. Indeed, some of those wounds will be felt in perpetuity. As The Washington Times reports: “Each illegal immigrant costs the U.S. more per year than it spends on the average food stamp recipient or Medicaid beneficiary, according to an analysis by the House Budget Committee. … The total net cost to the U.S. is more than $150 billion a year, with the lion’s share of that going to educate children who are here illegally themselves or whose parents are here without authorization, the Budget Committee says, citing data from the Federation for American Immigration Reform.” Making matters worse, Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington says that the $150 billion figure is a “conservative estimate.” Furthermore, he says the burden will be borne mostly by state and local governments, “who according to the data spend more than $73 billion a year on education, nearly $22 billion on law enforcement and almost $19 billion on medical care.”

• House seeks to prevent illegals skewing electoral power: Over 10 million illegal aliens have entered the U.S. since Joe Biden took office. That total is greater than the individual population of 41 states. Given this reality, a bill has been introduced to the House Rules Committee dubbed the Equal Representation Act. This bill, if it became law, would change the Census Bureau’s decennial census questionnaire to include a question regarding citizenship status, which Donald Trump also tried to do. Furthermore, using this data would exclude foreign nationals from being counted for apportionment of congressional representation and the Electoral College. In other words, the legislation would prevent the watering down of American citizens’ electoral representation rights. It would also make the Democrats’ support for open border policy and illegal immigration moot. Their interest is not really about enfranchising illegal aliens. Instead, it’s about building their electoral power by counting illegals. Unfortunately, given the current makeup of Congress, even if this bill were to pass the House, it would go nowhere in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Maybe Democrats will suggest a three-fifths compromise.

• Pro-Hamas scum deface NYC WWI monument: With apologies to Dale Carnegie, these people are neither winning friends nor influencing people. We saw the latest example of this on Monday in New York City, where a band of filthy Jew-hating, Hamas-loving leftist rabble vandalized a magnificent World War I memorial. As Fox News reports: “The 107th United States Infantry monument, located along Central Park on the Upper East Side, depicts seven U.S. Army soldiers in the throes of battle in September 1918, as they burst through the Hindenburg Line — the last and strongest of the German army’s defense. On Monday, as anti-Israel protests were underway in the area near Hunter College and the star-studded Met Gala, demonstrators placed pro-Palestinian stickers on the memorial, spray-painted ‘Free Gaza’ and burned the American flag at the site.” That’s right — they burned an American flag. You know, just in case there was any doubt that these dirty hordes don’t just hate the Jewish state but the American one, too. Come to think of it, perhaps they are influencing people — but in all the wrong ways. Not even a Democrat administration could look upon such an action and be moved favorably by it. Welp, they’ve defiled a monument to our nation’s long-dead war heroes. I guess the only solution is to put more pressure on Israel. Even the city’s Democrat mayor, Eric Adams, was disgusted by what he saw. As Fox News adds: “Adams, whose uncle died while serving in Vietnam at age 19, offered $5,000 of his own money to catch the vandals. NYPD Crime Stoppers is offering another $10,000 as a reward.”

• Feds require SC to give foreign nationals voter registration: Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019 requires all federal agencies to “promote access to voting,” which in practice has become little other than a get-out-the-vote campaign for Democrats. As Dave Craig, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Government Accountability, contends, “This is clearly weaponization of the government for a partisan purpose.” According to South Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, the agency must provide all foreign nationals with voter registration forms when they apply for Medicaid. A spokesman for the Palmetto State’s DHHS, Jeff Leieritz, explained: “SCDHHS does not believe the state Medicaid agency should have a role in voter registration. However, absent the legal authority to make this change, SCDHHS remains required by federal law to provide voter registration application forms with each Medicaid application.” State Representative Adam Morgan observed that the Biden administration’s requirement only confuses foreign nationals who obviously have no right to vote. “The refugee was actually confused,” Morgan stated. “They were like, ‘Am I supposed to fill this out?’ They asked a relative, and the relative is a citizen who said, ‘No, you can’t fill this out. You’re not a citizen.’ [The refugee] said, ‘Why are they giving this out to noncitizens?’ And we were, like, ‘Exactly! That’s insane.’” The fact of the matter is that none of the federal agencies should be involved in any way in an effort to “promote access to voting.” Period.

• Colorado requires teachers to lie to students by using “preferred” pronouns: It seems like only yesterday when the Left was using “science” like a truncheon upon the Right, raining blows upon our noggins about climate change and evolution and stem cell research and such things. Times have changed, though, and radically so. And credit goes to the left-leaning New Republic, whose Eric Armstrong way back in 2017 disabused his colleagues of their belief that they’ve taken the scientific high ground. The latest example of this comes from East California Colorado, whose Democrat-run legislature passed, and whose homosexual governor, Jared Polis, signed into law, a statute requiring schoolteachers to use their students’ “preferred” pronouns while at the same time cutting the kids’ parents out of the communication loop. “So,” as RedState’s Ward Clark derisively observes, “if we are to take this law at its face value, if a student comes in and claims that their new chosen name is ‘Beeblebrox Latimore XXabraxus Nightwobbler,’ and that their pronouns are ‘dun’ and ‘dunmore,’ then the teacher must adopt a grave expression and take the young lunatic seriously.” Don’t laugh. The way things are going, Beeblebrox might run for president one day.

• TikTok sues: The China-based company TikTok filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government on Tuesday over the recently passed law requiring the social media company to divest all its U.S. assets or be banned. The bipartisan Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act gives TikTok 12 months to divest or be shut down. TikTok asserts that “the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025, silencing the 170 million Americans who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere” and is therefore unconstitutional. TikTok further claims, “The Chinese government has made clear that it would not permit a divestment of the recommendation engine that is a key to the success of TikTok in the United States.” Well, that statement belies the fact that TikTok is indeed controlled by Beijing, which TikTok had previously denied. A member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, Jacob Helberg, noted that point as he rejected TikTok’s claim of the law being unconstitutional. “TikTok's argument goes against over 100 years of legal precedent,” Helberg said. “It also once again fails to address the central national security question at hand: Bytedance does the bidding of the CCP. TikTok’s ties to the CCP are no longer hypothetical, but are a well-documented pattern corroborated by dozens of company leaks, former executives and whistleblowers.”

• Is America in the midst of a mental health crisis? There are some disturbing data from a recent analysis conducted by FAIR Health, which found that the number of mental health diagnoses rose by a whopping 40% from 2019 to 2023. The analysis notes that such diagnoses rose in every age demographic, with those 65 and older showing the highest rise, increasing some 57%. The primary mental health issue was generalized anxiety disorder. The likely culprit for this jump in mental health issues is the COVID pandemic and the subsequent negative social and economic consequences of the government’s response to that event. But there is also another thing to point out: the spreading of radical leftist anti-American and anti-West ideology across the country that promotes victimhood as virtue. Rather than looking at and being thankful for the many blessings we have in this country, the narrative has become almost wholly negative all the time. This can’t be good for one’s mental state when, rather than looking toward the future with high hopes, one is merely waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Headlines

• Judge slaps down Trump’s mistrial request in “hush money” case as Stormy Daniels testimony rocks court (RedState)

• Georgia Court of Appeals to reconsider Trump’s case for disqualifying Fani Willis (Not the Bee)

• Biden tells Americans to “never forget” Hamas atrocities, denounces rising anti-Semitism on campuses (National Review)

• Thirty-three arrested as DC police clear George Washington University encampment (Washington Post)

• Bernie Sanders, a Jew, blocks Senate resolution condemning campus anti-Semitism (National Review)

• U.S. paused bomb shipments to Israel over concerns about Rafah invasion (National Review)

• Boy Scouts to officially change their name after bankruptcy, sexual abuse woes (NY Post)

• House Democrats don’t call for Cuellar resignation after indictment (Roll Call)

• Georgia governor signs election changes into law (NBC News)

• Gavin Newsom’s claim of record-high California tourism spending undermined by inflation adjustment (National Review)

• Girl sues Biden’s Education Department after male who competed against her allegedly made rape threats with no punishment (Daily Wire)

• Satire: For greater inclusivity, Boy Scouts of America removes every word in name except “of” (Babylon Bee)

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