Cross-Examination

• SCOTUS sides with free speech and the NRA: In a little win for Liberty, the Supreme Court ruled late this morning that the National Rifle Association can pursue its “unlawful coercion” case against a New York state official’s effort to get companies to end their association with the nation’s leading defender of Second Amendment rights. And the decision wasn’t even close — in fact, it was unanimous. The NRA is a gun-rights organization, but the justices agreed that its First Amendment rights were violated when Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, pressured insurance companies not to do business with the NRA over its political stance. Writing on behalf of the unanimous court, lefty Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.” Bully for Liberty!

• A non-unanimous unanimous verdict? Donald Trump’s legal fate is now in the hands of a deeply conflicted Demo-donor judge and a Manhattan jury pulled from a pool that in 2020 voted 9-to-1 for Joe Biden. This morning, as Fox News reports, “Jurors sought clarification on the extent to which they could make inferences based on witness testimony. The jurors cannot have a copy of the jury instructions inside their chambers, meaning they must send notes to Merchan requesting clarifications.” That seems oddly inefficient to us, especially given that the rest of the world can view the jury instructions. Judge Merchan issued bizarre instructions to the jury, in which he essentially tells the 12 that they don’t have to be unanimous in their unanimity but can instead pick from a buffet table of “predicate” crimes so long as they agree that Trump falsified his business records. “This is anything but standard,” says former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. “It’s the antithesis of standard. The idea that they do not have to agree on what the other crime is. We spent six weeks wondering, ‘What is the other crime?’ And in the end, the thud we get is this.”

• Desperate Democrats set the stage for illegal voting: By now, we all know why Joe Biden has kept our southern border wide open: Democrats don’t procreate above the replacement rate, so they need to build their base by other means. Brown people like free stuff, they cynically surmised years ago, and they’ve been the Open Borders Party ever since. The rotten fruits of this calculation might show themselves yet this fall. As The Daily Signal reports: “A new study has revealed that roughly 10% to 27% of noncitizens living in the U.S. are illicitly registered to vote, which could result in up to 2.7 million illegal votes being cast in the November elections.” The study notes that the 2022 U.S. Census listed approximately 19 million adult noncitizens living in the country. (The real number is much higher.) “Given their voter registration rates,” the report continues, “this means that about 2 million to 5 million of them are illegally registered to vote.” In a presidential election that was decided four years ago by 43,000 votes spread across three swing states, these numbers would likely be decisive, both for the presidency and for control of Congress.

• Another illegal commits murder: Earlier this month, police found the burning body of a woman near Martinsburg, West Virginia. She had been murdered, and the suspect in the crime was soon arrested. He happened to be an illegal alien from El Salvador with a criminal rap sheet that included several assaults committed in Virginia. Furthermore, this El Salvadorian national had done 22 years in prison in his home country for a slew of crimes, including robbery, sexual assault, and murder. After getting out of prison in 2021, he apparently headed north and illegally crossed into the U.S. on his way to Canada, where he sought asylum in 2023. Canada denied his claim and sent him packing, and he has evidently been wandering around the U.S. ever since. Thanks to Joe Biden’s open border, a woman who should be alive has been murdered, and three other people in Virginia have been assaulted. This is what happens when a political party prioritizes maintaining its own political power over and against protecting those citizens it was elected to serve.

• Kidney equity: The Biden administration wants to subject Americans awaiting a kidney transplant to a new DEI-based metric designed to eliminate alleged historic “racial inequities” by prioritizing racial minorities for available organs. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra announced that the agency would implement its new DEI-based kidney transplant pilot program in 90 of the nation’s 257 transplant hospitals by January 2025. The program uses a point-based quota system to track a hospital’s transplants. A successful transplant earns the hospital one point, but the new system will add an additional 0.2 points to a hospital’s transplant quota if the transplant recipient is a low-income individual. Hospitals that meet the quota can receive as much as $8,000 per transplant, whereas those that fail to meet the quota may have to pay out up to $2,000 per transplant. Becerra justified this biased system by claiming that racial inequities in the transplant industry are indicative of racial injustice. “Black Americans disproportionately struggle with life-threatening kidney disease,” he asserted, “yet they receive a smaller percentage of kidney transplants. The Biden-Harris administration is taking concrete steps to remove racial bias when calculating wait times and rooting out profiteering and inequity in the transplant process.”

• DOJ tracked Moms for Liberty as a hate group: In a rigged town with homogenous juries, the prevailing political party can operate with impunity, and that’s precisely what’s happening these days in our nation’s capital. That explains why the Biden Department of Justice, despite having been sternly talked to by House and Senate Republicans for having targeted pro-lifers and “radical-traditionalist Catholics,” can nonetheless continue to target conservative organizations as “hate” groups. As The Daily Wire reports: “A Department of Justice unit dedicated to ‘preventing and responding to’ ‘hate crimes’ tracked the conservative education policy group Moms for Liberty in the same manner it tracked the Ku Klux Klan, according to internal emails obtained by The Daily Wire. Moms For Liberty was tracked by the DOJ’s Community Relations Service (CRS) alongside symbols such as the noose, the Confederate flag, and the swastika. The only other groups whose movements were similarly tracked, the emails show, were the Ku Klux Klan, a second KKK-style group, and the Oath Keepers.” Yes, Merrick Garland’s DOJ has lumped Moms for Liberty onto the same watch list as the KKK.

• Quick path to med license in Cali: California lawmakers are pushing a bill that would expedite medical licensing in the Golden State “for an applicant who demonstrates that they intend to provide gender-affirming health care and gender-affirming mental health care.” Under the deceptive euphemism “gender-affirming care,” medical professionals who engage in distributing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or mutilation surgeries would qualify for expedited medical licensing by the state medical board. This flies in the face of new studies out of Europe and particularly the United Kingdom, which show that so-called “gender-affirming care” is anything but helpful and, indeed, is dangerous to children. As Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, observes, “The problem is that [California lawmakers are] doing backflips to make it easier and easier for children to get these treatments” when they should be making it harder. This is all about pushing a radical ideology and political agenda over and against sound medical ethics and scientific evidence.

• The apostate Episcopals: What one idolizes, one worships. And what one idolizes, one promotes. The Episcopal Church used to worship Jesus Christ, but it seems that with every passing year, it drifts further and further away from worshiping Jesus. In His place, the Episcopal Church has embraced the worship of the world and, increasingly, the sin of deviant sexuality. In a demonstration of this reality, the Episcopal Church, whose history is rooted in England with the Anglican Church, has long used a shield emblazoned with the cross of St. George as its official logo. Now, to celebrate “Pride Month,” the church has incorporated the “Pride flag” into the shield. In releasing its new logo, the Episcopal Church stated, “In affirmation and celebration of The Episcopal Church’s LGBTQ+ members, the Office of Communication is pleased to unveil a new Pride shield available online for churchwide use.” Jesus stated, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Publicly expressing love for sin is the opposite of keeping those commandments.

Headlines

• Justice Alito rejects calls to recuse from January 6 cases, denies involvement in flying upside-down flag (National Review)

• Rolling Stone’s “clickbait” attack on Justice Barrett (National Review)

• DOJ reaches settlement with ex-FBI “lovebirds” caught in anti-Trump text scandal (Fox News)

• Jill Biden sells fear on “The View” appearance: “We will lose our rights and freedoms” (Daily Wire)

• House Ethics Committee opens investigation into Rep. Henry Cuellar (NBC News)

• San Fran removes controversial “Appeal to Heaven” flag from Civic Center Plaza (San Francisco Chronicle)

• Al Qaeda, Iran praise left-wing protests on college campuses (Daily Wire)

• Less than half of young adults “proud” to be American (Washington Examiner)

• California setting up its next energy disaster (Hot Air)

• Manhunt! Another donut driver harms “Pride” mural (Hot Air)

• Finally, a “Visibility Day” for the people the LGBTQ movement finds inconvenient (Daily Signal)

• Humor: Kangaroos ask people to stop unfairly comparing them to U.S. justice system (Babylon Bee)

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