Politics

• Trump visits Capitol Hill for early birthday celebration: Three years is a political lifetime, but still: Who’d have believed that in the wake of January 6, 2021, Donald Trump would be where he is today, the unquestioned leader of a party poised to take back the White House he so ingloriously left? Certainly, none of the congressional Republicans whispering to reporters that they didn’t want him around anymore. And yet there Trump was yesterday, back on Capitol Hill for the first time since J6, cajoling Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene to play nice and cutting a day-early 78th birthday cake with Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans. As The Washington Times reports: “Trump revved up congressional Republicans and made amends with former opponents in a whirlwind swing through Capitol Hill on Thursday that cemented his position as party leader. Mr. Trump held what lawmakers described as a ‘pep rally’ for House Republicans, followed by a ‘warm’ and ‘upbeat’ meeting with Senate Republicans.” Democrats and their Leftmedia trucklings are still wrestling with Trump’s political resurrection, even as their guy, the Meander in Chief, continues to embarrass our nation in front of the world. And yet the best they can do is to trumpet Trump’s age with headlines calling him the “potential future oldest president,” while at the same time trying to ignore Biden’s ever-advancing decrepitude. Good luck with that.

• Larry Hogan withholds support from Trump after endorsement in Maryland Senate race (Washington Examiner)

• Big Guy says he won’t pardon sonny boy: Yesterday, Joe Biden reiterated his earlier statement that he won’t pardon his son Hunter or commute his sentence — whatever that sentence may be — for his three felony gun-crime convictions. As the Washington Examiner reports: “The president’s comments mark his first on-camera remarks on the topic following Hunter Biden’s Tuesday conviction … which he characterized as a fair trial. His immediate statement following the verdict confirmed his decision not to pardon his son, following promises made by White House officials that he would not do so.” This isn’t a profile in courage or a show of respect for the Rule of Law. Instead, it’s an acknowledgment of political reality. Were Joe Biden to pardon his son for crimes that it took a friendly jury just three hours of deliberation to convict upon, it would expose Biden’s rank cronyism and cement the sentiment among so many Americans that Washington, DC, is a rigged town and our “justice” system has two tiers. Still: We’ll see if the Big Guy sings the same tune on Wednesday, November 6.

• Hunter Biden drops laptop lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani (NY Post)

• Beware the looming “theocracy” of the Right: The Left wouldn’t be the Left if it weren’t occasionally sounding the false alarm about “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE!” And, true to form, there was The Washington Post, divining “what the Christian right wants from a second Trump term” and warning us that “Religious conservatives see opportunities for fresh gains after a series of victories during Trump’s first term” while “Rights advocates see a dangerous blurring of” —wait for it! — “church and state.” To be clear, the Left is as theocratic as any bunch; it’s just that they’ve swapped out God for their own earthly idols. Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa names some of these idols: “In Trump’s America, women will live in fear of having their pregnancies monitored or facing punishment if they have an abortion; teachers are told what books they can teach in the classroom and grown adults who they can love and marry.” Increasingly, as the facts continue to desert them, fear is all these desperate Democrats have.

• Psst, Clarence Thomas took trips: As a Right-thinking black man, Supreme Court Clarence Thomas is a particular object of ire for left-wingers. Cue the Democrats, who unearthed three more trips Thomas took that were paid for by GOP “megadonor” Harlan Crow, a longtime friend of Thomas. The previously undisclosed trips in 2017, 2019, and 2021 supposedly show that Thomas is unethical or something. “As a result of our investigation and subpoena authorization, we are providing the American public greater clarity on the extent of ethical lapses by Supreme Court justices and the need for ethics reform,” a haughty Senator Dick Durbin lectured in a statement. An attorney for Thomas explained that the trips fell under the “personal hospitality exemption.” This whole charade started last year, yet no one has presented evidence that the trips corrupted Thomas or influenced his rulings. It’s all insinuation. If only Democrats had one iota of concern for the Biden Crime Family’s influence-peddling operation.

• Biden mocked for wandering away from world leaders during photoshoot (Daily Wire)

Second Amendment

• ATF takes two shots: “The Supreme Court on Friday struck down a Trump-era ban on bump stocks, a gun accessory that allows semi-automatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns and was used in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history,” reports the Associated Press. The 6-3 decision was a rebuke of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which overreached its authority to outlaw something Congress had not expressly banned. One might argue that bump stocks were created to circumvent the law effectively banning machine guns, but that’s an argument for the legislature, not the ATF, which changed its mind after a decade in any case. As Justice Clarence Thomas explained, the device does not literally violate the law: “A bump stock merely reduces the amount of time that elapses between separate functions of the trigger.” The ATF also lost in a case over pistol braces. A U.S. District Court ruled that the Biden ATF’s effort to ban “assault weapons” via strict regulations on some devices is “unlawful” and “illegitimate.” In short, the ATF, under whichever president, is not free to write laws.

• Dispatches from the People’s Republic of California: For the longest time, California Governor Gavin Newsom was waging a shadow campaign behind Joe Biden in the event that the president could somehow be convinced to step aside for Kamala Harris, who could then be convinced to step aside for Newsom. But we haven’t heard much from Newsom of late, and that’s probably because all the news coming out of California is so awful. Heck, the crime blotter from Oakland alone could fill a magazine. Here’s a case in point from X poster Kevin Dalton: “3 criminals attempted to break into a 77 year old man’s home in Oakland. He shot and killed one of the felons. Naturally, since it’s Gavin Newsom’s lawless California, where the criminals are in charge, the homeowner has been arrested for murder.” As Not the Bee adds, “According to the report, three criminals drove a stolen car up to his home armed with a crowbar and a replica firearm. The elderly man shot one of the criminals and held his gun on the remaining two until police arrived.” So much for the fundamental human right of self-defense.

Good News

• Southern Poverty Smear Center announces massive layoffs: From our Schadenfreude Files, we note the following post from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s union: “More than 60 SPLC Union members, including five Union stewards and our Union Chair, were informed that they would be losing their jobs. We are devastated for our Union and for our colleagues.” As Not the Bee reminds us, the SLPC “was born out of the civil rights movement of the 60s and has since evolved into a corrupt far-left radical hate group that pushes gender ideology and slanders normal conservative organizations like Moms for Liberty as ‘hate groups’ in turn.” Disgraced SLPC founder Morris Dees “perfected the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton race-bait shakedown model and pulled in hundreds of millions for SPLC,” as our Mark Alexander noted recently. “JoAnn Wypijewski of the leftist Nation magazine described him as a ‘millionaire huckster.’ According to Harper’s Ken Silverstein, the SPLC exists ‘to separate wealthy liberals from their money.’ And Dees used those funds to build his ‘Poverty Palace’ offices and exotic luxury home.”

• PragerU videos might be coming to a school near you: The Left ruins everything it touches. So says conservative author and thinker Dennis Prager, and he’s right. Art, music, journalism, sports, comedy, education, medicine, movies, the military, the Boy Scouts, free speech, social media, voting — everything. The Washington Post, though, is deathly afraid that folks are listening to Prager or, even worse, that children are listening to him. Yesterday, a pair of the Post’s journalists sounded the alarm: “A privately funded effort to use disputed videos to teach conservative values in public schools is gaining traction, as Louisiana recently became the sixth state to endorse educational materials produced by Prager University. PragerU is not a university but a nonprofit that produces short videos that push patriotism and conservative views of history, race, sex and gender, among other topics. Since last year, Florida, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Montana and Arizona have also announced partnerships with PragerU under which the nonprofit’s lessons become state-sanctioned, optional teaching materials for public schools.” Good for these six states. What the Left rightly sees here is an existential threat to its monopoly on educational indoctrination.

National Security

• Biden protects more than 860,000 migrants from deportation with “temporary” amnesty (Breitbart)

• Pentagon affirms it won’t install Chinese-manufactured solar panels (Washington Examiner)

• Pentagon wants to feed troops “experimental” lab-grown meat to “reduce CO₂ footprint” (Washington Free Beacon)

Economy

• Supreme Court, siding with Starbucks, makes it harder for NLRB to win court orders in labor disputes (CNBC)

• Tesla shareholders vote to reinstate Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package (CNBC)

• U.S.-Saudi petrodollar pact ends after 50 years (TipRanks)

Culture

• Federal judge blocks Biden Title IX rule in four states (Fox News)

• Archaeologists discovered the first all-male child sacrifice site in Mesoamerica and told WaPo that we shouldn’t judge (Not the Bee)

• Everything is racist: Racism can spark depression and anxiety in Black adolescents, study finds (Washington Post) | Everything is classist: A landslide in Wyoming deepens the disparities between the ultra-wealthy and local workers (NBC News)

World

• Hezbollah No. 2 leader reportedly taken out in airstrike (RedState)

• Putin offers truce if Ukraine exits Russian-claimed areas and drops NATO bid; Kyiv calls it “absurd” (AP)

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