Judicial Benchmarks

• Weak-kneed SCOTUS punts again: Yesterday, the Supreme Court disappointed us by refusing to rule on a crucial First Amendment case, Murthy v. Missouri, instead meekly claiming that the plaintiffs lacked standing. And late this morning, the High Court continued to disappoint, giving Joe Biden and his fellow anti-lifers a victory in Moyle v. United States, an abortion case from Idaho in which the federal government argued that emergency rooms in the state could carry out abortion procedures despite the state’s ban on the procedure. Federalism schmederalism, huh? As the Washington Examiner reports, “The decision … marks a blow to the six states that have enacted near-total abortion bans with narrow exceptions for life-threatening circumstances for the mother.” Decisions in two other cases also came down this morning: The Court rejected Purdue Pharma’s proposed $6 billion bankruptcy settlement in a narrow 5-4 decision regarding the company’s culpability in the opioid epidemic, and in a bit of good news, the Court struck down an onerous and unconstitutional EPA rule setting unrealistic limits on power plant pollution.

• SCOTUS strips the SEC of a critical enforcement tool in fraud cases (AP)

Politics

• NY Times poised to fact-check Trump and spin for Biden: No doubt a bit down in the dumps about Donald Trump’s four-point lead over Joe Biden in their latest presidential poll, The New York Times is nonetheless poised to do everything possible to help Joe Biden in the aftermath of tonight’s debate. And the paper’s not even trying to hide it. “2 Candidates. No Audience. 29 New York Times Fact-Checkers,” reads the headline of an article in Monday’s edition, while the subhead makes clear just how committed they are to writing this particular first draft of history: “We’ll have 60 Times reporters,” they crow. There are several factors to consider before we decide what to fact-check, says Margaret Ho, the editor of the Times’s Washington bureau. “The frequency or popularity of the claim plays a role. And we pay close attention to news moments when people are trading claims and counterclaims. We also look for instances when unsubstantiated information is the norm. If something is skyrocketing across social media, we’ll check it.” Translation: If Donald Trump knocks Joe Biden’s block off, we’ll come to the rescue.

• These are the rules Trump and Biden agreed to follow in CNN presidential debate (Washington Examiner)

• Elon Musk defies CNN’s demands to censor debate streams on X (Daily Fetched)

• Humor: White House warns public any videos of Biden looking confused and senile during debate will be deepfakes (Babylon Bee)

• Trump at 2-to-1 to win the presidency: Nate Silver makes no bones about his left-leaning politics, but nor does he tend to let those politics get in the way of the numbers. “I don’t want Trump to win the election,” he readily admits, “and I’d never consider voting for him.” And yet, as he launched his presidential election model yesterday, he manned up to deliver the “grim” news: According to his data, Donald Trump has a 65.7% of winning the Electoral College and a 49% chance of winning the popular vote. Compare this to Silver’s final forecast in 2020, in which he put Joe Biden’s odds of winning at 89-10. Biden supporters hoping against hope that Trump’s 34-count “felony” conviction would tip the scales in their guy’s favor will also be disappointed. Said Silver, “I just don’t think it’s so obvious that there are strong gravitational forces pulling in Biden’s direction. In a time of extremely high polarization, elections tend toward being 50/50 affairs, and it’s a challenge to win the 50/50 races when you’re at a disadvantage in the Electoral College.”

• Shot: Trump could actually lose Florida. Here’s why. (Bloomberg) | Chaser: Biden campaign chair comes clean: No, Florida is not in play (Hot Air)

• House votes to defund Mayorkas: The party that controls the House also controls the purse. At least that’s what we’ve been told — although we’re hard-pressed to find evidence of it in the narrowly GOP-controlled House. Yesterday, however, the lower chamber voted to defund impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. As The Daily Wire reports, 193 Republicans voted to pass Arizona Republican Andy Biggs’s amendment to appropriations legislation that calls for “tens of billions of dollars to the Homeland Security Department in the next fiscal year.” Not surprisingly, all 172 Democrats voted against it. Perhaps more tellingly, 28 Republicans and 44 Democrats didn’t bother to vote at all. As Biggs proclaimed, “Alejandro Mayorkas — who was impeached earlier this year — doesn’t deserve a single penny from American taxpayers.” Biggs’s enthusiasm will likely be curbed, however, as the congressional sausage gets packaged. As Politico notes, the amendment will likely get yanked out as the House and the Democrat-controlled Senate reconcile their differences. So, yes, the Republicans have the power of the purse. Alas, it’s just a purse. It’s not a truncheon.

• It’s “dark money” if Democrats lose: Following Squad member Jamaal Bowman’s Democrat primary loss on Tuesday for New York’s 16th House district, The New York Times blamed a “flood of pro-Israel money.” It couldn’t have been that Bowman alienated voters with his repeatedly expressed anti-Semitic views. No, for the Times, it was all that Jew money. Bowman’s fellow radical leftist Squad member Ayanna Pressley likewise blamed his loss on an “unprecedented sum of money, $20 million,” arguing, “We cannot allow special interests, dark money, super PACs to buy congressional seats.” Of course, the Times and Pressley avoided digging into why the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was motivated to donate a record $14 million for a House primary election. Bowman referred to Israel as an apartheid state, and a month after Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack, he labeled verified reports of the atrocities Hamas committed against innocent Israelis as “propaganda” and lies. Then there are his disgraceful antics as a member of Congress. Who can forget Bowman’s illegal and childish pulling of the fire alarm in an effort to subvert a House vote he opposed? It wasn’t “dark money” that sunk Bowman. His own record did him in.

• Humor: Squad gives 21 fire alarm salute for their fallen comrade Jamaal Bowman (Babylon Bee)

• Cori Bush faces a tough road to renomination in Missouri’s August 6 primaries (Fox News)

Culture

• Judge strikes down Montana law defining sex as only male or female for procedural reasons (AP)

• The Rainbow Mafia expands Since 2017, the number of LGBTQ-identifying people holding elected offices has grown by nearly 200%. Unsurprisingly, the Leftmedia celebrates this development as “progress.” NBC News observes, “For the first time, there is also at least one out LGBTQ elected official in every state and in Washington, D.C.” Currently, across the nation, there are 1,303 LGBTQ-identifying individuals holding elected office. Elliot Imse, executive director of the Rainbow Mafia outfit Victory Institute, states, “LGBTQ people are running in historic numbers right now, and we are winning.” Of course, this growth in the number of sexually deviant elected officials is still far from enough for Imse, who argues, “The representation gap is so large that we need a moonshot effort to close it, and that is more important than ever right now, given all the attacks in our communities from state legislatures and city councils across the country.” Actually, what the country needs is far fewer elected officials who conflate their sexual deviant proclivities with a state of being. Less of this rainbow cult would be a good thing.

• More government pronoun insanity: Speaking of the Rainbow Mafia, the Biden administration is pushing more ridiculous language rules. The Department of the Interior recently published a 24-page “inclusive language” guide for agency employees. The guide highlights a list of problematic terms such as “husband” and “wife” and recommends that employees instead use “spouse, partner,” or “significant other.” The words “daughter” and “son” are also problematic terms and thus should be replaced with “child” or “kid,” the guide advises. Other common terms like “cockpit” should now be called “flight deck.” To “avoid making assumptions,” everyone in the department should refer to each other with “they/them” pronouns. Furthermore, demonstrating the inherent self-defeating nature of the whole woke language movement, the guide states, “Staff should refrain from the term ‘preferred pronouns’ because it implies a choice about one’s gender. Use ‘pronouns’ or ‘identified pronouns’ instead.” Yep, the inmates are running the asylum.

• Texas mom claims she was kicked off United plane for accidentally “misgendering” flight attendant (NY Post)

• Beating DEI: It’s not all bad news when it comes to the onslaught of radical leftist ideology. The imposers of the neo-Marxist tenets of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) are on the defensive in schools and businesses across the country thanks to freedom-loving Americans who have organized and are fighting back against this culturally devastating contagion. The most public battleground is social media, but the greatest successes are being won in courtrooms. Conservatives have learned that fighting for freedom requires fighting legal battles against leftists who have infiltrated and used America’s institutions to force their agenda. Thankfully, conservatives have seen significant victories, such as the U.S. Supreme Court striking down race-based admissions in higher education last year. DEI, which is inherently racist, is now increasingly viewed as likely to result in unwanted lawsuits. “The goal is complete race neutrality,” says Daniel Lennington, a lawyer for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty. Another anti-DEI group, Color Us United, advertises a “DEI Tip Hotline” that fields complaints of racial discrimination by companies against their employees. America First Legal, founded by former Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, advertises free legal services for employees of corporations whose policies “punish Americans for being white, Asian, or male.” The Leftmedia wring their hands over this “surge of conservative lawsuits,” but these are growing successes for Liberty over woke tyranny.

• This ex-Biden liaison pulled a Jussie Smollett by making racist posts about himself using the photo of some random white guy (Not the Bee)

Economy

• Amazon reaches $2 trillion market cap for the first time (CNBC)

• Walgreens to close significant number of underperforming stores, cuts profit forecast (Fox Business)

• Prospect of low-priced Chinese EVs reaching U.S. from Mexico poses threat to automakers (AP)

Misc.

• Illegal migrant arrested for allegedly raping 15-year-old girl in his car in upstate New York (NY Post)

• U.S. officials and media claimed Israel is using starvation as a weapon. New evidence shows this was a lie. (Washington Free Beacon)

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