Politics

• More friendly fire on Aisle 46: With Joe Biden’s declining condition increasingly undeniable, a growing number of Democrat lawmakers and Leftmedia outlets are calling for him to step down. Last week, Representative Lloyd Doggett (TX) “bravely” called for Biden to end his reelection campaign. Over the weekend, four House Democrats — Jerry Nadler (NY), Joe Morelle (NY), Adam Smith (WA), and Mark Takano (CA) — joined Doggett. They reportedly made their pleas in a meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. So, is the proverbial dam finally breaking? Not if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer can help it. According to Democrat Senate aides, Schumer’s got Biden’s back. “Schumer’s going to hold the line for leadership as long as he can,” an aide observed, but with the following caveat: “It’s hard to predict if the dam will fully break, but the dam is crumbling.” Senator Mark Warner (VA) is reportedly working to convince Democrat colleagues to issue a public call for Biden to step down. Meanwhile, Biden sent a letter to congressional Democrats telling them to “end” the calls for his stepping down: “The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end.” Biden seems bound and determined to stay the course.

• Staff provides Biden with instructions “on how to enter and exit a room” with large print and pics ahead of events (NY Post)

• Humor: Nancy Pelosi says we must reelect Biden to see if he’s senile (Babylon Bee)

• Lady MacBiden is still in control: Jill Biden is no Al Haig, and her husband isn’t undergoing surgery to remove an assassin’s bullet, but she’s nonetheless in control there at the White House. If you don’t believe us, just ask her whether Joe Biden is considering leaving the presidential race. The first lady is “unleashing fury” at anyone trying to force the president out, reports The Daily Wire. “ABC News host Martha Raddatz said following Biden’s interview with the network on Friday that sources inside the White House have told her that Biden’s ‘very tight inner circle’ is pushing Biden to stay in the race and that he will win as long as he keeps going. ‘This of course includes his wife Jill who they said is lashing out at those who want him to get out of the race,’ she added.” Let’s not forget the president’s wastrel son and wartime consigliere, though. Convicted felon Hunter Biden has also been ensconced at the White House, and he’s “the smartest man” Joe knows.

• Crooked Joe is running against the Supreme Court: There’s plenty at stake in this year’s presidential election: the fate of the Free World, for one, and the constitutional precept of three coequal branches of government, for another. But it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Joe Biden was supposed to return us to normalcy, remember? Apparently, in addition to open borders, grinding inflation, rampant crime, and spiraling debt, wanton attacks on the Supreme Court are this guy’s version of normal. Biden’s latest broadside comes after the Supreme Court rightly ruled that a president — any president, Republican or Democrat — has absolute immunity from prosecution for the things he does within his constitutional authority as president. The attack is a 30-second ad that refers not to the Supreme Court but “the same Trump Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.” The ad also claims that the High Court said Trump was “above the law” when in fact Chief Justice John Roberts said exactly the opposite. Team Brandon is thereby smearing this independent American institution as somehow under Donald Trump’s thumb. It’s a scurrilous charge, of course, but not an unexpected one when we consider the source.

• Democrats whip against GOP’s latest election integrity (Axios)

• Wisconsin Supreme Court overturns ruling that barred most ballot drop boxes (NBC News)

• Riots erupt in France after left-wing coalition projected to win plurality of seats (Fox News)

Culture

• Nashville “manifesto” copyright: The public doesn’t have a right to know a criminal’s motives. That is effectively the outcome after Chancery Court Judge I'Ashea Myles ruled that The Covenant School attacker’s “manifesto” was the copyrighted property of the victims’ families and therefore exempted from the Tennessee Public Records Act. Myles was also sympathetic to the argument that the killer’s manifesto could inspire copycat attacks, saying that such a risk was real and “of grave concern.” While the victims’ families welcomed the ruling, much of the press and those concerned with expanding government transparency found it troubling. As Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, contended, “To say that evidence collected by police can be copyrighted by the criminal or the surviving parent or spouse of the criminal does not bode well for the transparency of the police or the judicial system.” This decision is expected to be appealed. Parts of the killer’s writings have already been revealed.

Economy

• Hurricane Beryl makes landfall in Texas (Fox Weather)

• Boeing to plead guilty to fraud over 737 Max crashes (Axios)

• COVID damaged U.S. economy to the tune of $18 trillion: There’s no telling how much our nation’s flailing and variously bungled response to the COVID-19 pandemic cost us — at least not in terms of what it did to a generation of young people who were locked out of their classrooms for months on end, and for no good reason. But we are learning more about the financial costs of COVID. Indeed, a new report from the Heritage Foundation’s Nonpartisan Commission on China and COVID-19 puts the price tag at $18 trillion in economic losses. As Fox Business reports, “That figure includes more than $8.6 trillion caused by excess deaths; more than $1.825 trillion in lost income; $6 trillion due to chronic conditions such as ‘long COVID’; and mental health losses of $1 trillion and educational losses of $435 billion pushed the total above $18 trillion.” As the report’s commission put it, “By understanding and acknowledging these costs, we can lay the groundwork for holding accountable those whose negligence or overt actions exacerbated the pandemic’s severity.” Sounds like China owes us $18 trillion.

• Average wedding costs skyrocket: According to a recent report from The Knot, the average cost of a wedding and reception in 2023 was $35,000. That total was an increase of $5,000 from 2022. And, of course, the primary culprit for the increased cost was inflation. It’s no secret that weddings are genuinely expensive events. However, with wedding costs ballooning over the last few years, the trend of “micro weddings,” with no more than 50 guests, has been growing. Last year, roughly 15% of weddings in the U.S. had between 25 and 50 guests, and 2% had fewer than 25 guests. Even for typical weddings, the number of guests has declined since 2006, when the average number was 184. The shrinking of the wedding guest list can be almost entirely blamed on costs. As The Wedding Report CEO Shane McMurray explained, “The number one way to save money on your wedding is to cut the guest count.”

• Biden runs the EV revolution into a ditch: There’s no telling where the electric vehicle market would be right now if Joe Biden hadn’t been so intent on picking winners and losers, but here we are. Even the pro-EV lefties at Fast Company are acknowledging the problems, even if we reject their flawed premise. “When it comes to cars, the science is clear [sic]: We are going to have to start swapping out our gas-guzzling automobiles for their electric counterparts [sic]. Yet those cleaner alternatives are more expensive, less reliable, and still cause stressful range anxiety. We are, in other words, at an awkward phase of EV adoption, and it’s unclear whether people are still gung ho about embracing the tech, or if the EV revolution is going to get stuck in first gear.” We’ll agree that this is an “awkward phase,” but only because lefties like Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom have dishonestly tried to ram EVs down our throats.

• Financial literacy: California recently became the 26th state to require high schools to offer a personal finance course and require students to take at least one class in money management. When signing the new bill into law, Governor Gavin Newsom stated the obvious: “We need to help Californians prepare for their financial futures as early as possible. Saving for the future, making investments, and spending wisely are lifelong skills that young adults need to learn before they start their careers, not after.” Given how Newsom and the Golden State’s Democrat lawmakers have squandered the state’s $100 billion surplus in just a couple of years, it would seem that these spendthrifts should be required to take a course in financial literacy themselves. And when will the United States Congress be required to pass a financial literacy course?

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