Politics

• Dems tried to strip Trump’s Secret Service protection: Having narrowly escaped assassination on Saturday, Donald Trump seems intent on moving forward and trying to unify the country. We wish him Godspeed. In the meantime, chief among the many questions regarding the attempt on the former president’s life is the catastrophic failure of the Secret Service. Part of the answer might be found in the DEI focus of Director Kim Cheatle. Another part might be that some Democrats don’t think Trump deserves Secret Service protection at all. As The Washington Free Beacon reports, “Just last month, Rep. Bennie Thompson mocked GOP criticisms of his effort to strip Trump’s Secret Service detail.” Thompson, who chaired the Democrats’ rigged J6 Committee and was forced to fire a staffer over the weekend for a vile social media post regarding “shooting lessons” for would-be assassins, is also the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, and in April he and seven other Democrats tried to terminate Trump’s Secret Service protection with a bill called the DISGRACED Former Protectees Act, “which would’ve terminated Secret Service protection for former presidents convicted and sentenced for a felony,” according to the Free Beacon. Perhaps now, Cheatle will be sufficiently shamed into properly protecting both Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

• Secret Service claims reports that resources were diverted from Trump rally to protect Jill Biden are "wrong" (Daily Wire)

• Satire: FBI wonders if perhaps they’ve been investigating the wrong people this whole time (Babylon Bee)

• The hero who was Corey Comperatore: While Donald Trump narrowly escaped death on Saturday, one of his supporters did not. Corey Comperatore was a 50-year-old husband and father, and a former fire chief for Buffalo Township there in Butler County, Pennsylvania, the site of the rally. He died a hero, mortally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while protecting his wife and daughters. “The Comperatore family remains in our thoughts and prayers,” said Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. “They will have an empty seat at the dinner table for the rest of their lives. We need to make sure that Corey’s memory is forever a blessing.” As Fox News reports, Shapiro described him “as a ‘girl dad’ and firefighter who loved his family and community and went to church every Sunday.” Said Comperatore’s daughter: “The media will not tell you that he died a real-life super hero. They are not going to tell you how quickly he threw my mom and I to the ground. They are not going to tell you that he shielded my body from the bullet that came at us. He loved his family. He truly loved us enough to take a bullet for us.” A GoFundMe page has so far raised nearly $4 million for the Comperatores and the other two men wounded in the attack.

• The RNC adjusts on the fly: It’s safe to say that the tone of this week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee will be vastly different from the one that was in place just three days ago. Near-death experiences have a way of modulating, of putting a needed saucer beneath the hot coffee. As the Washington Examiner reports, the convention runs Monday through Thursday, “with each day focusing on a particular theme. Monday’s theme is ‘Make America Wealthy Once Again,’ as the economy has been one of Trump’s most significant messaging points this year. … Tuesday’s theme is ‘Make America Safe Again,’ Wednesday’s is ‘Make America Strong Again,’ and Thursday’s is ‘Make America Great Once Again.’” As for the event’s headliner, Donald Trump says his speech has changed in the wake of Saturday’s attempted assassination. “The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger,” he said. “Had this not happened, this would’ve been one of the most incredible speeches” aimed mostly at the policies of President Joe Biden. “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”

• Trump classified docs case dismissed: “The dismissal of the classified documents case is a seismic development. From the beginning of all of these cases, I have said that the Mar-a-Lago case was the greatest threat to the former president. It is now dismissed.” So said constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley this morning in the wake of Judge Aileen Cannon’s stunning dismissal of the case that Turley and other legal experts agree posed the most serious threat to Donald Trump. The reason for the dismissal? Judge Cannon ruled, in agreement with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and others, that Special Counsel Jack Smith was illegally appointed. “Former President Trump’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment Based on the Unlawful Appointment and Funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith is GRANTED in accordance with this Order,” Cannon wrote. “The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.” We’ve covered this ground, and it’s clear that Judge Cannon has found the arguments of Justice Thomas and former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese to be sufficiently compelling.

• The donors want Biden out: Joe Biden’s largest super PAC, Future Forward, was informed last Friday that a promised $90 million in donations would be withheld should Biden remain the Democrats’ presidential nominee. Democrat calls for Biden to step down erupted following his disastrous debate against Donald Trump, and they got louder after Biden’s damage control interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, growing still more shrill following his gaffe-filled NATO press conference. Yet despite this threat of donation losses, Biden has remained defiant in his persistence that he is not going anywhere. Meanwhile, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed Biden in a New York Times op-ed, saying “enough” of Democrats trying to replace him.

• Jill Biden’s grudge against Kamala Harris is so deep that the only thing worse than Joe stepping down is the VP replacing him (Daily Mail)

Immigration

• Americans want less immigration: For the first time since 2005, a majority of Americans want a decrease in immigration — legal and illegal — a recent Gallup survey found. Some 55% of Americans want immigration to decrease, the highest percentage since 2001, when 58% wanted to see numbers drop. This also represents a massive shift from last year, when just 41% of Americans were in favor of decreasing immigration. The cause for this shift is Joe Biden’s de facto and deadly open border. “The shifts in attitudes have come after monthly illegal border crossings reached record levels late last year,” Gallup observed. “They have dropped significantly since then, but remain above most monthly pre-pandemic totals.” The survey also found that 76% want more Border Patrol agents, 63% want to see asylum requests temporarily barred, and 53% support expanding or constructing border walls. This is all bad news for Biden’s reelection bid.

Culture

• Court upholds TN law barring sex change on birth certificates: The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled that Tennessee’s law barring gender-confused individuals from getting their sex changed on their birth certificates is not unconstitutional. The court rejected the lawsuit’s claim, brought by four men who “identify” as women, that Tennessee’s statute violated the 14th Amendment. “Absent an existing fundamental right, the Constitution does not require the States to embrace the plaintiffs’ view of what information a birth certificate must record,” Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote, adding that “there is no fundamental right to a birth certificate recording gender identity instead of biological sex.” Sutton rejected the assertion that the law amounted to unequal protection, noting, “Tennessee does not guarantee anyone a birth certificate matching gender identity, only a certificate that accurately records a historical fact: the sex of each newborn.”

• Alec Baldwin gets away with it: On Friday, Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer threw out the involuntary manslaughter case against actor Alec Baldwin after it was revealed that state prosecutors failed to turn over relevant evidence to the defense. The evidence in question had to do with a batch of bullets that the defense failed to receive. Prosecutor Kari Morrissey argued that she chose not to disclose the bullets because “I could see it was not at all similar to the live rounds on the set of Rust, so I made the decision not to collect the rounds since they had never left Arizona.” Baldwin broke down in tears following the judge’s dismissal of the case, as he was facing an 18-month prison sentence if found guilty. Lawyers for the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who was found guilty of the same charge and is serving a prison sentence, said they will file an appeal.

• Lincoln was gay, says Netflix: While many assume that documentaries are historically accurate accounts of past events, the truth is that they often have more in common with yarns told around the campfire than history books. The latest example of this comes from Netflix and its new documentary, “Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln.” In a clear effort to add legitimacy to this claim, the promo reads, “As told by preeminent Lincoln scholars and never before seen photographs and letters, the film details Lincoln’s romantic relationships with men.” That’s right. According to these “scholars,” Lincoln was homosexual. Who knew? Well, nobody up until someone with a clear agenda decided they wanted to shoehorn in a ridiculous 21st-century narrative that Lincoln was the first Log Cabin Republican. And what is the supposed evidence of this claim? According to an excerpt from the documentary, “Lincoln probably slept in the same bed with more men than he did with women.” Wow, that settles it then. Time to rewrite the history books.

Misc.

• MSNBC pulls “Morning Joe” off air after Trump assassination attempt (Daily Mail)

• RFK Jr. texts apology to sexual assault accuser (BBC)

• Biden disavowed anti-Semite Linda Sarsour. Then his White House hosted her. (Washington Free Beacon)

• We are witnessing a “historic surge” in corporate bankruptcies in Biden’s “best economy ever” (Not the Bee)

• Blocked Rhodes? Prestigious scholarship accused of “woke” anti-conservative bias (Washington Times)

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