Anti-Semitism

• DC thugs: While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was addressing a joint session of Congress yesterday, which our analyst Thomas Gallatin elaborates on here, a number of pro-Hamas hoodlums gathered in Washington, DC, chanting “Allahu Akbar” as they vandalized monuments and tore down and burned American flags. The anti-Semitic and anti-America protesters, many holding Palestinian flags, gathered in various locations across the city, including outside of Union Station, where they tore down the American flag from a flag pole, doused it with lighter fluid, and set it on fire. They then placed and burned an effigy of Netanyahu over the burning flag. At one point, a patriotic individual emerged from the crowd, grabbed the unburned remnants of the U.S. flag, pulled it from the fire, and ran. He was chased by some protesters but got away. When interviewed later, he said, “I’m ashamed I didn’t stop and go back and get the rest of it.”

• Most pro-Hamas arrestees have charges dropped: Between April 18 and June 4, over 3,100 individuals have been arrested who were involved in various pro-Hamas college campus protests across the country. The total number of students arrested is the largest in 50 years. According to The New York Times, “Most were charged with trespassing or disturbing the peace. Some face more serious charges, like resisting arrest. But in the months since, many of the charges have been dropped.” The most egregious example of students getting away scot-free happened at Columbia University, where student protesters forcibly occupied and barricaded themselves inside a campus building. All had their criminal charges dropped, with prosecutors absurdly claiming there was not enough evidence to convict them. Failure to hold people accountable for their criminal actions will only breed more crime.

• Israeli military recovers five hostages’ bodies in Gaza (BBC)

National Security

• Wray testifies on Trump assassination attempt: To no one’s surprise, FBI Director Chris Wray didn’t offer much insight into what drove would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks. Indeed, last week we warned of an FBI whitewash, and so far the bureau is living down to our expectations. Wray said Crooks made two scouting trips to the Butler, Pennsylvania rally site beforehand, in addition to flying a drone overhead hours before the rally. And Wray did offer one insight into Crooks’s premeditative mindset, however: “On July 6,” said Wray, “he did a Google search for, quote, ‘How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?’ That’s a search that obviously is significant in terms of his state of mind.” He added, “That is the same day that it appears that he registered for the Butler rally.” In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, we heard from one news source after another that Crooks was “a registered Republican.” And that may be true, but it may also have been a ruse. The 20-year-old Crooks, after all, also gave a $15 donation to the Progressive Turnout Project, hardly a Republican organization. How was Crooks radicalized? On this topic, Wray’s testimony didn’t offer a lick of insight.

• Marine veteran David Dutch, who was shot at Trump rally, released from hospital (NY Post)

• Trump and Zelensky speak, and now Ukraine wants peace with Russia: Call it The Trump Effect. The former president has made no secret of his belief that he can bring the parties together and end the war in Ukraine, but a recent phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have lent teeth to that boast. As Breitbart reports: “Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told top Chinese Communist Party diplomats in Beijing on Wednesday that his country is ‘willing and ready for dialogue and negotiations with Russia,’ a stark change from repeated refusals by the administration of President Volodymyr Zelensky to consider direct talks.” Prior to that, “Zelensky has for two years refused talks with Putin on the grounds that no talks should take place until Russian soldiers are no longer present in his country.” So, what changed? Perhaps the aforementioned phone call, their first such call in years. As Breitbart adds, “Zelensky expressed gratitude towards Trump for the conversation and hinted at a future in-person meeting. … ‘If Mr. Donald Trump becomes president, we will work,’” Zelensky said.

• U.S. military detects, intercepts Russian fighter jets, 2 Chinese H-6 bombers prior to Biden’s address (Fox News)

Politics

• Obama doesn’t think Harris can win: In the hours immediately after Joe Biden’s endorsement of Kamala Harris, it seems that every Democrat has dutifully fallen in line to endorse her. Every Democrat except one: Barack Obama. Because Obama knows something that his fellow Democrats seem unwilling to admit: Kamala Harris is unappealing and unelectable across many parts of America. In short, he doesn’t think she can beat Trump. “Obama’s very upset, because he knows she can’t win,” a Biden family source told the New York Post. “Obama knows she’s just incompetent — the border czar who never visited the border, saying that all migrants should have health insurance. She cannot navigate the landmines that are ahead of her.” Indeed, the inside source says that Obama was “shocked” when his former veep immediately endorsed Harris. If we had to speculate, we’d say that Biden’s endorsement of such a deeply flawed candidate was his way of flipping the middle finger to the party that turned on him and forced him out the door.

• DNC votes to nominate Biden’s replacement virtually (NY Post)

• Rating service removes post of Kamala Harris as most liberal senator: It’s long been understood that senators don’t make good presidential candidates. This is in large part because they amass a lengthy voting record that includes any number of uncomfortable and embarrassing party-line votes. Indeed, only three senators — Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama — have ever been elected president. Kamala Harris aims to be the fourth, and she’s already getting some help from GovTrack, the producer of a nonpartisan rating scorecard that ranked Harris as the most liberal of the nation’s 100 senators in 2019. Yes, Harris’s voting record in her last year before running for president was to the left of even socialist Bernie Sanders. This link used to take us to the page that showed Harris’s radical ranking, but now all it shows is, “Page Not Found.” Imagine that. But try as they might to erase the evidence of Kamala’s record, there are still plenty of receipts out there.

• Six House Dems vote with GOP to condemn Kamala Harris for “border czar” role (Fox News)

• Media suddenly changes its tune on calling Kamala Harris the “border czar” — despite giving her the title (NY Post)

Economy

• Economy top issue for students: What matters most to young voters and soon-to-be voters? According to a recent poll from the Young America’s Foundation, the economy is the number one concern for both high school and college students, with 48% and 44% respectively marking it as the top issue. Other issues high on the list were school safety, political corruption, education, and climate change. Interestingly, abortion, race relations, and LGBTQ rights came in at the bottom of the list. Sunjay Muralitharan, national vice president of College Democrats of America, responded to the results, stating, “I think there’s been this misconception that young people are really heavily focused on social issues like LGBTQ rights and climate justice.” He admitted, “Those are vital issues for Democrats across the nation, but not at the very top when it comes to the priorities of young people.” College Republicans National Committee Chairman Courtney Hope Britt saw the polling results as optimistic: “Polling is looking better and better for us by the day. In part, people are worried about the economy, and people trust Republicans with the economy.”

• How Harris caused inflation by casting decisive votes for Biden’s economic agenda (Breitbart)

• Existing-home sales notched their worst June in at least 25 years (Barron’s)

• Chick-fil-A dethroned as America’s top fast-food chain after nearly a decade (Christian Post)

• Policy: A market-based solution to rising Medicare costs (City Journal)

Culture

• Clinton-appointed judge blocks Education Department rule that forces schools to cater to trans students (Daily Caller)

• NYU Law School wants rights for nature: New York University School of Law is pushing a new legal theory via its More Than Human Life Project (MOTH). The project is described as “an interdisciplinary initiative advancing rights and well-being for humans, non-humans, and the web of life that sustains us all.” Harvard University is also getting into the act, offering a course titled “Rights of Nature,” which “will examine this fast-growing field, assessing the origins, practice, and potential of granting legal personhood to natural objects.” However, some worry this isn’t merely a silly thought experiment bandied about on college campuses. Christian bioethicist Wesley Smith observes, “For nature to possess rights, it must also be capable of assuming concomitant duties or responsibilities toward others, a farcical notion.” He warns, “If everything has rights, one could say that nothing really does.” In other words, it is a mechanism for destroying fundamental human rights. Mike Pompeo has argued that such a new view of “rights” serves to “blur the distinction between unalienable rights and ad hoc rights granted by the government.” It would be easy to see how this could be used to establish a tyrannical government that could justify its usurpation of individual rights and freedoms by advancing a claim of protecting nature’s rights.

• Shoplifting skyrockets by 24% across U.S. even as most other crimes fall to pre-pandemic levels (NY Post)

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