Thursday Executive News Summary

Top of the Fold

USPS is running a “covert operations program” that monitors Americans’ social media posts (Yahoo! News¹)

“The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what [a] document describes as ‘inflammatory’ postings and then sharing that information across government agencies. … Civil liberties experts expressed alarm at the post office’s surveillance program. ‘It’s a mystery,’ said University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, whom President Barack Obama appointed to review the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. ‘I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.’”

Senate GOP symbolically preserves earmark ban (Politico²)

“Senate Republicans kept their decade-long earmarks ban on Wednesday but installed a new internal GOP rule that demands spending cuts as a condition for raising the debt ceiling. … Both the earmark ban and the new debt ceiling posture keep the Senate Republicans on track with tea party-era attitudes toward spending, diverging from a majority of House Republicans who voted in a secret ballot to back Democrats’ return to earmarking, with extra guardrails. Still, neither the earmark ban nor the debt ceiling language is binding — and that means there’s nothing to prevent individual senators from requesting earmarks or voting to raise the debt ceiling without corresponding cuts.”

Government & Politics

Merrick Garland announces DOJ probe of Minneapolis Police Department (Sara Carter³)
Biden sets target of cutting emissions 50% by 2030 but won’t detail how to get there (Washington Examiner⁴)
Lisa Murkowski bucks her party to back Vanita Gupta, Biden’s pick for DOJ No. 3 (Politico⁵)
Bernie Sanders launches bill for tuition-free college that disproportionately helps wealthier families (Breitbart⁶)
House set to vote on DC statehood, but all eyes are on the Senate (Roll Call⁷)

National Security

Non compos mentis: FBI determined 2017 GOP baseball shooting was “suicide by cop,” lawmaker says (Washington Examiner⁸)
DOJ indicts Illinois professor for secretly working for China while getting U.S. government grants (Washington Examiner⁹)
Retired general picked by Nancy Pelosi to review Capitol security appears on Chinese propaganda network CGTN America (Daily Caller¹⁰)

Leftmedia

Daily Beast ripped for publishing misinformation about Columbus police shooting (Fox News¹¹)
NPR posts disclaimer on report saying it may be getting the facts wrong (Disrn¹²)

Annals of the “Social Justice” Caliphate

LeBron James incites violence with “YOU’RE NEXT” tweet targeting Columbus police officer (Fox News¹³)
Black Lives Matter activists: “We’re never gonna be satisfied”; “burn it down!” (Daily Wire¹⁴)
New York City will no longer prosecute prostitution, dismisses 900+ cases (CNS News¹⁵)

Closing Arguments

Policy: Policing without the police? A review of the evidence (Manhattan Institute¹⁶)
Policy: Democrats could end the border crisis quickly. Instead, they’re making it worse. (Daily Signal¹⁷)
Satire: Seven alternatives — for example, a thumb war — for police to use instead of guns (Babylon Bee¹⁸)

For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit Headline Report¹⁹.

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