Top of the Fold

• SCOTUS takes on Biden vax mandate: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today against Joe Biden’s COVID vaccine mandate. Specifically, the justices will entertain challenges to the constitutionality of Biden’s use of OSHA to impose a politically motivated agenda. Lower courts have split over the issue, with the Fifth and Sixth Circuits coming down on opposite sides of the debate. Twenty-five states have joined in the suit against the mandate. The justices’ decision promises to hold significant implications for the ability of presidents to unilaterally empower federal agencies to enact their political agendas.

• Jobs numbers fail to hit expectations: The December employment numbers are in and for the second month in a row missed the mark. Just 199,000 jobs were added, falling well short of the anticipated 422,000. Even the apparent silver lining of a drop in the unemployment rate down to 3.9% fails to account for the existence of a widespread labor shortage. Staffing remains a major problem for businesses, perhaps especially within the healthcare industry. 2021 may have seen a record number of positions added, but only after millions more jobs were killed in 2020. The fact of the matter remains that the total employment number has yet to reach pre-pandemic levels. Millions fewer Americans are working today than before COVID, despite 11 million openings. The Atlantic Fed is tracking a 6.7% growth in GDP through the end of the year, yet inflation continues at a 40-year high. Throwing even more cold water on the worrying jobs numbers is the fact that this latest reporting period doesn’t include the spike in COVID due to the Omicron variant. Could January’s numbers be even worse?

• New minimum wage hikes will slow economic recovery: Minimum wages hikes began in 25 states and 58 cities with the ringing in of 2022. It comes as no surprise that the states and cities enacting the largest minimum wage increases are run by Democrats, or that they also happen to be places from which residents are fleeing. While increased minimum wages sound good, it’s hard to overstate their real-world negative impact on workers and the economy. Employment Policies Institute Managing Director Michael Saltsman observes: “We know the damage that sharply rising minimum wage mandates have caused prior to the pandemic. Now, despite the track record of past harm, minimum wage advocates are instead moving the goal posts without assessing the extent of losses created by minimum wage hikes despite the hardship of the last two years.”

• Falsely blaming J6 for officer’s death: Just how bad was the January 6 Capitol riot? Well, according to anti-Trumper Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, it was so bad it was responsible for the death of a Capitol Police officer who was not there and died months later. The Republican governor released a ridiculous social media post in an attempt to show solidarity with the Democrats’ January 6 political show, erroneously suggesting that the death of Officer William Evans, a Massachusetts native, was the fault of Capitol rioters. In truth, Evans was murdered by a Louis Farrakhan supporter last April while he was guarding the Capitol.

• CBS hides inconvenient J6 polling data: CBS News and YouGov conducted a poll on Americans’ perspective of the January 6 Capitol riot. CBS highlighted that while 85% of Democrats viewed J6 as “an insurrection,” only 21% of Republicans surveyed agreed with that description. In a blatant bit of Democrat propaganda, what CBS failed to note is that the poll also showed 80% of Republicans believe J6 was “a protest that went too far” — in fact, an even higher percentage of Donald Trump supporters (84%) agreed. The poll indicates that the vast majority of Republicans have rejected the Left’s false narrative that the J6 riot was an “insurrection.”

More From Your Patriot Post Team

• Douglas Andrews: Biden Takes the Low Road on J6 — Never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, Joe Biden eschewed “unity” and instead attacked Donald Trump.

• Nate Jackson: Australia’s Problem Isn’t Limited to One Tennis Player — Novak Djokovic may get all the attention, but tyranny Down Under is much deeper.

• Emmy Griffin: Learning to Live With This Endemic Virus — COVID is mutating, and like all viruses, it is becoming more virulent and conversely more mild.

• Thomas Gallatin: A Real Solution to Prevent a J6 Repeat — Republican lawmakers should propose a rewrite or elimination of the 1887 Electoral Count Act.

• Brian Mark Weber: Leaving Censorship for Other Platforms — Could we be seeing the beginning of an exodus from Twitter and Facebook?

• Douglas Andrews: Manhattan’s Soft-on-Crime Soros DA — Mayor Eric Adams was elected to clean up New York, but the new district attorney has other ideas.

Politics

• “The court has no jurisdiction and the case must be dismissed as moot”: Federal judge tosses lawsuit challenging Joe Biden’s authority to block Keystone Pipeline (Daily Caller)

• Air Force accused of lowering standards for elite unit to accommodate female candidate; military branch admits change to “norms” (Free Beacon)

• Racist Joy Reid to lose MSNBC show in the spring? (Post Millennial)

Health

• Re-re-relocating the goalposts: Moderna CEO says fourth COVID vaccine dose likely necessary (National Review)

• Irony: Mayo Clinic dropping 700 workers for lacking COVID vaccination (Star Tribune)

Culture

• One cheer for Pope Francis: Pontiff rips couples who have pets instead of children (Daily Wire)

• Sports stars risk cancel culture to speak out as gender dysphoric male swimmer breaks women’s records (Washington Times)

Heartland

• Former New York Times columnist Nick Kristof booted from ballot in Oregon governor’s race (Washington Examiner)

• RIP: Lawrence Brooks, oldest U.S. veteran of WWII, dies at 112 (NBC News)

Odds & Ends

• Mortgage rates hit highest level since May 2020 (Yahoo) | What to expect when the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates (Washington Examiner)

• Trump’s new social media platform will launch February 21 (Post Millennial)

• Why the world is watching Kazakhstan: the country’s vast natural resources, including gas, oil, coal, and minerals, make it an important area for energy giants like ExxonMobil, Shell, and Chevron (Morning Brew)

Closing Arguments

• Policy: The Chicago Teachers Union–imposed school shutdown is about politics, not the pandemic (City Journal)

• Humor: AOC: “Insurrectionists are just mad they can’t date me” (Genesius Times)

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

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