Top of the Fold

• High inflation is here for a while: While much of the U.S. was focused on Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate hearings, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell was giving a speech for the National Association for Business Economics in which he admitted that 40-year-high inflation is a serious problem. “The inflation outlook has deteriorated significantly this year, even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine,” Powell stated. “The rise in inflation has been much greater and more persistent than forecasters generally expected.” Powell, who last June dismissed rising inflation as merely “transitory” and doubled down on that outlook as late as last December, is now warning that higher prices could be with us for the next three years. He further noted that the Fed will act to raise interest rates again, but another half-percent hike will do little to lower inflation. Interest rates have stayed too low for too long and need to be significantly raised in order to lower inflation. But doing so will cost the government more money and drag down economic growth.

• Culture battles for GOP governors: Two Republican governors faltered and one stood firm against the Left’s culture war this week. Utah Governor Spencer Cox vetoed a bill banning biological males from playing in female sports. His excuse for failing to protect girls and women was that doing so could lead to higher rates of suicide for gender dysphoric youth. Cox evidently bought into the Rainbow Mafia’s false claim that attributes suicides to a lack of societal acceptance, rather than the fact that these individuals are suffering from a mental illness. Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb also vetoed a bill that barred males from competing on female sports teams in K-12 schools. Holcomb’s excuse was similar to that made by South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem last year, as he claimed the bill would not stand up in the courts. Both the Utah and Indiana legislatures may override the vetoes. The one GOP governor who stood firm this week was the aforementioned Noem, who signed legislation banning state universities from “requiring students and teachers to attend trainings or orientations based on Critical Race Theory.” She explained, “College should remain a place where freedom of thought and expression are encouraged, not stifled by political agendas.”

• GOP woos voters at gas stations: Republicans have smartly initiated a voter registration campaign at gas stations across several states. “The Biden Gas Hike is a product of his own doing, and Americans have faced record high has prices as a result,” explained RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. “The RNC is mobilizing at gas stations across the country to register voters and remind folks that the anti-American energy of Biden and the Democrats is costing them more.” The voter registration campaign started in Arizona and North Carolina, and the RNC is planning to expand it to California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin.

• Biden surrendered, Taliban ends higher education for girls: Girls in Afghanistan will effectively no longer be permitted to go to school above the 6th grade following the Taliban’s recent decision to refrain from opening schools to girls beyond that. While the decision is said to be a continued postponement of opening higher-level schools to girls, it’s likely, based on the Taliban’s hardline ideology, that things won’t change for the better anytime soon. As the Taliban’s external relations representative Waheedullah Hashmi stated, “The leadership hasn’t decided when or how they will allow girls to return to school.” Unsurprisingly, the Taliban has failed to follow through on the promise to allow girls to continue to attend school. As local journalist Mariam Naheebi observed, “We did everything the Taliban asked in terms of Islamic dress and they promised that girls could go to school and now they have broken their promise.” It turns out some of the biggest victims of Joe Biden’s decision to surrender Afghanistan to the Taliban are girls and women.

Headlines

• CDC overreported COVID deaths by more than 70,000 (Daily Wire)

• More Americans 65 and under died from alcohol-related causes than COVID in 2020 (National Review)

• More than eight in 10 Americans hurt by inflation (Daily Wire)

• The cost of lithium — a metal used to make electric car batteries — is up nearly 500% since last year (Blaze Media)

• California Disney employees stage walkout over Florida’s parental rights bill (National Review)

• Ron DeSantis declares Emma Weyant rightful NCAA swimming champ (Washington Times)

• Democrats circulate plan for changing 2024 nomination calendar, moving against Iowa and welcoming new early states (Washington Post)

• Deadly tornado rips through heart of New Orleans (Fox Weather)

• Policy: What China is learning from Putin’s Ukraine invasion (Heritage Foundation)

• Humor: Taliban spokesman finally banned from Twitter after sharing Babylon Bee headline (BB)

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

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