Top of the Fold

• Student loan giveaway extended: For the fourth time since taking office, Joe Biden plans to extend the moratorium on repayment of federal student loans. In March 2020, the government paused federal loan repayment requirements due to the onset of the COVID pandemic. Now, over two years later, one of the few remaining pandemic-related relief actions by the federal government continues demonstrating that this has much more to do with the Democrats’ “free college” political agenda than anything related to the pandemic. Federal student loan debt exceeds $1.6 trillion — more than Americans’ debt on credit cards and auto loans. According to the top Republican on the House’s Education Committee, Virginia Foxx (NC), the Biden administration’s decision to extend the repayment pause “isn’t about the pandemic [or] targeted relief for struggling borrowers, it’s about setting the stage for blanket loan forgiveness.” Meanwhile, taxpayers, many of whom never attended college themselves, remain on the hook for these federal student loans.

• “Just buy electric cars,” they said: Power outages caused by recent storms across the country highlight a glaring flaw in the anti-fossil fuel, “go-green” lobby’s “solutions” to global warming. The Biden administration’s most Marie Antoinette-like cabinet member, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, recently suggested that people fed up with soaring gas prices should just buy electric cars. The problem is that America’s aging electric grid is in no condition to handle the surge in demand needed to charge millions of new electric vehicles. Leftmedia outlets like the Associated Press spin data on the growing frequency of power outages, asserting that this is all evidence of an increased frequency of severe storms due to climate change, but that’s not the case. The frequency and severity of storms have not increased, but what the data does reveal is a serious inconvenience for those believing in the “green dream.” The American power grid is simply incapable of handling the level of power necessary for the Biden administration’s electric vehicle pipe dream. That’s to say nothing of the supply for that electricity.

• China’s “glorious” COVID response: According to authorities in Beijing, fewer than 5,000 Chinese have died from the novel coronavirus. That’s a laughably dubious claim given the fact that COVID originated in Wuhan and that China’s aggressive response included mobile crematoriums and locking people inside their homes for weeks on end. Nevertheless, much of the American media played along with the deceit and often praised Beijing for its effective response to the pandemic. “Perhaps China’s authoritarian ways did prevent this,” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd once mused. “Had China been a free and open society, [would COVID] have spread faster?” The New York Times even asserted that China’s response was “motivated by serious concern for the public good.” Today, China is once again experiencing a spike in COVID cases — this one related to the Omicron variant that has evidently hit its largest city Shanghai pretty hard — and is forcibly separating and quarantining young children from their parents, holding them in government facilities, where they suffer from a lack of proper care and supervision. Even many Chinese parents are asking, “How could the government come up with such a plan?” The answer lies in the fact that China’s communist government does not believe in individual liberty and cares little for human rights or the truth.

Headlines

• Sacramento mass shooting suspect released from prison early weeks before tragedy, has violent past (Fox News)

• Clinton 2016 campaign, lawyer, tech exec in “joint venture” to smear Trump, Durham alleges (NY Post)

• Joe Biden wrote college recommendation letter for son of Hunter’s Chinese business partner, emails reveal (Fox News)

• Biden’s released tax returns don’t explain millions in income. Where did it come from? (The Federalist)

• Millions of dollars from anonymous donors swamped election officials in Dem-heavy counties in 2020 (Washington Times)

• The CDC finds a depression epidemic among teens — that it created (NY Post)

• U.S. looks to boost Canadian oil imports, but doesn’t want more pipelines (Oilprice.com)

• Barack Obama complains “misinformation” surrounded his healthcare plan. He’s the one who told the “Lie of the Year.” (Daily Wire)

• Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri sue to halt Biden from ending border order stopping illegal immigrants (Washington Times)

• Fifteen states threaten legal action against Biden admin to protect integrity of women’s sports (Fox News)

• Loudoun County schools told teachers to keep gender transitions secret from parents (Washington Examiner)

• Oklahoma legislature passes bill to make performing an abortion illegal (National Review)

• MIT reinstates SAT/ACT requirement (Insider Higher Ed)

• Policy: Why energy security is national security (The Federalist)

• Satire: Twitter workers worried Elon Musk will turn their free speech platform into platform that allows free speech (Babylon Bee)

• Related satire: Not to be outdone, Bill Gates buys 9.2% of MySpace (Babylon Bee)

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

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