Top of the Fold

• Roasting Biden: The White House Correspondents’ Dinner returned to DC after a two-year absence thanks to the pandemic. (It’s too bad COVID didn’t kill off the event entirely, but we digress.) Joe Biden took the stage to offer a couple of self-deprecating jokes about his low polling numbers, but he aimed the most pointed of his mockery at Donald Trump and Republicans. “This is the first time the president attended this dinner in six years,” he said. “It’s understandable. We had a horrible plague, followed by two years of COVID.” He then followed it up by saying: “Just imagine if my predecessor came to this dinner this year. Now that would have been a real coup if that occurred.” After a few more lame jokes mocking Republicans, Biden turned serious in an obvious effort to defend his creation of the Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board. The “liberal world order” that had been established to ensure world peace following World War II is “genuinely, seriously under assault,” he asserted. “Poison is running through our democracy. All of this is taking place with misinformation massively on the rise, where the truth is buried by lies and the lies live on as truth. What’s clear, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, [is] that you, the free press, matter more than you ever did in the last century. … There’s incredible pressure on you all to deliver heat instead of shed light because technology is changing so much; the system is changing. But it matters. The truth matters. American democracy is not a reality show.” What’s poisoning the Republic is the Left’s assault on America’s founding principles such as freedom of speech, which is becoming a casualty of leftist mis- and disinformation.

• Pelosi visits Ukraine, Putin will attend the G20 summit: Over the weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, where she met with President Volodymyr Zelensky. Pelosi is now the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the war-ravaged nation, even as Vladimir Putin’s forces continue their assault in Ukraine’s eastern regions. Zelensky welcomed Pelosi’s visit, which further signals the U.S. intention to continue backing Ukraine, despite increasingly strident rhetoric from the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin announced that he will attend the annual G20 summit this year being held in Bali, Indonesia, as he has accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Also receiving an invitation is Zelensky, who thanked Widodo for the invitation but has yet to RSVP. Given the fact that Zelensky is dealing with Putin’s war against his country, it would seem unlikely that he would make an appearance. Finally, Ukrainian officials admitted over the weekend that the legendary “Ghost of Kyiv” was not real. “Hero of Ukraine Stepan Tarabalka is not ‘Ghost of Kyiv’ and he did not shoot down 40 planes,” Ukraine’s Air Force Command clarified. However, the command then stated: “The Ghost of Kyiv is alive. It embodies the collective spirit of the highly qualified pilots of the Tactical Aviation Brigade who are successfully defending Kyiv and the region.”

• Killer Alec Baldwin calls for gun control: Actor Alec Baldwin, who is responsible for the accidental shooting death of film director Halyna Hutchins last year that is still being investigated, recently decided to voice his opposition to Americans’ Second Amendment rights. In a social media post, Baldwin wrote: “The very childhoods of our kids interrupted by this insanity. We regulate many things in this country in the interest of public health and safety. Drugs, cars, professional licenses, etc. We need gun control reform. Now.” Talk about tone-deaf. The man who failed to follow the most basic firearm safety protocols, which is why Hutchins is now dead, has the audacity to call for more firearm regulations, as if that were the reason why the accidental shooting happened in the first place. Of course, he’ll jump on any excuse to distance himself from any responsibility for what happened. Freedom always comes with the attached reality of responsibility, so Baldwin advocates taking away other people’s freedom rather than advocating that those who misuse it be held accountable.

Headlines

• Disney’s chief critic of Florida’s anti-grooming law leaves company after just three months (PM)

• Joe Manchin endorses Republican, slams Build Back Better in West Virginia GOP primary ad (Fox News)

• CMS drops ObamaCare rules on transgender care that worried religious freedom advocates (Washington Examiner)

• DOJ sues Alabama over law making “transgender” treatments for children a felony (Fox News)

• Indiana AG sues Black Lives Matter over donations, transparency (Washington Times)

• New Disinformation Governance Board is already expanding its scope (PJ Media)

• Joe Biden used alias of KGB spy from Tom Clancy novels, emails from Hunter’s laptop show (NY Post)

• FBI conducted millions of warrantless searches of Americans’ data in 2021 (National Review)

• Admin gives up on mandatory vaccines for migrants (Free Beacon)

• Majority of troops kicked out for COVID vax refusal received general discharges (NY Post)

• Policy: How Republican senators can defund Biden’s dystopic Disinformation Board (The Federalist)

• Humor: AOC says she got killed from Elon Musk buying Twitter and is now dead (Babylon Bee)

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

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