Top of the Fold

• Biden gives lie-filled speech on inflation: On Friday, May’s dismal inflation numbers came out. The 8.6% increase is speeding up rather than slowing down. But this evidently didn’t get communicated to Biden, who soldered on with a pre-written speech in Los Angeles as if the latest bad news on the economy had never happened. His first lie came with his oft-repeated Vladimir Putin blame game: “We’ve never seen anything like Putin’s tax on both food and gas.” He then falsely claimed that core inflation has “moderated” and “gone down” over the last couple months. As is regularly noted, Americans have been getting slammed by increasing inflation and high gas prices, and it began well before Putin’s February invasion of Ukraine. February’s inflation number was 7.9%, January’s was 7.5%, and December’s was 7%. The other “bad guys” Biden blamed for the high price of gas were those “greedy” oil companies and the “MAGA gang,” who Biden declared “have a fundamentally different view of the role of government and who should pay what.” We can certainly agree on having a fundamentally different view on the role of government — as in it’s not the government’s role to pay off college loans or supplement child support or spend taxpayer dollars on a slew of other entitlement programs. The truth is, as Barack Obama’s former adviser Steve Rattner observed: “We’re all paying the price for having overstimulated this economy during the pandemic and putting too much money into people’s pockets, which created a lot of this inflation. There’s no free lunch, and we’re all going to have to pay the price.”

• J6 TV ratings fail: Democrats were hoping for a “must-watch TV” vibe for Thursday’s January 6 Committee dog-and-pony show, but it failed to materialize. All the major television networks gave over their primetime slots to air the J6 “trial,” but based on the numbers, it can only be concluded to have been a ratings bomb. On a normal day, the total combined viewership for all three major networks’ news programs (ABC, CBS, and NBC) averages 18 to 20 million. The total viewership numbers for Thursday’s J6 hearing for all three networks was just over 11 million. To put things in perspective, Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address in March garnered 38 million viewers, and Donald Trump’s first State of the Union drew 45.6 million viewers. Even a rerun episode of “Young Sheldon” aired a week prior garnered more viewers for CBS (3.86 million) than did its coverage of the J6 hearing (3.24 million). Americans simply aren’t interested in the dubious narrative Democrats are desperately trying to convince them to believe.

• Biden inks migration deal at Summit of the Americas: Despite the glaring absence of several key Central American leaders, Joe Biden touted a new agreement signed with other leaders present that pledged to stem illegal immigration. “When migrants arrive on their doorstep, they can provide a place to stay, make sure migrants can see a doctor, find opportunities to work so they don’t have to undertake the dangerous journey north,” Biden declared. The Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection is an agreement by nations in the Western Hemisphere to do more to interdict individuals illegally entering their countries, including more screenings and deportations if they don’t qualify for protected status. Furthermore, the agreement also expands guest-worker programs. Conspicuously absent from the summit were the presidents of Mexico, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, all countries that account for the majority of illegal migrants. Meanwhile, morale is low among U.S. Border Patrol agents, as Biden’s de facto open-borders policy has effectively quashed the spirit for the job. “Under Biden, things are the worst they have ever been by far,” said one Arizona-based agent. “Agents are calling in all the time. You always hear, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ or, ‘What’s the point?’ in reference to doing our job. Agents are afraid of ending up on the news for doing their job or getting in trouble for doing their job. There is no morale.”

Headlines

• Outraged viewers bombard Fox News for segment promoting child gender experiments (The Federalist)

• Senate announces bipartisan framework for gun control package (Fox News)

• Pro-abortion group suggests targeting Amy Coney Barrett’s children (National Review)

• AOC touts blocking Supreme Court security bill after Kavanaugh threat (Newsweek)

• AOC tried to pin America’s rising violence on conservatives by sharing a list of cities that have been run by Democrats for decades (Not the Bee)

• Rents across U.S. rise above $2,000 a month for the first time ever (NPR)

• Pessimism confirmed: Consumer sentiment plummets to 40-year low (Hot Air)

• Increasing number of Democrats express doubt over party’s future with Biden (Daily Wire)

• New left-of-center poll shows seismic shift in Hispanic political support (Daily Wire)

• Biden admin takes major step to roll back Trump’s Jerusalem embassy move (Free Beacon)

• Texas judge halts “transgender” child abuse investigations (Daily Wire)

• Majority of “transgender” Americans are teenagers, and the numbers are rising (Townhall)

• Geico must pay $5.2 million to woman who got HPV from sex in man’s insured car, court rules (NBC News)

• Washington Commanders coach Jack Del Rio fined for calling J6 a “dust up” (Daily Wire)

• WHO now admits lab leak a possibility for COVID origin (Blaze Media)

• China will “start a war” if Taiwan declares independence (The Guardian)

• CNN’s ratings collapse continues (Daily Wire)

• Policy: The biggest winner in Biden’s solar panel charade is Communist China (The Federalist)

• Satire: White House attempts to distract from high gas prices by putting up wacky inflatable tube men in front of price signs (Babylon Bee)

• Related satire: Biden administration to provide grief counselors at all gas pumps (Babylon Bee)

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