Top of the Fold

• All stock market gains since Biden took office now gone: The 40-year-high inflation rate has also hit Wall Street, as the markets yesterday took a big tumble among growing fears of a coming recession. The S&P 500 dropped 20% off its recent high, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 876 points, and the Nasdaq fell 530 points. In short, the markets have lost all gains made since Joe Biden took office, effectively undercutting one of his main bragging points about the status of the U.S. economy. The Nasdaq notes that the driving factor behind the stock drop is “growing concerns the Fed is behind the inflation curve, and that the economy is entering a period of stagflation.” That and “renewed lockdowns in China raise fresh questions over global supply chains.” Adding to the markets’ woes is the fact that the Consumer Price Index hit a 40-year high, rising 8.6% over last year, while the Producer Price Index climbed 10.8% from a year ago. When Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was asked about a potential recession last week, she demurred: “Don’t look to me to announce it. I’m not going to announce it.” She then added, “I don’t think we’re going to have a recession.”

• Fed considering 0.75% rate increase: Following a bad day for U.S. stock markets, the Federal Reserve is reportedly considering raising the interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point. The Fed is clearly worried and wants to get ballooning inflation under control, which explains the talk of a larger-than-expected interest rate hike. The move would be a long-shot attempt at staving off an inevitable recession. Back in May, Fed Chair Jerome Powell argued: “Economic and financial conditions [were] evolving broadly in line with expectations. … Expectations are that we’ll start to see inflation, you know, flattening out.” Those expectations were wrong, as inflation has not leveled off and indeed has only sped up. So the Fed has almost no choice but to get more aggressive.

• Can’t tell the difference between news and opinion: USA Today along with 250 other news outlets across the nation recently announced they will be scaling back their opinion pages and shrinking the number of their columnists. According to The Washington Post, “Opinion pages are alienating readers and becoming obsolete.” Gannett, the owner of USA Today, claims: “Readers don’t want us to tell them what to think. They don’t believe we have the expertise to tell anyone what to think on most issues. They perceive us as having a biased agenda.” Even the language of that statement reveals just how biased they are. Readers perceive media outlets as biased because they are biased. But it’s not the opinion and op-ed section that reveals this bias as much as that which the Leftmedia presents as “non-biased” news. The real problem is that leftist “journalists” have rejected the notion that their job is to report the news and avoid injecting their opinion into their reporting. Instead, Gannett blames its paper’s biased reputation not on its own biased reporting but on “the traditional model [that] is confusing and repelling readers.” When the waters are intentionally muddied, it makes it difficult to see what’s swimming in the stream.

Headlines

• Trump “detached from reality” after 2020 election, former AG William Barr testifies (NR)

• White House again refuses to condemn illegal protests at justices’ homes (Townhall)

• “Not a question we should be asking”: Press secretary laughs off question about Biden’s health (Fox News)

• Sports Illustrated hit for article claiming Supreme Court ruling on prayer could erode “American democracy” (Fox News)

• Forty-one pro-life organizations and churches have been vandalized in the last 40 days (Not the Bee)

• Nearly 200 campus cancel culture incidents during 2021-22 school year (College Fix)

• Twenty-five states have now left National School Boards Association as Nebraska departs (Daily Wire)

• Policy: We must fight against opioids on two fronts (RCP)

• Satire: Biden says the economy is as vibrant and healthy as he is (Babylon Bee)

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