Top of the Fold

“Another Good Samaritan with a handgun”: On Sunday, police responded to an active shooter report at a mall in a suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana. The sociopathic assailant was armed with a rifle and multiple magazines, and he killed three patrons at the mall food court with clear designs on more slaughter. Police are crediting an armed citizen with killing the mass assailant before he could kill others. Ironically, the mall was a gun-free zone — i.e., mall policy prohibited citizens from legally carrying a firearm. But according to Greenwood Police Chief James Ison, “The real hero of the day was the citizen that was lawfully carrying a firearm in the food court and was able to stop the shooter almost as soon as he began.”

Secret Service deleted January 6 texts: It’s not supposed to be that kind of Secret Service. The law enforcement agency tasked with protecting the president’s life seems to have done something meant to protect his reputation — or at least minimize the damage. “Many US Secret Service text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” noted a letter to Congress written by Homeland Security Department Inspector General Joseph Cuffari. “The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6 [emphasis added].” Why would those texts have been deleted after records requests? What did they reveal about Donald Trump’s words or actions during the Capitol riot? Perhaps we’ll find out, but the Secret Service denies any “insinuation” of intentional wrongdoing.

Big First Amendment win coming? In underreported news, John Hinderaker at Power Line notes “a lawsuit [brought] by the States of Missouri and Louisiana against public officials including, among others, Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci and the Department of Health and Human Services.” This case has potentially big implications for the First Amendment as it pertains to social media. Biden’s Disinformation Governance Board may have been disbanded, but that doesn’t mean Democrats are done stifling free speech. In fact, former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki bragged about administration collusion with Big Tech to determine what speech to stifle. Missouri and Louisiana want answers regarding the “the identity of federal officials who have been and are communicating with social-media platforms about disinformation, misinformation, malinformation, and/or any censorship or suppression of speech on social media, including the nature and content of those communications.” Judge Terry Doughty, an appointee of Donald Trump, granted the plaintiffs’ request for expedited discovery, so perhaps we’ll soon find out.

Headlines

• “Egregious poor decision making”: Nearly 400 cops gathered at Uvalde school before anyone did anything (Daily Wire)

• Discontent with left-wing policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world (The Federalist)

• Biden, Saudi crown prince begin big meeting with fist bump (AP) | Biden confronts Mohammed bin Salman over Khashoggi murder, expects action on energy (Reuters)

• Biden’s disgraceful smear of Israel is no laughing matter (National Review)

• Federal judge blocks Biden admin directives on “transgender” school bathrooms and athletes (The Week)

• House passes bills to codify Roe, protect interstate travel for abortion (ABC News)

• Southwest flight attendant awarded $5M after firing over abortion stance (Fox Business)

• Nancy Pelosi’s husband buys millions in chip stocks right before vote on massive chip subsidy (Daily Caller)

• CBS, ABC, CNN sound the alarm on coronavirus BA.5, call for masking (Fox News)

• UPenn taps “transgender” swimmer Lia Thomas for NCAA Woman of the Year award (Daily Wire)

• Americans’ faith in public education nears record lows (NY Post)

• Fed leaning toward 0.75 percentage point rate hike (Barron’s)

• Texas’ power grid is straining — and it’s not even August (Bloomberg)

• California went big on rooftop solar. Now that’s a problem for landfills. (LA Times)

• Liz Cheney trails Trump-endorsed challenger by 22 points (The Federalist)

• The conservative case that Trump lost and Biden won the 2020 election (LNS)

• Just 14% of Stacey Abrams’s fundraising haul came from Georgia residents (Free Beacon)

• Policy: Democrat governors try to use social issues as a tool to lure businesses (City Journal)

• Satire: Biden calls on the economy to stop being bad (Babylon Bee)

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