Top of the Fold

• J6 rioter gets seven-year sentence: On Monday, a DC judge handed out the stiffest sentence yet for a January 6 Capitol rioter, as a man from Texas, Guy Reffitt, was given seven years and four months in prison after being found guilty following his trial in March. Reffitt was a member of and recruiter for a far-right militia group, and on January 6 he was illegally armed with a gun on the Capitol grounds, though he never entered the Capitol building itself. While on the grounds, he encouraged rioters to enter the Capitol and attack members of Congress. The judge made clear that Reffitt’s decision to go to trial rather than enter a plea deal led to his stiffer penalty. That said, the sentencing demonstrates yet again the nation’s glaring two-tiered justice system: Black Lives Matter and antifa rioters who reeked havoc in cities across the country in the summer of 2020 received hardly a slap on the wrist, whereas the more than 850 J6 rioters have had the book thrown at them. Such blatantly politically motivated bias will only serve to sow more distrust in the nation’s justice system. Nevertheless, Reffitt and his fellow rioting jackasses clearly broke the law and should suffer the consequences.

• “Fact-checkers” flag social media posts criticizing Biden’s recession redefinition: In yet another demonstration that Facebook’s “fact-checkers” are nothing more than leftist thought police, users’ platform posts decrying Joe Biden’s redefinition of a recession were flagged as “false information.” PolitiFact, one of the leftist third-party fact-checkers used by Meta, owner of Facebook and Instagram, labeled two claims that the White House had changed the definition of recession as “partly false information.” The posts in question published screenshots of the White House blog from July 21 that stated, “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.” One of the posts included the message, “Even if Thursday’s GDP report shows a second consecutive quarter of negative growth, you won’t hear the Biden admin using the R-word.” PolitiFact declared, “No, the White House didn’t change the definition of ‘recession,’” and then went to bat for the Biden administration by claiming that the two consecutive quarters of falling GDP is not an official definition but merely a common colloquialism. This is PolitiFact revealing that it is more concerned about pushing a political narrative over and against the facts.

• Emails accentuate Trump’s electors plan: Dozens of recently released emails sent by Trump administration officials following the 2020 election shed more light on the so-called “fake electors” plan. In the several states that Trump narrowly lost — states he contended had engaged in election fraud — a plan was put into place wherein alternate electors were chosen just in case the election results were changed after the December 14 elector deadline but prior to January 6. The term “fake elector” is used in several of the emails in reference to the alternative electors. Furthermore, according to an email from Trump campaign lawyer Jack Wilenchik, the existence of these fake electors was to have been kept secret until January 6 and then sprung onto Congress as it counted electoral votes. That “plan,” of course, never happened. Furthermore, that it was anything other than an idea for a contingency plan in the event that Trump’s challenge of the election results had been successful appears dubious. It seems once again that the J6 Committee, with Leftmedia help, is continuing to spin up an Insurrection™ plot where none exists. As the Trump campaign’s official intention regarding the alternate electors states, “on the understanding that if, as a result of a final non-appealable Court Order or other proceeding prescribed by law, we are ultimately recognized as being the duly elected and qualified Electors.”

Headlines

• U.S. takes out al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Afghanistan counterterrorism operation (Fox News) | Zawahri’s death raises questions about al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan after U.S. left it to the Taliban (Fox News)

• Nancy Pelosi lands in Taiwan, defying Chinese warnings of forceful response (WaPo)

• 2022 midterm primaries: What races to watch today (CBS News)

• Manchin reconciliation package includes EV tax credits he once called “ludicrous” (Free Beacon)

• A new bill takes on “Zuckerbucks” and “Bidenbucks” (Front Page Mag)

• U.S. to send Ukraine additional $550 million in military aid (Axios)

• Hitting back: Ukraine’s forces poised to take offensive in south against Russia (Washington Times)

• California declares a state of emergency over monkeypox outbreak, following New York and Illinois (CNBC)

• Democrats fixate on same-sex marriage while the country crumbles (The Federalist)

• “Not safe”: England to shut down only gender clinic for minors while Biden pushes child sex changes (Daily Caller)

• Germany has three months to save itself from a winter gas crisis (Bloomberg)

• Scientists baffled as Earth spins faster than usual (NY Post)

• Policy: “Inflation Reduction Act” is euphemism for big government socialism, higher prices (Daily Signal)

• Policy: How to end Big Tech censorship of free speech (NY Post)

• Humor: Putin awards self Medal of Freedom for dropping gas prices (Babylon Bee)

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