Top of the Fold

• Whistleblower: Hundreds of terrorists among Afghan evacuees: A Department of Defense whistleblower is claiming that hundreds among the thousands of Afghan refugees whom the U.S. evacuated from Kabul last year as the country was collapsing into Taliban hands were on the DOD’s terror watch list. Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) sent a letter calling for the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate the claims on the grounds that the Defense Department failed to properly vet refugees from Afghanistan. The letter notes that “324 individuals evacuated from Afghanistan were allowed to enter the United States, despite appearing on the DoD’s Biometrically Enabled Watchlist.” FBI Director Christopher Wray acknowledged that the agency is aware of the claims and is actively investigating a number of individuals, though he didn’t know the exact number. Furthermore, when questioned as to the current location of these suspect individuals, Wray said, “I can’t sit here right now and tell you that we know where all are located at any given time.” The whistleblower alleges that the “DoD instructed agency personnel to cut corners when processing evacuees” and “abbreviate their [fingerprint] tests in order to promote the rushed evacuation from Afghanistan.”

• U.S. government secretly ferrying illegals across the country: The Biden administration has been engaged in flying thousands of illegal aliens detained at the southern border and depositing them in various cities across the nation. In Jacksonville, Florida, alone, the federal government has deposited more than 70 chartered jet-loads of migrants, often in the dead of night. A similar situation is playing out all over the country. And while the Democrat mayors of New York City and Washington, DC, are busy blaming the influx of illegals in their cities on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s busing program, his campaign is a mere drop in the bucket when compared to Joe Biden’s migrant ferrying. As Representative Dan Meuser (R-PA) observed, “Wilkes Barre and Scranton are now border cities as a direct result of the Biden administration’s policies.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s office noted that the Biden administration has kept them in the dark and the only reason they know of these flights is thanks to local law enforcement. “[We’re] having to watch and observe — in effect, spy on the government to see what it is that they’re doing in the middle of the night out of these airport facilities,” said DeSantis’s public safety czar, Larry Keefe. “And it’s clandestine. And we really have no say into it. … I know when we initially got wind of this, it wasn’t through normal channels, it’s people in the federal government who are effectively leaking this to us so that we have a heads up on it.”

• Elderly woman banned from YMCA pool after complaining about a “transgender”: A community pool run by the YMCA recently banned an 80-year-old woman after she complained about a man in the women’s dressing room who was watching females undress. The elderly woman also complained about the man showering. “There were gaps in the curtain and there I was, naked, with soap and water on me, and this guy, right there very close to me,” she explained. “I asked, ‘Do you have a penis?’ He said, ‘That’s none of your business.’ That’s when I told him, ‘Get out of here, right now.’” But rather than the YMCA manager removing the man from the women’s locker room, it was the complaining woman who was told that she was guilty of discriminating and that she “can’t use the pool anymore.” Furthermore, the CEO of Olympic Peninsula YMCA later told her that she was barred from the pool. She observed that the YMCA did not inform “women the shower room is now all-gender and what that means, nor have parents been informed of what they can expect with these new polices.” Moreover, “The Y has not provided any dressing shower room options for women who do not want to be exposed to men who identify as women. It is unconscionable that the YMCA would implement these new policies without clearly informing pool patrons and parents.”

Headlines

• Senate passes Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act boondoggle (Daily Wire)

• Latest version of reconciliation bill raises taxes on small businesses (Breitbart)

• Only 12% of Americans believe Inflation Reduction Act will actually reduce inflation (Daily Wire)

• A blind squirrel finds a nut: Bernie Sanders slams “the so-called Inflation Reduction Act” (Daily Wire)

• Every Senate Democrat votes against defining pregnancy as unique to biological females (Washington Examiner)

• Indiana becomes first state in nation to approve near-total abortion ban post-Roe (Fox News)

• Biden’s DOJ fights religious healthcare providers over “transgender” care (Washington Times)

• Pentagon denies Mayor Muriel Bowser request for National Guard to assist in “humanitarian crisis” as migrants arrive in DC (Fox News)

• NYC Mayor Eric Adams blasts Texas Governor Greg Abbott after second bus of migrants arrives (Fox News)

• How a Dem congressional staffer faked being an FBI agent and became a fugitive (Daily Beast)

• RNC announces Milwaukee as host city for 2024 Convention (GOP.com)

• Policy: The drug crisis: problems and solutions (Manhattan Institute)

• Humor: Batgirl movie canceled after $70 million in Batmobiles destroyed backing out of Batcave (Babylon Bee)

• Satire: Man who couldn’t attend his mother’s funeral sure glad to see gay fetish festival still proceeding as planned (Babylon Bee)

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