Cross-Examination

• Hospital provided “gender-affirming” hysterectomies for kids?: Up until recently, Washington, DC’s Children’s National Hospital advertised on its website that it provided “gender-affirming medical care and gender-affirming hysterectomy” services for “patients between the ages of 0-21.” When the founder of Libs of TikTok called to ask how young a patient could be to receive a gender-affirming hysterectomy, the hospital worker stated that the procedure had been performed on patients younger than 16. When Fox News contacted the hospital, a spokesman contradicted the claim by saying that “we do not provide gender-affirming surgery for anyone under the age of 18.” This statement was made conveniently after the hospital had pulled down the webpage advertising hysterectomies for youths, claiming the webpage “was a flaw in the design of our website.” Well, that “flawed” webpage had been up on the hospital’s website since June 2021, and given the fact that the hospital also has a Youth Pride Clinic that advertises “affordable, high-quality health and wellness, including physicals, hormonal treatment and mental health counseling for transgender and gender-nonconforming youth,” the claims of it merely being a “flaw” on the website appear dubious.

• Facebook flagged GOP posts on Biden’s student loan cancellation: “WOW: Facebook says our post about paying back loans violates their ‘community standards.’ Big Tech’s at it again,” was a message posted on Twitter by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee. Included in that post were several screen shots of Facebook’s message that the Republicans had violated the social media giant’s “community standards.” Republicans blasted Big Tech censorship by observing that their original post simply stated: “If you take out a loan, you pay it back. Period.” The outcry by Republicans quickly received a response from Meta, the company that owns Facebook. Spokesman Andy Stone gave what amounts to a convenient “oops.” Stone wrote, “There is nothing about the content of this post that violates our polices, people should not have been prevented from sharing it and we’re working to fix it now.” Serving to underscore Republicans’ and conservatives’ long-running claims of Big Tech censorship being a violation of Americans’ First Amendment rights to free speech was the admission yesterday by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that Facebook abided by FBI warnings against allowing the sharing of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal prior to the 2020 election, claiming it was Russian misinformation. This is exactly why Big Tech censorship can’t simply be written off as a private company acting according to its own priorities. This is the classic definition of fascism at play.

• Judge orders Mar-a-Lago raid affidavit unsealed: On Thursday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the Justice Department to release to the public the affidavit authorizing the raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. DOJ officials had complied with Reinhard’s order last week to produce portions of the affidavit they contended need to be keep secret in order to protect their investigation. Reinhart ordered that a redacted version of the affidavit be unsealed and made available to the public by noon today. Generally during criminal investigations affidavits remain sealed until the government either announces its charges against an individual(s) or decides against doing so and ends the investigation. The judge in this case responded to Trump’s as well as the media’s call for releasing the affidavit by taking the unusual step of unsealing it due to the unprecedented nature of the raid on a former president’s residence. However, most legal experts believe that the affidavit will be so heavily redacted as to not provide any real answers to questions regarding the specifics of what the government was looking for and what crime they maybe investigating Trump for. In other words, don’t expect any significant new revelations later today.

• On this date last year — Biden’s surrender and retreat from Afghanistan: We are reposting, in chronological order, analysis of events a year ago related to the most disgraceful military exfil in American history — Biden’s deadly surrender and retreat from Afghanistan. This day last year, Mark Alexander covered: The Consequence of Biden’s Ineptitude: 13 Dead American Patriots. The blood of our military Patriots, and the coming bloodshed of thousands of Afghan men, women, and children being readied for slaughter, is on the hands of Biden, his Beltway cadre, and their supporters.

Headlines

• New NIH letter again confirms that Fauci lied, funding went to Wuhan lab (Red State)

• ‘Liberal elites’ pressured Pfizer to delay vaccine until after 2020 election (New York Post)

• Vax mandate keeps top tennis star Novak Djokovic from competing in the U.S. Open (Fox News)

• North Dakota judge blocks abortion ban from going into effect Friday (Washington Post)

• Counterstrike: U.S. helicopters, gunships hit Iran-backed militias in Syria as conflict escalates (Washington Times)

• Podcast conference begs forgiveness for hosting Ben Shapiro after social media backlash (National Review)

• Marjorie Taylor Greene’s home swatted a second time in two days (The Hill)

• State Department defends spending $10k on film fest featuring incest, pedophilia (Washington Free Beacon)

• The trailer for Hillary Clinton’s new Apple TV+ show gives us a glimpse at what might be the worst thing ever made on film (Not the Bee)

• Apple TV+ announces new show ‘Clintons in Cars Killing Witnesses’ (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.