Cross-Examination

• 160,000 public comments “missing” on Biden’s Title IX sex redefinition proposal: The Biden administration is blaming a sudden decrease of public comments posted on the Regulations.gov website regarding the Department of Education’s proposed redefinition of “sex” to Title IX protections on a “clerical error.” The Biden administration has been pushing the proposal to redefine the Title IX designation of “sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity. This change would effectively allow biological men to access female-only facilities such as bathrooms and locker rooms, as well as codify their right to participate on female sports teams for all colleges and universities that receive federal funding. The dubious “clerical error” eliminated 163,000 public comments from a total of more than 349,000. Making the matter even more fishy is the discrepancy between the Federal Register, which lists the total number of comments with none eliminated, and Regulations.gov, which curates to remove duplicates or spam comments. The Federal Register logs 21,000 fewer comments than Regulations.gov, which should be a technical impossibility. As Sarah Parshall Perry, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, observes: “The Department of Education’s claim that the error in the number of comments is due to a clerical error doesn’t pass the smell test. Far more likely is that they don’t want the American people to know how unpopular this policy change is.”

• Google and IBM walk back racist research fellowship rules: Tech giants Google and IBM have quietly reversed course on their companies’ rules to limit the number of white and Asian students that schools can nominate for research fellowships. The original rules required that if a school “chooses to nominate more than two students … the third and fourth nominees must self-identify as a woman, Black/African descent, Hispanic/Latino/Latinx, Indigenous, and/or a person with a disability.” The rules likely violated current civil rights laws, which Google initially denied by claiming that its rule was “extremely common” and comported with “all relevant laws.” However, after being questioned, Google decided otherwise, changing the fellowship nomination requirement to now “encourage” rather than mandate schools to nominate “those from historically marginalized groups.” IBM likewise dropped a “diversity candidate” requirement for nominees to its fellowship program and now merely asks that schools “consider a diverse slate of candidates.” The Civil Rights Act of 1964 explicitly forbids discrimination based upon race or sex.

• Remembering Benghazi 10 years later: The terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, occurred 10 years ago yesterday. And yet there are still questions from that fateful night that remain unanswered. Questions like: What caused the battle that had raged for hours to suddenly stop for no apparent reason? Marine Corps veteran and former CIA contractor Mark Geist, who fought that day to save his fellow Americans, observed, “If they would have kept firing mortars, they would have killed me.” Geist suspects that the militia that transported him and fellow contractor and former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty, who was one of the four killed, intervened. Hillary Clinton repeatedly asserted that the FBI’s last-minute investigation into her emails was responsible for throwing the 2016 election to Donald Trump, but that might be a convenient excuse to cover her abysmal response to the Benghazi attack. The then-secretary of state intentionally misled the American public as to the cause and the parties responsible for the attack, and she then sought to dismiss the deception and her response by infamously protesting during a congressional hearing, “What difference, at this point, does it make?” Well, it still matters to the families of four dead Americans, who 10 years later still live with the reality that no one has been convicted of their murders. Geist has since quit contracting and started a nonprofit to help wounded contractors called the Shadow Warriors Project. “It has been cathartic and very helpful,” Geist stated, “being able to share and be a part of something bigger than yourself.” He added: “Glen [Doherty], Tyrone [Woods], Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, put their hand up in the air and swore to uphold the Constitution. They chose to go into harm’s way. We have a lot of Americans around the world that are doing that, and we need to remember them as well.”

Headlines

• Spin city: White House touts Biden “economic blueprint” as recession fears mount (NY Post)

• Biden inflation hits soldiers hard as U.S. Army recommends food stamps for troops (Just the News)

• COVID illnesses are keeping at least 500,000 workers out of U.S. labor force (WSJ)

• Justice Roberts says Supreme Court will reopen to public and defends legitimacy (WaPo) | VP Harris attacks SCOTUS: “This is an activist Court” (Daily Wire)

• Grand jury looking into Trump’s post-2020 election fundraising (NY Post)

• South Carolina coach stands by decision to shun BYU after investigation into racial incident turns up nothing (NR)

• Here’s the “white supremacist” accused of vandalizing a gay pride crosswalk with swastikas (Townhall)

• Guns bought with a credit card in the U.S. will now be trackable (Not the Bee)

• Dutch agriculture minister resigns after mass farmer protests (Daily Caller)

• Policy: A five-point plan to secure a Republican majority come November (Newt Gingrich)

• Humor: Republican housewife insists on cleaning baseboards in case FBI raids house tomorrow (Babylon Bee)

• Satire: NFL hoping third year of “end racism” painted in end zone will do the trick (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.