Cross-Examination

• Team Biden “ran out of time” to talk immigration: Biden administration and Mexican officials met Monday to discuss a number of issues facing the two neighboring nations. According to administration officials, the primary subject was “supply chains and drug smuggling” issues. A subject that was glaringly absent in their discussions, however, was the ongoing border crisis. It was reported that “uncontrolled migration across the U.S. southern border” was “on the agenda,” but the two leaders “ran out of time” to address the subject, although Joe Biden and Andrés Manuel López Obrador supposedly “discussed migration and the border in their private session.” So, following Biden’s visit to the border, in which he played down any concerns over the massive number of migrants illegally crossing the U.S. southern border daily, his administration emphasized the erroneous narrative that the “border is secure” by having Biden effectively ignore the subject when meeting with his Mexican counterpart. Indeed, Lopez Obrador only noted that he and Biden spoke about the issue “in a very broad manner,” though he did thank Biden for having “not built even one meter of wall.” Biden’s border policy has always been that of a de facto open border. From his immigration agenda standpoint, there is no crisis. Why talk about it?

• No accountability for Buttigieg: Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has repeatedly demonstrated that he is either in over his head or willfully negligent. Buttigieg has repeatedly failed to show basic competence in overseeing the nation’s transportation sector. The latest example of this failure was Wednesday’s Federal Aviation Administration computer crash that forced the grounding of flights nationwide for almost two hours until the Notice to Airmen Air Missions (NOTAM) was rebooted. Buttigieg blamed the collapse on “an incredibly complex system” with a history of “glitches or complications [that] happen all the time.” But the FAA’s response to NOTAM’s outage in grounding all flights was, according to several airlines, needlessly extreme. The FAA’s grounding order resulted in the cancellation of more than 1,300 flights and the delay of a further 9,700. If the NOTAM system has a history of “glitches or complications” as Buttigieg claims, then why has nothing been done about it? Why are there no backup systems? And did it really rise to such a problem that required a nationwide grounding order? Apparently, Canada experienced similar but unrelated problems, but flights weren’t grounded. Buttigieg spun a “safety first” excuse for the decision while asserting the FAA would “own” the issue and “fix it.” Of course, he and the FAA have yet to “own” the issues they are responsible for, all while Buttigieg has no problem threatening Southwest over its recent scheduling software debacle. Absentee Buttigieg apparently believes that leadership consists of showing up after a crisis event, declaring that “things need to change,” and then scheduling his next holiday.

• More Americans identify as Republicans: The majority of America has long been moderate to right-leaning. Indeed, any truly free society naturally would be culturally inclined to view the individual as the primary provider for his own welfare over and against the state. Despite this leaning, for the first time in decades, more Americans personally identify as Republican than Democrat. A recent Gallup poll of 10,000 adults found that 45% identified as Republican to 44% Democrat. While it’s not a massive swing or distinct advantage, digging into the data further shows that 47% and 30% of adults respectively identify their political views as moderate and conservative, while just 21% were liberal. Meanwhile, the Democrat Party has increasingly shifted to the left. Gallup notes, “After hovering near 50% in recent years, the percentage of Democrats who identify as politically liberal rose four percentage points in 2022 to 54%, a new high for this group.” It appears the growth in the number of Republicans has a lot to do with the Democrats’ move to the hard left. As Ronald Reagan famously observed, “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me.” So, while the red wave may have failed to materialize during the midterm elections, there’s still reason to be optimistic about Republicans’ future election prospects.

Headlines

• AG Garland appoints special counsel to investigate Biden classified documents (Fox News)

• “It’s not like they’re sitting out on the street!”: Biden defends keeping classified documents in his garage (Not the Bee)

• Hunter Biden lived at home where classified documents were stashed, records show (Free Beacon)

• House Oversight panel to probe China money to university where Biden worked, classified memos found (Just the News)

• In emails to White House, Facebook admits suppressing “often-true content” on COVID vaccines (Daily Signal)

• U.S. flights grounded because engineer accidentally “replaced one file with another” (ABC News)

• Amid aviation crisis, Transportation Department expands vacation (Daily Signal)

• House GOP introduces bill requiring K–12 schools to post curricula online (National Review)

• Democrats push to amend Constitution so 16-year-olds can vote (Fox News)

• Lightfoot blasted after asking CPS teachers to encourage students to help her mayoral campaign (NBC Chicago)

• Only half of U.S. women under 45 have children (PM)

• Humor: Biden says he is unaware of any classified docs, or who he is, or why he’s sitting in this oval-shaped office (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.