Cross-Examination

• More docs, more damage control: Joe Biden “takes classified documents very seriously,” so he not only kept some of them in his garage next to his Corvette, but he also stashed a few inside his home. Evidently, Biden abides by the notion that the best hiding places are in plain sight. A fourth set of classified documents were discovered at Biden’s Delaware home, this time by his personal lawyer. Prior to this latest discovery, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeatedly declared that no more classified documents were unaccounted for, that “the search is complete.” Well, so much for that false claim. But beyond the continuing revelations, there’s the glaring double standard of Biden’s personal lawyer doing the search, whereas the FBI sent in a team to raid Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, dismissing attorney-client privilege by using the “crime/fraud exception.” Effectively, Biden is allowed attorney-client privilege protection, wherein the FBI is kept out of the investigation while his legal team combs through his records. Representative Jim Jordan blasted the Biden administration over its “lack of transparency,” saying, “2020, they suppress the Hunter Biden story. 2022, they raid [Trump’s] home 91 days before an election, but they don’t tell us about Joe Biden’s classified document issue that they knew about prior to the [2022 midterm] election.” Clearly seeking to engage in damage control over the growing scandal, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he has appointed a special counsel to investigate the matter.

• Biden comes after pistol braces: In the latest move infringing on Americans’ Second Amendment rights, the Biden administration announced a new Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives rule banning pistol-stabilizing braces. The ATF’s new rule asserts that a “stabilizing brace” effectively turns a pistol into a rifle and is therefore regarded as an illegal short-barrel firearm. The new rule requires any pistols with attached “stabilizing braces” to be registered within 120 days, or that the brace be “permanently removed and disposed of, or altered … such that it cannot be reattached; or the firearm is turned into your local ATF office … or … is destroyed.” AG Merrick Garland claimed that the rule change was needed to make “clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers, and individuals cannot evade these important public safety protections simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles.” Senate Republicans have objected to the new rule as “the largest executive branch-imposed gun registration and confiscation scheme in American history.” The Second Amendment advocacy organization Gun Owners of America has promised to file a lawsuit.

• Emergency debt measures: On Friday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter to Congress and specifically to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy alerting that she was acting to take “certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations.” Yellen noted that the U.S. government would hit its debt limit this coming Thursday and warned that it was “critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit.” Yellen was unable to estimate the length of time these emergency measures would allow the U.S. government to keep up its obligations, but “failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.” Raising the debit ceiling has been a regularly repeated “crisis” for lawmakers wherein Democrats continually warn of catastrophic consequences should the debt limit not be raised. This time it’s Social Security, Medicare, and military salaries. And like clockwork, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted that “Congress is going to need to raise the debt limit without condition.” KJP further asserted that there should “be no negotiation over it.” In 2021, Congress raised the federal debt ceiling to $31.4 trillion, and thanks to the Democrats’ spending spree, that ceiling has been hit yet again. Meanwhile, Republicans have repeatedly called for government spending cuts, with House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) noting: “At the same time you’re dealing with the debt limit, you’re also putting mechanisms in place so that you don’t keep maxing it out because if the limit gets raised, you don’t go to the store the next day and just max it out again. You start figuring out how to control the spending problem.” Indeed, Americans are currently suffering under a 40-year-high inflation rate thanks to government overspending. The solution is simple: The federal government needs to stop spending money it doesn’t have.

Headlines

• No visitor logs exist for Biden’s Wilmington home, site of classified doc discovery, White House Counsel’s Office says (Fox News)

• Democrat Mayor Eric Adams demands action from Biden after seeing border crisis firsthand (Fox News)

• $10 million “wasted”: Family of Coretta Scott King has crude comparison for MLK statue (Daily Wire)

• “Shameful form of indoctrination”: SPLC promotes teaching kids about Black Lives Matter on MLK Day — in first grade (Daily Signal)

• Hunter Biden asks court to deny estranged four-year-old daughter taking his surname (Breitbart)

• Trump Organization fined $1.6 million for tax fraud (AP)

• Biden, media taunt struggling Americans by insisting 6.5% inflation is a good thing (The Federalist)

• On the road to zero: More states phasing out the income tax (Just the News)

• The country’s biggest school districts are explicitly hiding kids’ gender transitions from parents (Daily Caller)

• China reports huge rise in COVID deaths after WHO criticized Beijing for heavily undercounting (CNBC)

• University of Alabama basketball player Darius Miles among two charged with capital murder in shooting death on the Strip (AL.com)

• Texas medical schools hit with lawsuit for allegedly discriminating based on race, sex, and nationality (Fox News)

• Policy: Woke medical schools are a threat to your health (Washington Examiner)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.