Cross-Examination

• Incredible Russian casualties rate: According to recent reports, the Ukrainian military has been exacting a heavy toll against the Russian invaders over the last month. United Kingdom officials say Ukrainians are killing some 800-plus Russian troops per day. In one battle fought near the coal mining city of Vuhledar, some 5,000 Russians were either killed, wounded, or captured. The high casualty rate has much to do with the current makeup of Russia’s fighting force, with a significant number of fresh recruits who have had limited training being thrown into combat. And according to UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace, it is now estimated that “97% of the whole Russian army is in Ukraine.” Over the last several weeks, the Russians have been pushing hard in an effort to slowly advance and reclaim ground they lost last summer and fall. “We haven’t actually seen this massing of a single force to punch through in a big offensive,” Wallace noted. “We’ve just seen an effort to advance, and that has come at a huge cost to the Russian army.” The assessment is that the Russian army aims to advance as much as possible before an anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive in the early spring. Despite the high Russian casualty rate, there is little indication that Vladimir Putin has any plans for ending his effort to conquer Ukraine anytime soon.

• NYT cognitive dissonance: In a classic example of “do as we say, not as we do,” The New York Times recently announced that the company will buy back some $250 million of its own shares, a move the Times’s editorial board argued back in the summer of 2020 should be made illegal. The Gray Lady’s editorial board called for the banning of stock buybacks because it is a way for limiting available stock and therefore boosting a stock’s value. “American workers have suffered a devastating loss of economic power, manifest in their wages, benefits, and working conditions,” the Times editors wrote, and therefore we need to reverse “the legalization of share buybacks.” Now the Times is engaging in this buyback because of its desire to “game the system” and increase the paper’s own stock value — precisely what has happened, as the media outfit’s stock price jumped some 12% since the announcement was made on February 8. The truth is, engaging in hypocrisy of this type is nothing new for the Times. For example, the paper has repeatedly railed against the salaries of CEOs skyrocketing while “workers have been left behind,” only for the Times to turn around and give its CEO, Meredith Kopit Levien, a significant salary bump from $4.4 million in 2020 up to $5.8 million the very next year.

• The girls are not alright: The CDC recently released the results of a Youth Risk Behavior Survey from 2021, which found that almost three in five teenage girls reported feeling “persistently sad or hopeless,” the highest in 10 years. Even more troubling is that 30% of teenage girls said they have seriously considered suicide, an increase of almost 60% in the last decade. What does the CDC say accounts for the dramatic rise in negative feelings in teenage girls? Well, here’s where the leftist agenda rears its ugly head: The report notes that LGBTQ youth “experience much more interpersonal stress from schools, from peers and from home, unfortunately.” Translation: Blame conservatives. Unsurprisingly, as the number of teenagers, especially girls, who identify as “transgender” has exploded over the last decade, combined with the pushing of victimhood identity, the result has been more of America’s youth feeling hopeless and sad. Furthermore, the CDC seems to entirely ignore the government’s overreaction to the COVID pandemic — i.e., locking down schools, which served to isolate swaths of America’s youth. Obviously, that had a significant negative impact on kids’ emotional and mental health. Leftists have promulgated their agenda everywhere, effectively grooming teenagers to reject basic truth, biological reality, and a value system that embraces individual responsibility, replacing all of that with a negative victimhood ideology based on race and gender identity. Is anyone actually surprised that the result of this toxic milieu is increased depression among youth?

Headlines

• Biden says there’s “no rationale for assault weapons” after Michigan State shooting (National Review)

• MSU shooter had felony gun charge dismissed by progressive DA, was “known” to police (RedState)

• Biden administration announces $231M to fund red-flag laws, other gun violence prevention (The Hill)

• Senators react to classified UFO briefing from Biden administration officials (Daily Wire)

• New report shows Biden team has been lying from beginning about Chinese spy balloon (RedState)

• VP Harris says Chinese spy flight episode shouldn’t impact relations with China (Fox News)

• SBA won’t even try to collect on PPP loans that are supposed to be paid back, citing "equity" (Daily Wire)

• Republicans demand answers on CDC’s COVID vaccine database (Daily Signal)

• WHO abandons plans for crucial second phase of COVID-origins investigation (Nature)

• New York City sent fingerprints of unvaxxed teachers to FBI (Free Beacon)

• James Clapper tries to backtrack on calling Hunter laptop “Russian disinformation” (PJ Media)

• Disinformation Inc: Microsoft removes conservative sites from blacklist “defunding” outlets (Washington Examiner)

• The lone Republican FTC commissioner is leaving, claiming the chairwoman has abused her power (Government Executive)

• Dianne Feinstein appears unaware of her retirement announcement during reporter gaggle (Fox News)

• John Kerry family private jet sold shortly after accusations of climate hypocrisy (Fox News)

• “Nonbinary” former Biden official Sam Brinton to appear in court to face bag theft charges (Fox News)

• Shake Shack agrees to pay “misgendered” employee $20K in discrimination dispute (National Review)

• Christian teacher loses job after refusing to deceive parents on kids’ gender transitions (Fox News)

• “It was mutilation”: Five detransitioners harmed by medical transition speak out in new documentary (Daily Wire)

• Policy: As electric car sales surge, their benefits are increasingly criticized (NY Post)

• Satire: Ilhan Omar withdraws support for East Palestine after learning it’s in America (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.