Cross-Examination

• Dems target banks/Moody’s warns about banks: Seeking to seize the moment of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse as an excuse to expand the federal government’s power, Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren along with several of her Democrat colleagues have targeted the Trump-era legislation that raised the “too big to fail” threshold regulations on banks. Warren claims the bipartisan legislation effectively caused SVB’s collapse and called for its repeal. Warren is once again engaged in a classic example of that political game of asserting correlation as causation. As Democrat Senator Jeanne Shaheen (NH), who voted for the Trump-era bill, observed: “We need to complete the investigation of what actually happened at Silicon Valley Bank. All the regulation in the world isn’t going to fix bad management practices, and it appears that that’s one of the problems at SVB.” Meanwhile, speaking of bad management practices, Moody’s Investors Service just downgraded the entire U.S. banking sector from “stable” to “negative,” and it issued warnings against six specific banks it has placed on review.

• Don’t let noncitizens vote: The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) filed a lawsuit against Washington, DC’s new law that gives non-U.S. citizens the right to vote in city elections. DC passed the measure last October, and this week it goes into effect after Congress failed to overturn it. The IRIL argues that the law “automatically dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens on a massive scale,” violates the “fundamental constitutional right to vote of the plaintiffs,” and voids their “equal protection of the law.” The law enfranchises roughly 42,000 noncitizens, including foreign diplomats, allowing them to vote in DC elections. This means that Chinese and Russian diplomats would be allowed to vote in our nation’s capital elections. Talk about a Trojan Horse.

• School punished for upholding dignity of women’s sports: A Christian school in Vermont has been punished by the state for holding to biblical values and standards after the school’s girl’s basketball team refused to play in a tournament game against an opposing school that fielded a team with a “transgender” male player. The Vermont Principals’ Association has now ruled that Mid Vermont Christian School violated the state’s anti-discrimination policy and therefore will be barred from competing in future VPA tournaments. The school plans to appeal the ban, contending, “Cancelling our membership is not a solution and does nothing to deal with the very real issue of safety and fairness facing women’s sports in our beloved state.” It’s going to take more brave people like those at MVCS standing up against the “transgender” lobby in order to stop this culturally destructive ideology.

• Meta lays off another 10K: Meta, the parent company of social media giant Facebook, just announced another round of layoffs. Last November, Meta laid off 11,000 employees, while this latest round will be another 10,000. CEO Mark Zuckerberg cited the need to improve “financial performance in a difficult environment,” adding, “This will be tough and there’s no way around that.” This will drop Facebook’s total number of employees to roughly 65,000, down from its all-time high just a year ago of 86,000. Facebook is also closing down some 5,000 job openings that it had failed to fill. Ironically, it appears that Zuckerberg’s ill-conceived “metaverse” is shrinking the size of the social media giant.

• Newark scammed by fake country: Here’s a story for those social studies students who complained about having to take a geography quiz because they would never need such “time wasting” information. Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka was recently humiliated after, as CBS News put it, he invited “what he thought was the Hindu nation of Kailasa to Newark’s city hall for a cultural trade agreement.” The problem is, Kailasa doesn’t exist. It is a fake nation creation by hoaxers. We’re betting Baraka, who was an educator in the city’s public school system before becoming mayor, wishes he had spent more time looking at a world map.

• Francis celebrates decade as pontiff: The Roman Catholic Church’s current pontiff recently celebrated a decade serving as the pope. Pope Francis’s tenure has been marked by his willingness to push the church’s doctrinal boundaries, which he seemed to recognize with an observation regarding the anniversary on the Vatican’s “popecast”: “These 10 years have been like this: living in tension.” Much of that tension is likely tied to comments Francis has made specifically regarding human sexuality, though he noted in the popecast that “gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations.” What makes Francis difficult to pin down is that he appears to at times take both sides of opposing arguments. For example, Francis has said: “There is no contradiction for a priest to marry. Celibacy in the western Church is a temporary prescription.” On the other hand, Francis has also stated: “Personally, I think that celibacy is a gift to the Church. I would say that I do not agree with allowing optional celibacy, no.” The question is, how much of this “living in tension” is intentional?

Headlines

• Russian jet collides with American drone over Black Sea, U.S. military says (CBS News)

• Biden unveils effort to crack down on firearm industry, enhance background checks (Daily Wire)

• Gun owners threaten immediate lawsuits over Biden order increasing background checks (Washington Examiner)

• Biden probe reveals $3 million payment from Chinese energy company to family associate (Washington Times)

• Treasury Department hands over Biden’s suspicious activity reports to House GOP (Free Beacon)

• Biden claims he had an “epiphany” on same-sex marriage as a teen, but we have the receipts (PJ Media)

• Biden says opposing the mutilation of children is “close to sinful” (PJ Media)

• DeSantis strips luxurious Florida hotel’s liquor license after hosting “lewd” drag show with children present (Fox News)

• Corporate America has donated $82 billion to BLM-related causes so far (Daily Wire)

• Ohio sues Norfolk Southern over toxic train derailment (AP)

• Increase in mortality rate among kids, teens largest in decades (The Hill)

• Historic decline in IQ could stem from poor education, study shows (Campus Reform)

• NYC ranked most congested city as motorists spend 10 full days in rush-hour traffic per year (NY Post)

• China, Russia deploying space weapons to attack U.S. satellites, warns Space Force chief (Washington Times)

• Policy: Trump vs. Biden: Academic study determines what president was more effective on border (Washington Examiner)

• Satire: Biden admin promises to tax Silicon Valley billionaires on all the money the federal government just gave them (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.