Cross-Examination

• Dominion lawsuit against Fox begins: Today in Wilmington, Delaware, opening statements are being made in the defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News. Dominion is seeking $1.6 billion in damages from the conservative media organization due to Fox News’s reporting following the 2020 election regarding false allegations of election fraud perpetrated by the election software company. For its part, Fox News insists that as a media organization, it was simply engaged in reporting claims other people were making, irrespective of their accuracy, which is a freedom protected by the First Amendment. In order to succeed in its defamation case, Dominion will have to convince a jury that Fox News knowingly acted in malice against Dominion. That’ll be a high bar.

• Biden vows to veto women’s sports: House Republicans are in the process of producing legislation to protect women’s sports. The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, also known as HR 734, would limit students’ participation in sports to their biological sex and not a declared “gender identity.” Joe Biden has labeled this protection of women “discrimination” and vowed on Monday that he would veto any such legislation. The White House falsely asserted that HR 734 “targets people for who they are” and that it is a “one-size-fits-all requirement that forces coaches to remove kids from their teams.” Ironically, it is the Biden administration that is looking to redefine Title IX protection of girls’ sports by redefining sex to include “transgender” individuals. Changing definitions in order to get around the rules has long been known as cheating.

• Senate says COVID came from the lab: The results of a Senate commission investigation led by former Senator Richard Burr has concluded that the COVID virus most likely originated from a lab leak in Wuhan, China. The report states, “The preponderance of information affirms the plausibility of a research-related incident that was likely unintentional resulting from failures of biosafety containment during vaccine-related research.” The report also throws cold water on the animal origin theory, observing that it lacks demonstrable supportive evidence. What was once derided by Dr. Anthony Fauci and much of the mainstream media during the first year of the global pandemic as a “fringe conspiracy theory” has largely become the scientific consensus. This serves to illustrate why freedom of speech is essential to both finding and preserving the truth.

• DeSantis vs. Disney continues: On Monday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made clear he won’t allow Disney to rig the game and get out from under state authority. Last year, Florida revoked Disney’s special autonomous status due to the company’s decision to engage in pushing false political narratives against the state’s Parental Rights in Education law. Disney worked to preserve its special self-governing status by getting the district board it controlled to turn over all governing authority to the company prior to the state-controlled board’s takeover. DeSantis called Disney’s action a “direct defiance of the will of the people of Florida” and pointed to new legislation to address and correct the company’s underhanded attempt to avoid state authority. He promised that Disney will “live under the same laws as everybody else, pay their fair share of taxes, and honor the debts that they’ve accumulated over these years.”

• Joe Biden’s sneaky and illegal EV battery directive: In his effort to coerce more Americans into going electric, Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency has taken an emissions regulation for gas-powered cars and stretched it into applying to non-emission-producing electric vehicles. To ensure that EV manufacturers’ batteries retain their recharge capacity for several years and go tens of thousands of miles without significantly diminishing, the EPA applied to EVs the Clean Air Act’s warranty requirement on gas-powered vehicles of eight years or 80,000 miles for “major emission control components” like catalytic converters. The problem is obvious: EVs don’t produce emissions. So the Biden administration is attempting to circumvent the growing problem with EV batteries by playing a redefinition game in order to hold manufacturers liable under a law that doesn’t apply to the product they are manufacturing.

Headlines

• Biden-McCarthy escalate tit-for-tat over debt ceiling deal (The Hill)

• House Republicans expand Biden family investigation to “six additional” kin (The Federalist)

• Fetterman returns to Senate after depression treatment (Axios)

• Feds charge two with running covert “police station” for China to chase down dissidents in NYC (NY Post)

• Elon Musk reveals U.S. intel agencies had “full access” to private Twitter DMs (Fox News)

• Federal court blocks California city’s gas stove ban (Free Beacon)

• Missouri becomes first state to crack down on sex-change treatments for adults (Free Beacon)

• C-SPAN ditches House Republicans’ Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg hearings, fueling bias claims (NY Post)

• Trans teacher removed from school for allegedly threatening to shoot students, cops seize guns from home (Daily Wire)

• Loudoun County schools to make bathrooms co-ed to accommodate trans students (Daily Wire)

• Disney to host “Pride Nite” after DeSantis announces bill stripping entertainment giant of self-granted protections (National Review)

• UN-backed report suggests normalizing pedophilia, decriminalizing all sexual activity (Daily Wire)

• No charges for officers in Jayland Walker case (WJW)

• Germany switches off its last nuclear plants (AP)

• Policy: IRS plan for self-preservation comes at taxpayers’ expense (Daily Signal)

• Humor: Bud Light smooths things over with new ad featuring drag queen waving American flag (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.