Cross-Examination

• Here’s to you, Ms. Former Marketing Genius: Anheuser-Busch’s woke vice president of marketing for its Bud Light brand, Alissa Heinerscheid, has been placed on leave as the beer company’s top-selling product continues to reel following Heinerscheid’s controversial decision to use “transgender” influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a marketing campaign. Bud Light’s non-apology walk back failed to stanch the bleeding, which cost the company some $7 billion in market value, so now Heinerscheid is being given the slow walk out the door. Budweiser’s vice president of marketing will replace her. While it may be well and good that Heinerscheid is out temporarily, the beer company needs to offer a complete mea culpa and ditch its embrace of the woke ESG agenda that got it into this mess in the first place. Expecting the costumers it threw under the bus to simply forgive and forget without any serious act of contrition on Bud Light’s part, along with a commitment to avoid politics and just make beer, is likely another bad bet.

• Did Garland perjure himself? The IRS whistleblower who alleges that there has been a cover-up in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s potential tax crimes notes that Hunter has been getting “preferential treatment” from his father’s administration thanks to Attorney General Merrick Garland. The whistleblower’s attorney, Mark Lytle, claims to have information that could “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee.” That senior political appointee in question is evidently Garland. Indeed, Garland has repeatedly given testimony before Congress that there “will not be interference of any political or improper kind” from the Justice Department in U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s Hunter Biden investigation, and that Weiss “will have full authority” to bring charges against the president’s son if he so decides. According to the IRS whistleblower, that is not the case.

• Hunter’s potential charges: Enough evidence for raising criminal charges against Hunter Biden is evidently there, but the Justice Department has yet to pull the trigger. The charges that Hunter could/should be facing include several tax-related crimes as well as an illegal firearm purchase. NBC News reports: “Two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News about ‘growing frustration’ inside the FBI because investigators finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago. A senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago.” In other words, the DOJ has had the goods on Hunter for some time, but leadership, likely Attorney General Merrick Garland, has seemingly put the kibosh on taking any action against Joe Biden’s son.

• “Illegitimate” SCOTUS saves abortion pill: When the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of a law or court decision that goes against the Democrats’ political agenda, lawmakers are quick to label the Court as illegitimate and “a threat to democracy.” Such histrionics were displayed by the likes of Senators Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren following SCOTUS’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer. However, as soon as the Court makes a ruling that Democrats like — such as its decision last Friday to stay the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that approved the FDA’s easing of access restriction to the abortion drug mifepristone, to be taken up by the Court with a decision promised next summer — then these lawmakers are praising SCOTUS. The real reason Democrat lawmakers are so elated by this decisions is that it serves to keep abortion front and center going into the 2024 campaign. It’s all about politics.

• Dadeville shootout arrests: A total of six individuals have now been arrested in connection to a “Sweet 16 birthday party” shooting in Dadeville, Alabama, a little over a week ago that left four people dead and another 32 injured. A 19-year-old and a 15-year-old were taken into custody last Thursday. The police have yet to disclose a possible motive for the attack. Investigators have indicated that the crime scene is complex and that it will take some time to piece everything together.

Headlines

• Biden signs executive order creating Office of Environmental Justice (National Review)

• EPA to propose strict carbon limits for power plants (National Review)

• House to vote on Republican debt limit bill this week (Reuters)

• GOP investigator suspects Biden family dozen part of “influence peddling scheme” (Daily Wire)

• Majorities don’t want Biden or Trump to run in 2024 (The Hill)

• New York Times jumps on bandwagon: Concerns about Biden’s age are legitimate (Hot Air)

• AOC: Tucker Carlson, Fox News “incite violence”; we need to “explore” regulating them (Daily Wire)

• U.S. military evacuates embassy staff from Sudan amid conflict (National Review)

• Christian university blocks Maoist China survivor from speaking over anti-woke views (Fox News)

• Top general admits transgender inclusion hurts Army recruiting (Free Beacon)

• Americans spent more on legal cannabis in 2022 than chocolate, beer (Fox Business)

• NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell is out after admitting inappropriate relationship (CNBC)

• Parental rights bills sweeping the United States (Epoch Times)

• Policy: Emissions-free electric vehicles are a fantasy (Daily Signal)

• “Satire”: AOC: “The government must shut down unapproved news agencies to defeat fascism” (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.