Cross-Examination

• GOP leads the way for gas stoves: On Wednesday, House Republicans successfully passed the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act, with more than two dozen Democrats joining the GOP majority to counter Joe Biden’s effort to ban gas stoves. The legislation passed 248-180 and is now headed to the Democrat-controlled Senate, where West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin introduced a similar bill. “The federal government has no business telling Americans how to cook their dinner,” Manchin said. “My view is that it’s part of a broader, administration-wide regulatory effort to eliminate fossil fuels.” His assertion is accurate, and in this case Biden’s Consumer Product Safety Commission has effectively introduced a ban on gas stoves by putting forth new efficiency standards that nearly all stoves currently on the market fail to meet.

• Suarez runs for president: Republican Miami Mayor Francis Suarez announced his entry into the presidential primary yesterday. The two-term mayor is Cuban American and widely popular in Miami, as he has led the city into an economic boom. In his announcement video, Suarez touted his Miami record overseeing economic growth while maintaining low crime as a blueprint for the nation. Suarez is one of the few Republicans in the field who did not support Donald Trump in 2020. He has also been critical of Governor Ron DeSantis, particularly regarding his actions against Disney. Suarez is fiscally conservative, business friendly, and pro-law and order but culturally liberal. He proudly embraces the LGBTQ crowd and recently posted a social media message in support of “Transgender Day of Remembrance and Resiliency.” During the COVID pandemic, he was a big proponent of masking and crossed horns with DeSantis over his banning of masking and vaccine mandates. His entry into an increasingly crowded and racially diverse field of GOP candidates serves to further expose the false nature of the Democrats’ smear that the Republican Party is the party of white supremacy.

• The Fed hits pause: With signs that the rate of inflation is slowing, currently at roughly 4%, the Federal Reserve paused its repeated hiking of interest rates, now sitting at 5% to 5.25%. Following a meeting in Washington, DC, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell explained, “In light of how far we’ve come in tightening policy … today we decided to leave our policy interest rate unchanged.” He added that the Fed’s target of 2% inflation remained and that there will likely be more interest rate hikes in the future. The Fed now anticipates that inflation will continue to decrease to a 3.2% annual rate by the end of the year.

• Senator Ernst seeks to disarm IRS agents: Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst doesn’t understand why the IRS needs and wants guns, so she has announced a bill to disarm the tax agency. Dubbed the Why Does the IRS Have Guns Act, Ernst observed, “The taxman is fully loaded at the expense of the taxpayer.” She noted that, according to research from OpenTheBooks, since 2006 the IRS has spent $35.2 million on firearms, ammunition, and “military-style” equipment. Her argument is that tax agents are not law enforcement agents and therefore do not need to be armed and act as such. If passed into law, Ernst’s bill would remove the IRS’s criminal division from the tax agency and make it a division of the Justice Department.

• Mail theft crime is spiking: Since the pandemic, the U.S. Postal Service has reported a significant uptick in mail theft, specifically crime targeting bill-pay checks. This coincides with reporting from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that the number of check fraud scams nearly doubled over that same time span. In 2021, there were 350,000 check fraud scams; that jumped to 680,000 last year, even as the number of people using checks continues to decline. FinCEN estimated $24 billion in check fraud last year. Mark D. Solomon, vice president of the International Association of Financial Crimes Investigators, observed that mailed checks have become a target for criminals: “Checks are more vulnerable than other payment methods to being compromised, counterfeited or stolen.” The trouble is the older generation tends to believe in the security of sending checks when in reality they have become one of the riskiest ways of paying bills.

• GOP senator blocks arms sale to Hungary: Hungary is standing in the way of Sweden’s entry into NATO, and Idaho Senator James Risch, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, has had enough. Budapest has dragged its feet on giving approval for Sweden’s NATO membership, as Hungary has the power to veto entry for any new member into the military alliance. Frustrated, Risch has blocked a new arms sale to Hungary, arguing, “For some time now, I have directly expressed my concerns to the Hungarian government regarding its refusal to move forward a vote for Sweden to join NATO.” He then explained, “The fact that it is now June and still not done, I decided that the sale of new U.S. military equipment to Hungary will be on hold.” Tensions between Hungary and Sweden appear to be at the root of the current impasse.

Headlines

• Tale of two chambers: GOP-led House celebrates Flag Day without Dem-led Senate (Free Beacon)

• Daniel Penny faces up to 15 years on second-degree manslaughter charge in death of Jordan Neely (NY Post)

• Nets spend 291 minutes on Trump indictment, zero seconds on Biden Burisma bribery (NewsBusters)

• Twenty Republicans join with Democrats to kill Schiff censure (Daily Caller)

• Biden vetoes GOP resolution repealing EPA pollution rule (Washington Examiner)

• Starbucks manager wins $25.6 million lawsuit after arguing she was fired for being white (Fox Business)

• Senior Space Force officer attacks anti-grooming and mutilation laws, says they damage readiness (RedState)

• Target received bomb threats from the “LGBTQ+ community.” The media told a different story. (Free Beacon)

• White House stomps on girls’ rights with Orwellian remark about competing with “trans” athletes (RedState)

• Thousands of schools urge or instruct teachers to hide students’ gender identity from parents (Daily Wire)

• Middle schoolers’ USA rebellion at pride event causes libs to melt down (Townhall)

• Vanderbilt pediatric transgender clinic terminates “gender-affirming care” before Tennessee law takes effect (Daily Wire)

• Hamtramck council bans LGBTQ flags from city property after months of intense debate (Detroit Free Press)

• Bill Gates set to meet Xi Jinping in China (Free Beacon)

• Mayorkas releasing Chinese nationals with ties to CCP into U.S., House Republican says (Daily Wire)

• Medicaid emergency spending for illegal migrants doubles in one year to $7 billion (Just the News)

• Abbott says bus of migrants transported to Los Angeles (The Hill)

• Social Security recipients are on track to receive the smallest COLA increase since the pandemic began (NBC News)

• Inflation fell to 1.1% in May in producer price index (Washington Examiner)

• Satire: Biden brags that he’s destroying economy at slightly slower rate than before (Babylon Bee)

• Humor: Biden releases new campaign logo: Briben 2024 (Genesius Times)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.