Cross-Examination

• Biden’s big WH staff: Evidently, it takes a lot of handlers to keep Joe Biden propped up and running — indeed, a record number. According to an OpenTheBooks review of Biden’s White House staff payroll, it is the largest and most costly in U.S. history. Thus far into his presidency, Biden’s WH staff has cost $158.8 million. “No White House ever employed 500 staffers until Biden became president,” observed OpenTheBooks CEO Adam Andrzejewski. “The Biden White House employed 560 in FY2021 and 474 in FY2022. In 2023, the headcount increased by 50, to 524.” Biden has employed 108 more staff than Donald Trump and 70 more than Barack Obama at this same point in their respective presidencies.

• Dispatches from the Golden State: Demonstrating that California’s reparations task force is little other than a clown show, a further recommendation it offered beyond a reparations payment of $1 million per black resident was to end several “racist” laws. That includes laws against “public intoxication” and “public urination” and eliminating interest on child support debt. It is indeed telling that the task force sees laws against these behaviors as somehow being anti-black. Who exactly are the racists again?

• Bizarre: Georgia mayor arrested for burglary: South Fulton Mayor Khalid Kamau was recently arrested following his breaking and entering into a lake house he had taken a shine to. When confronted and held at gunpoint during the break-in by the surprised homeowner, Kamau reportedly responded: “Do you know who the f**k I am? I’m the mayor, and I’ll wait for my police to get here and see what happens then.” Kamau was charged with criminal trespass and first-degree burglary and released after posting $11,000 in bail. A city official explained, “The city of South Fulton is committed to upholding the law and ensuring that all individuals, regardless of their position, are subject to the same fair and just treatment.” The mayor’s rationale for entering the home was his desire to own it someday.

• DOJ has spent $9M and counting on Trump doc investigation: The special counsel investigation into Donald Trump’s handling of classified documents, led by Jack Smith, has cost American taxpayers over $9 million thus far. Over $2.5 million of that total has gone to personnel compensation and benefits costs. Meanwhile, Robert Hur, the man investigating Joe Biden’s own classified document mishandling, has spent a little more than $600,000. We know this is shocking, but judging by the money spent, Trump is the DOJ’s primary target.

• China’s threatening “neurostrike” weapons program: The Chinese military has been developing brain-disrupting weaponry, according to a recent report. Known as China’s Neurostrike Program, the aim would be to attack both military and civililian personnel with a brain-disrupting weapon that would “impair thinking, reduce situational awareness, inflict long-term neurological damage and cloud normal cognitive functions,” reports The Washington Times. (No, they don’t mean TikTok, though if the shoe fits…) The authors of the report contend that China’s “new landscape of neurostrike development includes using massively distributed human-computer interfaces to control entire populations as well as a range of weapons designed to cause cognitive damage” and that “any breakthrough in this research would provide unprecedented tools for the CCP to forcibly establish a new world order, which has been [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s lifelong goal.”

• Five hundred days of war in Ukraine: July 8 marked the 500th day since Vladimir Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine. The U.S. and others have spent billions in military aid for Ukraine, and yet the end is nowhere in sight. Indeed, Joe Biden admitted in a CNN interview over the weekend that the Ukrainians are “running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it.” Biden followed that up by noting that the U.S. will be sending another $800 million military aid package that includes cluster munitions to Ukraine. The human tole of the war continues to rise with more than six million Ukrainians having fled the country; at least 9,000 civilians have been killed and a further 15,000 wounded. When it comes to soldiers, Russia has suffered an estimated 230,000 casualties and Ukraine an estimated 131,000. And these numbers continue to rise daily.

Headlines

• Congress braces for three-week sprint before August recess (Washington Examiner)

• “Optics the Chinese love”: Janet Yellen awkwardly bows to CCP official during Beijing trip (Fox News)

• Democrats express reservations about Biden decision to send cluster bombs to Ukraine (Daily Wire)

• “I made a huge mistake”: Tucker Carlson talks covering politics, why he was fired, and Donald Trump (RedState)

• Meta’s Twitter clone launches, immediately censors anyone with unapproved thoughts (Not the Bee)

• Twitter threatens Zuckerberg’s Threads with lawsuit, alleging Meta hired ex-Twitter employees to design app (Not the Bee)

• CNN discourages viewers from watching anti-pedophile movie “Sound of Freedom” (PM)

• Portland to distribute foil, straws, snorting kits to drug addicts (Daily Caller)

• Supermarket employee fired for recording three men stealing $500 in laundry detergent (NY Post)

• Disgraced USA Gymnastics team doctor stabbed multiple times by a fellow inmate (Fox Sports)

• “Transgender” model crowned as Miss Netherlands, will compete for title of Miss Universe (Breitbart)

• Good news: Appeals court reinstates Tennessee ban on gender-transition treatments for minors (National Review)

• Good news: Cycling event alters category policy after furor over “transgender” competitor’s win in women’s race (Fox Sports)

• Sudan on brink of all-out civil war, UN chief warns, after airstrike kills at least 22 (The Guardian)

• Kremlin says Putin met with Wagner chief Prigozhin days after attempted mutiny (National Review)

• Dutch PM Mark Rutte is quitting politics (Politico)

• Humor: California bans Spanish over nouns having only two gender options (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.