The Patriot Post® · Thursday: Below the Fold

Cross-Examination

• Biden’s oligarch dinners: The Republican-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee released a memo detailing what amounts to a pay-to-meet scheme in which the Biden family collected north of $20 million from foreign sources. Looking at bank records, the committee found a pattern of foreign nationals from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, and China donating large sums of money to firms connected to the Biden family and then days later enjoying a private dinner meeting with then-Vice President Joe Biden. In other words, influence peddling. According to a committee member, “The Biden family’s and associates’ dealings with foreign nationals from Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine show a pattern of Hunter Biden and Devon Archer courting wealthy oligarchs with political and financial influence but tainted backgrounds.” These bank records appear to support Archer’s recent testimony, and they help reveal just how the Bidens have become so wealthy.

• Moving to the GOP: Since 1994, nearly four times as many Democrat lawmakers have switched to the GOP versus Republicans going the other way. A total of 83 former Democrats, including five lawmakers this year, have flipped parties, and the primary reason cited has to do with the Democrat Party’s crusade to the hard left. And this party-flipping trend isn’t limited to lawmakers, as recent Gallup polling found that for the first time since 1988, more Americans identify as Republicans than Democrats. The reason for this trend, according to West Virginia Republican Party Chairwoman Elgine McArdle, is because “more and more voters feel left behind by the Democratic Party.” Just like Ronald Reagan famously observed, “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me.”

• Another woke prosecutor axed: On Wednesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis handed the state attorney for the Ninth Judicial Circuit, Monique Worrell, her walking papers. The George Soros-backed prosecutor was suspended for dereliction of duty and incompetence. In removing Worrell, DeSantis’s office included a list of the “more egregious results of her policies or practices in action.” The list notes several incidents where Worrell’s soft-on-crime actions let violent criminals off easy only for those individuals to go and commit more violent crimes, including murder. Worrell is now the second state prosecutor DeSantis has removed from office.

• Trans parental liability: The latest example of the threat the Rainbow Mafia poses to Americans’ rights and freedoms comes from Massachusetts, wherein the commonwealth’s Commission on LGBTQ Youth offered a chilling recommendation. According to the commission, a parent’s failure to “affirm” a child’s gender-bending delusion and allow for “transgender” medical procedures is “transphobic” and should be considered child abuse. Reality, of course, is just the opposite. The recommendation reads in part that “in particular, the Commission recommends that the state examine the possibility of codifying gender-affirming child welfare protections in state law to better support youth and families.” In other words, the commission wants to elevate LGBTQ activism as a super right, giving them authority to indoctrinate children over and against parental rights even to object. The commission wants the state government to “explicitly” legally classify “the withholding of gender-affirming care” as child abuse. The groomers are coming for your children.

• Twitter fined regarding Trump warrant: X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, was fined $350,000 for failure to comply with a judicial order to secretly turn over Donald Trump’s Twitter account to special prosecutor Jack Smith. The Elon Musk-owned social media company first contested the order by citing First Amendment free speech protections. The company was fined after it delayed turning over Trump’s account. Trump, who has not posted to X since he was banned for almost two years following the January 6 Capitol riot, responded to the news on his Truth Social account by calling it a “major ‘hit’ on my civil rights.”

• Biden’s gifts to both Russia and Ukraine: What’s the Biden administration’s military aid for Ukraine costing Americans? Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion, the U.S. has officially allocated $113 billion for Ukraine — “roughly $900 per American household,” observes the Heritage Foundation’s Richard Stern, “and almost 12 times the spending cuts promised by House leadership in the annual spending bills.” Interest on that $113 billion, which has been added to the national debt, will cost $300 per American household over the next 10 years. But Americans’ dollars aren’t just going to Ukraine, but also Russia. And those dollars going to Russia have just increased thanks to Joe Biden’s recent designation of 1,562 square miles in Arizona as a national monument. How so? His national monument designation just cut off America’s only domestic source of high-grade uranium, and with the U.S. already importing 95% of the uranium used for nuclear power, Biden has ensured that the country will be at the mercy of those nations we import from — including Russia.

Headlines

• Fauci referred to Justice Department for criminal investigation for allegedly lying under oath to Congress (Fox News)

• FBI director lied under oath on memo targeting “radical traditional Catholics,” new memo suggests (Daily Signal)

• Trump says he won’t sign the loyalty pledge required for first GOP debate (NBC News)

• At least 36 dead from raging Hawaiian brush fires (Fox Weather)

• Inflation remained elevated in July at 3.2% — and prices are unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels anytime soon (NBC News)

• China slides into deflation in potentially worrying sign for global economy (Fox Business)

• NYC migrant crisis could soon cost $12B: Mayor Adams (NY Post)

• FBI shoots and kills Utah man wanted for threats against Biden, New York prosecutor (CNBC)

• Ecuador in shock as presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio assassinated (Reuters)

• Policy: Don’t defend Planned Parenthood’s “gender-affirming care”; defund it (Daily Signal)

• Humor: Megan Rapinoe gets new job with Galactic Empire training stormtroopers to shoot (Babylon Bee)

For more editors’ choice headlines, click here.