‘Would Be Unacceptable’: Blinken and Netanyahu Meeting Hits Crossroads as Israeli Invasion of Rafah Looms

Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister met in Tel Aviv on Wednesday to discuss the ongoing Israel-Hamas war — and disagreements over the next phase of conflict.

The Biden administration is backing an effort to reach a deal between Israel and Hamas for a temporary ceasefire and the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza in exchange for the release of hostages. During their meeting on Wednesday, Blinken discussed the ceasefire deal with Netanyahu and “the need to avoid further expansion of the conflict,” underscoring the Biden administration’s “clear position” on opposing an Israeli invasion of Rafah, the southernmost region of Gaza, according to a readout of the meeting.

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Bipartisan Opposition: Governors from 48 States, 5 Territories Reject Biden’s Plan to Take Over National Guard

The governors of 48 U.S. states and five territories have sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin expressing a “strong opposition” to the Department of Defense’s (DOD) proposed legislation to the Senate Armed Services Committee that would permanently federalize portions of the state Air National Guard troops into the U.S. Space Force.

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New EPA Rules Will Require Carbon Capture Technology on All Existing Coal and New Gas Plants

Coal fired power plant

The administration’s announcement refers to carbon capture as “proven and cost-effective control technologies,” but critics have argued that the technology is expensive to scale up to a degree it can have any impact on carbon dioxide emissions and will drive up energy costs.

The Biden administration finalized four rules regarding power plants Thursday. One of the Environmental Protection Agency’s rules will require all existing coal plants and new natural gas-fired power plants to implement carbon capture technology.

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More than 1.7 Million Illegal Entries in First Six Months of Fiscal 2024

Illegal Immigration

More than 1.7 million foreign nationals have illegally entered the U.S. in the first six months of fiscal 2024, the greatest number for this time period in U.S. history.

The 1,733,496 who illegally entered in the first six months of the fiscal year outnumber the 1,547,866 who illegally entered in the first six months of fiscal 2023 by more than 185,000.

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SCOTUS Shocked by Biden Administration’s View of Federal Power over States in ER Abortion Challenge

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar

To convince the Supreme Court that the Biden administration could use federal Medicare funding to force hospitals to perform abortions in violation of Idaho law, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar conceived and gave birth to some unusual arguments Wednesday.

She reached for a 129-year-old precedent that crippled the labor movement for decades, neutered legal obligations to the “unborn child” in the federal law that allegedly requires abortions in certain situations, and didn’t deny a Republican administration could use her rationale to functionally ban abortion and even transgender care nationwide.

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Top Automaker Takes $1.3 Billion Bath on Key EV Line

Ford Headquarters

Top American automaker Ford hemorrhaged over a billion dollars on electric vehicles (EV) in the first quarter, leading to massive losses per vehicle.

Ford sold 10,000 vehicles in its EV Model e unit in the first three months of the year, losing $1.3 billion on the line altogether, equating to a loss of $130,000 per vehicle sold, according to data from the company’s first quarter earnings report. Despite the loss on EVs, Ford’s net income was $1.3 billion, selling over a million vehicles with $42.8 billion in revenue in the quarter.

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Biden Admin Used Border Wall Funds on ‘Environmental Planning,’ Government Watchdog Says

Joe Biden with CBP agents

The Biden administration spent taxpayer dollars meant to fund a border wall to pay for “environmental planning,” according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

At the request of Republican Reps. Jack Bergman of Michigan and Jodey Arrington of Texas, the GAO investigated whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) broke the law when it effectively blocked the use of taxpayer dollars to build a wall along the southern border. While GAO’s final report clears the DHS of breaking the law, it confirmed that DHS used congressionally-appropriated funds meant for the wall to pay for “environmental planning” and efforts “to remediate or mitigate environmental damage from past border wall construction.”

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Commentary: Biden’s Title IX Revisions Aren’t Good News for Women

Girls Sports

Locker rooms and bathrooms at schools that accept public funding are about to become dangerous places for women — even in states that have the kind of commonsense legislation intended to keep women’s private spaces private.

Last week, the Biden administration released a host of changes to Title IX, the federal legislation that is best known for dictating equal treatment of men and women in sports and for governing the way schools handle sexual assault charges. While the administration hasn’t yet decided whether biological men who identify as female should be allowed to compete in women’s sports, it redefined “sex” as “gender identity” in almost every other context while simultaneously allowing schools to violate the due process rights of students accused of sexual assault.

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Commentary: Migrant Pain for the Heartland

Although the Badger State is 2000 miles away from Mexico, the fallout of Biden’s open border bleeds into the American heartland, literally so in many cases. In reality, the Biden-Harris open borders agenda transforms every jurisdiction in America into a border town, including small villages like Whitewater, Wisconsin. That previously tranquil small town of 15,000 in southern Wisconsin has been flooded with about 1,000 new migrants during Biden’s term, mostly from Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Such a mass influx places intense strain upon public resources, including schools ill-prepared to handle so many new students, many of whom do not speak English. Whitewater city council member Brienne Brown told Wisconsin PBS that “we are a poor town that has limited resources.”

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Commentary: To Appease Environmentalists, the FTC Will Cripple U.S. Energy

FTC Chair Lina Khan

In the movie The Perfect Storm, George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg are among the crew of a boat off the Northeast coast that is caught in the convergence of multiple powerful storms. The combination of tempests ultimately takes down the craft and its crew. We should all hope one of our nation’s most vital industries doesn’t succumb in similar fashion as it is caught in a perfect storm of ideological rigidity, bureaucratic arrogance, and regulatory overreach.

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