"Sen. Maggie Hassan is the latest Democrat in a tough reelection fight to sound the alarm over Biden's decision to overturn Title 42, which allows U.S. authorities to turn away migrants at the border to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

"The Department of Homeland Security has warned that reversing the pandemic immigration rule will lead to up to 18,000 illegal crossings a day, up from the current pace of roughly 6,000 a day.

"While advocates for looser immigration laws have applauded Biden's decision, Hassan and several other House and Senate Democrats facing difficult midterms are leaning into the border fight with the administration. In recent weeks, they have joined forces with Republicans in backing a bill that would prevent the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from following through with an order that will stop authorizing Title 42 in late May. ...

'"Border agents were very clear with me that the end of Title 42 will lead to a steep increase of attempted crossings that they will not be able to effectively handle because they don't have enough resources,' Hassan said in a statement after her visit in early April. 'In particular, border agents told me that they need additional personnel, physical barriers, and technology at the border to stop unlawful crossings, which is especially important because they expect that smugglers will try to take advantage of the increase in attempted crossing.'"

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"Today, new sources and supplies of oil and gas are a prerequisite for getting Europe to commit to boycotting Russian supplies. Until Europe joins our boycott, it is not going to work. For now, all our boycott is doing is increasing the price at which Putin can sell his oil and gas to his regular customers. It may be the right thing, but it won't work unless our allies get involved as well, and that means providing them with alternatives.

"The best way to counter those 'Putin price hikes' at the gas pump has always been to produce the gas here at home. But the long-term beneficiaries of what we do now will be our trading partners. Many European countries listened to environmentalists for too long and made themselves too dependent upon Russian oil and gas. They are now realizing that this isn't going to work. They need to produce more of their own energy or find other non-Russia sources, lest they find themselves at the mercy of their neighborhood narcissistic bully in Moscow. ...

"Russia's most powerful weapon is not nuclear bombs, a weapon of last resort, but natural gas. We can fix that by exporting much more liquefied natural gas to European ports, weakening Russia and helping our allies at the same time."

Rad the entire article here.

"A new law passed by Illinois Democrats over the weekend will compel private retailers to advertise lawmakers' temporary tax break. That break amounts to breadcrumbs for consumers forced to cope with record gas prices, amplified by gas taxes that are among the highest rates in the nation.

In the early hours Saturday morning, the state legislature passed a new budget that will require gas stations to post signs to celebrate Democrats' delay of a 2.2 cent increase of the gas tax scheduled for July. Residents already pay the fourth-highest gas taxes in the country at more than 40 cents per gallon, according to federal data.

Under the Democrats' new plan headed to the governor's desk, the advertisements must read, 'As of July 1, 2022, the State of Illinois has suspended the inflation adjustment to the motor fuel tax through December 31, 2022. The price on this pump should reflect the suspension of the tax increase.'

Grocery stores must also publish a note on receipts that the state suspended a 1 percent tax on groceries for a year."

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"Crime is rising, so it's time for Democrats to take aim at law-abiding gun owners. In a press conference today, President Joe Biden promised swift action, announcing a series of unilateral moves that will have virtually no effect on rising criminality. Among them is regulating so-called 'ghost guns,' which Biden claims 'are the weapons of choice for many criminals.' And by 'many,' he means 'incredibly few.' Biden also promised to fight for 'universal' background checks and 'assault-weapns' bans, two other policies that would do almost nothing to lower the crime rate and everything to do with making life more difficult for peaceful gun owners."

"Last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission released a new rule for public comment that would require public companies to report the climate-related impact of their businesses. Since it has been well established in multiple IPCC reports that the human impact on climate has never been observed, only modeled, this seems unnecessary.

"The climate models used by the IPCC and NOAA to 'compute' the human impact on climate have already been invalidated by Drs. Ross McKitrick and John Christy in their well-known Earth and Space Science peer-reviewed paper. In fact, McKitrick and Christy's paper is cited numerous times in the latest IPCC report, called AR6, which acknowledges the point. It also admits that one likely reason is that the models are overestimating the sensitivity of the climate to carbon dioxide, and that the models are overestimating warming relative to observations in both the atmosphere and the oceans. ...

"The SEC document claims that: the impact of climate-related risks on both individual businesses and the financial system as a whole are well documented.' This does not seem to be the case. Recent research by Professor Roger Pielke Jr., Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, and data from the EM-DAT disaster database all show the impact of climate change, both of natural and human origin, is declining."

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"California electricity bills are among the highest in the nation and are set to continue skyrocketing, putting state and national green ambitions in the spotlight.

"The state's largest energy providers reported average monthly bills dwarfing those of other states in 2021, E&E News reported. If prices keep rising, as current projections say they will, electric vehicles will continue to be more expensive than traditional gas-powered cars. ...

'"It's a huge problem,' Severin Borenstein, the director of the Energy Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, told E&E News."

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"President Joe Biden is the opposite of Harry Truman. 'Give 'Em Hell, Harry' had a famous sign on his desk in the Oval Office: 'The Buck Stops Here.' That meant that when things went wrong, he shouldered the blame -- as any good chief executive of a company or a country should do.

"What Biden is best at when things go wrong is pointing his finger at someone else. He passes the buck. The Afghanistan debacle? The Pentagon brass told me to do it. The disaster at the border? Blame Congress for not authorizing enough money.

"High gas prices? Blame Russian President Vladimir Putin. Runaway inflation? Price gouging by American companies.

"The obvious solution to $5-a-gallon gas, surging prices at the grocery store and higher drug and hospital costs is to stop the multitrillions of dollars of debt-spending in Washington that is dumping cheap money into the economy."

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"The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that what Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s called 'the cold peace' has given way to Cold War II. The first Cold War was a struggle not only of nations and alliances but also of systems -- capitalism versus communism. The second Cold War is already a struggle among systems as well, pitting countries that focus on manufacturing (China) and resources (Russia) in the physical world against an alliance led by the United States, which for the last generation has sacrificed much of its own manufacturing and mining to specialize in global leadership in finance, services, and entertainment. To put it another way, the contest of models in Cold War II is not about ownership of the means of production; it is about material production versus immaterial service provision.

"The other side in the new Cold War is very good at making things, mining minerals, and growing food. In contrast, the U.S. economy, although it still manufactures many products and is highly productive in energy and agriculture, rewards and celebrates those who make apps and loans -- after a generation in which American business and financial elites made fortunes by offshoring industrial jobs and facilities to China and Taiwan. ...

"Even the beneficiaries of U.S. dependence on China -- Silicon Valley, universities, Wall Street, 'green' technologies that need Chinese imports -- are being forced to acknowledge that we still live in a material world in which countries can be great powers even if they do not dominate global banking and insurance markets, on the basis of mining energy and minerals, growing crops, and making physical things. Russia and Ukraine together are responsible for more than a quarter of global wheat exports. Russia and Belarus together produce nearly half of the global exports of potash, a critical nutrient used in fertilizers, while Russia produces more than a fifth of the ammonia exports used in global agriculture.

"For its part, China dominates global production of many essential minerals, both directly -- producing 63% of rare earths and 45% of molybdenum -- and indirectly, by investing in lithium mines in Australia, platinum mines in South Africa, and cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo."

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"President Joe Biden has offered a lackluster response to new evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Contrary to the conspiracy theories offered by some, the evidence for these atrocities is abundant and clear.

"Yet, when asked by a journalist on Monday what sanctions he would propose in reaction to Russian atrocities, Biden could do no better than 'I'll let you know.'

"This callous contrast with U.S. allies is notable. Facing credible evidence of the Russian rape, torture, and murder of hundreds of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, President Emmanuel Macron of France has called for an end to European imports of Russian oil and coal. Supported by his Green Party coalition partner, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has hinted he will support such a step. Also on Monday, France and Germany expelled dozens of intelligence officers from the respective Russian embassies in their nations. At the same time, Britain is leading calls for the delivery of longer-range artillery and anti-ship weapons to Kyiv. These would enable Ukrainian forces to destroy Russian logistics convoys more effectively.

"So if even the normally hesitant French and Germans are ready for far tougher action against Moscow, why is Joe Biden so afraid to do the right thing? ...

"Biden doesn't appear to recognize the historic stakes at play. Throughout the Ukraine crisis, Biden has shown a willingness to let Russia force his hand rather than vice versa. He has repeatedly slow-rolled the delivery of more advanced weapons to Ukraine, then limited the quantity of weapons supplied. As an example, the United States recently delivered a small but highly capable aerial combat drone to Ukraine. But it only delivered 100 of these 'Switchblade' weapons. That limited number reflects the White House's obsessive focus on not overly aggravating Russia. At what point will Biden realize that is now a moot point?"

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"President Joe Biden's first nominee to fail on the Senate floor is the result of Democratic leadership's disorganization and inability to manage the legislative calendar, according to multiple interviews with senior Senate staffers.

"The Senate voted down David Weil's nomination for a top Department of Labor post on Wednesday evening, a significant blow to labor interests and Biden's domestic agenda. Moreover, it was an embarrassment for Democratic Party leadership, who tend not to bring nominations to the Senate floor unless they know the party can win the vote. Weil's nomination was brought to the floor and voted down by all 50 Republicans and three Democrats -- Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), and Mark Kelly (Ariz.).

"The stunning defeat was due to a combination of Democratic work-from-home-policies and incompetent whipping by party leadership, according to numerous Senate sources involved in the vote. The vote was described in Politico as a 'fiasco' and a 'kind of thing [that] just doesn't happen.' Typically, the outlet wrote, party leadership pulls nominees in order to save face before a doomed vote. ...

"Biden nominated Weil in June to serve as administrator of the Wage and Hour Division in the Labor Department, a position he previously held during the Obama administration. Weil faced opposition from business groups over concerns that he would implement harsh regulations on independent contractors and franchises."

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