"The tally for how much the federal government spent to combat COVID-19 is now estimated to be $5 trillion. It is more than the combined costs of World Wars I and II. The left is celebrating that politicians in Washington saved us. Really? From what exactly? ...

The left believes that it was government intervention that saved millions of lives. But even with all the federal spending, some 879,000 (and counting) have perished from the virus. It was politicians such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo whose awful decision-making contributed to the deaths of thousands of seniors exposed to infected patients in nursing homes. In addition, politicians didn't shut down the New York subway system for many weeks into the virus, costing thousands more avoidable deaths.

Suppose the government is here to save us. How do we explain the shameful malfeasance of the CDC, the FDA, the NIH and other government medical agencies and programs that spend roughly half a trillion dollars each year to keep us healthy? All of that money couldn't stop a virus from wreaking havoc on the country for two years and counting.

Why was the CDC caught entirely unprepared to fight this virus? It would be like a town spending millions of dollars a year on fire protection, and the first time there is a significant fire, the firefighters are all napping, no one slides down the poles and the fire engines won't start. So, what were Dr. Anthony Fauci and the rest of the experts at the CDC doing with the tens of billions of dollars we give them each year? They studied the health effects of liberal obsessions such as climate change, racism and gun violence. What they weren't ready to do was their job: preparing for infectious diseases. ...

Big government didn't save us. On the contrary, big government has left us weaker as a nation in every way, and we will spend decades cursing the fact that we panicked and handed over so much power to so many incompetent people in Washington."

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"Let's get something straight: there was absolutely nothing racist or sexist about a pair of tweets by Ilya Shapiro last week criticizing President Biden for his blatantly racist and sexist decision to consider only black women for nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. Every single person who saw them knows that -- especially the people who immediately tried to get Shapiro fired for it.

"That's really what this is all about. The feigned outrage over Shapiro's tweets is nothing more than a pretext for trying to get him run out of his new job at Georgetown Law School, where this week he's supposed to begin as executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution. The left thinks it owns places like Georgetown, and for the most part it does. The message of this coordinated campaign to cancel Shapiro is simple: if you're right-of-center, stay out of academia because it's ours. ...

"Here's hoping this ginned-up controversy will die down and the mob will move on. If it doesn't, and Shapiro loses his new gig at Georgetown over this, understand that that was the purpose of the outrage and the smear campaign against Shapiro. They don't want someone like him at Georgetown, not because he's a racist but because he's not a leftist. And they will say and do anything, including launch an entire smear campaign based on a lie, to get him out."

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"If you needed a metaphor for President Joe Biden's economic recovery, or even his presidency, you just got it on Friday. The very day the president went to Pittsburgh to talk about infrastructure, a bridge collapsed.

"If you have a bridge on your commute, you would do well to keep an eye on whether Biden has plans to visit your town.

"Yes, we are joking, of course. But the bridge metaphor works because Biden has a track record of making everything he touches worse. Between his staggeringly incompetent exit from Afghanistan and his deplorable conduct in handling the border crisis he created, Biden is really stinking up the joint. But it is the economy where he is arguably doing the most damage."

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"'In 2021, we had the fastest economic growth since 1984. The Biden economic plan is working, folks,' blared the official Twitter account of President Joe Biden. ...

"So how, exactly, is Biden's economic plan 'working'? His main impact on the economy has been the near-$2 billion spending bill passed last spring, now widely seen as fueling the record inflation. (The cash has barely started going out the door from the infrastructure bill passed in the fall.) And his anti-energy policies (killing pipelines, denying drilling permits, threatening new 'carbon' taxes, etc.) have helped spur soaring energy costs, another inflation-driver.

"Like virtually everything else he tells the nation, 'The Biden economic plan is working' was just empty malarkey."

"While Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi go all out to protect Ukraine's national sovereignty, at the same time they are orchestrating a clandestine invasion of America across the southern border.

"Two million illegal immigrants from dozens of countries crossed over from Mexico last year, and the Biden administration is facilitating the cartels' people-smuggling operation -- at taxpayer expense.

"Under cover of darkness, every night the federal government is transporting illegal migrants as fast as it can away from the border on secret charter flights into unsuspecting communities around the country. Officials have lied and obstructed the few journalists who have tried to reveal the truth."

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"In 2022, Berlin offers the linchpin of Putin's strategy against the West. It is Europe's most powerful economy, which sets the tone of appeasement and undermines NATO's credibility.

"The new government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz has somehow made itself even more sympathetic to Putin than that of Scholz's predecessor, Angela Merkel. Scholz is ignoring the calls of his foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, to pledge that Putin's Nord Stream 2 pipeline won't pump any gas if an invasion of Ukraine occurs. Scholz's obstinate dedication to the pipeline matters greatly. Nord Stream 2 is the centerpiece of Putin's interest in ensuring Europe's long-term dependency on Russian energy exports. Putin intends to translate that energy dependency into extorting Western Europe into political concessions on other matters -- matters, that is to say, such as Ukraine and the security of the Baltics.

"Germany's challenge to NATO gets worse. Scholz refuses to increase defense spending from the paltry 1.5% of gross domestic product that Germany currently invests. (The NATO target expenditure is 2% of GDP.) Instead, the socialist-minded chancellor begs Putin for a meeting and dialogue on a 'qaulified new beginning.' One assumes this will come after Ukraine receives its unqualified ending.

"But the impact is clear: Facing the most preeminent threat to European security, Europe's most powerful economy would prefer to abandon its allies rather than lose its access to Putin's favor and his cheap gas. The risk is that what now affects Ukraine might one day soon affect all of Europe."

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"The Department of Justice has awarded crime-reduction grants to some groups that back the same anti-police, soft-on-crime policies implemented by George Soros-funded district attorneys that critics argue have unleashed a surge in urban crime.

"Those policies -- including the defunding or restructuring of police departments, bail reform, less incarceration, decriminalizing and deprioritizing a broad range of criminal offenses -- have been linked to skyrocketing criminal violence in many Democrat-led cities, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York City."

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"By so many measures, Joe Biden's presidential administration falls at the bottom of the scale. But there is one metric by which Biden is tops -- in fact, the very tops in all of history. That is the regulatory costs his administration has imposed on the nation in a single year.

"The American Action Forum, a conservative think tank that tracks government regulation, has tallied up what government agencies estimate their regulations cost. The Biden administration has now imposed $201 billion in regulation -- more than three times the cost that President Barack Obama's very left-wing administration imposed on families and businesses in its first year.

"What's more, Biden's new regulations are forcing more than 100 million hours of annual paperwork on the nation, far more than either the Obama or Trump administration.

"For a presidential administration that has basically failed in every important area -- on COVID, on the border, on Afghanistan, on the economy -- Biden certainly knows how to succeed when it comes to imposing new costs.

"The single most expensive rule change, by far, is a requirement that automakers meet an unrealistic 55 mile per gallon fleetwide average by 2026. But this is only one of many expensive new rules that stand to sap the bank accounts and energy of entrepreneurs and families."

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"The Biden administration is endangering U.S. athletes who plan to travel to China for the 2022 Beijing Olympics amid a new warning from the Chinese Communist Party that it will punish foreigners for making political statements, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley told the Washington Free Beacon on Wednesday.

"'No one should be the least bit surprised that China is threatening our athletes and warning them against criticizing their communist government,' Haley said. 'President Biden's diplomatic boycott means nothing to a regime that's timprisoning activists and committing genocide without consequences. Our athletes are at risk, and yet we've heard nothing from the administration on what they plan to do to protect them.' Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, has emerged in recent months as one of the most prominent critics of the Beijing Games and has repeatedly laid into the Biden administration for capitulating to China.

"Haley's comments to the Free Beacon come after a top CCP official warned on Tuesday that foreign athletes who travel to the communist country, including Americans, will face punishment if they engage in political speech during the games. This would include criticism of the Chinese government's ongoing genocide against the Uyghur ethnic minority, as well as its surveillance and police state.

"'Any behavior or speech that is against the Olympic spirit, especially against Chinese laws and regulations, are also subject to certain punishment,' Yang Shu, deputy director general of international relations for the Beijing Organizing Committee, was quoted as saying at a press conference."

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"Exactly a year after President Joe Biden took office, his administration desperately needs a reset. It will help if he begins governing as he promised during his campaign. ...

"To save his presidency and better serve the country, Biden must do after just one year what former President Bill Clinton did after two: tack to the center. Recognize that his party holds only the barest of congressional majorities. Press procedural reforms that really can be bipartisan rather than ones seeking obvious partisan advantages for Democrats. Break mammoth bills into bite-sized chunks and do the hard work of building bipartisan supermajorities for them. ...

"There was a time when, despite his other flaws, Biden at least knew how to make political shifts to follow public opinion. Even if only to provide for the defect of better motives, Biden should still be pure politician enough to see that his political viability lies near the center, not the angry Left, of today's political world."

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