June 4, 2024

Vol. 13, No. 2100

BORDERLINE: President Biden is expected today to issue an executive order that would seal the southern border and shut down asylum requests after the average number of daily entries hits 2,500, allowing for immediate deportations.  The order would likely go into effect right away because entries have been averaging 3,800 a day.

  Immigration has been a damaging issue for Biden with Donald Trump hammering away at the President for not controlling the border. 

  Administration insiders tell reporters that entries and asylum applications would be accepted once again when the figure drops to 1,500 a day.

  Republican leaders are already calling Biden’s move “too little too late,” even though they blocked a bi-partisan immigration bill that would have been the toughest in decades. Donald Trump wanted to maintain the open border as an issue for his election campaign. 

LAWFARE: First Lady Jill Biden sat in the front row yesterday as a jury was selected in the trial of her step-son, Hunter, in his federal trial for illegal possession of a gun.

  Hunter Biden owned a pistol for 11 days in 2018 after denying in the federal paperwork that he was a drug addict. He has later admitted being under the influence of drugs and alcohol during that period. 

  The younger Biden is facing charges that few people would be indicted for, let alone denied a plea deal under similar circumstances. Yet the Republicans who have claimed Donald Trump is the victim of four political prosecutions, including a conviction, are not sympathizing with Hunter.

  The Republicans have been using the term “lawfare,” a term coined to describe the law used as a weapon of legal war against Trump. They have not decried the prosecution of New Jersey’s Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez or the indictment of Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas.

  President Biden has refrained from commenting on his son’s legal troubles but has stood by him as a father. The President issued a statement yesterday saying in part, “Our family has been through a lot together, and Jill and I are going to continue to be there for Hunter and our family with our love and support.”

  On the literal law Hunter Biden faces up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines, which would be highly unlikely given that he would be a first-time offender and that the gun was not used in a crime.  

POLITICAL SCIENCE: Republican members of the House Committee on the Coronavirus yesterday without proof accused Dr. Anthony Fauci of covering up knowledge that the virus that caused the Covid pandemic escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. Republicans have tried for 18 months to pin blame on Fauci and so far have failed.

  Fauci, who for 18 years was head of the National Institute for Infectious Diseases, pointed out an email in which he told a scientist who suspected a lab leak to report that to the FBI. “It is inconceivable that anyone who reads this email could conclude that I was trying to cover up the possibility of a laboratory leak,” Dr. Fauci testified. 

  The House committee so far has been unable link the 83-year-old immunologist to the beginnings of the Covid outbreak in China, although his department was funding virus research at a lab in Wuhan. Fauci has maintained all along that while no one knows the origin of the virus, the weight of evidence points toward an infection passed from animals to humans. 

  Fauci has long been a target of Republican know-nothing accusations.  When he became a proponent of Covid vaccines, the anti-vaccine crowd turned against him, and he’s been excoriated for saying that the horse medicine ivermectin has no effect fighting Covid. He said he and his family have been threatened, “Everything from harassments from emails, texts, letters of myself, my wife, my three daughters.”  Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene refused to address him as “doctor,” saying that to her he’s a “mister” and that he belongs in jail.

  Fauci kept his cool the entire time.

THE WAR ROOM: An Israeli airstrike near Aleppo, Syria in the early hours today killed a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps who was working as an adviser, Iranian media reports.

  It’s the first attack by Israel since they nearly went to all-out war with Iran in April.

  Israel yesterday said that four more hostages held by Hamas militants in Gaza are confirmed to be dead. The military says that the four were killed together during an Israeli operation in Khan Younis in southern Gaza and that the bodies are still being held by the militants.

  The four were ages 51, 79, 80, and 85. The Israeli statement seems to indicate that the four were killed in an Israeli attack rather than by the militants.

  About 120 hostages remain unaccounted for and many are presumed dead.

At least 36,470 people have been killed in Gaza in almost eight months of fighting, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

THE OBIT PAGE: Janis Paige, once a struggling actress and beauty queen who became a star in the 1954 Broadway production of the hit musical “The Pajama Game,” died in Los Angeles. She was 101. Paige had made a string of movies and won minor beauty titles including Miss Wingspread and Miss Naval Air Reserve before she broke out on Broadway

THE SPIN RACK: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to secure an unusual third term once six weeks of votes are counted today. — A “heat dome” is settling into the West, expected to feed wildfires and send temperatures into the triple digits. — Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences announced that it will no longer require applicants for positions to submit diversity statements and instead describe their “efforts to strengthen academic communities.” 

BELOW THE FOLD: A woman in Nebraska pronounced dead at a nursing home was later found to be alive at a funeral home. The local chief deputy sheriff said, “This is a very unusual case.” 

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