"The House Intelligence Committee will hold the first open hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years. ...

"For just one example as to why public awareness of this topic is important, the Washington Examiner has seen compelling evidence that the Space Force is undertaking quiet work in support of the government's UFO research. That doesn't mean UFOs are aliens. But something very significant is going on.

"This hearing is a blow to the Pentagon bureaucracy, which had hoped to keep the UFO issue out of the public gaze. But as Bryan Bender reported last week, Congress has become increasingly agitated by the Pentagon's failure to undertake a more comprehensive approach to the UFO issue. Described inside the government as 'Unidentifies Aerial Phenomena (UAPs),' UFOs have seen greater public attention in recent years following the release of videos recorded by Navy aircraft showing these objects. ...

"But what's motivating Congress to take public action is its access to a larger portfolio of imagery, data, and military witness testimony that has yet to be released to the public."

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"The FBI opened 'at least dozens' of investigations of parents and elected officials across the country for opposing COVID-19 school policies such as mask and vaccine mandates, House Judiciary Committee Republicans alleged this week.

"Ranking Member Jim Jordan of Ohio and Louisiana's Mike Johnson, ranking member of the civil liberties subcommittee, accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of giving sworn testimony last fall that was 'contrary' to evidence subsequently provided to them by 'brave whistleblowers.'

"The renewed attention on Garland's statements follows government motions to dismiss a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by 14 Republican state attorneys general seeking the Biden administration's communications with the National School Boards Association (NSBA), which had asked the president to prosecute 'domestic terrorism and hate crimes' by critics of COVID policies and the teaching of racially deterministic doctrines like critical race theory."

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"Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, accelerated in April, rising 0.6 percent from the previous month, while the March increase was 0.3 percent. That is bad news. In addition, the headline print on 12-month price hikes was 8.3 percent, worse than the consensus expectation of 8.1 percent.

"The only life raft for President Biden? That 8.3 percent year-over-year boost is modestly lower than the 8.5 percent inflation recorded for March.

"The friendly media clung to that bit of flotsam for dear life. Inflation 'slowed in April', as USA Today reported, asking: 'Will it bring a bit of relief to price-weary shoppers?'

"No, it's doubtful that people paying almost 11 percent more for groceries, 44 percent more for gasoline, 80 percent more for fuel oil and 23 percent more for a used car than they did a year ago will be comforted to know that it could have been worse."

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"It's not every day that a federal judge calls a lawsuit from one of the country's top lawyers a nasty and partisan 'Hail Mary pass,' intended to undermine free and fair elections. But that's what happened on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, tossed out a lawsuit brought by Democratic superlawyer Marc Elias.

"'In the 102 years since my father, then a Ukrainian refugee, came into this country, if there were two things that he drilled into my head, they were â€Ã‚¦ free, open, rational elections [and] respect for the courts. The relief that I'm being asked to give today impinges, to some degree, on the public perception of both,' Kaplan said of the lawsuit, which sought to preserve redistricting lines in New York state that a court had already ruled unconstitutional. 'And I'm not going to do that.'

"It's been a rough month for Elias, the man former president Barack Obama tapped to lead his post-presidential initiative to expand 'voting rights' and the Democratic Party's premier legal attack dog. Just last week, Special Counsel John Durham accused Elias, who represented Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign -- and who every election cycle counts virtually every powerful Democrat as a client -- of lying about his relationship with the opposition research firm he retained to assist that campaign."

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"No parent needs to be told that remote learning during COVID was a disaster.

"But a new study confirms it. Its findings cry out to heaven for accountability among those who brought this disaster upon their own school districts by ignoring science and keeping school buildings closed long after there was any justification.

"Harvard researchers found that students in schools that stayed remote into 2020 lost the equivalent of half a school year of learning over the two-year window beginning in the fall 2019 academic year.

"There was a significant difference between the students who went back to in-person learning after the initial jitters over COVID and the ones who did not. Students who returned to in-person schooling in fall 2020 lost only 20% of a school year.

"Thus, in the mostly liberal jurisdictions that bowed to the teachers unions and kept schools closed long after there was any scientific justification, students suffered a loss that was 150% greater. It is also worth noting, with Democrats giving so much lip service to 'equity' and 'inclusion,' 'that their policies were much harder on school districts with high levels of poverty."

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"Whoever, with the intent of interfering with, obstructing, or impeding the administration of justice, or with the intent of influencing any judge, juror, witness, or court officer, in the discharge of his duty, pickets or parades in or near a building housing a court of the United States, or in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer, or with such intent uses any sound-truck or similar device or resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

"Nothing in this section shall interfere with or prevent the exercise by any court of the United States of its power to punish for contempt."

"The groundswell of organized retail crime is a national issue that risks spreading local law enforcement thin. While the American public sees headlines of smash-and-grab robberies or watches shock-inducing footage of their favorite retailers left ransacked and wrecked, it's our local police forces that are left to pick up the pieces.

"Almost 70 percent of storefronts have reported an increase in theft this past year, and the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail estimates that organized retail crime accounts for $45 billion in annual retail losses. In one instance alone in February 2021, a group brazenly grabbed handbags worth $165,000 from the shelves of a Chanel store in New York in a daytime robery.

"Why the sudden spike in crime sprees over the past couple of years? Historically, organized retail crime tends to increase in challenging times. According to U.S. court statistics, retail theft skyrocketed by 16 percent after 9/11 and by 30 percent during the 2008 recession. It's no surprise that we are seeing a similar, albeit accelerated, trend amid the protracted pandemic and crippling inflation."

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"Biden's push to impose labor-union organizing on companies and raise the country's already-high labor standards would inflate the already-high cost of making goods in America. The administration's proposed PRO Act would end right-to-work features of federal law, which allow states to let workers opt out of unions, even when the workplace is organized. Today, 28 states are right-to-work, and they accounted for 70 percent of manufacturing-employment growth in the economic rebound after the 2008 recession. Right-to-work has become a key feature of site selection for foreign firms looking to open industrial plants in the U.S. and for domestic firms expanding their manufacturing workforce here. Many of the biggest new U.S. plant projects announced recently, including those by Ford, General Motors, and Volkswagen, are located in right-to-work states. Ending this option wouldn't boost unionization; instead, it would further discourage reshoring and likely dampen American manufacturing employment.

"The PRO Act reflects a broader Biden administration commitment to intensify regulations, increase bureaucratic oversight, and funnel resources to favored industries."

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"Carbon taxes, and their functional equivalent disguised in the form of energy taxes, have faced political obstacles and serial failures to take effect ever since the debacle of the 1993 Clinton-Gore 'BTU' tax. Now a bipartisan group of American lawmakers has proposed a 'border carbon adjustment' tariff intended to reduce society's use of hydrocarbons and usher in energy innovation. But carbon taxes have failed, so far, for good reason; they're a bad idea and would do little to cut hydrocarbon use or stimulate productive innovations. And whether framed as a border adjustment or as the broad-based levy that Congress toyed with enacting three years ago, any carbon tax would be inflationary -- meaning this latest proposal couldn't come at a worse time.

"It's easy to ignore the benefits of cheap energy when, well, it's cheap. Energy is needed for everything that is fabricated, grown, operated, or moved. Since hydrocarbons directly supply 84 percent of the world's energy and are indirectly embodied in all the rest, the inflationary potential of any carbon tax is clear. In normal times, energy typically accounts for only about 10 percent of the cost of most products and services. But double the spending on energy, and the average overall final price tag for a product or service rises at inflationary levels. With today's energy prices already doubled, or more, the consequences are apparent. Over half of wheat's inflation, for example, is a direct result of higher prices for natural gas, the fuel needed to make fertilizer.

"The energy-inflation arithmetic is equally clear at the macroeconomic level. Before the runup in global energy costs -- a trend that began well before the war in Ukraine -- global spending by consumers and businesses on energy accounted for about 10 percent of global GDP. Double energy costs, and you don't get more GDP: you get inflation."

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"The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.

"The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision -- Planned Parenthood v. Casey -- that largely maintained the right. 'Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,' Alito writes.

"'We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,' he writes in the document, labeled as the 'Opinion of the Court.' 'It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives.'

"Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court's holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months."

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