Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Attorney General Merrick Garland has long maintained that he is a completely apolitical figure who only follows the law. Critics have challenged that claim on key cases, including those related to Hunter Biden. However, Garland may now face one of the clearest tests of his claim in his tenure. The House committees have issued a public report alleging three different instances where Hunter Biden allegedly committed perjury. The question is now what Garland is prepared to do about it.

When Hunter testified, I wrote columns suggesting that he might take the Fifth Amendment to remain silent because the risk was too great that he might lie or mislead investigators in his answers. With months of preparation, he decided to run the gauntlet and now appears to have exposed himself to the possibility of additional criminal charges.

Hunter Biden has still not responded to the specific allegations, but on their face they appear strong. Notably, the Justice Department spent considerable time and money to pursue false statements against figures like Michael Flynn over just one statement describing a meeting with Russian diplomats. These are instances where Hunter was under oath, prepared for months, and had counsel present.

One of the instances concerns the controversial WhatsApp message where Hunter not only threatened a Chinese businessman to send him massive amounts of money but said that his father was sitting next to him at the time. Millions were later sent to the Bidens. The infamous WhatsApp message stated in part:

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

The response of Hunter to questions about the message was curious and evasive. Hunter said that he had only two things to say about that message. He denied that his father was sitting next to him despite saying that he had no memory of sending the message.  Second, and most importantly, he stated “the Zhao that this is sent to is not the Zhao connected to CEFC” who “had no understanding or even remotely knew what the hell I was even Goddamn talking about.”

The Committee staff maintains that Biden’s WhatsApp account show that he only ever communicated with one Zhao – Raymond Zhao – and that he most certainly did not what he was “talking about.”

Another alleged lie was Hunter’s denial that he ever helped people associated with Burisma secure visas.

He told Congress that he was unwilling to provide “any work as it related to visas that they needed” and that he would “never pick up the phone and call anybody for a visa.” The Committee has produced an email showing Hunter’s associate Devon Archer concerning the revoking of Burisma CEO Nikolay Zlochevsky’s visa. It states that “Hunter is checking with Miguel Aleman to see if he can provide cover to Kola on the visa…Please send Hunter an email with all Kola’s passport and visa documents and evidence and copy me. We’ll take it from there.”

Hunter also swore that he had no part in shell companies that received foreign payments.

Yet, Archer testified that he and Hunter had equal stake in Rosemont Seneca Bohai and the Committee has evidence from the IRS whistleblowers showing that Hunter received benefits as owner of the entity’s associated bank account.

The most damning evidence may be a document reading: “I, Robert Hunter Biden, hereby certify that I am the duly elected, qualified and acting Secretary of Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC.”

He used that document as part of his contract with Porsche Financial Services for a sports car.

That would seem pretty clear and well-founded allegations for a referral to the Justice Department. After fast-tracking false statement claims against Trump officials, the question is whether Garland will even submit the matter to a grand jury. He could also give the matter to the Special Counsel prosecuting Hunter.

Ordinarily, a prosecutor pursuing a defendant in two different felony cases would jump at any alleged illegality. You would not want to stand between him and a grand jury. However, Special Counsel David Weiss has been accused of minimizing charges against the President’s son and attempting to push through a notorious sweetheart deal that collapsed in court.

Now Garland faces an unavoidable choice in treating this referral as he did Trump cases (in sending this to a grand jury) or scuttling alleged perjury made by the son of the President before Congress.

It is far less challenging legally than it is politically for Merrick Garland.

If the rule of law still governs at the Justice Department, Hunter Biden could be facing a third front in his ongoing legal struggles.

NVDA smashed earnings and guidance out of the park and shares exploded over 10% higher…

… to make the AI-darling above $2.5 trillion market cap for the first time…

Source: Bloomberg

With around a 1% decline in US stocks, total US market cap fell by around $500 billion, while NVDA alone added $230 billion…

Source: Bloomberg

For everyone else there was more great news about the American economy… US PMIs surged to two year highs proving Bidenomics is awesome (though input prices surged), and jobless claims remain near record lows. New home sales were weak but the market chose to ignore that.

BUT… just as the dismal dump in soft data recently has prompted buying panics across stocks and commodities (on Fed cut hopes)… so the ‘good news’ today sparked a very bad no good response from markets with rate-cut expectations tumbling further. The market is now pricing in just  chance of two rate cuts this year and has reduced 2025’s expectations to three more cuts only…

Source: Bloomberg

And so while NVDA was charging to ever more impressive highs, everything else shit the bed with stocks down hard, oil & gold tanking, crypto clubbed like a baby seal, bonds battered, and only the USDollar managed gains, recovering from overnight weakness.

Small Caps and The Dow were the biggest losers on the day with the latter hit by Boeing’s breakdown. Despite NVDA’s surge, Nasdaq and S&P were down significantly too…

Small Caps fell back to (and found support at) the 50-DMA today (all the other majors are extended well above their 50DMAs)…

Boeing shaved almost 100pts off The Dow today but all 30 components were red…

‘Most Shorted’ stocks continue to trend lower as short-squeezes have run out of ammo…

Source: Bloomberg

Magnificent 7 stocks ripped higher out of the gate (thanks to NVDA) but by the close had given it all back…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were up across the board with the short-end a slight laggard (2Y +6bps, 30Y +4bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar rebounded off overnight lows to end higher…

Source: Bloomberg

But gold was slammed lower once again…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin hit $70,000 and was immediately dumped…

Source: Bloomberg

But, Ethereum held on to gains as hopes for approval of the ETH ETFs rises…

Source: Bloomberg

With ETH/BTC soaring…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices flip-flopped to end at three-month lows…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, to clarify, the market is in ‘Upside-Down World’ still where good (macro) news is bad (market) news and vice versa…

Source: Bloomberg

But don’t forget that inflation indicators just keep surprising to the upside (and now growth is getting a pump)…

Source: Bloomberg

Hardly an obvious scenario for rate-cutting… but then again, it is an election year and Biden is down bigly…

Source: Bloomberg

…so anything goes for the apolitical Fed.

The GOP-led House passed a bill with bipartisan support on Thursday to prevent noncitizens from voting in local Washington, DC, elections. This is a further push for election integrity by Republicans at a time when radicals in the Biden administration have facilitated the greatest illegal alien invasion this nation has ever seen. The latest government data shows ten million migrants have invaded the country through the open southern border. Predictably, the majority of Democrats opposed the bill.

House passes bill to ban noncitizens from voting in local D.C. elections

143 Democrats voted for

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 23, 2024

Fifty-two Democrats joined 210 Republicans in favor of bill HR 192, while 143 Democrats opposed.

The bill bars noncitizens from voting in “an election for public office in the District of Columbia or in any ballot initiative or referendum in the District of Columbia.” Federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal-level elections.

Republicans blasted the local law this week, arguing that noncitizens should not participate in local elections in the nation’s capital. 

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) released a statement on X that said “radical policy” from local DC politicians is “anti-American and dilutes the constitutional rights of DC residents.” 

My statement after the House voted to ban noncitizens from voting in D.C. elections: pic.twitter.com/jTHyY8dQvF

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) May 23, 2024

Here’s what other politicians are saying:

Only allowing U.S. citizens to vote in U.S. elections shouldn’t be controversial.

I just voted for H.R. 192 to prohibit non-U.S. citizens from voting in D.C. local elections for public office. pic.twitter.com/zD23i1LAeP

— Congressman Chuck Edwards (@RepChuckEdwards) May 23, 2024

Non-citizens should not vote in U.S. elections.

Today, the House rejected the D.C. Council’s resolution allowing noncitizens to vote.

143 Democrats voted to allow non-citizens to vote—which tells you everything you need to know about where they stand on election integrity.

— Rep. Andy Harris, MD (@RepAndyHarrisMD) May 23, 2024

Only American citizens should vote in American elections.

I just voted for H.R. 192 to ban illegals from voting in our elections in our nation’s capital.

We must preserve this precious right for U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens alone.

— Rep. Steve Womack (@rep_stevewomack) May 23, 2024

Voting in U.S. elections is a right of citizenship. That’s why I voted FOR H.R. 192, to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting in D.C. elections. Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee the governance of D.C. and today @HouseGOP is sending a strong message that we OPPOSE…

— Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne (@RepBethVanDuyne) May 23, 2024

It’s utterly absurd that a majority of Democrats voted against HR 192. Now you understand why radicals in the White House have flooded the nation with millions of illegals. This lawless behavior is a move to steal elections. 

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

After Nvidia’s earnings beat on Wednesday, rising CEO confidence points to a general increase in US earnings growth. How long it lasts, though, depends on how much more the economic cycle has left in the tank.

You may have heard there’s going to be a UK election soon. When Rishi Sunak made the announcement outside Downing Street, D Ream’s 1990s’ pop-synth hit Things Can Only Get Better echoed in the background. Based on survey data, US CEOs might be bopping along to the same tune. CEO confidence has been rising, which often means earnings soon follow suit.

EPS growth for the S&P 500 has been flat, and if CEO confidence isn’t misplaced, it should soon start to rise. That’s even more the case, as when CEOs are upbeat stock buybacks tend to rise too, reducing the share count and providing another EPS tailwind.

Nvidia and other firms’ earnings began to inflect higher last summer, but earnings more broadly should start to pick up too. Relationships in the economy operate with lags, so the re-acceleration in the cycle about six-to-nine months ago is expected to start to feed through more broadly around now.

An increase in earnings growth should be baked in the cake. How long it lasts is another question. The new orders-to-inventory ratio in the ISM, i.e. whether purchasing managers are expecting to accumulate inventory or will have to produce more to keep up with orders, has been falling and has slipped below one.

If sustained, it shows that earnings could be disappointing expectations by early next year.

The chart below shows the ISM ratio leads the difference between EPS and forward EPS one year ago, by about nine months.

Near-term recession risk remains low for now, although that could change quickly. That means that things can only get better for earnings growth in the coming months, but not for too long.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,

The pattern is now clearly established. Major figures in and around the pandemic response are slowly walking back all the major claims surrounding the global compulsory regime that ruled life for two and a half years. And each statement is pointing to the same reality. The critics were correct all along. Yes, the very people whose social media accounts were throttled and banned for spreading supposed disinformation.

Consider the statement by Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). His tenure there overlapped with the beginning of the lockdowns but he always seemed out of his element, outrun and overwhelmed by the bureaucratic miasma that washed through the agency at the time.

He has always tried to be a team player but you can sense his bitterness today. He knows the power of his words and is choosing them carefully now. In the past, he has said decisively that the idea that the pathogen was a gain-of-function lab leak was indeed possible. He was never a great enthusiast for the vaccine, even making a video in 2020 in which he said that a homemade mask might be more effective.

In other words, he was never on board with the whole plan. He was even excluded from meeting with Fauci/Birx and company.

Now he has come out and said what many people said from the beginning. He says that healthy people under the age of 60 never really needed the shots, and, further, that the injuries from the shots are high and must be recognized and acknowledged. True, this is information that everyone who has kept up already knows. What’s significant is the source.

“Those of us that tried to suggest there may be significant side effects from vaccines … we kind of got canceled because no one wanted to talk about the potential that there was a problem from the vaccines, because they were afraid that that would cause people not to want to get vaccinated,” Dr. Redfield said.

He still thinks that the shots should be credited for saving “a lot” of lives, though that research is much in dispute. What’s remarkable is to have the former head of the CDC openly putting down the idea that healthy adults and children did not need these shots. They are included in the childhood schedule now and mandates still pervade academia and U.S. policy for citizenship. Clearly the pharma industry pushing these products remains more powerful than even former heads of the top agency in charge.

In addition, in compelling testimony, former head of the National Institutes for Health Francis Collins has admitted that there never was any science behind social distancing. The rule of six feet of distance, which sounds innocuous, masks a totalitarian ambition. It was the reason for the school closures since there was no way to practice it. It was why there were no gatherings. It was why businesses had to be only half-full or closed. It was the reason for the crazy dance everyone was doing for nearly two years. Even now, you sometimes encounter people who jump out of the way when a human is near.

There was never any science to it. We knew that from the very outset. The notion seems to have emerged out of a middle school science model based on the childhood game of Cooties, an imaginary virus that boys said girls had and girls said boys had. It was that dumb and yet it governed our lives.

Actually, there was a long science behind all forms of physical distancing. The research had been accumulating for 15 years in randomized controlled trials of physical interventions to interrupt virus spread. The overwhelming evidence was that they made no difference at all. That was the scientific orthodoxy going into 2020.

Still, they went ahead with devastating results. Gyms had to close—for the good of health. In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy issued some 80 edicts for business closures. Those edicts have only now been completely overturned as unconstitutional and unjust, and all penalties assigned to violators have been reversed. This is hugely important news but essentially four years too late.

As for the damages done by the shots, the vaccine makers were indemnified by law against paying for any harms they caused. So there is no question of any liability on their part. The pharma companies say that if they had to be held responsible for damages that they could never make any vaccines. That claim alone should raise alarm bells. In a market economy under the rule of law, makers of products bear responsibility for harms caused by their use. Pharma should be no different especially with a product imposed by force on most of the population.

In addition, there is a real question of fraud against which the shot makers are not indemnified. Those claims are now in litigation. We shall see how they end up. No question that public opinion has dramatically turned against all the expert advice and mandates of this period of our history. It is more likely than ever that judges will test out the power of the judiciary by putting a solid stop on the power of the administrative state, at least in the United States.

In addition, we are seeing the Cuomo brothers (former N.Y. Governor Andrew and former CNN commentator Chris) attempting to walk back everything they did and said. Andrew is now frequently saying that all the mandates of the period were in fact completely unenforceable. This claim is completely wrong: the police roamed the streets in those days to ticket people for not distancing and shutting down businesses for not selling food with their drinks (as if that was going to achieve anything in terms of stopping the virus). Meanwhile, Chris has outed himself as being vaccine-injured and inviting ever more dissidents on his show on News Nation.

Now to the burning question. If all the evidence was clear that none of this could control a virus, and if even the vaccine trials were revealing high injury and a lack of effectiveness of the shots, why did they go ahead with the crazy experiment in the first place?

Here is where we have to get into some speculation. Having studied and written about all of this for four years, and looking even at the prevailing pandemic plans for the future, it’s my considered opinion that the whole protocol was designed for one purpose. The intention from the beginning was to preserve the immunological naivete of the whole population for as long as possible so that the vaccines could come to the rescue and save the population. In other words, everything they did, from closures to forced separation and masks, was designed to stop the emergence of natural immunity.

Does that sound crazy and conspiratorial to you? Maybe but I urge you to think about it. They had from February 2020 to December of that year, helpfully timed with an election they could force to be swung by mail-in ballots, to keep seroprevalence levels in the population as low as possible. That’s why there was such a wild frenzy to stop anyone in the population from catching so much as a cold. The idea was to pitch the shot based on new technology as the savior of humanity.

Can I absolutely prove that theory? Not really, not yet. But it makes sense of all existing facts, and it also makes sense of why they attempted so many cockamamie strategies even though they would not likely work. It was the best they had and they were quite desperate to make sure that the shots and the shots alone would save the day. It’s also why the World Health Organization changed the definition of herd immunity from including exposure to become exclusively a product of vaccines.

The plan was pretty far-flung but there were three major problems.

• First, people quickly realized that the bug was nowhere near as serious as they made it out to be. Many people got the thing, felt rough for a few days, and shook it off. Such is life.

• Second, people got exposed and thus obtained immunity anyway. There was nothing that could be done about that.

• Third, and devastatingly, the shots did not work as intended. They didn’t stop infection and they didn’t stop the spread. Plus they caused enormous harm.

If there was a conspiracy, then, it flopped.

This is the scenario that I believe is waiting to be unearthed. It will be in time. The elites that were in charge are right now simply trying to delay the day as long as possible, while admitting as little as possible in the meantime. For this reason, the gradual walkback is going to take many years in the hopes that once people find out the real agenda, the intensity of public outrage will have died down as much as possible. Then the whole episode can fade into the woodwork of the history of our times.

The anti-money-laundering scandal at Toronto-Dominion Bank, currently under investigation by the US Justice Department, has sparked an internal reorganization at the Canadian bank, leading to the termination of over a dozen employees. 

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, citing a source familiar with the situation, the employees were fired for failing to maintain the bank’s anti-money-laundering standards.

The person said action was taken against certain leadership in the anti-money laundering function and people working in US bank branches who were found to have breached TD’s internal code of conduct, which employees agree to each year. Some employees were fired as criminal charges were brought against them. Other disciplinary steps were imposed on staff where the bank determined there were minor infringements, the person added. -WSJ 

At an investor conference earlier today, following TD’s financial results for the second quarter, President and Chief Executive Bharat Masrani said an internal investigation into the failings has progressed. He said the bank had fired employees responsible for the failings. Neither the source nor the bank released further details about the exact number of firings and or names of the fired workers. 

“We have significantly strengthened the leadership of our US anti-money-laundering function,” bank spokeswoman Elizabeth Goldenshtein said, adding the bank has brought in top talent with experience transforming and leading anti-money-laundering programs to ensure this lapse never happens again. 

Earlier this month, WSJ revealed a Justice Department investigation into TD Bank’s internal controls focused on how Chinese drug gangs used the bank to launder money from US fentanyl sales. The bank set aside $450 million to resolve one of those inquiries and expects more penalties. 

Following the earnings report, Bloomberg Intelligence’s Paul Gulberg and Ethan Kaye pointed out that the $450 million reserve for an anti-money laundering probe could exceed that amount as it only addresses negotiations with one regulator. 

TD Bank’s Canada-listed shares moved lower by 1.3% in the session, down 7% since WSJ’s report on the DoJ probe earlier this month

“Criminals are regularly targeting financial institutions and, in these cases, TD did not effectively thwart their activity. This is unacceptable. TD has been cooperating closely with the authorities to help them prosecute these criminals,” Masrani said.

Authored by Eric Lundrum via American Greatness,

The cable news channel CNN has suffered its lowest primetime ratings since 1991, in yet another indication that traditional television news coverage, as well as increasingly left-wing media, has taken a massive hit to its viewership in recent years.

As reported by the New York Post, the week of May 13th through May 19th saw the channel’s 8 PM to 11 PM programming draw just 83,000 viewers in the most crucial demographic of viewers between the ages of 25 and 54.

In that same time period, Fox News saw over 186,000 viewers in the same demographic and the same time slots.

MSNBC came in second with 111,000 viewers.

CNN’s 8-11 PM programming consists of Anderson Cooper’s “AC360” at 8 PM, followed by “The Source with Kaitlan Collins” at 9 PM, and concluding with “CNN NewsNight,” hosted by Abby Phillip, at 10 PM.

The channel’s overall weekly performance saw just 494,000.

By contrast, Fox News saw over 2 million in the same week, while MSNBC saw 1.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen Ratings.

The horrendous performance has put CNN’s new boss Mark Thompson under even greater scrutiny, as well as the CEO of CNN’s parent company Discovery, David Zaslav.

“Thompson better get his act together before he completely destroys CNN,” said one anonymous TV news producer.

“It seems like he’s thrown in the towel regarding cable.”

Since becoming CEO of Discovery, Zaslav first attempted to turn around CNN’s decline by hiring Chris Licht to run the network; Licht left after just 13 months in his position, where he was succeeded by Thompson. Thompson left the primetime lineup unchanged, while instead attempting to revamp the morning lineup.

“Zaslav went to a programmer in Licht,” said an anonymous producer.

“Now he went to a guy that doesn’t know how to program TV.”

Nevertheless, a spokesman for CNN tried to spin the numbers as positive for the network, claiming that the channel’s primetime ratings are “all growing year over year” among the target 25-54 bloc. The spokesman further claimed that if the 7 PM program of “Erin Burnett Outfront” is added to the primetime lineup, alongside the rebroadcast of Anderson Cooper’s show at midnight, then CNN is “registering double-digit, year-over-year growth” in its ratings.

“CNN’s new name is Canceled Network Now,” said an anonymous media insider. “Young people are as interested in Anderson Cooper as they are in Liza Minnelli.”

Authored by Sean Trende via RealClearPolitics,

Playing the Veepstakes guessing game is often a losing one for analysts. Vice-presidential selection is ultimately a highly personal choice, and it is simply too difficult to venture into the mind of one individual and mimic their thought process. Perhaps more importantly, Republican presidential nominees haven’t made the obvious choice for vice president since Ronald Reagan chose George Bush in 1980. Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp, Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, and even Mike Pence were all somewhat “out-of-left-field” selections for their respective presidential candidates.

It is tempting to say that the journey into the mind of a presidential candidate is particularly likely to become a failed venture when that candidate is Donald Trump. This doesn’t give Trump enough credit. Picking Mike Pence in 2016 was, in retrospect, an inspired choice and probably helped win him the presidency. In this regard, at least, his 2016 campaign was surprisingly normal.

Nonetheless, the goal isn’t to predict who Trump’s pick will be. Instead we’ll rank the prospective candidates by who would do the most good for the Republican ticket. There are a number of potential candidates not listed here. Ben Carson, Elise Stefanik, Tom Cotton, or Ron DeSantis come to mind (and Kristi Noem until about three weeks ago), and Trump really could pick someone completely out of the blue. But let’s look at the potential running mates who have gotten the most buzz of late:

10. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

First, Haley certainly isn’t showing much interest in the job. A vice-presidential candidate should, at a minimum, have endorsed the presidential candidate. There’s a universe where this is the Republican dream ticket, but relations between Haley and Trump have deteriorated so much that Trump risks looking weak or desperate were he to pick her. Probably a net negative at this point.

9. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders’ pros are threefold: She is a female governor, she served in the Trump administration, and she is supportive of Trump. Beyond that, she brings little to the table.

8. Sen. J.D. Vance, Ohio.

Vance might have made sense for Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he was trying to build a coalition by tearing away blue-collar voters from Obama’s 2012 win. But if Trump is trying to shore up the blue-collar vote in 2024, he’s in trouble. He needs to make gains elsewhere. Also Vance’s 2022 win in Ohio was fairly unimpressive, so even if he needs to win by those voters for some reason, it isn’t clear that Vance is the ticket.

7. Former Hawai’i Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

This is one I go back and forth on. Ultimately, I think Gabbard probably has too many liberal votes dating from her almost-decade in Congress. Check out her scorecard from the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, for one. That didn’t stop George H.W. Bush from being chosen in 1980, but this isn’t 1980 anymore. She’s an outside-the-box pick for a campaign that, at least right now, doesn’t have to think outside the box.

6. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

On paper, Scott makes sense. Trump is hoping to add non-white voters to his coalition, and the first black Senator from the South since Reconstruction seems like he would not hurt. But Scott underwhelmed in the debates and lacks the executive experience that some of the other possibilities bring to the table.

5. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Four of my top five picks are governors, and this isn’t accidental. Probably the two most important things Trump’s pick would do are: (a) reassure suburban voters that this will be a serious administration, rather than the at-times chaos-filled farrago that was Trump’s first term; and (b) give the various wings of the Republican Party confidence that when Trump leaves in 2029 he’ll leave the GOP in capable hands. Abbott has been a reasonably successful governor of the nation’s second-largest state for a decade now. His experience with the immigration issue will also help highlight a top theme of the Trump campaign for the election.

4. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Reynolds is a lot like Sanders or Vance in that she doesn’t bring a lot immediately to the table, electorally speaking – as Trump is already counting on carrying Iowa, Arkansas, and Ohio, respectively. What she does bring, though, is eight years of executive experience (14 if you count her time as lieutenant governor.) It also doesn’t hurt that she’s from a state that borders the state likely to be electoral vote number 270 for one candidate or another (Wisconsin). A serious midwestern governor who could be a serious president one day, and who doesn’t turn off one faction or another of the GOP coalition, is a pretty solid veep resume.

3. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.

Yes, yes, I know. Burgum has Interior Secretary written all over him. But boring and safe worked for Trump in 2016, and for reassuring wavering GOP suburbanites that Trump is serious about governing in 2025, he could do a lot worse. Although Burgum certainly looks the part, he has a history that is to the left of what we would expect from a modern Republican candidate – but not so far to the left that it would cause some of the problems that a Tulsi Gabbard pick might cause.

2. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Imagine Burgum, but make him a little more charismatic, and give him minor GOP celebrity status. That gives you Youngkin. If Trump is serious in believing that Virginia is in play this time around, he might add some interesting electoral math as well. If I had to make a pick about who I thought Trump would choose, this is probably who I’d come up with.

1. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

Yes, one of them would probably have to change his residence (c’mon, Trump owns property everywhere). Yes, there’s some bad blood from 2016 still. But Rubio makes so much sense. He takes Florida off the board (to the extent that it isn’t already) and probably ices Nevada and Arizona as well. He might put New Mexico into play. He’s reassuring to suburbanites, and beloved of anti-anti-Trump Republicans. He sounded Trumpian themes on working class woes before Trump. The only downside is the address thing, and even if neither wanted to declare residency elsewhere (much easier today than in 1789) the worst-case scenario would be that the vice-presidential election would go to the Senate, which Republicans probably control if Trump wins the presidency.

*  *  *

Sean Trende is senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. He is a co-author of the 2014 Almanac of American Politics and author of The Lost Majority. He can be reached at strende@realclearpolitics.com. Follow him on Twitter @SeanTrende.

Shares of vaccine companies surged on Wednesday following two reports of human bird flu infections, one in the US and another in Australia. The federal government is closely monitoring the rising risk of human-to-human transmission, which has yet to be seen. 

On Wednesday, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reported a farmworker who had high exposure to infected livestock developed mild symptoms and has recovered. 

“The current health risk to the general public remains low,” Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive, said in a news release. “

Bagdasarian continued, “We have not seen signs of sustained human-to-human transmission at this point. This is exactly how public health is meant to work, in early detection and monitoring of new and emerging illnesses.”

The second case was reported in Australia’s southeastern state of Victoria. This is the first human case of bird flu in the country. 

For several years, the H5N1 strain of avian flu has swept the world, killing hundreds of millions of farmed and wild birds, if not more. An evolution of the virus appears to be infecting humans. 

Goldman analysts pointed out yesterday evening that “green shoots across Vax Names following reports of human bird-flu infections confirmed in the US and Australia.” They noted vaccine companies, including Moderna, jumped 14%, BioNTech +11%, CureVac +18%, and Novavax +5.3%. 

“Bird flu” headlines in corporate began to rise in late March. 

On a monthly basis, “bird flu” headlines in all of the corporate media have surged to record highs. Must push fear before elections. 

Last week, former CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield warned NewsNation:

“That’s the real biosecurity threat that these university labs are doing bio-experiments that are intentionally modifying viruses – and I think bird flu is going to be the cause of the Great Pandemic – where they’re teaching these viruses to be more infectious for humans.”

Perhaps imposing a moratorium on “gain-of-function” experiments due to the concern for all humanity is the most prudent move forward before over-educated Ivy League idiots potentially start the next great pandemic. 

Authored by American Coal Council CEO Emily Arthun, via RealClearEnergy,

The Biden administration’s war on coal came out of the shadows recently, with the release of a new series of regulations that have the clear intent of locking up millions of acres of federal land from coal mining and drilling for oil and natural gas, as well as shutting down the nation’s remaining coal-fired power generation fleet.

The Bureau of Land Management released a new rule that will effectively make it impossible to continue to mine coal or drill for oil and gas anywhere on federally owned lands. This will cripple coal mining in the Powder River Basin and other western reserves, which provide most of the nation’s thermal coal used for energy production. This action alone would have been devastating, but it was just part of a much larger and far-reaching series of regulatory actions.

The new tranche of regulations was an 11th hour assault, issued literally days before the close of a window of time allowing a new President to reverse the decision by executive order. With this announcement, any reversal will have to come through action by both houses of Congress or by litigation in court.

These actions come despite the clear warnings by some of the Biden Administration’s own electric utility regulators that further closures of baseload energy capacity (such as coal) could result in the failure of the nation’s electric grid.

The new regulations effectively make it impossible for utilities to continue to operate coal-fired power plants without investing in new, largely unproven commercially and highly expensive, carbon capture technologies capable of cutting 95% of carbon dioxide emissions. It would also require the same of any new natural gas-powered facilities. However, existing natural gas facilities would be exempt from the requirement.

Make no mistake about it, this new series of regulations has one intent – to force the shutdown of the nation’s coal-fired generation fleet, starving it of much of its fuel source, and making it economically impossible to continue to operate these units.  Far from some panacea, these actions will ripple through the entire economy. They will drive already staggering electric bills out of reach for millions of American families, leaving them struggling with the choice of putting food on the table or heating and cooling their homes. Many of those on fixed incomes, such as retirees on social security, will be the hardest hit.

And even if you can afford to pay for electricity, it may not be there when you need it most. Further closure of baseload generation could (and likely will) push the electric grid past the breaking point during the very times when they need electricity the most – the heat of summer and the cold of winter.  It will result in the de facto rationing of energy and will also play out across the rest of the economy, driving inflation even higher and forcing many companies out of business.

Frankly, I do not understand this “damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead” approach to regulation. It seems allegiance to a radical green agenda is all that matters to the Biden Administration and the needs of average American families are not even on the radar.

America needs ready access to reliable and affordable energy. It is what built this great nation. There is no shortage of coal. There is no shortage of gas or oil. However, there does appear to be a shortage of common sense on the part of this administration.

Rather than using our vast resources of coal, oil, and gas, the Biden Administration seems intent on committing economic suicide. Over the next few decades, demand for electricity is projected to skyrocket. How will we meet that demand if we continue this administration’s reckless pursuit of a green fairy tale?

Emily Arthun is president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based American Coal Council.