Questions for IRS whistleblowers, Bidenflation’s still with us

Conservative: Questions for IRS Whistleblowers

Whistleblower testimony has “revealed scores of ways in which the DOJ and FBI interfered” with the Hunter Biden investigation and US Attorney David Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s “attempts to cover up that interference,” fumes The Federalist’s Margot Cleveland. At his Wednesday hearing, Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and fellow Republicans should be looking to hold DOJ/FBI accountable, as the two whistleblowers “who exposed” interference give their public testimony. Comer & Co. should let the two “tell their story, using follow-up questions to draw out more details” — and “attempt to learn what other evidence may have been secreted from the investigative team.” Weiss may have “called off the investigation, but that doesn’t mean the case of corruption against the Biden family” must be “dead.”

Ed desk: Families Flee, Schools Wither

New census data show “families with the preschool-age children who would form the next generation” of public-school students “abandoning cities, especially big ones, at unprecedented levels,” notes City Journal’s Steven Malanga. “The trend is most pronounced in states where population growth has lagged,” and “the under-five population has slumped 10.3 percent in urban counties” across the mid-Atlantic. No wonder: “Rising urban disorder, growing homelessness, and extended school closures sent families fleeing from cities.” That’s why “New York City’s traditional public schools” have “lost nearly 100,000 students since the pandemic began, with enrollment now down to about 900,000.” “This mass exodus has sparked budget battles in New York and other municipalities,” but “the numbers suggest that the worst is yet to come.”

Eye on the economy: Bidenflation’s Still With Us

“You need $1,000 in earnings today to buy what $862 could buy when Biden took office,” gripes the TIPP Insights editorial board — and the recent CPI decline to 3% only “seemed lower than it actually was.” “Things were getting more expensive but more expensive at a slower rate than the previous year” when inflation was soaring. Indeed, since February 2021, Bidenflation “reached 16.0% in June. It was 15.9% in May, 15.3% in April, and 14.8% in March 2023.” “Food prices increased by 18.9% under Biden.” “Gasoline prices have increased by 42.7%.” Real weekly wages “have dropped for 26 of the 29 months of the Biden presidency.” Up next? “An extended period of stagflation characterized by a recession and inflation.”

Foreign desk: Dems’ Blatant Anti-Israel Hostility

As the Democrats’ base grows ever more hostile toward Israel, party leaders “have sought to draw a distinction between opposing specific policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and opposing the nation of Israel itself” — yet “it’s getting harder and harder for that distinction to hold,” contend National Review’s editors. “On Wednesday when Israel’s President Isaac Herzog speaks to Congress, at least five progressive Democrats will be boycotting.” Since 2013, when Dems told Gallup “they sympathized more with Israelis 55 percent to 19 percent,” there’s been “a net decline of 47 points in support for Israelis among Democrats.” Despite Democratic congressional leaders’ efforts to dismiss Israel-bashers, like Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal, “it’s hard to ignore the broader anti-Israel trend within the party.”

Iconoclast: Partisans Refuse To Admit Wrongs

In a troubling trend, partisans on all sides have become unwilling to “consider that their chosen team or champion can possibly be wrong or that the opposing side might have a point,” frets the Washington Examiner’s Quin Hillyer. Confirmation bias is giving way to “flagrant dishonesty, obduracy, or lunacy.” Ex-prez Donald Trump’s backers won’t “acknowledge anything wrong” with his behavior, while Team Biden goes “to absurd lengths” to hide President Biden’s “many decades of outlandish lies.” “One side or the other says facts aren’t facts and that the same thing they excuse for their own side would be downright evil if done by their opponents.” The result: an “attitudinal pandemic” that’s “poisoning the American body politic to the worst extent of our lifetimes.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board