IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN THEY DO IT: Everyone Around Biden Is an Election Denier, Including Him.

EVERGREEN: After Failing To Pay Own Taxes, New York Dem Bridget Fleming Voted To Hike Taxes for Everyone Else.

JOHN HINDERAKER: “Most of what liberals have labeled ‘disinformation’ here in the U.S. has turned out to be true. I am not sure what ‘tweaked’ means, but I think it probably equates to presenting facts that are true–even ‘well-known!’–without surrounding them with liberal talking points.”

LOOK WHO’S “RUSHING” COVID VACCINES NOW:

Democrats and the public-health clerisy denounced President Trump for rushing Covid vaccines. They’ve been curiously quiet about the Food and Drug Administration’s gunshot approval last week of revamped booster shots with no trials showing they are safe or effective.

The FDA granted emergency-use authorization to mRNA shots by Pfizer and Moderna that are bivalent, targeting the initial Wuhan variant as well as the currently predominant BA.4 and BA.5 strains. The Biden administration ordered 171 million doses earlier this summer, so FDA authorization seems to have been a fait accompli. The FDA probably should have made the reconfigured vaccines available to high-risk and elderly patients. But the case is weak for young people, given the limited benefit and uncertain risks.

The FDA is in a tough spot. The original vaccines, which targeted the Wuhan variant, are much less effective against Omicron and even less so against subvariants that evolved in rapid fire—BA.2, BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5. Vaccine makers spent this winter and spring testing vaccine configurations for Omicron and future variants. Some variants—including those that never became widespread in the U.S., such as Beta—share many of the same mutations. The trouble is nobody knows how the virus will evolve.

In late June, Pfizer and Moderna presented data to an FDA advisory committee on their experimental boosters, which targeted Omicron both alone and in combination with the Wuhan variant. The BA.4 and BA.5 variants had surged relatively recently, so the vaccine makers hadn’t had time to devise and test shots targeting them.

The FDA advisers found themselves in conflict, and so were the data. Pfizer’s data showed that its Omicron-specific booster generated a stronger antibody response to Omicron than its combination vaccine. Yet Moderna’s combo booster produced a more durable immune response—i.e., antibody levels stayed high longer.

Some advisory members worried that the FDA was moving too fast with too little data. “I think we need a higher standard than what we’ve been given. I think it’s uncomfortably scant,” said Paul Offit of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Members also were wary of recommending new boosters that target the BA.4 and BA.5 variants given the lack of evidence. With the advisory committee at loggerheads, the FDA made the executive decision—as is its prerogative—to direct Moderna and Pfizer to reconfigure their vaccines for the BA.4 and BA.5 variants in combination with the Wuhan variant.

The White House wanted the boosters available in the fall, which didn’t leave the FDA time to wait for more studies.

Related: “I really feel we need the human data.”

DEAL OF THE DAY: Dickies Men’s Casual Reversible Belt. #CommissionEarned

STACY MCCAIN: “The symbolism of choosing Philadelphia as the site of last week’s speech was perhaps more fitting than Biden realized, because Philadelphia is a city that Democrats have absolutely ruined.”

PUTIN’S MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE: Federal Oil Leases Slow to a Trickle Under Biden. “The Biden administration has leased fewer acres for oil-and-gas drilling offshore and on federal land than any other administration in its early stages dating back to the end of World War II, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis.”

THAT’S DIFFERENT, BECAUSE SHUT UP: Jonathan Turley: What about Hillary’s obstruction? “Thus, an obstruction charge against Trump would be prosecuted in the shadow of Hillary Clinton’s case. In addition to the transfer of top-secret and other classified documents to her private server, Clinton and her staff did not fully cooperate with investigators. During the investigations of her conduct, some of us marveled at the temerity of the Clinton staff in refusing to turn over her laptop and other evidence to State Department and DOJ investigators. The FBI had to cut deals with her aides to secure their cooperation.”

YES. JOEL KOTKIN: Can Space Save Earth?

The world economy is in the doldrums, pessimism is rife around the world, and most young people, according to one survey, believe climate change means the end of human life on Earth.

Yet a better future beckons, if we can only begin to look outside ourselves, and even beyond our planet. It is in space that we may find solutions to some of our most pressing problems, including a workable energy strategy and access to the precious minerals needed to sustain our prosperity.

Space has always held a special place in our collective imagination. Missions to Mars, the mining of asteroids and the development of space-based human societies have been the subject of TV shows and movies for decades, all speaking to the notion of a human “manifest destiny” that will transcend the inertia of our Earth-bound society.

Despite a decades-long torpor at NASA, the space industry is making a major comeback. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis has just announced that it is formally tracking the industry’s growth, which it estimates contributes approximately $200 billion annually to the U.S. economy and already employs 354,000 people. The global space economy could reach $1 trillion by 2040, according to new research from Morgan Stanley.

This rapid growth reflects not so much the desire to “boldly go where no one has gone before” but — as in the westward expansion across America of the 19th century — our hunger for riches, precious metals and minerals. It has less to do with exploratory zeal and more with maintaining and feeding our terrestrial habitat.

Well, it’s both. Plus:

SpaceX is preparing to establish a permanent presence on the moon and launch a crewed mission to Mars, but other players are also driving change. NASA, for instance, is planning new unmanned deep-space exploration. Japan has already started small-scale efforts to test the feasibility of retrieving metals from asteroids, the first attempt to shift mining away from our fragile planet to the vast and, as far as we know, empty areas in space.

These activities are already helping Earth in profound ways. Perhaps the most evident benefit has come in the form of satellite communications. SpaceX, through its Starlink constellation of satellites, beams broadband service to customers around the globe.

The efforts of space companies to provide orbital communications networks have, among other things, begun to bring cyberspace to the developing world. Aerospace engineer and consultant Rand Simberg says the Starlink system is why “Ukraine has maintained the internet through the war.” Sadly, the U.S. government recently rejected a Starlink project to serve rural America.

But telecommunications are just the one of benefits of the space industry. As the industry matures, it could help solve Earth-bound problems, such as how to harvest metals, particularly relatively inaccessible ones like cobalt and lithium. Lithium, for example, is very abundant in the asteroids and moons of the outer solar system and perhaps on Mars as well. Two asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to one recent scientific report, have more iron, nickel and cobalt than exists on Earth.

Ultimately these products could be not only mined but also processed in space, reducing pollution of both the air and water on Earth. Space also could provide the solution to solar power’s intermittency problem. Out in space, the sun always shines.

Where the space industry ultimately locates itself will become a huge source of competition both internationally and within the U.S. Our geopolitical and economic rivals — China, which is contemplating the construction of mile-long spaceships, and Russia — are not going to concede the heavens to us.

Nope. It’s the new space race.

SALENA ZITO: Pennsylvanians feel left out by Biden’s student loan policy.

Last week, President Joe Biden announced that up to $20,000 of college loans for individuals who earn $125,000 or less, and household who earn $250,000 or less, are now eligible to be forgiven. That means individuals like Mr. Sera are now being rewarded for doing it right by subsidizing someone else’s education.

“What was done here was classist in that it rewards the professional class and makes electricians like me or plumbers or those working construction that keep our bridges and streets safe or the people who keep your lights or heat or air conditioning flowing in the energy industry are being essentially told our contribution to the country matters less,” he said.

Mike Rowe made his name meeting and working with blue-collar workers across the country on his iconic TV series “Dirty Jobs” and founded the mikeroweWORKS Foundation, which has granted millions of dollars in work ethic scholarships to train more skilled workers. He told the Post-Gazette he is dumbfounded by the Biden administration’s decision to place the burden on the very people we should be rewarding for their choices and skills.

“For every five tradespeople that leave the field this year, two will replace them, and it has been that for nearly a decade — we are looking at a crisis in the skilled labor market unlike anything we’ve ever seen — it’s just math,” Rowe said.

“So, if you ask yourself, ‘Well, what does this decision do to encourage more people to get into the trades?’ The answer is: nothing. If you ask, ‘What does this decision do to get more of those 11 and a half million open jobs filled with people that have the proper training?’ The answer is: nothing. And if you ask yourself, ‘What does this decision do to encourage universities to charge even more money than they’re charging right now?’ The answer is: everything.”

The Democrats are now the party of the Gentry Class and its lumpen clients. The GOP is now the party of the multiracial working class.

#RESIST: Florida Prepares to Hold the IRS Accountable. “Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who also doubles as the state fire marshal, released the text of a bill that serves as part of his IRS Protection Plan for the state.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE IN THE BIDEN ERA: Feed a Family for a Week With a Single Bag of Beans.