DC AS LAND OF THE LIVING DEAD: There are more than 1,100 federal agencies and programs being funded for decades after their legislative authorizations expired. They’re called Zombies. So why are House Republicans not lining up to co-sponsor the “Unauthorized Spending Act” introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee? I quote a guy who knows the answer to that question.

CHINA INTEL’S U.S. ‘SERVICE CENTERS’ EXPOSED: Would you be surprised to learn that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) United Front Work Department (UFWD) operates seven “service centers” within the borders of the United States? Read that again, then ask your senators and representative what they are going to do about it.

SPEAKING OF JUNETEENTH: Hans Bader at Liberty Unyielding points out that June 19, 1865, was not actually “the day slavery ended” in America because it remained legal in Kentucky and Delaware until … the answer is right here.

TWO REALITIES JUNETEENTH MISSES: Whatever one thinks about making Juneteenth a federal holiday, the reality is there is more slavery in the world today than there was in 1865 when news of the Emancipation Proclamation reached slaves in Texas. More slavery of the physical sort and more of the inner sort as well.

SCHUMER SHUFFLE ON ENERGY FACTS: None of the journalists covering Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) asked him for the evidence on which he bases his claim that “Democrats have spent the last two years lowering energy costs,” so I did. I’m betting you can probably guess what the response was.

IF YALE RESEARCHERS CAN FIGURE IT OUT: Then why can’t allegedly smart Biden Administration policymakers? That giving coke-heads and other drug addicts “harm reduction” free paraphernalia and instructions on how to get high “safely” isn’t the way to reduce addiction, that is.

Neither the Biden White House nor the Bidenoids running the Department of Health and Human Services responded when asked by the Washington Free Beacon’s Alex Schemmel asked for comment on a Yale University researchers’ study that found social pressure, family responsibility, and spirituality are keys to getting free of addiction.

CALIFORNIANS’ CHOICE: If state officials go forward with their plan to ban sales of all fossil-fueled vehicles by 2035, they will force upon their millions of residents one simple choice – they can either recharge their Electric Vehicles or they can keep the lights on in their homes and businesses. Issues & Insights explains why that is inevitable, based on a detailed analysis by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) that is well-worth reading.

Being about California,  there is also a delightful Hollywood allusion by the I&I miscreants that illustrates the end of such madness, via a Ramirez that would no doubt prompt a hearty laugh from Charlton Heston.

TRANSGENDER LEFT IS LOSING AMERICA: Writing at The Washington Stand, Ben Johnson reports on the growing majority of Americans who reject the Woke Transgender ideology.

The really good news is that majority is not just older folks, but includes a majority of Gen Z: “Even among the most liberal generation in U.S. history, 57 percent majority of Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2010) now believes in the gender binary — increasing 14 points in two years.”

WE ARE FUNDING ILLEGALS’ INVASION: Capital Research Center’s Kali Fontanilla details how federal funds help non-profits like the American Red Cross support the massive invasion of the U.S. by illegal immigrants.

HILL GOP GIRDS TO FIGHT BIDEN’S PICK TO RUN CDC: Looks like President Joe Biden is moving to appoint former North Carolina Secretary of Public Health Mandy Cohen to succeed Rochelle Walensky as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Cohen is a huge Fauci fan and advocate of masking/lockdowns/vaccine mandates. Republicans on both sides of the Hill are marshaling their forces but the CDC Director is not subject to Senate confirmation.

JUST WAITING FOR THE NEXT FALL: Three Democrats have PACs that seem to be related to anticipation about President Joe Biden’s falls, especially the next one. One of the names will amuse you, another one will prompt guffaws and the third one, well, you’ll just have to check out this Washington Free Beacon piece by Andrew Stiles.

HEADLINES WE’LL NEVER SEE: Issues & Insights has a lengthy and quite revealing list. At least we can dream.

THEY CAME AND TOOK IT: Hundreds of billions of tax dollars handed out by the feds to fraudsters, dead people, fictitious firms, etc. etc., according to new analysis by Open The Books.

BLUEPRINT FOR SAVING MEDICARE: The federal government’s most popular social program (or second most-popular, depending on how you view Social Security) faces insolvency in less than a decade. Politicians keep kicking the can down the road, the root problems in the program continue to worsen and we all go on about our business.

But, as somebody whose name escapes me at the moment once famously said, things that cannot continue, won’t, and that maxim is deeply applicable to Medicare. There is hope, however.

“Modernizing Medicare: Harnessing the Power of Consumer Choice and Market Competition,” co-edited by Dr. Robert Moffit and Marie Fishpaw and featuring essays by a dozen of the nation’s smartest public health policy thinkers, points to the success of Medicare Advantage as the core of such hope.

Check out my latest PJMedia column for more of why this book is essential reading for Medicare beneficiaries and policymakers alike. Radical reforms designed to give the power of choice to beneficiaries can save the program.

RIOT HELMETS TAKEN FROM CAPITOL POLICE: A few days before the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, dozens of riot helmets were taken away from the Capitol Hill Police,  according to an exclusive news report by The Epoch Times’ Joseph Hanneman.

SPEAKING OF NON-MATERIAL NOTIONS LIKE ‘FREEDOM’ AND ‘CREATIVITY:’ Analytic Philosopher Jay Richards — the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society — explains his view that materialism and natural science are not one and the same things.

Otherwise, there’s no room for non-material concepts like individual liberty, justice, limited government natural rights, and so forth. It’s an 11 minute video on HillFaith that I happily suggest is well-worth some serious thought. You may not agree with Richards after listening to him, but then how would you quantify your thoughts on the matter (no pun intended).

REVISITING REAGAN’S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS IN 1967: Yes, RR’s first elective public office was governor of California and, while it is now known only to a few Reagan scholars and a fading coterie of aging veterans (like me!) of his campaigns, the Washington Free Beacon’s Matthew Continetti considers how that 1967 address remains extraordinarily relevant to the present day.

UNEXPECTED TURN IN NASHVILLE SHOOTING: Attorneys for the parents of Audrey Hale, the troubled young trans-gendering woman who killed three adults and three young children at Nashville’s Covenant School, are moving to assign to the facility’s students all rights to the murderer’s writings, The Epoch Times’ Chase Smith reports.

A SENATOR TO KEEP AN EYE ON: Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) had a tough act to follow in his predecessor, Sen. Tom “Dr. No” Coburn, who exposed Alaska’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” and who was a bulwark against stupid and fraudulent federal spending.

But, as I explain this morning in The Epoch Times, Lankford is emerging as the conservative senator most likely to expose, carefully and directly, the multifarious ways in which Democrats in the White House, the federal bureaucracy, the mainstream media and elsewhere manipulate language and legal precedent to mislead, abuse and oppress.

As one former Coburn staffer admiringly described Lankford: “He’s a legislator, not a headline-chaser.” He’s also a man of genuinely principled and daily demonstrated faith, which makes him particularly worth watching.

BIDEN’S AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL OK’D GRANT TO UNDERMINE ISRAEL: Wait a minute, I thought ambassadors were supposed to represent the wishes of their country to another nation. I’m from out of town and all, but that’s long been my understanding.

So, if outgoing U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides backed a grant of almost $1 million to fund so-called human rights investigations that were clearly meant to hurt Israel, as reported by Adam Kredo of The Washington Free Beacon, does that mean it’s the Biden administration’s official policy to undermine Israel, our closest, most dependable ally in the entire Middle East?

NEW FAUCI FOLLY: Anthony Fauci claimed in 2021 that scientists at the Wuhan Institute for Virology in China were “competent, trustworthy scientists.” On the other hand (a phrase that seems uniquely applicable whenever Fauci is in focus), Fauci’s National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) was funding ethics training for Chinese scientists.

FDR’S D-DAY PRAYER: Hard to imagine an American President today offering a national prayer like that of FDR, delivered via radio and shared with the nation beforehand so that every American could pray it as well. Today’s ACLU would have sued FDR for such a prayer.

AF ACADEMY SANDBAG EXPOSED AS DOMESTIC TERRORIST: The sandbag that without warning and suddenly from out of nowhere jumped up and tripped President Joe Biden at the Air Force Academy has now been exposed as a sinister tool of the biggest and most evil threat to American national security, those domestic terrorists espousing white supremacy who seized the Capitol on January 6.

IT REALLY IS FOR THE CHILDREN: Defending them against Woke ideologues with scalpels, that is. The movement to persuade state legislators to approve laws protecting children against the trans-gendering virus is much bigger than you might think. I have the data in my latest PJ Media column, courtesy of Liberty Counsel.

UPDATE: A peer-reviewed study conducted by a “gender-affirming” care department and published by a medical journal confirms trans-gendering procedures do not result in improved mental health.

PELOSI’S HOLLYWOOD EXIT ON J6: Just the News has new security video footage from January 6 showing then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi being escorted out of the Capitol by a security detail, plus her daughter carrying a video camera to capture the whole process.

Former Capitol Hill Police Chief Steven Sound tells JTN having the younger Pelosi along to film the evacuation put an unnecessary strain on the security detail. JTN also wonders if perhaps the purpose of the filming was for a planned Pelosi political propaganda documentary and potential money-making thereof.

Expect more J6 revelations in coming days from JTN, The Epoch Times’ Joe Hanneman and American Greatness’ Julie Kelly, as all three have been viewing thousands of hours of the J6 security video footage and they are unearthing significant news in the process.