FEDS FUND TRAINING FOR PIGS, DOLPHINS TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) reveals that grants by Biden USDA and NSF to fund studies training pigs to use joysticks and dolphins to use touchscreens to play video games. No, really, she’s not making this up.

WOULD YOU DIE FOR A LIE? That’s the question being posed today by a HillFaith video to hundreds of congressional aides, representing both parties, via an ad in this week’s CNCT Newsletter. Check it out here. Would you? You should check out the CNCT App, too, because it’s a great example of innovative digital creativity by a very sharp young man, David Tennent.

SO MUCH FOR STANFORD’S ‘APOLOGY:’ You recall Stanford University officials sent a letter of apology to Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan following the disruption by administrators and students of his talk before the Federalist Society chapter on the California campus.

But now the other shoes drops on the apology, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Silbarium, who reports:

“Leaders of the Stanford Federalist Society received an email Saturday night from acting associate dean of students Jeanne Merino, who stood by silently as students disrupted Duncan’s talk. Merino pointed them to ‘resources that you can use right now to support your safety and mental health’ — and discouraged them from tweeting about the event ‘until this news cycle winds down.’

“Among the resources Merino to which pointed them was Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Tirien Steinbach, who took the podium from Duncan to talk about the ‘harm’ he’d caused — and whom Stanford condemned in its apology to Duncan, characterizing Steinbach’s intervention as ‘inappropriate.'”

One might well conclude the inmates are running the asylum known as the Stanford University Law School.

RFK JR ON REGULATORY CAPTURE: Never thought I’d be writing this, but in a lengthy Epoch TV interview with Jan Jekeilek, Robert Kennedy Jr. lays out in stunning detail the depth and profoundly harmful consequences of regulatory capture in public health. Kennedy is best known for his contrarian stance on vaccinations, but this interview makes clear there is much, much more to this guy.

ICE ANKLE MONITOR DATA WAS WRONG: Not only were the numbers of illegal immigrants required in 2022 to wear ankle monitors before being released into the U.S. not way up in 2022, there was actually a big decline, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

BIDEN, DEMS WANT TO END MEDICARE ADVANTAGE: It’s always the Republicans being accused of driving granny off the cliff by abolishing Medicare, but, as the Heritage Foundation’s Bob Moffit demonstrates in detail, it’s President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress who are working overtime to terminate the popular Medicare Advantage program.

EARMARKS FOR HOUSE GOP BUT FEWER FOR DEMS: House Republicans are implementing a revised procedure for earmarks in the 118th Congress.

Essentially, the new process means more for Republicans, fewer for Democrats. Remind us, please, which of the two parties in Congress declared a moratorium on earmarks in 2011, then abandoned it in 2021?

SURVEY FINDS MOST AMERICANS WANT TO KNOW TRUTH ABOUT COVID: A new I&I/TIPP survey finds that 69 percent want now-classified intelligence reports on the virus’ origin to be made public and 76 percent want a serious congressional investigation.

The survey of 1,370 registered voters nationwide has a 2.8 percent plus or minus margin of error and is full of strong signs that huge majorities of Americans want the truth and don’t believe what they’ve been told since January 2020 by federal officials.

Not coincidentally, House Republicans have mounted multiple Covid origin investigations, which are this week beginning to accelerate their digging. Considering all the other lies coming out of government in recent years, the phrase “target-rich environment” is taking on new meaning.

REP. CORI BUSH ALLY IS 109 TRILLION YEARS OLD: And if you doubt that Nathaniel Davis — a privately paid security guard for the Missouri Democrat — is that old, well, you better be careful because he also has incredible powers, as described by the Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr:

“He claims he can summon tornadoes at will, cause earthquakes with his hate, and conduct blood rituals to bring ruin upon his enemies. An intergalactic master of psychic self-defense born 109 trillion years ago, his days, he says, are now spent tending to his crops and spreading anti-Semitic conspiracies.”

Oh, and another thing, Davis is a former member of the New Black Panther Party. If you don’t recognize the “Nathaniel Davis” name, perhaps you know him as “Aha Sen Plankhy.” I am not making this up and I know Kerr to be a solid journalist, so you can assume he’s not making it up, either.

RECOVERING AMERICA’S PAST: Tim Goeglein’s “Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story” is a succinct, thoroughly documented analysis of how the Left has destroyed the teaching of actual American history in our public schools and replaced it with lies, distortions and fables.

As one of the best such works I have encountered in many years of following the issue from both a scholarly and a news perspective, I highly recommend this new book, as is explained in my latest PJ Media column.

TIME TO ADMIT EVs ARE EVIL: Leave it to Issues & Insights to get to the bottom line of the enviro-fanatics’ accelerating crusade to force everybody else out of privately owned, fossil-fueled vehicles and into Electric Vehicles (EV):

“EVs aren’t “zero emissions” vehicles. All an EV does is shift the emissions elsewhere — namely, over to gigantic monopoly power companies that burn natural gas, coal, garbage or, horror of horrors, employ nuclear fission. Plus, making electric cars releases far more CO2 than is emitted in the production of conventional cars.”

If that’s not enough, I&I has much more, including the fact much of the material required to make EV batteries is controlled by China and mined with slave and child labor. The more is learned about the all-but-certain consequences of the EV conversion, the more clear it becomes that it will be an environmental, economic and social catastrophe.

THINK THIS WILL HELP? House Ways and Means Committee moves forward with bill to give states big incentives to go after Covid unemployment fraud much more aggressively and to extend the statute of limitations on such crimes to 10 years. There’s been an estimated $400 billion in fraudulent benefits paid out, so there’s a lot at stake.

STOP WITH THE HYPER CARTER TRIBUTES ALREADY: Andrew Ferguson, writing for the Washington Free Beacon, captures what many are thinking but reluctant to verbalize whenever another paean to Jimmy Carter is issued. Yes, it’s sad that any human being enters hospice, but, no, Carter was not a successful president and his post-White House years were hardly any better.

AMTRAK JOE NOWHERE TO BE SEEN IN OHIO: President Joe Biden has been boasting for years about his reliance upon Amtrak to get to and from his home in Delaware to Washington, D.C. And he has been a faithful advocate on behalf of subsidized rail services for decades.

So one might logically expect him as President to at least put in an appearance in East Palestine, Ohio, at the scene of the horrendous train derailment that has put the hypocrisies of Joe and Transportation “Secretary” Mayor Pete on vivid display.

Noting the multiple Biden administration and mainstream media attempts to blame former President Donald Trump for the disaster and that it was Trump who actually showed up in Ohio, bringing supplies of water and food (plus a timely “I showed up” zinger), Issues & Insights captured the scene rather well, observing:

“Taking a broad swipe at Trump as a substitute for, or diversion from, its apparent indifference to what happened in a community that heavily voted for Trump is both distasteful and expected from an administration from the party that is determined to split this country. Federal attention arrived only when it was demanded by politics. Otherwise, the people of East Palestine were just as good as canceled.”

A MOVIE FOR ALL SEASONS: Those of a certain age will recall the 1966 classic, “A Man For All Seasons,” starring Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More. I watched it again a few days ago (marking the many dozenth time I’ve done so). Scofield won “Best Actor” and the film also starred Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, John Hurt, Nigel Davenport, Susannah York and others.

Would that somebody would make movies today with such bracing dialogue! Anyway, my favorite scene is More’s final exchange with Richard Rich. I’ve always loved the irony of More’s remark about Wales, but re-watching it this time sparked a realization on which I elaborate a bit in this HillFaith post this morning. The immediate application is, of course, for those working on the Hill, but folks of a modestly thoughtful turn will appreciate it as well, I hope.

SETBACK FOR PORTER’S SENATE HOPES: Rep. Katie Porter (D-Cali.) may have used resources from her official office in her 2022 re-election campaign, according to a complaint filed with the Office of Congressional Ethics by the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT).

Porter is one of three announced California Democrats hoping to succeed Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.). The others are Rep. Barbara Lee and Rep. Adam Schiff. A Porter spokesman claims to The Epoch Times that everything was approved by an obscure office in the congressional bureaucracy.

THINK TWICE ABOUT INVESTING IN EVS: Sooner or later, President Joe Biden and the enviros throughout the bureaucracy, media, academic, woke corporations and advocacy communities will have to face the reality that Electric Vehicles are NOT the future of American transportation.

My latest PJ Media column lays out three huge reasons why EVs will never dominate American roads. One of the three is actually from a study by an environmental advocacy group that thinks the conversion to EVs in America should result in all-but disappearing private transportation.

Maybe that’s been their goal all along???

VEGAN, MUSLIM,QUEER: If that sounds like an extremely unlikely combination, it is, but “Raquel Evita Saraswati,” AKA Rachel Elizabeth Seidel, used such a fake persona to get next to a bunch of prominent Democrats, including members of “The Squad” and former President Barack Obama, according to the Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Kerr.

Seidel passed herself off among the prominent as an activist on behalf of the world’s oppressed minorities, but, Kerr reports, her Mom described her as “white as the driven snow.” One wonders if black and blue might be added to Seidel’s color wheel after some of the folks she deceived get through with her.

BIDEN MOUNTS HUGE POWER-GRAB FOR WHO: President Joe Biden is about to sign on to a deal that would cede U.S. sovereignty to the World Health Organization (WHO) to determine this country’s response to future pandemics, according to The Epoch Times’ Kevin Stocklin. As I reported last year, Biden has been working with officials at WHO for some time seeking such powers since the COVID-19 Pandemic.

MATCH MADE IN HADES: China’s dictator, Xi Jinping, is heading to Moscow to meet with Russia’s dictator, Vladimir Putin, according to the Wall Street Journal. Officially, the primary purpose of the summit is for Xi to push for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.

Call me cynical, but here’s betting Xi and Putin will also discuss the timing of China’s prospective invasion of Taiwan and how it might force the U.S. to limit or reduce its involvement in supplying and equipping the Ukrainian military in its defense against the Russian invasion that is now more than a year old.

STILL THE THIRD RAIL: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is trying to end cutting Social Security and Medicare as the dreaded “Third Rail of American Politics,” but Democrats are determined to keep it shocking for Republicans.

IS THE ASBURY REVIVAL GENUINE: That’s a question I can’t answer yet, but that it has continued for many days, attracted thousands of students and shows no signs of waning may well be signs of genuineness. We’ll see.

What I do know is the evidence is solid for the literal resurrection of Christ – without which Christianity is a fool’s errand. If it really happened, it changes everything, as Philosophy Professor Gary Habermas explains this morning on HillFaith.

NEW J6 BOMBSHELL: Two undercover officers shadowed Ashli Babbit during the January 6 riot at the Capitol and one of them was heard to say prior to her death that “someone will get shot.” This is the latest report from my Epoch Times colleague, Joseph Hanneman, who has doggedly followed the blizzard of J6 court filings, analyzed endless hours of J6 video and talked with legions of witnesses, participants, law enforcement experts and more. Joe is the real-deal journalist.

MCCARTHY CONCLUDES IT’S IMPEACHMENT TIME: Former federal attorney Andy McCarthy is a careful and conservative thinker in the best sense of the latter adjective, so it’s important to take note of the fact he has concluded that the time has come for House Republicans to begin impeachment proceedings as the only effective response to the border crisis.

“Congressional Republicans seem to grasp that, at this point, the only solution is impeachment, the position advocated by three former government officials and top Heritage Foundation analysts — Hans von Spakovsky, Lora Ries, and Steven G. Bradbury — in a recent Fox News op-ed. But my friends are aiming too low — specifically, at Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security (as applied to him, an Orwellian title if ever there was one),” McCarthy writes at NRO.

True, the Senate is controlled by Democrats who will never support impeachment of one of their own in the Oval Office. But that sad reality is not the end of the matter, according to McCarthy:

“The Senate votes are not what matter right now. Biden does not want to bear the historic stigma of House impeachment articles, especially as he gears up to seek reelection. Moreover, an impeachment over the border catastrophe would not remotely resemble the aforementioned impeachment of Trump a year before the 2020 election.

“The Ukraine episode was a trifle, the impeachment was driven by nothing more than partisanship, and the whole exercise was so flippant that it was barely mentioned in the ensuing presidential campaign — even at the Democratic convention. In stark contrast, the destruction of the southern border is an existential national crisis that is already inflicting harm on millions of Americans.”

Concludes McCarthy:

“It’s that simple: Either Republicans use the only tool available to them to force Biden’s hand, or they are aiders and abettors. There is no middle ground.”

And you, Instapundit reader, how do you vote on this historic question?

THE TRAIN WRECK THAT IS BUTTIGIEG: For those keeping score, the Washington Free Beacon’s Andrew Stiles has an important update.