EXCLUSIVE: DHS Secretary Had a Disastrous Meeting with Border Patrol Agents. “An agent pressed Mayorkas on how DHS can reconcile saying border security is the main mission for Border Patrol, yet agents are unable to patrol the border due to the policies the Biden administration has in place. Border Patrol agents are being utilized to process the thousands of illegal immigrants.”

STACEY LENNOX: About Those Free COVID-19 Tests Joe Biden Sent You… “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sent citizens from Wuhan all over the world early in the pandemic while restricting their travel within China. Now, two years later, Chinese companies are profiting from the fallout.”

JOE BIDEN’S RETURN TO DECENCY: Eff-ing Right: How S— Talk Can Save Biden’s Presidency. “The whole encounter — including Doocy’s genial refusal to get all huffy about Biden’s flash of huffiness — was in its own way quite winning. It was also a reminder of how many memorable Biden moments feature casual profanity or bursts of authentic emotion amid the pervasive phoniness of contemporary politics.”

Well, that’s one way to spin it.

Another is: Biden has always been a nasty piece of work who enjoys punching down.

#RESIST: Woman Sneaks Ivermectin Into Hospital, Saves Husband’s Life.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE SHOULDERS ON THAT GUY? Lia Thomas’ teammates realizing ‘they will never, ever be able to beat this person,’ Penn swimmer’s dad says.

SCENES FROM AN ACTUAL INSURRECTION: CHAZ’s Rapping BLM Warlord Has a New Side Hustle – Fighting Sexual Assault Lawsuits in Seattle.

BEN SHAPIRO: COVID-19’s Impact of Expressive Individualism. “There will be no normalization for those who have made pandemic paranoia a feature of their identity. That’s because the public health establishment has now successfully cultivated a large group of people who measure their moral value by just how compliant and panicked they remain over COVID-19.”

Read the whole thing.

PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.

Victoria Taft: Why Did Joe Biden Build His Hollywood Oval Office Set? An Answer Emerges. “After allowing fake fact-checkers to lie on their behalf about the Potemkin Office, which is as real as Joe’s veneers, photos of the Hollywood set are proliferating on the White House Flickr account.”

Cameron Arcand: These 4 Red States Recovered All the Jobs They Lost During the Pandemic. “Even CNN Business admitted that California and New York had some of the worst recovery numbers in the ratings, with a measly 60% and 70% of jobs recovered.”

Yours Truly: Ranking the Bond Movies Part 004 (Popcorn Thrills). “They keep you entertained for a couple of hours, but the popcorn calories don’t stick. Still, who doesn’t love a perfectly adequate Bond flick?”

COLORADO: Craig, one of Colorado’s last coal towns, grapples with its future as its power plant and mine shut down.

“A power plant job, especially in a rural community like Craig — those are what I call cradle to grave jobs,” said Richard Meisinger, business manager of the 111 chapter of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union which represents the bargaining unit at the Craig plant and nearly 4,200 members across Colorado and Wyoming. “People hire on there when they’re young anticipating that they are going to work at that power plant there their entire workable lifespan.”

The same scenario is playing out in other small towns across the U.S. After decades of relying on coal for their workforce, tax base and way of life, the towns face uncertain futures as new state and national legislation forces the retirement of fossil fuels because of the worsening effects of human-caused climate change. Only a few towns have a viable plan to transition to cleaner energy, like one in Wyoming chosen for a Bill Gates-backed nuclear power plant.

The impact spreads beyond the plants workers and is felt by the rest of the community, too. In Craig, much of the infrastructure of the county is supported by the coal plant workers, who make an average of $100,000 a year, compared with a $40,000 average salary across the county.

Now, some workers will retire, while others, like the younger Loyas, must find a new way to support their families, and possibly leave Craig behind.

Plus:

As the coal industry goes, so will nearly half of Moffat County’s gross domestic product, Peterson said. It could affect services like healthcare, fire departments, infrastructure and upkeep for neighborhoods and roadways.

According to Ray Beck, former Moffat County commissioner and mayor of Craig, the county’s biggest source of revenue is property tax. Moffat County’s 2020 assessed value was nearly $430 million with 62% coming from the top 10 taxpayers, all energy-related businesses.

“We can’t recover from that,” Beck said.

Locals have a lot of questions about how “green energy” might someday replace those jobs and revenues, but no answers.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEF: Nick Searcy Is On a Mission to Destroy Dems’ Jan. 6 Lies. “Nick joined me on my Kruiser Kabana podcast this week to talk about the movie, offering some additional context to the dark subject matter. These podcast episodes are usually for VIP subscribers only but I have decided to leave it on the other side of the paywall for a couple of weeks to give more people a chance to hear this important version of what went on that day.”

JOE BIDEN RESTORING DIGNITY TO THE US GOVERNMENT: US diplomatic officials forced to undergo anal COVID tests in China.

YES: Prominent Doctors Argue Masks for Kids Should Be Optional: ‘Give Them Their Childhood Back.’

SATIRE (I THINK): Biden’s Supreme Court Pick Sexually Assaulted Me 25 Years Ago.

COLORADO: Parents at Aspen council meeting speak out en mass against mask mandate for children.

While people party unmasked in packed bars and eat and drink in restaurants throughout Pitkin County and at the ski resorts, hundreds of children are forced to wear face coverings all day long in school and it’s impeding their education, eroding their mental health and creating fear of authority.

That’s according to two dozen parents who spoke for an hour during public comment at Aspen City Council’s meeting on Tuesday, urging elected officials to convince their colleagues on Pitkin County’s board of health to lift the mask mandate in public schools and child care facilities.

Julia DeBacker, a parent of six children in Aspen, said two years of forcing them to wear a mask has led them to be socially incompetent, fearful, full of anxiety and untrusting of authority.

Sense broke out here in southern Colorado over a year ago, but Aspen (and Pitkin County) are deep blue.

ATHENA THORNE: I’ve Learned Some Wild Stuff Since I Came to PJ Media.

DON’T GET COCKY: Red wave alert for Senate Democrats.

The race-by-race analysis hasn’t kept up with the deteriorating macro-political reality for Democrats. At the beginning of the cycle, Senate Democrats looked like they would benefit from a favorable Senate map, not defending a single state that Trump carried in 2020. But with Biden’s downturn, the swing states that the president carried narrowly (Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) now look like tough territory for the party in power. Meanwhile, Republican-leaning states like Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, which once looked competitive, now look like longer shots—even with a solid Democratic recruit in Florida, the presence of a Trump-endorsed candidate in North Carolina, and an underwhelming Republican field in Ohio. At the same time, Democratic-leaning Colorado and New Hampshire could get competitive, even without popular Gov. Chris Sununu running in the former and with a muddled GOP field in the latter.

Outside of Sununu’s decision to pass on the Senate race, most recent developments have played to Senate Republicans’ advantage. Scandal-plagued, Trump-endorsed Sean Parnell dropped out of the Pennsylvania race, allowing for a more mainstream hedge fund co-CEO (David McCormick) and a celebrity doctor (Mehmet Oz) to fill the vacuum. The Democratic primary field has gotten pulled so far to the left in Wisconsin that even vulnerable Sen. Ron Johnson has a clear path for a third term. Republicans have released internal polling showing their challengers are already leading in Nevada and Georgia; even older Democratic surveys underscore the precarious predicament for Sens. Raphael Warnock and Catherine Cortez Masto.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s decision to put all senators on the record to roll back the legislative filibuster—in a failed attempt to pass a voting-reform package—only gives Republican challengers fodder to argue that even the swing-state Democratic senators (except Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) are doing the bidding of the progressive base.

Two real weak spots are Arizona and Georgia. I bet the GOP in those states could use some volunteers.

STACEY LENNOX: Military Whistleblowers May Blow Up the COVID Vaccine Narrative.

HE WENT OUT FOR ICE CREAM: Psaki Appears To Struggle To Answer What Biden Was Doing Today, Then A Reporter Tweeted Photos Of Biden.

J CHRISTIAN ADAMS: DeSantis Aims to Fix Failure to Prosecute Florida Election Crimes. “We now have hard data from Florida that shows serious potential election crimes have been ignored by both county and federal prosecutors in the Sunshine State.”

PRIVACY: Google Just Gave You the Best Reason Yet to Finally Quit Using Chrome.

Google is introducing an alternative [to cookies] it calls Topics. The idea is that Chrome will look at your browsing activity and identify up to five topics that it thinks you’re interested in. When you visit a website, Chrome will show it three of those topics, with the idea that the site will then show you an ad that matches your interest.

Google says that Chrome will allow users to view the Topics they are associated with, and give them the ability to delete them. Google isn’t asking users if they’d like to be part of Topics, it’s just leveraging the fact that it owns Chrome in order to force users to be a part and then giving them a way to opt out if they want. That’s great, except almost no one is ever going to do that. Google knows that.
…
“At root is Google’s insistence on sharing information about people’s interests and behaviors with advertisers, trackers and others on the web that are hostile to privacy,” Peter Snyder, who is Brave’s director of privacy, said in a statement. “These groups have no business–and no right–to learn such sensitive information about you.”

Ultimately, that change in the way Google is looking at Chrome–that it isn’t a tool that serves its users, but is a tool that serves up users to advertisers, albeit in a slightly more privacy protective way–is a bad sign. It’s also the best reason to finally ditch it altogether.

I’m usually happy using either Brave or Safari.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? Biden to ‘Expedite’ Bringing More Afghan Refugees to US.

BLUE STATE BLUES: Funko closing warehouse locations in Washington in consolidation move to Arizona.

LET’S GO BRANDON: Kid Rock’s Anti-Biden Anthem Dethrones Disney Hit on iTunes.

YOU CAN MUST LEAVE YOUR HAT MASK ON: Washington DC Requires Nude Strippers To Be Masked.

VIDEO: Mexican Drug Cartel Modifies Drone, Drops Bombs.