White House Dossier's

Titanic sub destroyed in 'catastrophic implosion,' all five aboard dead . . . A deep-sea submersible carrying five people on a voyage to the century-old wreck of the Titanic was found in pieces from a "catastrophic implosion" that killed everyone aboard, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday, ending a multinational five-day search for the vessel. A robotic diving vehicle deployed from a Canadian ship discovered a debris field from the submersible Titan on Thursday morning on the seabed some 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the bow of the Titanic, 2 1/2 miles (4 km) beneath the surface, in a remote corner of the North Atlantic, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters. Reuters

U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago . . . A top secret military acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard what the U.S. Navy suspected was the Titan submersible implosion hours after the submersible began its voyage, officials involved in the search said. The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after the submersible’s disappearance Sunday, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the Coast Guard commander on site, U.S. defense officials said. Wall Street Journal

Russia is targeting the US homeland with its strategy of Cyber Armageddon, to deter NATO troops from deploying into the theater in Ukraine . . . Multiple federal agencies were struck with a massive Russian cyberattack, among them the Department of Energy, which manages U.S. nuclear infrastructure and sets America’s nuclear policy. Russia's targeting of a US facility managing the disposal of defense-related radioactive nuclear waste was Putin's strategic messaging. Moscow is signaling to Team Biden that Russia has the wherewithal to unleash a much more crippling attack on the U.S. homeland, resulting in a Cyber Armageddon. That is if the US Commander-in-Chief authorizes the deployment of US forces into Ukraine.

Unleashing Cyber Armageddon on America would be Putin’s last ditch effort, if he thought that U.S. troops were about to flood into Ukraine to bloody his nose. "God save the queen, man!" said President Biden during a speech on gun control last week, punctuating his remarks with yet another outburst of utter confusion. Our confused Commander in Chief’s policy in Ukraine has baffled even Putin, provoking the Russian spy master to target the U.S. homeland with assorted Armageddons. And that is a terrifying reality America faces. Intelligence Analysis by Rebekah Koffler. Fox News

The Memo: Boebert’s ‘frankly stupid’ impeachment push leads to GOP groans, Dem glee . . . A quixotic push by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to impeach President Biden was placed on the back-burner Thursday. But even some Republican insiders fear the damage might already have been done. Boebert, one of the fiercest among the GOP’s right-wing firebrands, surprised many of her colleagues by introducing an impeachment resolution earlier this week. The move caused disarray in the House Republican conference and the furor was only defused with a deal to send the resolution for consideration by committees. The move, passed in a 219-208 vote Thursday, places no obligation on the committees to do anything to advance Boebert’s proposal. The Hill

Give me one reason why Joe Biden should not be impeached. The guy and his minions are literally destroying America as we know it and love it.

Photos Place Hunter Biden At Father's House The Day He Invoked Dad’s Name to Threaten Chinese Business Partner . . .  'I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,' Hunter stated before issuing threat. Photographs on Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop place him at his father's Wilmington, Delaware, residence on the day he invoked President Joe Biden's name in a text message, threatening his Chinese business partner to come down on him with their full weight if the business partner did not fulfill his "commitment." In that message, sent on July 30, 2017, to an official, Henry Zhao, working with a Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC Energy—linked to Chinese military intelligence—Hunter Biden said he was sitting next to his father and that "we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled." Free Beacon

Hunter Biden invited to White House state dinner 2 days after news of plea agreement on federal tax charges . . . Hunter Biden was listed among the guests invited to a White House state dinner Thursday night for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his wife. The invitation comes just two days after the 53-year-old's agreement to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax became public.  Fox News

Biden is happy to throw Modi an esteemed dinner. And bite his lip about human rights. . . . India’s Modi brushed aside such concerns, while Biden stressed press freedoms and tolerance. Politico

New national coalition of sheriffs forms to address border crisis . . . More than 90 sheriffs from 24 states are part of the coalition. Following through on a pledge he made during his first border security summit in Arizona and ahead of his next border trip to Texas on Monday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday announced the creation of a new national coalition of sheriffs committed to working together to combat crime stemming from the border crisis. Participants in the coalition include sheriffs from Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Just the News

US blind spot could lead to China's victory in Taiwan war . . . Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping has a military option for attempting to subjugate Taiwan that U.S. strategists have neglected, former officials and American analysts fear. “They’ve got two choices: invasion or blockade; and, if the invasion fails, the blockade is a fallback option,” Foreign Policy Research Institute senior fellow Lonnie Henley, a retired intelligence officer who specializes in China issues, told the Washington Examiner. “The advantage of a blockade is there’s not much we can do about it. The disadvantage is it takes a long time to achieve its effects. Starving people out is a slow process.” Washington Examiner

How the US lost Latin America . . . America’s power and influence are waning in its own backyard while its enemies are steadily gaining ground. And the United States has only itself to blame. Through a series of policy errors, the U.S. is ceding the dominant position in its own hemisphere. As we approach the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, it’s worth asking if that landmark strategic declaration is a dead letter. For most of American history, Latin America has arguably been the chief driver of U.S. foreign policy. The last eight decades or so, with a focus on Europe and later the Middle East, can be seen as exceptions to the rule. Washington Examiner

Air Force studying ‘military applications’ for ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence . . . Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall said yesterday that he has asked the service’s Scientific Advisory Board to rapidly kick out a study of the potential impacts of “generative” artificial intelligence, such as the increasingly popular AI program ChatGPT. At the moment, "generative" AI systems have "limited utility" for the US military, Kendall said, but could help with some tasks if applied "in an ethical way."  Breaking Defense

Prediction: The Ukraine War Will Last Until January 2025 . . . If you are tired of war fatigue, brace yourself for more war. Eighteen more months of conflict, to be precise. No one knows if our prediction is accurate, but the truth is that even people in the Biden administration don't have a clue. Every war to date in which the United States has been involved has had a specific objective, many times, breached because of scope creep. If President Biden wins reelection, he could either double down, arguing that he received a mandate for more war, or seek a peace deal given that Washington will have to assume the lion's share of any reconstruction. We predict the latter, as he can use the elections as a pivot to change direction to build bi-partisan support in Congress. Second-term presidents are always thinking about their legacy, and Biden would rather be remembered for peace than for a war that goes on forever. Until Jan 2025, however, expect the needless and senseless war to continue. Tippinsights

The Ukrainian Tragedy . . . Those of us who are attentive to the lessons of the past will remember that the architects of the second Gulf War, the two-part crusade to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s nefarious despotism and bring the blessings of democracy to the Arab Islamic Middle East, only belatedly discovered the fact that the divide between Sunnis and Shiites and the persistence of deep tribal cleavages were the fundamental realities we inherited in a newly “liberated” Iraq. Armchair theorists had spoken of an Iraqi middle class yearning for civic freedom, and of a reformed Islam waiting to find expression in “Islamic democracy.”

Turning to the Russo-Ukrainian War that has raged since February 23, 2022, the same mix of historical ignorance and utopian expectations has clouded the Western response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. But this time, there has yet to be an acknowledgement of the most relevant fact on the ground, namely the deep divide in Ukraine between the Galician Party, rooted in the west of the country and now dominant in Kiev, which is committed to expunging any Russian cultural and spiritual presence in Ukraine, and the Muscovite Party, which sees Russia and Ukraine not as enemies but as spiritual, if not exactly political, brothers. American Mind

What are we going to do about all those Washington "experts," who are always eager to commit someone else's sons and daughters to fight in forever wars?

Kosovo-Serbia conflict creates fear of escalation in tense Europe . . . A growing conflict between Kosovo and Serbia is threatening to become a major crisis for the U.S. and Western leaders who are already responding to the largest land war in Europe since World War II. With a war raging in Ukraine, Washington is trying to deftly navigate a series of violent clashes and boiling tensions in the independent state of Kosovo, which remain unresolved more than a month after the conflict erupted. Last week, the standoff grew worse after neighboring Serbia, which placed its combat forces on high alert, arrested three Kosovan police officers and ignored international calls to release them. Kosovo responded to the arrest by closing its borders with Serbia. Meanwhile, the heads of both countries are refusing to negotiate with each other, setting off an emergency in the western Balkans at the worst time possible for Western leaders. The Hill

Chinese Hackers Infiltrate Global Governments, Organizations, Security Firm Says . . . Chinese hackers are suspected of breaching the networks of public and private organizations globally in an exploitation that has been occurring since 2021, according to cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Since 2021, suspected state-backed Chinese hackers have exploited a security hole involving emails containing malicious files to gain access to various organizations, with the majority being in the Americas, according to a release from Mandiant. The release does not indicate which public and private organizations were subjected to the attacks, but noted that the attacks spanned at least 16 different countries and numerous government organizations. Tippingsights

IDF aerial measures okayed to combat rising N. West Bank terror . . . An IDF drone Wednesday struck a vehicle carrying 3 Palestinian terrorists from an attack on a military post near Jenin. All three were killed. The operation was in line with the introduction for the first time in 17 years of aerial operations for targeted assassinations in the northern West Bank. The mew policy was approved by PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to meet the proliferating Palestinian use of firearms and bombs for lethal attacks – some of them across the security border into northern Israel. The most violent are traced to the currently lawless northern Palestinian towns of Jenin and Nablus. The three terrorists eliminated on Wednesday came from Jenin and tried to shoot up the IDF checkpoint at Jalameh. The Shin Bet said that 300 of the 375 significant Palestinian attacks aborted up to June this year unprecdentally entailed gunfire. DEBKAFike

Money

Where’s the Recession We Were Promised? . . . The economy and the jobs market turned out to be far less sensitive to interest rates than economists thought, at least so far. In the U.K., history shows an inverted yield curve isn’t always a reliable signal of a coming recession. The 2023 recession is missing in action. At the end of last year, economists were more convinced than they’ve ever been that recession was on the way, but it refused to arrive. Now investors, economists and Federal Reserve policy makers are giving up on the idea, expecting the economy to be (a bit) stronger and stock prices and bond yields to be higher. Wall Street Journal

Ford preparing for another round of layoffs: report . . . More layoffs are coming at Ford Motor in the coming weeks. The layoffs will mostly be among U.S. salaried workers. The upcoming move by the automaker is part of a continuing effort to streamline operations and reduce costs. The layoffs will be announced as early as next week. Fox Business

Culture

Hunter Biden kicked out of $10K sex club for ‘grabbing women’s asses,’ acting like a ‘spoiled child’ . . . Hunter Biden got kicked out of a private sex club for “grabbing women’s asses” and acting “like a spoiled child,” the founder exclusively told The Post. The president’s troubled son is “a really bad guy — not a good person. He’s just not,” said Damon Lawner, who founded the notorious SNCTM club, where membership ran as high as $75,000 a year. And Hunter’s $10,000 payment led to Lawner receiving an IRS subpoena. Lawner claimed that the payment was made through a mystery woman in 2018 and that he was later informed of a probe by the IRS criminal division who “asked me about book-keeping and records.” Lawner said he decided to disclose Biden’s sex club membership after Biden was given a virtual slap on the wrist on Tuesday in an income tax and a gun case after a five-year federal investigation. The whopping fee, Lawner said, was made through an LLC that hid Hunter’s name and paid by a mystery woman who accompanied the president’s son — “high as a kite and zonked out” — to the club. NY Post

Gaines and Scanlan demand protection for women's sports or 'women will continue being erased' . . . For Women's Sports Week, former NCAA swimmers Riley Gaines and Paula Scanlan are sounding the alarm on threats to women's sports and women as a whole. "If these threats to women do persist, the integrity of women's sports is lost," the former competitive swimmers wrote for the Washington Examiner. "But even more importantly, women will continue being erased as a whole." Gaines is a former 12x All-American swimmer at the University of Kentucky, an adviser at Independent Women’s Voice, and a vocal critic of biological males' participation in women's sports, such as Lia Thomas, who identifies as a transgender female. Scanlan is a former teammate of Thomas at the University of Pennsylvania. Fox News

Starbucks union says workers at more than 150 stores will strike over Pride decor . . . Some organized Starbucks stores will strike across the U.S. starting Friday in Seattle after the coffee giant and the union representing baristas publicly clashed over claims that the company was not allowing Pride month decor in cafes. The union, Starbucks Workers United, said more than 150 stores representing nearly 3,500 workers have pledged to join the strikes, which will take place over the next week. Last week, the union alleged dozens of U.S. stores were not allowing employees to decorate for Pride month, accusations that suggested a wave of backlash against LGBTQ+ inclusion had reached a perceived liberal bastion in corporate America. Starbucks said it had not revised its guidelines for store decorations. CNBC

Life is too comfy in America. When human beings don't have to struggle for survival, they create non-existent problems to direct their energy towards. Send these folks to Russia, China or North Korea to appreciate what they've got here in the US.

Texas Christian University offers 'Queer Art of Drag' course requiring students to create a 'drag persona' . . . Texas Christian University (TCU) offered a course in the spring semester of 2023 titled, "The Queer Art of Drag," which requires students to develop a drag persona and "engage queer theories in relation to performance practice." The class, which is offered through its Women and Gender Studies Department and is taught by Nino Testa, whose drag persona goes by the name Maria von Clapp, will explore "drag performance as an outlet for social critique, pedagogy, and queer worldmaking," according to the class syllabus. In addition, students will explore the history of the "queer art of drag," meeting with drag performers and experts and create their own drag personas to debut at TCU's Annual Night of Drag. Fox News

Middle schoolers' reading and math scores plummet . . . American students' test scores in math and reading got significantly worse last year — continuing a decade-long freefall.

Driving the news: The decline in math scores last year was the biggest in the past 50 years, according to newly released federal data. Details: The findings come from a test known as "The Nation's Report Card" — a continuous, national assessment of 13-year-old students. Results were distributed by the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the Education Department. By the numbers: Math and reading scores began declining in 2012, and average scores are now lower than they were before the pandemic. The average math score for 13 year olds declined 9 points between the 2019-20 and 2022-23 school years. Axios

Why Modi Gifted a 7.5-Carat Lab-Grown Diamond to Jill Biden . . . During his visit to the U.S. this week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden multiple gifts on Wednesday. But the most interesting among them was a papier mache box containing a 7.5 carat synthetic green diamond. The lab-grown diamond (LGD) is at the heart of India’s bid to become a global leader in producing the synthetic alternative, which has a much smaller carbon footprint than mined diamonds, and is seen as “conflict free.”According to India Today, the production of the diamond gifted to the Bidens produced just 0.028 grams of Co2 per carat, which is over 100,000 times less emissions per carat than the production of the average mined diamond. Below, what to know about India’s quest to become a LGD leader. Time

Narendra Modi Is Not Who America Thinks He Is . . . On Thursday the White House rolled out the red carpet for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India to “affirm the deep and close partnership between the United States and India.” The outreach to Mr. Modi — the democratically elected leader of the world’s most populous nation, with polling favorability numbers recent American presidents can only dream of — appears, superficially, to make good diplomatic sense. But here is what Americans need to know about Mr. Modi’s India. 

Armed with a sharp-edged doctrine of Hindu nationalism, Mr. Modi has presided over the nation’s broadest assault on democracy, civil society and minority rights in at least 40 years. He has delivered prosperity and national pride to some, and authoritarianism and repression of many others that should disturb us all. Since Mr. Modi took power in 2014, India’s once-proud claim to being a free democratic society has collapsed on many fronts. Of the 180 nations surveyed in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index, India sits at 161, a scant three places above Russia. Its position on the Academic Freedom Index has nose-dived since Mr. Modi took office, putting it on a course that sharply resembles those of other electoral autocracies. The Freedom in the World index has tracked a steady erosion of Indian citizens’ political rights and civil liberties. On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, India has tumbled squarely into the ranks of “flawed democracies.” NYT

Why Biden Can't Pry India Away from Russia . . . As Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to Washington to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden, much of the fanfare surrounding the visit is focused on announcements regarding the growing partnership between the two nations. But while the White House seeks to isolate Russia over its war in Ukraine, New Delhi remains steadfast in its commitment to a deep-rooted relationship with Moscow. Although tensions continue to simmer between India and China, with whom Russia has cultivated increasingly close relations, New Delhi counts on its unique dynamic with Moscow to realize its interests and serve as a buffer to Beijing.

Former Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao explained that "a good part of India's strategy to deal with a belligerent Beijing runs through Washington." At the same time, she argued, "it also runs through Moscow." Newsweek

A.I. has a discrimination problem. In banking, the consequences can be severe . . . Artificial intelligence algorithms are increasingly being used in financial services — but they come with some serious risks around discrimination. Artificial intelligence has a racial bias problem. From biometric identification systems that disproportionately misidentify the faces of Black people and minorities, to applications of voice recognition software that fail to distinguish voices with distinct regional accents, AI has a lot to work on when it comes to discrimination. And the problem of amplifying existing biases can be even more severe when it comes to banking and financial services. Deloitte notes that AI systems are ultimately only as good as the data they're given: Incomplete or unrepresentative datasets could limit AI's objectivity, while biases in development teams that train such systems could perpetuate that cycle of bias.A.I. can be dumb. CNBC

Zelensky Admits He Already Spent The Next 3 Accounting Errors . . . KYIV — After it was revealed that an accounting error inadvertently sent another $6.2 billion to Ukraine, President Zelensky admitted he has already spent all the money from the accounting error as well as the money from the next three accounting errors. "I need the U.S. to please produce more accounting errors quickly," said Zelensky. "We are out of money again, and we will need these to kill Russians and pay off the mortgage on my island resort. Democracy and freedom depend on it."

Sources in the Pentagon confirmed that the $6.2 billion error was "totally an accident" and that the money is already spent and completely untraceable. In an official statement, a Pentagon spokesperson said: "Woopsie! I guess these things just happen. No one will be held accountable. Have a nice day." At publishing time, Hunter Biden had contacted officials in the Ukrainian government promising another accounting error from "The Big Guy" next week. Babylon Bee