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Wednesday, May 10, 2023

April Numbers are in, Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light Down Significantly While Competitors Rise

Washington Examiner: Anheuser-Busch found itself slammed by April’s beer numbers as the unrelenting backlash it has received from its partnership with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney appears to be the gift that keeps on giving. Total Anheuser-Busch beer volumes fell 12.5% as brands such as Molson Coors and Constellation Brands rose 7.6% and 3.8%, respectively. Bud Light endured a specifically bad beating. The iconic blue can was down 21.4% for the month, according to data collected until April 29, and Budweiser was down 11.5%. Coors Light, on the other hand, rose 10.9% (Washington Examiner). Beer Business Daily: April scan numbers are in, and it’s not pretty (Twitter).

Poll: Americans Have Low Confidence in Democrats’ Handling of the Economy

National Review: A new poll released by Gallup on Tuesday morning revealed that nearly half of Americans have “almost no confidence” in Biden to do the right thing when it comes to the national economy. Only 35 percent of Americans surveyed have confidence in Biden’s economic leadership, an approval rating that places him near the historical low set by President George W. Bush in 2008, who was at the time mired by foreign wars and the Great Recession. Behind the president, the next group with the lowest rates of national support were Democrats in Congress, with 41 percent of respondents having barely any faith in their economic leadership. Conversely, congressional Republicans have remained relatively impervious to steep declines in confidence (National Review). CNN: Americans have low confidence in President Biden, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on the economy (Twitter).

The Debt Ceiling Stalemate Continues

Financial Times: US president Joe Biden and congressional Republicans failed to reach a breakthrough after their first big meeting to avert a crisis over the debt ceiling, but agreed to continue talks and hold a new summit on Friday. Speaking outside the White House on Tuesday afternoon, Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker, said there had been “no new movement” after America’s top political leaders gathered for just over an hour. “Everybody reiterated the positions they were at,” McCarthy said (Financial Times). Bloomberg: The Republican-led House last month passed a bill that would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion in exchange for $4.8 trillion in budget deficit cuts over 10 years. The White House has said it will only accept a “clean” no-strings-attached debt ceiling increase, although Biden is open to separate talks on the budget levels for fiscal 2024. (Bloomberg). There is another meeting set up for Friday.

Trump Found Liable of Sexual Abuse in 1996; Jean Carroll Awarded $5 Million

NBC: A Manhattan federal jury found that Donald Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awarded her $5 million for battery and defamation. Carroll alleged Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store and then defamed her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book. Trump denied all wrongdoing. Carroll filed the lawsuit last November under the “New York State Adult Survivors Act,” a state bill which opened a look-back window for sexual assault allegations like Carroll’s with long-expired statutes of limitation (NBC). Michael Knowles: So the jury concluded that E. Jean Carroll lied about Trump’s raping her but didn’t lie about his sexually assaulting her, which occurred sometime around 1996 maybe—or was it 1995?—and anyway, he owes her $5 million. Do I have that right (Twitter)?

Guatemalan President Warns US of 80,000 Migrants Heading Toward US Border

This is from one single country. Fox News: U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, says he learned from the president of Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei, that more than 80,000 migrants, primarily from Venezuela, are moving toward the U.S.-Mexico border, ahead of Thursday’s expiration of Title 42. President Giammattei also said he tried to call the White House on the matter, but nobody would take his calls. Once the order ends, droves of migrants are expected to arrive at the border, believing they have a better chance of being admitted into the U.S., although the Biden administration has said that is not true (Fox News). Bill Melugin: Non-stop illegal crossings continuing here in Brownsville. This is another group of several hundred that just crossed over, some out of frame under the levee. More are coming. We’ve been watching on our drone as migrants tether a rope to US side of Rio Grande while crossing (Twitter).

North Dakota Governor Signs Bill Allowing Teachers to Refer to Students as Biological Gender

Townhall: This week, Gov. Doug Burgum (R) of North Dakota signed a bill into law that allows teachers at public schools and state government employees to refer to trangender people by their name and pronouns that correspond to their biological sex rather than their gender identity. According to The Hill, the new legislation requires school teachers to inform a student’s parent or legal guardian if they begin to identify as transgender. The legislation reportedly passed the House and Senate with veto-proof majorities. Opponents of the bill claimed that it violates students’ privacy, particularly for students who identify as transgender and do not want to tell their parents… Previously, Burgum vetoed a nearly identical bill. At that time, the state legislature did not have enough votes to override a veto (Townhall).

Senator Dianne Feinstein Announces Her Return This Week

Associated Press: Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office disclosed Tuesday that she is returning to Washington following an absence of more than two months in which the oldest member of Congress faced calls from within her own party to resign. The 89-year-old California Democrat announced in early March that she had been hospitalized in San Francisco and was being treated for a case of shingles. But an expected return later that month never happened. Few details emerged on Feinstein’s condition, and some Democrats openly complained that her lengthy absence was compromising the Democratic agenda in the Senate, including slowing the push to confirm President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees. Some in the House urged her to step down (Associated Press).

Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried Attempts to Get 10 of 13 Charges Dropped

New York Post: Sam Bankman-Fried, who has long denied stealing from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange, said prosecutors charged him with “troubling” haste and asked a US judge to throw out 10 of the 13 criminal counts against him. In a filing in Manhattan federal court Monday, Bankman-Fried’s lawyers said now-bankrupt FTX was far from the only cryptocurrency company to collapse during a broad market crash in 2022, and that prosecutors hastily charged their client in a “rush to judgment” (New York Post). Wall Street Journal: Mr. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty and is currently under home detention at his parents’ California house while he awaits trial in October (Wall Street Journal).

Emails from Antony Blinken Found on Hunter Biden’s Laptop

New York Post: The CIA conspired with former acting director Mike Morell and the Biden campaign to produce a letter falsely claiming that emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian disinformation — and solicited signatures from at least one former intelligence official. Morell told the CIA’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) that he needed the letter approved as an unusual “rush job” that day, October 19, 2020, in an effort to provide then-candidate Joe Biden ammunition in the final presidential debate to discredit The Post’s report on the Biden emails which had been published five days earlier (New York Post). National Review: It turns out that Blinken communicated with Hunter Biden by email when he was deputy secretary of state in the Obama-Biden administration. Blinken obscured some of his correspondence with the then-vice-president’s son by conducting it via a private email account, thus ensuring that it wouldn’t be recorded in the government’s record-keeping system. But, it was recorded on Hunter’s laptop. In his testimony, Blinken denied having ever had email communications with Hunter. The laptop demonstrates that this testimony was untrue (National Review).

10.

NFL Player’s Ruined Reputation, Career Over False Allegations

This is what happens when we operate in an “guilty until proven innocent” society. Daily Wire: Matt Araiza looked like he would have a promising NFL career after he was named the Buffalo Bills starting punter last August. A San Diego State University (SDSU) graduate, Araiza’s talent earned him the nickname “Punt God.” But within days of landing the position, a woman filed a civil lawsuit claiming Araiza and two college football teammates gang-raped her when she was just 17. The civil lawsuit became public and, based on the allegations, media and the public vilified Araiza, taking the claims at face value. Now, a 200-plus page transcript of a nearly two-hour meeting explains why prosecutors didn’t file charges. According to investigators, Araiza wasn’t even at the house when the incident is alleged to have occurred (Daily Wire). Fox News: Since the accusation, Araiza was released from the Bills and has yet to be picked up by another team in the league despite the December announcement that charges would not be pressed (Fox News).