Thursday’s leak proclaiming a Manhattan grand jury had charged former President Donald Trump in a 30-something-count criminal indictment preempted nearly a week of important stories. Here are some of the most important underreported stories from the last five days.
1. House Weaponization Hearing
On Thursday, the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government held a hearing for testimony related to Missouri v. Biden. In that case, Missouri, Louisiana, and others sued the Biden administration and numerous individual defendants for violating the First Amendment through what the plaintiffs called a “vast censorship enterprise.”
At last week’s hearing, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, and Louisiana Special Assistant Attorney General D. John Sauer testified in detail about that “censorship enterprise,” providing highlights of evidence uncovered so far in the lawsuit. While the “Twitter Files,” earlier testimony of Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger, and previous filings in Missouri v. Biden revealed extensive information about the public-private Censorship Complex, this testimony provided the House committee with even more troubling information.
2. Chinese Spy Balloon
The Chinese spy balloon that floated unmolested across America in February “gather[ed] intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so,” NBC reported on Monday. The revelations, based on “two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official,” appear to contradict the Biden administration’s earlier claim that the Chinese spy balloon had “‘limited additive value’ for intelligence collection by the Chinese government.”
3. Border
