Nota Bene: President Biden’s Relentless Campaign To Hobble Elon Musk

Plus, America’s new ‘Climate Corps’ and the ‘free for all’ at the border.

Patrick Pleul/pool via AP
Elon Musk on March 22, 2022. Patrick Pleul/pool via AP

Every week, it seems, there is another headline about some branch of President Biden’s government going after Elon Musk for something or other. This week, it’s the Department of Justice via the Southern District of New York, which reportedly is investigating perks the Tesla chief executive may have received from his company going back to 2017.

Last month, it was a house he was reportedly building at Austin, Texas. Before that, it was because his SpaceX wasn’t hiring noncitizen asylum-seekers and refugees. The Federal Trade Commission has been hounding Twitter, now called X, since the day Mr. Musk announced he was buying the liberals’ favorite social media megaphone. San Francisco authorities are investigating him for putting beds in at the Twitter headquarters there. The list goes on.

People are starting to notice. At Wednesday’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Thomas Massie asked the attorney general, Merrick Garland, what’s up with all that.

“Elon Musk was a Democrat who admittedly supported Biden. But then he became a critic of the administration,” Mr. Massie said. “The DOJ has opened not one, but two investigations of Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg spent $400 million in 2020 tilting the elections, secretly for Democrats. No investigations whatsoever. To the American public, these look like Mafia tactics. You pay your money, we look the other way. You get in our way, we punish you.”

Mr. Garland said he can’t comment on ongoing investigations.

America’s New ‘Climate Corps’

It’s an all-too-familiar story from the current White House: Mr. Biden’s handlers want something done, but Congress blocks them. Instead of shrinking away and moving on to something else, they ignore Congress and do it anyway. The latest example? Mr. Biden’s Climate Corps — 20,000 young Americans on the government payroll building trails, planting trees, and installing solar panels in the name of combating climate change.

When the president tried to include a Climate Corps in last year’s Green New Deal, a.k.a., the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress balked at the price tag and the necessity for such a boondoggle when unemployment is at 3.8 percent and business owners are complaining about labor shortages. Invariably buried in much of the fawning coverage of the announcement on Wednesday was this kicker: “The White House declined to say how much the program will cost or how it will be paid for.”

‘Free for All’ at the Border

The number of migrants showing up at the southern border is returning to record levels after tapering off slightly over the summer. “It’s a total free for all in Eagle Pass right now,” Fox News’s Bill Melugin, one of only a handful of reporters paying any attention whatsoever, says.

Also Noteworthy:

  • Iranian lawmakers passed a bill Wednesday subjecting women who violate its Islamic dress code to 10 years in prison.
  • NFTs have turned out to be the beanie babies of the roaring ‘20s.
  • Charlie Sykes: Democrats have a contempt problem.
  • Arizona’s Kari Lake will not go quietly into the night.
  • Prime Minister Sunak confirms that the U.K.’s ban on diesel- and gas-powered cars will be delayed until 2035. “It should be you, the consumer, that makes that choice, not government forcing you to do it,” he says.
  • Meanwhile, Ford says it will lose $4.5 billion on electric vehicles this year, up from the $3 billion it predicted just months ago.
  • Add olive oil to the list of necessities that have seen prices skyrocket recently.

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