BYRON YORK — From now on, the Trump-Russia affair, the investigation that dominated the first years of Donald Trump's presidency, will be divided into two parts: before and after the release of the Mueller report. Before the special counsel's findings were made public last month, the president's adversaries were on the offensive. Now, they are playing defense.... (more)

ANDREW MCCARTHY — Here's what you need to know: In rushing out their assessment of Russia's interference in the 2016 election, Obama-administration officials chose not to include the risible Steele-dossier allegations that they had put in their "VERIFIED APPLICATION" for warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) because . . . wait for it . . . the allegations weren't verified.... (more)

NEWSMAX — Ecuador will hand over to U.S. prosecutors on Monday the belongings of Julian Assange that remain in the country's London embassy, WikiLeaks told The Guardian on Sunday. Ecuadorian officials are travelling to London to permit the Americans to "help themselves" to the possessions, which include two of Assange's manuscripts, other legal papers, medical records and electronic equipment, so that they can expand their extradition case before the British deadline on June 14, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson told The Guardian.... (more)

DAVID LIMBAUGH — Alabama's mostly Republican lawmakers and governor passed a strong abortion ban this week, and liberals are fit to be tied. "Today, I signed into law the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, a bill that was approved by overwhelming majorities in both chambers of the legislature," said Gov. Kay Ivey. "To the bill's many supporters, this legislation stands as a powerful testament to Alabamians' deeply held belief that every life is precious and that every life is a sacred gift from God."... (more)

DAILIY SIGNAL — The pro-life movie "Unplanned" surpassed all expectations in theaters, and is now leading abortion workers to leave the industry. In this episode, Rachel del Guidice talks to Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood worker, about the stunning trend. Plus: Alabama is set for a legal showdown after passing a law that bans abortion. Thomas Jipping joins us to unpack what could come next and analyzes the prospects of overturning Roe v. Wade.... (more)

WASHINGTON EXAMINER — Some of the migrant families arrested at the southern border weren't actually families. In a pilot program, approximately 30% of rapid DNA tests of immigrant adults who were suspected of arriving at the southern border with children who weren't theirs revealed the adults were not related to the children, an official involved in the system's temporary rollout who asked to be anonymous in order to speak freely told the Washington Examiner Friday.... (more)

NATIONAL REVIEW — The snakiest of snake-oil pitches goes like this: Give us some of your freedom and we'll take care of you. Socialists have been making similar claims back as far as Plato. The end result doesn't have to be Venezuela. It can just be . . . Europe.... (more)

NEWSMAX — Nearly three decades ago, when Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards' wife was 20 weeks pregnant with their first child, a doctor discovered their daughter had spina bifida and encouraged an abortion. The Edwardses refused.... (more)

WORLDNETDAILY — Lawmakers in Alabama have adopted a law that makes conducting an abortion punishable by up to 99 years in prison. The governor signed it late Wednesday. And lawsuits from the American Civil Liberties Union or Planned Parenthood are likely, rulings that inevitably would be appealed.... (more)

NEWSMAX — President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order declaring a national emergency and barring U.S. companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms posing a national security risk, paving the way for a ban on doing business with China's Huawei Technologies Co.... (more)

WORLDNETDAILY — Washington has entered a new era. The report from special counsel Robert Mueller put to rest claims the Trump campaign in 2016 colluded with Russia. There are no charges coming, he made clear.... (more)

THE HILL — Attorney General William Barr joked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi about Democrats' calls for his arrest, asking the California Democrat whether she brought handcuffs to an event on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday morning.... (more)

HUMAN EVENTS — This afternoon, the White House launched a new online portal that will allow users who have been banned or suspended from social media platforms to share their stories with the White House. The portal, called the "Tech Bias Story Sharing Tool,"asks users if any social media platform -- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, or any other -- has taken action against the user's account. The user is given an opportunity to explain the circumstances of their banning, link to the offending post or tweet, and include any screenshots of emails from the social media platforms explaining why they took adverse action against the user's account.... (more)

ASSOCIATED PRESS — President Donald Trump on Wednesday granted a full pardon to Conrad Black, a former newspaper publisher who has written a flattering political biography of Trump. Black's media empire once included the Chicago Sun-Times and The Daily Telegraph of London. He was convicted of fraud in 2007 and spent three and a half years in prison. An appeals court reversed two convictions, but left two others in place.... (more)

FOX NEWS — The U.S. attorney appointed to examine the origins of the Russia investigation has been working on his review "for weeks," a person familiar with the process told Fox News on Tuesday, to probe "all intelligence collection activities" related to the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.... (more)

WORLDNETDAILY — A former Justice Department official said Democrats should be "quite worried" about U.S. Attorney General Barr's appointment of a U.S. attorney to look into the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation.... (more)

BYRON YORK — A huge controversy erupted last year when President Trump declassified parts of the FBI's secret request to wiretap former Trump campaign volunteer foreign policy adviser Carter Page. Defenders and critics of the president argued over whether the October 2016 warrant application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court relied extensively on the so-called Steele dossier, which was a collection of anti-Trump allegations compiled by the former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign.... (more)

CONRAD BLACK — The full proportions of the debacle that awaits the Democrats next fall is starting to penetrate their complacent disdain and revulsion toward President Trump. Rank-and-file Democrats are so ecstatic at the arrival of a known candidate whose views on principal policy issues cannot be invoked by Republicans to frighten children into eating their breakfast cereal that they have accorded Joe Biden a levitation in the polls.... (more)

PATRICK J. BUCHANAN — As his limo carried him to work at the White House Monday, Larry Kudlow could not have been pleased with the headline in The Washington Post: "Kudlow Contradicts Trump on Tariffs."... (more)

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON — The Chinese Communist government does not have so much a strategy to translate its economic ascendance into global hegemony as several strategies. All of them are brilliantly insidious.... (more)

RAND CORPORATION — U.S.-based journalism has gradually shifted away from objective news and offers more opinion-based content that appeals to emotion and relies heavily on argumentation and advocacy, according to a new RAND Corporation report.... (more)

WASHINGTON EXAMINER — The U.S. fertility rate fell to a record low in 2018 and the number of births declined for a fourth consecutive year, the National Center for Health Statistics reported Wednesday.... (more)

PETER LEMISKA — ou've got to hand it to Jerry Nadler and the Democrats. They know just how to sound righteous, patriotic, and even noble when they want to. For two years, they posed as champions of democracy, railing about treason at the highest levels of government. "America deserves better," they proclaimed. And today when they're pontificating about abuse of power, threats to our democracy, the rule of law, and congressional oversight responsibility, why it's nothing less than inspirational.... (more)

REAL CLEAR POLITICS — In his Monday night monologue, FNC's Tucker Carlson said that when it comes to allegations of Trump-Russia collusion, "the Democratic base has been emotionally incontinent for quite some time." "But the people who run the Democratic party are not crazy. They are coolly rational; they always have been. They want power," he continued. "That's all they want. Whatever it takes. These people don't throw fits unless it's to serve some higher political purpose. And this fit does serve a higher purpose. They're trying to divert attention from a much bigger story."... (more)

NEWSMAX — Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is calling out Joe Biden's national security and foreign policy credibilility -- and says age would be "problematic" for both Biden and rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.... (more)