Read it.

Washington is upping the ante against censorship, warning foreign officials that they will be banned from travelling to the U.S. if they limit the free speech of Americans. Government departments that (over) regulate U.S. tech companies could also face repercussions.

European officials were clearly in mind during the creation of these plans. Figures in Donald Trump’s administration have spent months criticising Continental leaders for imposing censorship—most memorably JD Vance who told the February Munich security conference about Europe’s “enemy within”—and Secretary of State Marco Rubio specifically mentioned Europe when outlining the measures in a social media post on Wednesday.

Read it.

Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has once again disappointed conservative voters—this time by appointing a radical-left activist from the SPD as the government’s new “Queer Commissioner,” in a move critics are calling a gift to the woke wing of German politics.

Sophie Koch, 31, replaces Green politician Sven Lehmann in the post, but instead of downsizing the role or scrapping it altogether, Merz has expanded it—creating a new, additional post within his government. The CDU leader who once vowed to bring order to immigration policy and push back against progressive excess has instead handed more power to someone known for insulting his own party and promoting extremist slogans.

Koch, who until recently worked for a taxpayer-funded LGBT NGO in Saxony, has made headlines for openly mocking the CDU and celebrating their declining support in eastern Germany. “Never again CDU,” she beamed in a now-viral video, reacting to falling poll numbers for the party in Saxony. She has also accused the CDU of abandoning “the democratic centre” over migration policy.

Read it.

Americans are taught in school that the Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation of 1930 greatly exacerbated the Great Depression and sent the world spinning off into a decade of debt deflation and economic contraction.

This seems to make sense until we remember that the history of the United States over the past century was written largely by progressives. In fact, the Great Depression began in 1920 with a decade of falling prices for farm products, a deflationary wave that eventually engulfed the real estate sector and the entire US economy.

What is missed by many discussions of Smoot-Hawley during and after that period, is the fact that the economic collapse of the 1930s was already a given with or without the new tariff law. The impetus behind the political decision to raise tariffs was a misguided reaction to the collapse of agricultural prices, but the force behind this deflationary wave was primarily “positive” factors such as new technology and innovation. The deflation that began after WWI decimated farm communities and eventually led to the collapse of real estate prices, particularly Florida real estate.

Read it.

Five protesters were arrested on Wednesday, April 28th—for an alleged plan to disrupt filming on a new Gal Gadot movie, set in central London.

The five were apprehended and taken into custody on suspicion of harassment and offences under Section 241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel has denounced the Wonder Woman actress for supporting Israel and having served in its military. Demonstrators had staged several disruptions on earlier shooting days prior to the arrests.

In a break with a pattern of two-tier policing, which has tended to favour pro–Palestinian protesters since the October 7th pogrom, a spokesperson for the Met said the film was targeted “solely because an actress involved in the production is Israeli.”

This is why we can’t have good things.

Read it.

After a belated crackdown on campus antisemitism, some were surprised to see the Jewish Council for Public Affairs leading a campaign in support of college Hamas enthusiasts.

Observers of Jewish organizational life remembered the JCPA as a representative of local Jewish ‘federations’, the organization had always been liberal, but it had never taken so blatant a stance in defense of antisemites or so overt a stance.against the American Jewish community.

In reality though the JCPA had not existed since 2022. The organization using the JCPA name is a leftist activist group funded by George Soros and headed by a member of his anti-Israel lobby. The crucial break came when the JCPA endorsed the Black Lives Matter racist hate group whose associated mobs attacked synagogues, assaulted Jews and denounced Israel.

The Other McCain.

Amid a nationwide carnival of destructive violence following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, few episodes of the “most peaceful protests” were more idiotic than burning down an affordable housing project under construction in Minneapolis. The six-story building was to have had 189 apartments, including 38 “affordable” units, as well as ground-floor retail space, and had been scheduled to open in spring 2021, but the arsonists of the Black Lives Matters movement destroyed it.

Let’s fight the racist oppressors! Let’s burn down our own buildings and steal our own shit!

Read it.

Hey, that’s the platform she ran on when she one the election.

Read it.

A volunteer has been banned from a railway charity scheme in the UK after he asked a basic question regarding a train that had been wrapped in ‘Pride’ colours.

The Telegraph reports, “Matthew Toomer, 48, was thrown out of West Midlands Railway’s ‘Adopt a Station’ scheme after he privately contacted company bosses to express concern about its ‘Progress Pride’ train.”

…

What awful hateful thing did Mr. Toomer say?

He commented on a social media post about the rebranded train, asking if it would “return to its natural state once the event is over.”

Oh the horror.

Read it.

A parade of keffiyeh-clad students descended on Manhattan Criminal Court on Wednesday to face formal arraignment for their roles in a violent takeover of Columbia University’s Butler Library. Their lawyer accused Israel of “genocide,” asked the court to consider dismissal, and ultimately secured adjournments for procedural documents that will delay the cases for more than a month.

A total of 56 defendants were arraigned at the courthouse, with a few joined by their nervous parents. Among the defendants present were Ramona Sarsgaard, the nepo baby daughter of Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard. Dima Aboukasm—whom Mayor Eric Adams once hailed as a peace activist—also had her day in court. They were represented by Matthew W. Daloisio, the same attorney who represented those arrested for storming Columbia’s Hamilton Hall in 2024.

How dare you expect us to obey the law! OPPRESSORS!

Read it.

California has declared war on its middle class, and the special interests controlling the state are doing everything they can to impose this punitive economic model on the rest of America. It’s a quasi-feudal system, with the entire population divided into aristocrats and serfs. The means to destroy the middle class is to engineer an unaffordable cost of living for households, and a regulatory environment that only huge corporations can afford to navigate. The moral justification for this destruction is to cope with the “climate emergency” and to achieve social “equity.”

Read it.

At least six Mexican soldiers were killed when a homemade explosive detonated on a roadway at the Michoacán-Jalisco border—territory controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), according to one of Mexico’s top newspapers.

El Universal reported that the incident occurred as Mexican troops were conducting an operation to dismantle CJNG operations and a training center in Santa María del Oro, located in eastern Michoacán near the Jalisco border.

Sources said at least one cartel member was armed with a “Minigun machine gun at that location, along with an arsenal and hitmen.”

Welcome to the Turd World – right on your doorstep.

Read it.

Taylor Lorenz, a widely respected journalist who has worked for the New York Times and the Washington Post, and who recently appeared in an Emmy-nominated documentary series on CNN, has accused former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg of supporting mass murder and “embrac[ing] far-right eugenics.” Lorenz, 40, previously accused former president Joe Biden of committing “war crimes” in Gaza and “genocide” in the United States (by failing to reinstate COVID-era masking policies). On Wednesday, she lashed out at Buttigieg on social media after the failed presidential candidate argued Democrats should not have been so averse to reopening schools during the 2020 pandemic.

“Pete saying he would have ‘opened the schools sooner’ in 2020 aka killing MORE vulnerable ppl faster, sacrificing teachers and educators (and kids!) lives to force them back into unventilated buildings [with] no protections,” Lorenz wrote on X, the immigrant-owned social media platform. “Disgusting how Dems have fully embraced far right eugenics.”

Lorenz’s view appears to be more in line with the one expressed by Pete’s husband, Chasten Buttigieg, in a July 2020 interview with Time magazine. “There’s already a flight risk of teachers fleeing the profession,” he said. “I don’t want to see teachers leaving the profession on gurneys.” Democrats, teachers’ unions, and their media allies routinely accused Republicans of wanting to murder children by opening schools too soon. They claimed to be on the side of “science,” even though they were not.

Victor Davis Hanson.

But here’s the real backstory to the whole thing. Why did he want to meet Trump? He wanted to meet Trump because he had a free trade agreement with the United States with no tariffs placed on South African agriculture—everything, metals, everything. And he was running a $9 billion surplus. And in addition to that, he was getting $500 million in foreign aid from the United States.

And in addition to that, his ambassador had just been fired or expelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Why? Because in a performance art fashion, he made a video and said Donald Trump was a white supremacist. This is the ambassador, just before this visit, not too long earlier. And then said that he was part of a white victimhood movement. So, they kicked him out. Was he embarrassed? No. He had a hero’s welcome when he went back.

And then we have the larger context of South Africa. It usually votes at the United Nations against the United States. It’s signed onto the International Criminal Court’s farce that was going to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a war criminal. We had the video that was shown about the leader of the third-largest party in South Africa saying that they wanted to “kill the Boer, kill the farmer” to a big crowd.

Read it.

The Department of Health and Human Services sent a letter to health care providers urging them to discard discredited research on child gender transitions.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy told health care providers, risk managers, and state medical boards to heed his department’s recent review of child sex changes, which determined the irreversible procedures can cause significant harm, including sterilization.

“The Hippocratic Oath lays down the foundational commitment for the medical profession: ‘First, do no harm,’” Kennedy wrote. “The Review makes clear that ‘the evidence for benefit of pediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence for harm is less uncertain.’ For this reason, the Review states that when ‘medical interventions pose unnecessary, disproportionate risks of harm, healthcare providers should refuse to offer them even when they are preferred, requested, or demanded by patients.’”

Newsbusters.

As its own future comes under threat by the Trump administration, a juxtaposition on National Public Radio’s homepage Tuesday (see photo) unwittingly showed just what kind of job losses NPR has sympathy for — DEI woke-work, not the manufacturing jobs that actually involve making things, and which happen to employ many Trump voters.

“Corporate America’s retreat from DEI has eliminated thousands of jobs” is an expanded “digital feature” version of a story by Maria Aspan for Tuesday’s Morning Edition. Over the airwaves, Aspan lamented “the numbers are pretty bleak. More than 2,600 jobs in diversity or DEI have been eliminated in the last couple of years.” She decried the “now very politicized job market” of DEI (which stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion).

Wasn’t it the left-wing DEI movement that politicized the job market?!

Project Veritas.

Maybe we’ll see some Bidens going to jail.

Newsbusters.

The New York Times is trying to Gorilla glue an insane idea to our brains that we will somehow feel the sting of President Donald Trump and the GOP choosing to cut federal benefits to — wait for it — illegal immigrants.

Make it make sense.

Washington Free Beacon.

Jake Tapper, the CNN host who promoted false Democratic talking points about Joe Biden’s mental acuity before writing a best-selling book about the “cover-up,” slammed his beloved political party this week for behaving like a bunch of woke scolds who are obsessed with racism and routinely denigrate normal men. Tapper discussed his belated epiphany—many years after the Democratic Party started hating men and denouncing everything as racist—on a podcast with tech baron Scott Galloway, recounting his appearance on a “left-leaning podcast” where one the hosts made a “joke” about how his teenage son might be racist because he wants to be a police officer.

“They asked me about my son, and I said he’s a football player and he wants to be a policeman, and their joke was, about my 15-year-old son, ‘Oh, how does he feel about minorities?’ Like the idea that he wants to be a policeman, therefore he’s racist, my son,” Tapper recalled. “That was the big laugh, and then I got dragged in the comments and all that stuff, and I thought to myself, ‘This is why you fuckers are losing elections.'”

Tapper argued that the liberal podcaster who joked about his son being a racist—since identified as Jason Stewart, a semi-professional DJ and cohost of the How Long Gone podcast—had exemplified “how the Democratic Party talks to men.” Indeed, they have been doing this for quite some time before Tapper decided to notice. “Like, my football playing son, who has no political views, he’s 15, he thinks about World War II and gaming and playing linebacker. That’s his world. You’re deciding he’s a racist because he wants to be a cop,” the journalist said. “And why does he want to be a cop? He wants to be a cop because he wants to help people.”

Read it.

The left’s answer to everything seems to be better messaging:

“Democrats spending millions to learn how to speak to ‘American Men’ and win back the working class,” the Independent reported today, with party leaders holed up “in luxury hotel rooms on a strategy codenamed SAM, or ‘Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan.’”

Yeah, that’ll work.

It’s all about style and nothing about substance. See this:

This is all about perception, not reality … Study the “syntax” of the opposition so you can try to sound like them. Watch the “tone” you use to speak. Always be aware of your “messaging.” These people have learned precisely nothing from the rise of Donald Trump. The lesson in Trump’s rise, distilled to its essence, is “be authentic.” No “messaging” massaging can be remotely helpful if you’re obviously an inauthentic liar.

Although “be authentic” is indeed part of the lesson that should have been learned, the substance of the message is very important as well. If the left was authentic it would turn even more people off.

Read it.

A new report by the Council of Europe’s human rights monitoring body, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), warns of “racial profiling” in Europe in its latest findings, published Wednesday, May 28th.

“We’ve noticed that no member state of the Council of Europe is really immune when it comes to racial profiling,” said Bertil Cottier, chair of the ECRI. The Council determined that using facial recognition AI technology to track and identify criminals or registering undocumented immigrants is a violation of human rights and counts as racial profiling.

Italy was identified as one of the countries where racial profiling is a supposed concern. “During our visit to Italy we noticed some cases of racial profiling within the police forces. We made a recommendation to the Italian government to take this issue seriously,” said Cottier.

Read it.

Good riddance.

However, the legacy of the penny will last in our language. We will still ask a penny for thoughts. We will still throw in our 2 cents in discussions. A penny saved will even be a penny earned. We can still be penny-wise and pound-foolish. In tight times, we will still pinch pennies.

But pricing will likely shift. The old psychological trick of pricing things at 99 cents will persist. I saw a bag of chips the other day marked at $11.99. The memorable part is the 11, not the masked 12. That habit will likely go away. Even though only one in five transactions are in cash, it is likely that pricing habits will adapt in time.

However, aside from all these seeming trivialities, there is a gravely serious matter here. What it ultimately reveals is the monetary system’s mass theft of the public’s wealth. Here’s why.

Back in 1913, if you had 3 cents, you had the spending power that you would have if you had a dollar today. That’s a 33-fold increase in prices over a century and a decade of central banking and money printing to sustain an ever larger government and an ever bigger debt burden.

The loss of purchasing power in the money is the equivalent of a tax, a sneaky, surreptitious tax that masks its coercion in monetary depreciation.

By the way, I’m pretty sure that these numbers don’t capture the whole of it. They are drawn from the Consumer Price Index (CPI). I no longer trust it.

Say good-by to the dollar, really.

Newsom backs rule change after Trump threatens to pull funding over transgender athlete (Eric He/Politico)

Trump Border Czar’s Cash-In With Key ICE Contractor Unmasked (Erkki Forster/The Daily Beast)  Unmasked!

FEMA at ‘high risk’ of disrupting ‘life-saving’ disaster relief, per internal memo (Marisa Kabas/The Handbasket)  Because, as we all know, disaster relief is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government – and the Federal taxpayer.

Trump Reportedly Pauses New Student Visa Interviews–Latest Threat To International Students Who Add $44 Billion To U.S. Economy (Sara Dorn/Forbes)  And cost how much extra spending on the part of the Federal taxpayers? As Thomas Sowell is fond of saying, there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

Judge approves Treasury DOGE team’s access to sensitive data systems (Michael Stratford/Politico)

Marshals’ Data Shows Spike in Threats Against Federal Judges (Mattathias Schwartz/New York Times)

Vance to headline Vegas fundraiser for Trump PAC costing $1 million per head (Natalie Allison/Washington Post)

Trump’s Tirades Aren’t Swaying Putin (Tom Nichols/The Atlantic)

Cognitive Decline? Trump Repeatedly Fumbles in Multiple Weird Rants (Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling/New Republic)  They’re desperate to deflect attention from Biden’s defects by attributing the same to Trump. (Call me when Trump falls when getting into or out of an airplane.)

Wall Street Investors Mock Trump With A Brutal 4-Letter Code Word (Ed Mazza/HuffPost) I’m sure Trump is deeply wounded. “They may have won all the battles, but we had all the good songs!” — Tom Lerer

Trump’s Attacks Have Helped Heal a Deeply Divided Harvard (New York Times)

Back at SpaceX, Musk says in interview DOGE became D.C.’s ‘whipping boy’ (Christian Davenport/Washington Post)  As is obvious to the most casual observer.

Trump oversight picks include scandal-hit ex-lawmaker, antiabortion lawyer (Washington Post) The swine!

Trump Pledged to “Make America Healthy Again,” Then Cut a Program Many Tribes Rely on for Healthy Food (Mary Hudetz/ProPublica)  I guess “tribes” = “America” ?

Green Giants vs. Trump: Billion-Dollar Enviro Groups Fight to Save Wind Power

‘Truth Teller’ Bruce Springsteen Slimes Trump as Treasonous

America Turns Its Back on the World (Paul Krugman)  Instead of kissing the world’s ass – like Paul Krugman.

GOP rejects ‘millionaire tax’ pitch, advancing breaks for rich Americans (Jeff Stein/Washington Post)

Rubio’s claim that it’s ‘a lie’ that people have died from foreign-aid cuts (Glenn Kessler/Washington Post) No people that it’s our government’s job to save.

The two strongest points in NPR’s lawsuit against the Trump administration (Jessica Levinson/MSNBC)  1. He’s Trump and 2. They’re not.

‘TACO’: Wall Street Mocks Trump With 4-Letter Code to Call Bets Against Him (David Gilmour/Mediaite)  The adolescence is strong in this one.

Trump’s Fury at Harvard Gets More Deranged–and Exposes a Big MAGA Scam (Greg Sargent/New Republic)  Greg Sargent loses his shit.

Trump’s attack on Harvard hampered by his inability to STFU (Liz Dye/Public Notice)  Which is, indeed, a problem that the Narrative Media has in spades.

Senate Democrats Have Been Handed a Tool to Stop the Big Beautiful Bill (David Dayen/American Prospect)

Trump Makes Wild Claim Canada Is ‘Considering’ Becoming U.S. State (Josephine Harvey/The Daily Beast)  Let’s keep yanking their chains, shall we?

ICE, Shifting Tactics, Detains High School Student at N.Y.C. Courthouse (New York Times)

Trump’s military parade doubles as a birthday party (Brett Samuels/The Hill)  Yeah, for the Army.

RFK Jr.’s War on Vaccines Is Here (William Kristol/The Bulwark)  Bill Kristol loses his shit.

The Trump Administration Is Trying to Kill American Higher Education (Daniel W. Drezner/Drezner’s World)  Apparently Harvard is the only ‘higher education’ in the country. No wonder it’s so hard to get in.

The Trump Presidency’s World-Historical Heist (David Frum/The Atlantic)  David Frum loses his shit.

Termination notices expected to go out to all remaining Voice of America employees this week (Ben Johansen/Politico)  Where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

MSNBC’s Glaude: Trump’s Harvard Moves In Line With William F. Buckley’s ‘Assault’ On Yale  Which didn’t work either.

The View Claims Trump Pardons ‘Not Ethical,’ Praised Hunter Biden’s   Well, Hunter was an actual criminal.

Stocks Rally on the ‘TACO Trade’ (Jason Karaian/New York Times)

Retiring Capitol Police Chief: Jan. 6 Pardons a “Slap in the Face”  He actually deserves a good spanking, but a slap in the face will have to do.

How to Turn the Middle Against Trump (New York Times)  Come up with proof that he’s a Jew?

Death, Sexual Violence and Human Trafficking: Fallout From U.S. Aid Withdrawal Hits the World’s Most Fragile Locations (ProPublica)  Because, as we all know, protection from death, sexual violence, and ‘trafficking’ around the world is TOTALLY the responsibility of the Federal government – and the Federal taxpayer. The gravy train is over, guys.

Yale Dean Emails Everyone Anti-Trump Essay: “I Know You Share My Concern”

Babylon Bee.

And neither side reads Greek, so it’s not as if they know what they’re talking about.

Read it.  And watch the video (it will break your heart.)

With the MAGA movement in full swing, maybe now is a good time to Make Air Travel Great Again. I have fond memories of flying in the 70s; easy, simple, inexpensive, relaxing, meal on board. And nowadays it’s unbelievably awful.

Read it.

The Left is nothing if not persistent.

While Congress has been exhaustively debating the tax cut and spending details of President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” Senator Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent socialist, and his House Democratic allies are again honing their comprehensive health policy agenda: the abolition of all Americans’ private and employer-sponsored health insurance and the creation of a “single payer” system of government-run national health insurance.

Along with Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), Sanders recently reintroduced the Senate and House versions of the “Medicare for All Act of 2025.” The legislation has attracted 16 cosponsors in the Senate and 104 cosponsors in the House—almost half of the entire House Democratic caucus.

As noted in analyses of earlier versions of the House and Senate legislation, it would create a government monopoly over the financing and delivery of American health care. Under this system, one would have no alternative to the government health plan, creating a “No Choice, No Exit” scenario.

Read it.

San Francisco’s public school system is quietly rolling out a “Grading for Equity” program that will reportedly exclude homework or weekly tests from final grades and allow students to pass with scores as low as 21 out of 100.

The plan, unveiled Tuesday by Superintendent of Schools Maria Su, will take effect this fall at 14 public high schools and affect more than 10,000 students, the Voice of San Francisco reported. Under Grading for Equity, semester grades will depend entirely on a final exam that can be retaken multiple times—even if students skip assignments or fail to attend class.

News of the plan comes as President Donald Trump cracks down on DEI initiatives both in public schools and in higher education. In addition to revoking billions of dollars in federal funding from elite universities, Trump has demanded that state education departments eliminate many DEI programs or risk losing their funding, prompting lawsuits that are making their way through the court system.

Su did not seek approval from the San Francisco Board of Education before announcing the drastic overhaul, according to the Voice. Her staff has told board members that they have no authority to reject the plan, which was revealed on the last slide of a PowerPoint presentation in a 25-page board meeting agenda.

She made the announcement the final week of the spring semester, as parents weigh whether to keep their children in San Francisco’s public schools this fall. The district is facing over $110 million in budget cuts amid declining student enrollment and mounting concerns about academic standards.

Read it.

On Tuesday, May 27th, a 73-year-old Bavarian pensioner was notified that he was to start his 75-day prison sentence by June 5th. His crime? Two posts on X in which he used the phrase “Alles für Deutschland” (“Everything for Germany”), a slogan often associated with the SA, a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi party some 90 years ago. The elderly man was first sentenced to a fine, which he did not pay, claiming he did not have the financial means to do so.

Germany’s speech police is now cracking down on ordinary citizens, after primarily targeting the politicians of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), currently the most popular party in the country. One of the most recent cases was that of David Bendels, editor-in-chief for the AfD-affiliated Deutschland Kurier, who received a seven-month suspended sentence for “abuse, slander or defamation against persons in political life.” The offence? Bendels had edited and posted a meme of then interior minister Nancy Faeser, which pictured her holding a sign saying “I hate freedom of opinion.”

As a February report by the MCC Brussels think tank revealed, Germany’s expansive hate speech and defamation laws were being used in particular ahead of the parliamentary elections to target political opponents. Section 188 of the German Criminal Code has led to police searches and criminal penalties for citizens who insult politicians online, including a raid on a retired man’s home for sharing a post critical of a government minister, the fining of a pensioner €800 for a joke referencing a politician’s personal life, and a citizen being sentenced to prison for sending an angry email to a prime minister.

“The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” ? Tom Wolfe

ZMan counts up the points.

The first four months of the Trump restoration have exceeded everyone’s expectations for no other reason than it has shifted the conversation. The bad guys are still battling everything in the courts and Congress, but unlike the first time, Trump seems to have a plan, and he has been aggressive in executing it. As a result, he has been setting the agenda rather than the bad guys. The one place where he is failing is with Ukraine, where it looks like he has painted himself into a corner.

When Trump came to power, the choices with regards to Ukraine were to either abandon the whole thing and get blamed for tanks in Kiev or continue the Biden policy and get blamed for tanks in Kiev. To his credit he tried to shake things up by talking directly to the Russians and bypassing the snakes in the foreign policy community while doing it, in an effort to reset the board. Clearly, the snakes and the bad guys did not see that coming, so they were unprepared for it.

The problem is that the facts on the ground have not changed, so there is no deal Trump can make with the Russians to end the war. Zelensky will never do any peace deal as that means the end of him. The nationalists in Ukraine will never accept a deal, which is why Zelensky cannot do a deal. The Europeans seem convinced that peace in Ukraine means the withdraw of America from Europe, so they are fighting like hell to keep the war going, even as it harms their positions.

Read it.

Socialism will do that to you.

Read it.

On Wednesday Reuters is reporting that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), the controversial US-backed aid organization whose distribution sites are protected by American mercenaries, has suspended its operations in Gaza “due to disorder.”

Gaza’s Government Media Office announced in a statement, “We confirm that the ‘Israeli’ occupation’s project to distribute aid in the so-called ‘buffer zones’ has failed miserably, according to field reports and according to what was announced by the Hebrew media as well.” Israel has rejected the charge, instead blaming unruly Palestinian masses, Hamas, and criminal gangs who have long looted aid stores in the Strip.

Most ‘Palestinian’ problems are self inflicted.

The Foundry.

Liberals might support high immigration levels, and large numbers of foreign students in particular, simply because they like the new and unfamiliar—though it’s hard not to notice that foreign students typically pay more tuition and pad the bottom line of our colleges and universities, just as immigration on the whole gives liberals opportunities to court newcomers with social services and identity politics.

Yet supposedly hardheaded realists say it’s not liberal ideology but America’s need for more scientists and entrepreneurs that’s the real reason we have to open our campuses (and borders) to the world’s talents.

After all, if we don’t do that, where else are we going to get the brains we need to compete with China?

The trouble with this tale, which is an article of faith for The Economist and the likes of Bremmer, is that it’s patently false—and largely intended to deceive.

In fact, very few companies on the Fortune 500 were started solely by immigrants; almost all were founded by Americans, occasionally in partnership with émigrés.

The source for the factoid, the American Immigration Council, has to fudge the numbers by lumping “children of immigrants” into the same category as “immigrants,” even when those children are born American citizens.

As for competing with China, how can it be that China itself is so competitive when it accepts relatively few foreign students or immigrants?

Read it.

Andrew Cuomo, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party’s nomination for mayor of New York City, will on Wednesday promise to raise the city’s minimum wage to $20 an hour if he’s elected, putting the wages among the highest in the nation.

Buy those votes! Buy those votes!

Read it.

The Navy has taken a rare step and relieved a one-star admiral who oversaw the service’s unmanned and small combatant programs, including one of its newest class of warships, according to a statement released Monday.

Rear Adm. Kevin Smith was relieved from leadership of the program office by Dr. Brett Seidle, acting assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition.

As the program executive for unmanned and small craft, Smith oversaw the Navy’s design, development, construction, maintenance and modernization of unmanned maritime systems, as well as systems for mine warfare, special warfare and expeditionary warfare. The office is also overseeing the planning and construction of the Navy’s Constellation-class, next-generation guided missile frigates.

Pete Hegseth is cleaning house.

“During his tenure as the major program manager for the Constellation-class frigate, the program office was awarded the David Packard Excellence in Acquisition Award for 2021 as the top program office in the Department of Defense,” his biography boasted.

Uh-huh. See USS Constellation Update at the NavyMatters blog for the truth: The program is at least 3 years late and will undoubtedly be even later – and way over budget. That is not a kind of ‘excellence’ that David Packard would have liked.

Why, yes, I do have a cold. Why do you ask?

Read it.

Anti-antisemitism campaigner Mark Birbeck has been scheduled to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, May 28th. Along with Niyak Ghorbanii, he was arrested on September 7th, 2024, after the duo displayed a banner declaring ‘Hamas is Terrorist’ during a London ‘pro-Palestine’ solidarity march.

Additional charges include two counts of ‘assaulting emergency workers’–incidents that the Metropolitan Police claim occurred while Birbeck was being handcuffed, after his truthful declaration against the proscribed organisation.

The pair’s supporters state:

On September 7th, 2024, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) once more marched through London, and again Niyak Ghorbani and Mark Birbeck challenged the march to ensure Hamas was not airbrushed from the story. But the Met police decided that declaring ‘Hamas are Terrorists’ … was a step too far and arrested both Mark and Niyak.

Legal support from the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) is assisting them in their challenge to restrictive bail conditions. Further donations to help with legal fees can be sent here.

The charges are part of a wider pattern of British police going after opponents of Hamas and Hezbollah who assert their right to protest against the terror groups and their supporters.

Read it.

Terror group Hamas has ordered Palestinians to avoid humanitarian assistance distributed by a U.S.-backed aid organisation. The Islamists claim it is part of an Israeli intelligence-gathering plot: this follows the agency insisting that aid recipients use biometric ID to receive help, in an attempt to prevent Hamas or its allies from pilfering supplies.

Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), linked to the Israeli and U.S. governments, has been greenlit by Israel to enter the Strip. Close to Israeli military positions, four such hubs are in the process of being established, aiming to feed half of Gaza’s population by the end of the week.

Now, despite claims that Gaza’s population is heading for starvation amid an Israeli blockade, few Palestinians have arrived at GHF distribution centres. The Hamas-linked Home Front issued this warning:

Do not go to Rafah … Do not fall into the trap…Do not risk your lives. Your homes are your fortress. Staying in your neighbourhoods is survival, and awareness is your protection.

In practice, however, the terror group has unleashed a wave of violence, including executions, against Palestinians who protest against its brutal regime—suggesting intimidation is keeping Gazans away from the hubs.

Following widely repeated claims last week that “14,000 babies would die in the next 48 hours,” the current Hamas response to GHF sits uneasily with the blood libel that Israel is deliberately starving children. It’s as if the terror group does not want aid to get through.

Read it.

“Issa al H” acknowledged he committed a “grave crime” by attempting a mass casualty attack in which three people were killed, said his lawyers as they read out his statement to a Düsseldorf courtroom on Tuesday, May 27th.

The jihadist detainee is also accused of Islamic State membership—having pledged allegiance to IS in videos made just prior to the attack—and 10 counts of attempted murder and further charges of grievous bodily harm.

The stabbings came during Solingen’s three-day festival (‘of diversity’) to mark the city’s 650th anniversary. Anger followed the revelation that the perpetrator arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2022, but disappeared the following year, by the time German authorities were preparing to deport him to Bulgaria, where he first registered for asylum.

The violence in Solingen formed part of a migrant-led wave of violent crime across the European Union which, in turn, has helped to persuade voters to support tougher restrictions on mass migration.

Newsbusters.

In a twist that will shock absolutely no one, the paragons of elite Acela journalism at MSNBC are upset that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has decided to investigate such unsolved mysteries as the J6 pipe bomber, the Dobbs leak, and the source of the cocaine left in a White House locker. All of which, of course went uninvestigated during the Biden Administration.

New York Post.

The Secret Service has suspended two uniformed officers who were reportedly caught on camera fighting each other outside former President Barack Obama’s home last week.

During the brawl, one federal officer allegedly grabbed her radio and threatened to “whoop this girl’s ass.”

Video published Tuesday shows the female agents punching and shoving each other.

Remind me why we have female Secret Service agents.

Newsbusters.

America has no reason for hope – and there’s no way the nation can escape hopelessness – CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl says in a fearmongering PBS special purporting to examine the boundaries of presidential authority.

Stahl is a panelist in PBS’s misleadingly titled How Much Executive Power Is Too Much? Breaking the Deadlock: A Power Play – a transparently manipulative effort to vilify President Donald Trump by portraying the threat-to-democracy deeds of a hypothetical “President Powerton.”

Read it.

TV host and mikeroweWORKS Foundation CEO Mike Rowe says the current labor shortage and shifting work ethic are rooted in deeper cultural changes.

“We’re the clouds from which the snowflakes fell,” he said, suggesting older generations helped create today’s workforce mindset, according to Fox News.

Rowe believes there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the job market, with a tight labor market enabling more workplace accommodations because people aren’t “lining up” for essential jobs.

“We’ve got a huge labor shortage and the push to get to the AI thing over the finish line. That means data centers. We’ve got to train people to build these data centers,” he said.

Our society is focusing too much on ‘thought’ and ‘speech’ and not enough on ‘craft’ and ‘achievement’.

Not the Babylon Bee.

Democratic donors and consultants have been meeting in luxury hotels to analyze the party’s inability to connect with male voters and propose alternative communications strategies. The results, according to the New York Times, have often resembled “anthropological studies of people from faraway places.” One liberal group is planning a $20-million campaign called “Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan,” or SAM for short, that will “study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality” in masculine-coded heteronormative communities.

The Washington Free Beacon has exclusively and semi-legally obtained an early draft of the data-driven blueprint for communicative outreach. Enjoy!

Read it.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is outpacing the National Republican Congressional Committee in fundraising, according to recent campaign finance disclosures. They show that at the end of April, the DCCC had hauled in $1 million more than its Republican counterpart.

In total, the DCCC raised $8.1 million, compared with the NRCC’s $7 million.

This snapshot of the fundraising numbers come as the 2026 midterm elections are shaping up, as usual, to be a fierce battle. Historically, midterm elections favor the party out of power, and Republicans currently hold slender margins in both the House and the Senate. Republicans hold 220 seats in the House and need at least 218 to maintain a majority in the 435-seat chamber. In the Senate, the GOP holds 53 of 100 seats.

Despite historical winds at their back, Democrats have struggled with their messaging since the November 2024 elections, especially with new revelations about President Joe Biden’s mental decline during his time in office.

Democrats, Party of the Rich.

Read it.

The retreat of DEI may be one of the biggest political and cultural reversals in recent history. Corporate America is running from its DEI trainings and programs in droves. Wall Street has soured on it. Many states, and now the federal government, have declared war on it. And many ordinary Americans are tired of it.

Yet the rot of DEI goes deeper than most people know, and it still has a veneer of respectability in academia. Of course, university administrators are running for the hills when it comes to publicly talking about DEI in the face of mounting legal and political challenges. But they haven’t changed their minds on the issue. They are busily at work rebranding DEI offices and positions as quickly as they can.

DEI Exposed: How the Biggest Con of the Century Almost Toppled Higher Education does just what the title promises: it exposes DEI for the con game it is. Dr. Stanley Ridgley has written a scathing criticism of DEI in higher education. This book is not for the faint of heart and will persuade no DEI enthusiasts or sympathizers. Ridgley’s contempt for DEI offices, publications, platitudes, and practitioners is palpable.

Read it.

More bad news for Democrats.

UPDATE: Economist/YouGov Poll: GOP Widens Popularity Gap Over Dems

Read it.

These folks’ logical flaw is to assume that the biological processes in your body are just as predictable and controllable as transistors on a microchip. What they don’t understand, or choose to ignore, is that the human organism is far too complex and unpredictable for that level of control.

Trump considers redirecting $3 billion in Harvard grants to US trade schools (Reuters)

What to Know About the Deportees the U.S. Is Trying to Send to South Sudan (New York Times)  Come and get yer Narrative, right here.

Tech’s Trump Whisperer, Tim Cook, Goes Quiet as His Influence Fades (Tripp Mickle/New York Times)

Trump pardons Virginia sheriff convicted of federal bribery charges (Stacey Dec/ABC News)

Five Years On, NY Times Weeps: Noble BLM Has Given Way to Trump’s ‘White Grievance’

7 ways Republicans are split over Trump’s ‘big bill’ (Theodoric Meyer/Washington Post)

Within Pete Hegseth’s divided inner circle, a ‘cold war’ endures (Dan Lamothe/Washington Post)

Trump’s China Tariffs Are Having a ‘Massive Impact’ on Small Business (Peter Eavis/New York Times)

Republican Crackdown on Aid to Immigrants Would Hit U.S. Citizens (New York Times)  It is an article of faith among the Woke that the minute someone receives a government benefit they are therefore entitled to that (or more) forever and ever, along with all of their Friends And Relations.

Harvard’s Laurence Tribe Delivers Unflinching Message To Foreign Students In Trump Crosshairs (Lee Moran/HuffPost)  Tribe is famous for twisting the Constitution in service of Wokery, which has of course made him the darling of proglodytes everywhere.

As Trump targets elite schools, Harvard’s president says they should ‘stand firm’ (NPR)  Easy for him to say.

Trump Chooses Memorial Day to Lash Out at Political Foes Rather Than Honor Fallen Heroes (John Moretti/Agence France-Presse)  I saw him do a lot of the later and not much of the former.

Dem Reps Aren’t Done Pushing for Kilmar Abrego Garcia (Adrian Carrasquillo/The Bulwark)  Of course. They’re a one-trick pony. It’s all they’ve got.

MAGA Erupts Over ’60 Minutes’ Correspondent’s Viral Warnings About Trump (Ewan Palmer/The Daily Beast)  MAGA is the New Nigger.

Trump is ‘remarkably like’ 1930s far-right regimes, billionaire investor warns (David Smith/The Guardian)  Like Roosevelt?

All Hail Our Rococo President! (Emily Keegin/New York Times)  The real reason they hate Trump is that he’s just so tacky.

Trump is withdrawing whiteness from white immigrants (Noah Berlatsky/Public Notice)  Proglodytes just can’t get away from their fetish about skin color.

Another Indefensible Trump Pardon (William Kristol/The Bulwark)

The hidden elitism of RFK’s MAHA movement is making America more unhealthy (Amanda Marcotte/Salon)  Amanda Marcotte loses her shit.

This One SCOTUS Ruling Unleashed the Trump Chaos We’re Living In Now. Will John Roberts Do Anything About It? (Mark Joseph Stern/Slate)  Don’t hold your breath.

Trump Pardoned Tax Cheat After Mother Attended $1 Million Dinner (Kenneth P. Vogel/New York Times)

There’s a Very Simple Pattern to Elon Musk’s Broken Promises (Carlton Reid/Wired)

Live updates: NPR and stations file lawsuit against Trump, arguing ending federal funding is illegal (Associated Press)

JD Vance and the Honky Tonk Man (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)  The Kristol Krew specializes in name-calling.

Trump announces full pardon for Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery (Jared Gans/The Hill)

The ugly truth behind ICE agents’ masks (Will Bunch/The Philadelphia Inquirer)  Will Bunch loses his shit.

Surely Trump’s Wacko West Point Commencement Speech Proves He’s Mentally Unfit to Serve (Charles P. Pierce/Esquire)  And of coursd we all take political advice from a gay fashion mag.

MAHA in Disarray: Leading Anti-Vaxxer Parts Ways with RFK (Will Sommer/The Bulwark)  MAHA is the Next New Nigger.

Uncle Sam’s new message to young Black Americans: I don’t want you (Phillip E. Thompson/Washington Post)

Trump Court Pick Once Called For Bringing Back Literacy Tests In Elections (Jennifer Bendery/HuffPost)  Proglodytes, of course, are all for illiterate voters.

Bobby Jr. would like to give your baby COVID (Jason Sattler/THE FARCE)

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Today in Democrat Lawfare

NPR and Colorado public radio stations sue Trump White House (David Folkenflik/NPR)

NPR Sues Trump Over Order to Cut Funding (Benjamin Mullin/New York Times)

Judge pleads with Trump administration for ‘reason over rhetoric’ in deportation case (Politico)  Talk to the Democrats.

Federal Judge Denies Putting ICE Agents at Risk

Corporate America’s retreat from DEI has eliminated thousands of jobs (Maria Aspan/NPR)  Ah, now we have it. It’s all about make-work government and corporate jobs. Discrimination is okay as long as the Correct People profit.

NPR Sues Trump Administration Over Funding Cut  Becuase, as we all know, once someone gets money from they government, they are entitled to that (or more) forever.

BREAKING: Leftist Snobs at NPR Sue Trump, Claim THEY Embody First Amendment

NPR sues Trump over executive order slashing federal funding (Melissa Quinn/CBS News)

Hegseth’s Safe Space (Oliver Darcy/Status)

NPR Lawsuit Alleges Trump Funding Cuts Violate First Amendment

NPR sues Trump administration over executive order to cut federal funding to public media (David Bauder/Associated Press)

Judge Temporarily Blocks White House From Ending Congestion Pricing (New York Times)

Watch: Footage Shows Activist Judge Helping Illegal Immigrant Avoid ICE

Judge Strikes Down Trump Order Targeting WilmerHale (Zach Montague/New York Times)

Power Line.

“Los Angeles ranks No. 1 in move-outs for second year, PODS data shows,” reports KTLA-5 on the continuing exodus from the Golden State. The station adds,

The report, analyzing customer move data from January 2024 through March 2025, found that California, with seven cities, including Los Angeles, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area, ranked among the top 20 areas with the highest number of move-outs.

The latest PODS study, released last week, shows that nine of the top ten destinations are in the Southeast (North Carolina west to Texas) plus Boise, Idaho (#7, up from #11 last year).

As KTLA noted, Los Angeles repeated as the #1 departure city. Nine of the top ten losing cities are located in blue states, with the lone exception being Miami, Florida.