I TAKE THIS AS A SIGN THAT HE HAS NO FURTHER POLITICAL AMBITIONS: Christie’s family gets beach all to themselves after NJ shutdown.

CHANGE: A Smaller Government, At Least At 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On Friday, the Trump administration released its annual report on White House office personnel, disclosing the name, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. OpenTheBooks.com, a private organization that tracks government spending, calculates that the Trump White House is costing taxpayers $5 million less, and employing 110 fewer staffers than the the Obama White House in 2015.

Perhaps the biggest reduction comes in the size of the first lady’s staff: “There are five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 24 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).” God bless Melania.

Indeed.

BETTERIDGE’S LAW OF HEADLINES STRIKES AGAIN! Is Libertarianism a “Stealth Plan” To Destroy America?

IT RHYMES WITH MODEL T: Tesla’s mass-market Model 3 begins production Friday.

The first car will roll off the assembly line two weeks ahead of schedule. Tesla has scheduled a “handover party” for the first 30 customers for July 28.

The company plans to produce 20,000 cars in December, company founder Elon Musk said Monday in a series of Twitter comments.

The Model 3, an electric-powered car selling for about $35,000, is a crucial test for the company and its plans to make affordable electric vehicles available to a wide range of customers. Musk said he hopes Tesla will manufacturer 500,000 cars per year by 2018. The company has made about 85,000 vehicles thus far, selling them at prices of $90,000 and beyond.

Musk has promised to ramp up annual Model 3 production to half a million units in 2018, which would be a modern manufacturing miracle if he can pull it off.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: A new dawn in Supersonic Transport and technological innovation. “Things were getting better at a breakneck pace for 25 years after World War II. Then it all just … slowed way down.”

DONALD TRUMP: Opioid pusher.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Trump Should Be Impeached After Tweeting CNN Takedown Video.

Flashback to the middle of 2008, when Olbermann was busy looking for “Somebody who can take [Hillary] into a room and only he comes out,” and the fall of that year, when he was worried that Sarah Palin “might stick around to be the slowest-moving target imaginable for comedians and commentators. It would be like shooting moose from a chopper.”

Also, a reminder of MSNBC’s Martin Bashir’s on-air monologue from 2013 when he wished that Palin would be defecated and urinated on.

As Glenn noted yesterday, new status anxiety fuels Trump derangement, just as it did Palin derangement syndrome.

FOR DECADES WE HEARD THAT ENERGY INDEPENDENCE WAS OUR GOAL, AND NOW THAT WE’RE ACHIEVING IT NOBODY SEEMS TO NOTICE: North America Is Making OPEC Irrelevant.

A coalition of OPEC members and other petrostates agreed to reduce its collective production by 1.8 million barrels per day through next March, but surging North American crude production is threatening to effectively cancel out those cuts. As the FT reports, oil output in Canada’s oil sands is set to jump as projects funded well before the decline in crude prices come online over the next year and half. . . .

Canada isn’t even the sharpest North American thorn in OPEC’s side, though. The United States has seen its own oil output jump 550,000 barrels per day since last November, when these petrostate cuts were first announced. American production has dipped slightly in recent weeks as producers have scaled production back slightly due to flagging oil prices, but the outlook for shale over the rest of the year is still quite strong.

Combined, Canadian and U.S. oil production is set to grow more than a million barrels per day next year, as compared to where these North American countries were when the petrostate cuts first went into place. That nullifies more than half of that petrostate production draw down.

And it’s important to note that, going forward, OPEC will be the victim of any success it manages with these cuts. If prices do start to rise—a very big if, given current market conditions—then shale producers will quickly be able to take advantage of the rebound by ramping up their own production.

Have you hugged a fracker today?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Scientists find mathematical formula for a flawless bottom.

The science is far from settled however, and further study is required.

CNN: ‘DANGEROUS’ ‘FASCIST’ TRUMP THREATENING OUR LIVES WITH HIS TWEET.

Yes, it’s high time that CNN start to treat Trump with the same tone they would deploy against any fascist dictator. Oh wait…

BLUE STATE BLUES CHAOS: Illinois House OKs income tax hike, spending plan; Rauner vows vetoes.

With the state on the cusp of a catastrophic credit downgrade, the Illinois House on Sunday voted to end the historic budget drought by passing a long-awaited spending plan and seeking to pay for it by hiking the income tax rate to 4.95 percent.

But nothing is ever easy when it comes to patching up a political feud between two of the state’s most powerful men: Democratic Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Rauner’s administration on Sunday night said he’d veto both measures as soon as they hit his desk, should the Illinois Senate concur with the House on Monday. The administration also advised that members of the General Assembly “shouldn’t go anywhere.”

You can’t tax your way to prosperity, and you can’t go on indefinitely spending money you don’t have — two simple facts which escape most legislators.

#1 ON AMAZON: Mark Levin’s Rediscovering Americanism: And the Tyranny of Progressivism.

HAS ANYONE PETITIONED THE EPA TO REGULATE BIRTH CONTROL PILLS? Fish becoming transgender from contraceptive pill chemicals being flushed down household drains.

AT AMAZON, fresh New Releases, updated hourly.

Plus, today’s new Kindle Daily Deals.

And shop the Digital Deals of the Day.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: A new dawn in Supersonic Transport and technological innovation. “Things were getting better at a breakneck pace for 25 years after World War II. Then it all just … slowed way down.”

WEIRD: “On a morning when you would have expected the Morning Joe panel to be all about Trump’s CNN wrestling tweet, a Washington Post editor/columnist painted an amazingly positive portrait of the president’s actions in Syria.”

Plus: “Ignatius also said that the name Trump was cheered whenever it was mentioned during meetings Ignatius had with Syrian forces trying to take out Assad. One Syrian commander praised Trump for having what Ignatius described as a vulgar term that in Spanish is ‘cojones.'”

A 1960s VTOL: An XC-142A hovers. The photo dates from 1964. Here’s a pic of some descendants (bumped from yesterday, the Ospreys over Sydney).

“IN OTHER NEWS, EVERGREEN STATE HAD A CONSERVATIVE STUDENT:” Conservative Student Quits Evergreen State, Pens Note to Professor Weinstein.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Why Did a UCLA Instructor With a Popular Free-Speech Course Lose His Job?

THIS SEEMS RIPE FOR FRAUD: Nearly 20% of Rhode Island Registered Voters Live Out of State.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA:

An American warship on Sunday sailed close to a disputed island in the South China Sea occupied by Beijing, as part of an operation to demonstrate freedom of navigation in the waters, a US official said.

The USS Stethem, a guided-missile destroyer, sailed within 12 nautical miles of Triton Island, part of the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, the official said. The operation was first reported by Fox News on Sunday.

It was the second “freedom-of-navigation operation,” or “fonop,” conducted during the presidency of Donald Trump, following a drill in late May in which a U.S. warship sailed within 12 nautical miles of an artificial island built up by China in the South China Sea.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement the U.S. ship had made an unauthorised entry into China’s territorial waters.

FONOP. Freedom Of Navigation Operation. What the USN did was perfectly legal. China’s manufactured islets are illegal. But Beijing called the the FONOP a “serious political and military provocation…”

After the FONOP Chinese President Xi and President Trump spoke on the phone.

“Xi Jinping stressed that since his meeting with President Trump, important results have been achieved in China-U.S. relations,” Chinese state media outlet CCTV reported. “Meanwhile, bilateral relations have also been affected by some negative factors, for which the China side has expressed its position to the U.S. side.”

According to the Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration, China’s militarized islets are a very negative factor.

Three more are nearing completion.

Here’s an example of an appropriate diplomatic response.

HISTORY DOESN’T REPEAT ITSELF, BUT IT OFTEN RHYMES LIKE A BAD JOHN COUGAR SONG:

● Shot: OPINION: Scarborough should run against Trump in 2020.

—Brent Budowsky, The Hill, Thursday.

● Chaser: John [Cougar] Mellencamp for senator from Indiana.

—Brent Budowsky, The Hill, February 17, 2010.

 And a bonus bit of Obama-era history rhyming today:

● Shot: WashPost Assembles ‘Kids Chorus’ to Mock/Sing Trump Tweets.

—NewsBusters, yesterday.

●  Chaser: CNN Uses Singing Children to Campaign for ObamaCare.

—NewsBusters, October 7, 2009.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can we move Earth’s orbit?