TRUE: Peggy Noonan: A generation of media figures are cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump.

Here I want to note the words spoken by Kathy Griffin, the holder of the severed head. In a tearful news conference she said of the president, “He broke me.” She was roundly mocked for this. Oh, the big bad president’s supporters were mean to you after you held up his bloody effigy. But she was exactly right. He did break her. He robbed her of her sense of restraint and limits, of her judgment. He broke her, but not in the way she thinks, and he is breaking more than her.

We have been seeing a generation of media figures cratering under the historical pressure of Donald Trump. He really is powerful.

They’re losing their heads. Now would be a good time to regain them.

They have been making the whole political scene lower, grubbier. They are showing the young what otherwise estimable adults do under pressure, which is lose their equilibrium, their knowledge of themselves as public figures, as therefore examples—tone setters. They’re paid a lot of money and have famous faces and get the best seat, and the big thing they’re supposed to do in return is not be a slob. Not make it worse.

By indulging their and their audience’s rage, they spread the rage. They celebrate themselves as brave for this. They stood up to the man, they spoke truth to power. But what courage, really, does that take? Their audiences love it. Their base loves it, their demo loves it, their bosses love it. Their numbers go up. They get a better contract. This isn’t brave.

Trump’s presidency has made clear that the allegedly sober and sensible establishment — the one that calls him excitable, rage-filled, narcissistic, and mean — is excitable, rage-filled, narcissistic, and mean.

CONGRESSMAN HANK JOHNSON: Americans Need to Act Less Like ‘Animals’ in Political Discourse.

Johnson, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, was asked if there’s a course of action he would like to see Congress take in the aftermath of the incident.

“I think it really boils down to what’s in the heart of legislators. Do they care about the people they represent or do they care more about corporations getting people elected here? Do they care more about the dark money that can be used either for or against them in their election? Do they care more about that than the poor, the people who are on the low end of the spectrum, those who have been down for generations, those whose forefathers were down?” he asked.

“Do they care more about bringing more money to those who already have, or should they think about sharing prosperity to the have-nots? I think it really boils down to that. The members have to really start looking into their hearts. Are we here to grease our own palms and those of our neighbors and friends, or are we here to work for peace and prosperity, not just for ourselves, but for everybody?” he added.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but it seems like he’s saying that the way to make the violence stop is to enact his agenda.

SOCOM’S LATEST COMBAT DUNE BUGGIES: They’re more than dune buggies.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE, EXPERTS? Extremism Experts Are Starting To Worry About The Left.

NEWS FROM TENNESSEE: Hero homeowner holds escaped Georgia inmates at gunpoint until arrests. “A Tennessee homeowner held two escaped inmates wanted in the killing of two prison guards at gunpoint Thursday until authorities arrived and made the arrests. Tennessee Highway Patrol spokesman Lt. Bill Miller said late Thursday that the homeowner caught Donnie Rowe and Ricky Dubose trying to steal his vehicle.”

JOBS: Trump Prods Labor Department to Promote Apprenticeship Programs to Erase Skills Gap.

President Donald Trump applied his considerable branding ability to a key economic issue on Thursday.

He said he really likes the phrase, “Earn while you learn.”

It describes the basis for apprenticeship programs, which are the focus of the White House’s workforce development week. He signed an executive order to encourage more of them. . . .

But apprenticeships are just one slice of a much larger workforce development pie. There are retraining programs for veterans, dislocated workers, and older Americans — to name just a few.

Even Trump’s fiercest critics on the left think that the man who created and starred in NBC’s “The Apprentice” could go a long way toward reshaping the workforce if he threw his marketing prowess behind programs that help develop it.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) likes to say that the former reality show star president could champion apprenticeship programs all over the country by playing on his celebrity past.

“I guarantee Democrats would vote for that,” he said last week at a summit in Washington.

Well, let’s find out.

FLY INVISIBLY AND CARRY A BIG STICK: How F-22 Is Deconflicting U.S.-Russia Operations Over Syria.

Of course, the F-22 is not the only asset deconflicting the crowded skies over Centcom. The Air Force’s airborne command-and-control aircraft and high-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms, as well as ground-based command-and-control forces, are also helping clear the area. But the stealth F-22’s ability to evade detection gives it a unique advantage in getting noncoalition players to cooperate, says Shell.

“It is easier to bring air dominance to bear if you know where the other aircraft are that you are trying to influence, and they don’t know where you are,” says Shell. “When other airplanes don’t know where you are, their sense of comfort goes down, so they have a tendency to comply more.”

People fear what they can’t see.

ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION, DONE WITH TAXPAYER DOLLARS AND NO ACCOUNTABILITY: Exposing the EPA’s Gold King Mine Cover-Up.

SOME THOUGHTS FOR ADAM SMITH’S BIRTHDAY:

From Fred Smith in Forbes Magazine.

Self-interest encourages deal-making and empathy makes it more likely that such deals will be fair—and, thus, more likely to be repeated. Smith recognized that free markets were the result of the creative synthesis of these two traits. Too few capitalist defenders today realize that understanding both traits is critical.

MORE:

Empathy deals with our awareness of how others will react to our actions and our choices. It permits us to get into the skin of another person and understand, to some extent, their motives and values. These dual traits distinguish mankind from other social animals. Animals, too, are self-interested and sometimes cooperate. But, as Smith notes, they don’t bargain—they lack the empathetic traits that would allow them to know what the other wants and reach a mutual win/win agreement. Smith notes: “Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this—no dog exchanges bones with another.”

To make a deal is human. Real the entire essay.

A FOR REAL UPDATE: Note that June 16 is Adam Smith’s Gregorian calendar birthday.

THE DEEP STATE STRIKES BACK: Don’t Blame Trump When ObamaCare Rates Jump.. “California’s insurance commissioner discovers an ‘uncertainty’ that eluded him last year.”

At best, not one of the California Insurance Commission’s nearly 1,400 employees thought to ask whether a federal court ruling stopping an estimated $7 billion to $10 billion in annual payments to insurers throughout the country would affect the state’s health-insurance market. At worst, Mr. Jones—a Democrat running for attorney general next year—deliberately ignored the issue to avoid exacerbating already-high premium increases that could have damaged Hillary Clinton’s fall campaign and consumers further down the road.

The California Insurance Commission is not alone in its “recent discovery” of uncertainty as a driver of premium increases. In April the left-liberal Center for American Progress published a paper claiming to quantify the “Trump uncertainty rate hike.” The center noted that the “mere possibility” of and end to cost-sharing payments would require insurers to raise premiums by hundreds of dollars a year.

Following insurers’ June 21 deadline, expect a raging blame game over next year’s premium increases.

The full repeal promised by virtually every Republican in every election since 2010 would sidestep this problem.

MARK LEVIN: The Left Has Made Political Violence Mainstream.

REFORM AGENDA FOR THE U.N. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL: Ambassador Nikki Haley says The U.N.’s Human Rights Council has got to change — and she’s right. It’s biased against Israel. Human rights abusers are given seats on the Council. And it fails to treat serious human rights violations “equally and objectively.”

If the Council sounds a lot like a contemporary American university, well, it is.

IT’S A FAIR QUESTION. I THINK ATTORNEY GENERAL SESSIONS SHOULD APPOINT A SPECIAL COUNSEL TO LOOK INTO HILLARY’S BEHAVIOR. IS RUDY GIULIANI FREE? Trump: Why is Hillary Clinton not investigated but I am?

CIVIL DISCOURSE: Shots Fired at Truck Flying ‘Make America Great Again’ Flag in Indiana.

DELAY: Vote on healthcare bill by July 4 looking more in doubt.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy didn’t seem too concerned if the Senate fails to vote on healthcare reform by Congress’ July 4 recess.

“It’s not like your wife’s birthday. You miss your wife’s birthday, there is hell to pay,” the Louisiana lawmaker said Thursday. “On the other hand, if you don’t cut the grass on Friday but do it on Saturday it is not a big deal. I am not saying it isn’t a big deal, but you know what I am saying.”

And:

Complicating a July 4 vote that no text has been publicly released, which has rankled some Republicans who want any bill to receive a fair amount of scrutiny.

“We need time to fully understand it,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. “I don’t want to see us vote before the July 4 break. I think that would be too soon.”

Johnson said he hoped that there would be a short-term bill to stabilize markets, separate from a long-term overhaul. But no such bill has emerged.

He understood the reluctance by leadership to put together a short-term bill now.

“By not doing anything we have put pressure on ourselves to get this completed,” he said.

Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., summed up the mindset surrounding the July 4 goal.

“It is a hope, an aspiration, [and] it’s a plan,” the third-ranking GOP senator said Thursday.

It sounds like a mess.

CHANGE: Trump Admin Orders Federal Agencies to Eliminate Dozens of Paperwork Requirements.

The Trump administration announced on Thursday it would be eliminating an obscure rule requiring federal agencies to provide updates on how they will prepare for a bug that infected computers in 2000.

In addition to eliminating the Y2K bug rule, agencies will also be eradicating dozens of other paperwork requirements. For example, the Pentagon will not have to file a report each time a small business vendor is paid, which consumes approximately 1,200 man hours, according to Bloomberg.

“We’re looking for stuff everyone agrees is a complete waste of time,” Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters at the White House.

President Donald Trump has kept his campaign promise of pushing deregulation, signing “more laws rolling back his predecessor’s regulations than the combined total of the three previous presidents since the process was established by the 1999 Congressional Review Act,” Bloomberg reports.

More like this, please.

WAPO HAS MORE ANONYMOUS SOURCES, THE DOJ WARNS AGAINST ANONYMOUS SOURCES, AND THERE’S NOTHING ANONYMOUS ABOUT LEFT-ON-RIGHT CRIME: All that and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.

CAMILLE PAGLIA: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror.

Had Hillary won, everyone would have expected disappointed Trump voters to show a modicum of respect for the electoral results as well as for the historic ceremony of the inauguration, during which former combatants momentarily unite to pay homage to the peaceful transition of power in our democracy. But that was not the reaction of a vast cadre of Democrats shocked by Trump’s win. In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite. Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago—Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?

And positioning themselves as batshit crazy and power-hungry.

IN WHICH I EXPLAIN WHY ACADEMICS THINK QUALITY LITERATURE MUST CONTAIN SOCIAL JUSTICE: Wondering why professors and critics think that some books are great, while you find them sermons in progressivism?  Wonder no more.  In the Kingdom of the Blind Marxist. (He who can make up a victimhood story is king.)

TRAVELERS’ TALL TALES: Marco Polo & Cryptozoology.

AND BEAT ON THE SHORES OF ETERNITY? Black holes crash together and make waves.

HONESTY DIES IN DERPNESS: More Darkness at the Washington Post.

FOR THOSE WHO WONDERED, KATE PAULK HAS HER PILLS: But This Entire Saga Could Have Been Avoided If The Government Stopped Trying To Protect Us from Ourselves.

FACE THEM: Consequences, Part Whatever.