UNARMED IN A BATTLE OF WITS: CNN’s Chris Cillizza Tries Giving Rand Paul a U.S. History Lesson, Probably Now Regrets It.

Someone should ask Cilizza and Chait how they feel about putting abortion, and immigration, up to a direct popular vote.

INNATE IMMUNITY: Young infants produce strong immune response to SARS-CoV-2, study finds.

PRIORITIES: NASA pursues greener, more efficient spacecraft propulsion.

A LOT OF UNANIMITY, LATELY: Low-Level Crack Offenders Are Not Covered Under First Step Act, Unanimous Supreme Court Says. And another defeat for the Biden Administration at the hands of a unanimous, and in this case rather tart, Court.

More here, pointing out the Senate’s near-unanimous support for the bill: “Also, one of those 97 senators was Joseph Robinette Biden. Indeed, Biden helped draft that crack legislation. Another friendly pat-down. Revenge is a dish best served cold after three decades.”

Plus: “Justice Sotomayor offers an implied rebuke of then-Senator Biden. It turns out that the 100:1 ratio was apparently made up without any rationale. What a bunch of malarkey!”

Reminder: The Supreme Court will decide 16 more cases in the next two weeks.

STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS V. HARVARD:  Supreme Court stalls.  By asking the Department of Justice for its views, it succeeds in putting off a decision on whether to take the case.

ANN ALTHOUSE RESPONDS TO CHARLES BLOW:

If “most people” lack “any real concept of what critical race theory is,” then why don’t Democrats and others communicate the information? Instead, as Blow describes in his column, Republicans use the term to generate anxiety about what those terrible left-wingers want to do to us.

I challenge proponents of Critical Race Theory to speak to ordinary people in terms they can understand and explain the theory, why it’s a theory, and what is meant by “critical.” Don’t just tell us conclusions and demand that we accept them and don’t just introduce another confusing term. That is, don’t just say that there is “systemic racism.” Explain the theory and what is critical about the theory.

Why can’t that be done clearly and straightforwardly? People are right to feel anxious and suspicious about something so big and powerful that can’t be talked about. To say “In fact, I don’t even believe that most people have any real concept of what critical race theory is” is to blame the people for failing to understand what isn’t being discussed clearly. That’s perverse and elitist.

Well, most “woke” stuff is perverse and elitist. And Critical Race Theory can’t be discussed clearly and straightforwardly because if it were, the vast majority of people would reject it. Hence the smoke and mirrors and charges of bigotry aimed at critics in place of reasoned argument.

Related, the Critical Race Theory Motte and Bailey:

Also: Victor Davis Hanson: Anatomy of the Woke Madness: How did such collective madness infect a once pragmatic and commonsensical America?

NET-ZERO: The West’s Suicide Note.

America has been the exception to the G7’s enthusiasm, having repeatedly refused to ratify any of the climate change treaties even when, as now, the U.S. administration was in the hands of climate “emergency” zealots who signed them. Partly as a result, the United States under the Trump administration was able both to reduce its carbon emissions and to re-emerge as an energy super-power by liberating “clean, green” natural gas from the land by fracking.

Oddly, even masochistically, President Biden was elected to reverse this policy and to embrace the Paris conference aim of achieving Net-Zero emissions by 2050. Seeing this as an opportunity to entrench Net-Zero as a legally-binding international obligation on all governments, the G7 and the IEA each issued a report at around the same time, respectively making the political and the technical case for the inevitability of Net-Zero.

It’s as if the people driving this don’t have our best interests at heart.

FASTER, PLEASE: Vermont becomes first state to reach 80% vaccine threshold.

YOU’VE GOT TO BREAK A FEW EGGS TO MAKE A HALAL OMELET*:  Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Tunnels.

* As Orwell said of the Soviet Union, “Where’s the omelet?”

DISPATCHES FROM THE NEWSPEAK DICTIONARY: Fed Reserve Tells Employees Not To Use Offensive Terms Like: Founding Fathers.

THE FAILURE OF BILL DE BLASIO: Crime Becomes an Issue in New York City Electoral Politics Once Again.

BREAKING: The Babylon Bee Scores a Major Victory Over The New York Times.

JIM TREACHER: Reader, Can You Spare a Dime?

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Biden repeatedly mixes up Syria and Libya.

STACEY LENNOX: ‘But Trump’ Is Not a Valid Excuse for Journalists Not Doing Their Jobs.

NOT A GOOD LOOK FROM HILTON: China Demolishes Mosque In Xinjiang, Gives Contract To Hilton To Build Luxury Hotel On The Land.

Hey, remember when Mad Men portrayed Conrad Hilton as a flinty all-American self-starter and entrepreneur? Good times, good times.

Flashback: We’re Not Exporting Our Values to China — We’re Importing Theirs.

DRIVING DYSTOPIA: German Automakers Keep Reimagining Vehicle ‘Ownership.’

COCAINE MITCH: McConnell Crushes Biden’s Hopes of a Supreme Court Pick in 2024. “Well, I think in the middle of a presidential election, if you have a Senate of the opposite party of the president, you have to go back to the 1880s to find the last time a vacancy was filled. So I think it’s highly unlikely.”

RADICAL CHIC: HOMETOWN BUFFET DIVISION. “‘Actively not wanting to be fat is fatphobia, and therefore you’re fatphobic’… And where we’re told, quite emphatically, that a reluctance to become fat is, ‘intrinsically entangled with white supremacy, anti-Blackness, settler colonialism, and capitalism.’”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China Blueprints Red Planet Sample Return, Future Space Exploration Missions.

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE. Pelosi: We didn’t rebuke Omar — we thanked her!

Related: House GOP Will Press Motion To Remove Ilhan Omar From Committee As Dems Try To Head Off Civil War Over ‘Crimes Against Humanity’ Comments.

BREAKING: New York Times Surrenders to Babylon Bee.

FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: How One Tennessean Fought Back Against “New Racism” and Won!

DISPATCHES FROM THE ONCE GOLDEN STATE:

● Biden Administration Doubling Down On Costly Bullet Train To Nowhere.

● Opinion: Progress in California Road Repairs Lagging Despite Gas Tax Hike.

● California City Bans New Gas Stations in Latest Climate Change Effort.

That “Progressive” road diet doesn’t starve itself, you know.

And finally, from America’s Newspaper of Record: Texas Governor Signs Executive Order Donating City Of Austin To California.

It’s Gov. Abbott’s boldest move yet, though some Californians may not be able to cope with it: ‘Douche’ father-of-seven sales exec who moved his family from California to Texas, then back again, is blasted for complaining about Austin’s ‘rude locals, bland culture, oppressive heat and Yelp’s bad food choices’ in scathing Op-Ed.

BATTLESWARM BLOG: The Fall Of Netanyahu. “Can such an unwieldy coalition survive long enough for Lapid to take his agreed-upon turn as Prime Minister in 2023? Maybe, but I’d bet against it. The coalition has the bare minimum 61 members to forge a governing majority, and a unified desire to oust Netanyahu only gets you so far. Pounding the snot out of Hamas has probably bought the new coalition several months of relative peace in which to operate, but that just means the internal stresses will be all the greater. And if it falls, it’s entirely possible that the indomitable Netanyahu (whose Likud still has more seats in the Knesset than any other party) could still end up as Prime Minister yet again.”