AUSTIN BAY: America’s Next Wars.

THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE GARBAGE PEOPLE ON A POWER TRIP:

BY JOVE, I THINK HE GETS IT:

The people who are responding that he should just concentrate on doing tech stuff don’t get it. Nowadays you need a bodyguard of lawyers just to go about your business.

DAN MARKEL UPDATE: Wendi Adelson And Luis Rivera Take The Stand In The Retrial Of Katherine Magbanua In Dan Markel’s Murder.

I’ve been remiss in covering the trial this week, but Paul Caron has everything rounded up.

OPEN THREAD: When explanations make no sense, when every answer’s wrong. You’ve got to find a way to say what you want to say, break out.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY, SUPPLY CHAIN EDITION: Merchant mariners stranded on ships in Shanghai during COVID lockdown.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: On National Security | Drawing lessons from the first ‘commercial space war.’

ANALYSIS: TRUE. “It was a fraudulent firing from the beginning…. Just because George Floyd died, which was a national tragedy, doesn’t mean the social mob gets to go around demanding people get fired just because they are offended by controversial comments.”

Plus, from the comments: “America is in deep trouble if state universities think they did the right thing in censoring this man’s reasonable, learned speech.”

We either need better people running state universities, or to get rid of state universities.

THE CURSE OF CUOMO LINGERS: Hochul’s racial huckstering after Buffalo ignores NY’s violent-crime surge.

DEEP SEVENS: One of The Hot, Dense Blobs Deep Inside Earth Has Been Revealed With New Imaging.

THE WOKE TSUNAMI IS RECEDING: Hurrah for new HBO boss uncanceling J.K. Rowling.

WE FOLLOW THE SCIENCE, EXCEPT WHEN IT MIGHT HURT UPSCALE WOMEN’S FEELINGS: Talk about deadly obesity risks in America? Fat chance.

OLD AND BUSTED: The Hawaiian Judges.

The New Hotness? Louisiana Judges! “A Louisiana federal judge blocked the Biden administration on Friday from winding down Title 42—a pandemic-related border restriction that allows for the immediate expulsion of asylum-seekers and other migrants.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY: Embarrassing! He Brought a Knife to a Gunfight. “Everyone knows the Chicago Way: They pull a knife, you pull a gun. Then there’s the Florida Way: You pull a knife and he pulls a gun while his wife helpfully videos the whole thing for the police to use as evidence against you.”

WOKE POLITICS, EXPLAINED:

THUG LIFE WRIT LARGE: Mountains of grain left to rot as Vladimir Putin ‘blackmails the world.’

IT’S COME TO THIS: Pelosi’s archbishop orders her to stop receiving communion over abortion; Napa bishop concurs.

YOUNG-ADULT WEBSITE* VOX.COM: The Depp-Heard trial has played right into the hands of far-right extremists.

Conservative media outlets have also promoted a one-sided narrative of the case; Vice recently reported that Ben Shapiro’s popular conservative news platform the Daily Wire has spent nearly $50,000 promoting ads about the trial on Instagram and Facebook — most of it trashing Amber Heard. The presence of these bad actors has, if anything, only exacerbated the vitriol Heard has received within the mainstream.

* * * * * * * *

To be clear, this isn’t an easy story of good and evil. It’s impossible to completely absolve Amber Heard, who has her own alleged history of violence, or frame Depp as a monster incapable of kindness, charity, and the positive energy that amassed him millions of fans to begin with. Yet you don’t need to do either of those things to acknowledge that this is a case about the deeply unfunny topic of intimate partner abuse and that the major points of this trial have already been decided in one court of law. The judge at the first trial in 2020 found Heard had proven 12 of 14 allegations of abuse. So far none of the trial testimony has substantially contradicted anything in Heard’s original claim of being a domestic violence survivor.

Culture critic Ella Dawson has a Twitter thread compiling reporting on the myriad ways in which this trial is not only destroying years of progress made against domestic abuse in the US, but also laying the groundwork for a culture in which bots and bad actors harass, vilify, and eviscerate all other prominent women who publicly name their abusers — like Gamergate, but times tens of millions of participants, and gleefully endorsed by people all across American culture.

That, above all — above the TikTok cat memers mocking Heard and Saturday Night Live dismissing the whole trial as “for fun” — is what’s absolutely jawdropping here. This trial, which amounts to a simple yes/no question over whether Heard had the right to call herself a victim of domestic abuse in a single sentence from that 2018 opinion piece, has somehow united far-right misogynists with middle-of-the-road liberals and geeky progressive fandom acolytes of Depp.

Evergreen:

* Classical reference.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Biden Judicial Pick Lied About Cop Killings. Now She Claims She Didn’t.

HISTORY: The Great Shooting Stance Feud.

WOEING: The New Air Force Ones Are Late, So the Old Planes Need More Cash, Official Says. “Air Force acquisition chief cites 2- to 3-year delay, which Boeing blames on subcontractor and supply problems.”

STAY FASHIONABLE: Leather Ratchet Belt 2 Pack. #CommissionEarned

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: James Baker buries Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann in probe.

A former FBI official delivered devastating testimony Thursday against former Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann — saying he’s “100% confident” the defendant denied acting “on behalf of any particular client” when he handed over since-debunked information linking Donald Trump and Russia.

“I think it was pretty close to the beginning of the meeting. Part of his introduction to the meeting,” former FBI general counsel James Baker told jurors in Washington, DC, federal court.

Baker’s account directly supports the sole charge against Sussmann as a result of special counsel John Durham’s probe into alleged law-breaking in connection with the FBI and Robert Mueller’s probes of purported Trump-Russia ties.

Sussmann, 57, is on trial on a single count of lying to the government during a Sept. 19, 2016, sit-down with Baker at FBI headquarters.

Ouch.

PREDICTABLY ENOUGH, THEY’RE TRYING TO GIN UP A BOGUS SEX SCANDAL ON ELON MUSK. HE’S TREATING IT WITH THE SERIOUSNESS IT DESERVES:

When you’re targeted by a clown show, the only proper response is to point and laugh.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Energy Officials Issue ‘Sobering’ Warning About Widespread Summer Blackouts Triggered by Closure of Fossil Fuel Plants.