MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Team Biden’s refusal to admit we’re in a recession is just another reason Americans don’t trust our institutions.

The news is bad on the lack of trust. A recent University of Chicago Institute of Politics poll found that a majority of Americans think that the government is “corrupt and rigged against people like me.” . . .

Why do people feel that way? Well, that’s a real poser, but I’m going to offer a suggestion: They feel that way because they’ve noticed that the government is corrupt and rigged against people like them.

Just spitballing here.

GOVERNOR ABBOTT BLASTS MAYOR BOWSER FOR WHINING ABOUT ILLEGAL ALIEN ‘CRISIS’ COMING TO D.C. FROM TEXAS:

“With pledges from Texas and Arizona to continue these abhorrent* operations indefinitely, the situation is dire, and we consider this a humanitarian crisis — one that could overwhelm our social support network without immediate and sustained federal intervention,” Bowser wrote in requesting help from the National Guard.

“We’ve had a number of discussions,” she said. “We’ve facilitated FEMA’s involvement with a million dollar grant that has now been increased to work with a lead nonprofit agency. We’ve facilitated using those grant funds to set up respite center in a neighboring jurisdiction and I’ve also asked the Secretary of the Army to deploy the D.C. National Guard to help lead that effort.”

Abbott responded on Twitter, writing: “D.C. is experiencing a fraction of the disastrous impact the border crisis has caused Texas.”

“Mayor Bowser should stop attacking Texas for securing the border & demand Joe Biden do his job,” Abbott added.

* “Abhorrent?” Past performance is no guarantee of future results:

FOX NEWS CAPS OFF JOE BIDEN’S RECESSION DENIALISM WITH THE PERFECT CHYRON:

BETTER PUT UP MY UMBRELLA: Scientists Calculated The Probability of Falling Space Junk Killing Somebody.

Related: X Prize Foundation studying active debris removal competition.

Meanwhile, here’s a piece that Rob Merges and I wrote about orbital debris removal a while back.

TO BE FAIR, THAT’S REALLY BECAUSE “CARBON OFFSETS” ARE A SCAM: Carbon offsets alone won’t make flying climate-friendly.

OLD AND BUSTED: Ernie Pyle reporting from the front lines of the war.

The New Hotness? Annie Leibovitz shooting glamorous cover stories of the war! In Case You Weren’t Convinced Volodymyr Zelensky Is Serious, Vogue Is Here To Tell You. “I don’t blame the Zelenskys for wanting to draw attention to their struggle. I do blame them for trying to guilt the West into escalating it. And after seeing the Vogue cover story, I blame them for thinking their veneration in the minds of Americans is so sacrosanct that sitting under hair and makeup artists for an almost comically dramatic photoshoot would not make anyone question their sincerity.”

I wonder if Zelensky knew of Leibovitz’s cursed streak? Flashback: The New Bad-Luck Curse in Politics: Jim Geraghty rounds up the names of four (insert “infamous” or “superstar” here, depending upon your worldview) leftists, including Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, who have undergone a dramatic reversal of fortune in recent days, who have all been lovingly photographed for Vogue or Vanity Fair by Annie Leibovitz, and confirms Iowahawk’s observation: “Whom the gods would destroy they first make pose for Annie Leibovitz.”

SHOCKER: Hunter Biden scandal may lead right back to Joe.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Researchers 3D print sensors for satellites.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Understanding Transfer Bars. I blame a lawyer for this particular bit of oddness.

LIVE AT 4PM EASTERN: ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere’ with Kruiser, VodkaPundit, Special Guest Larry O’Connor.

CALIFORNIA GASLIGHTING: Not a National Model — A National Warning. As Gavin Newsom runs absurd ads inviting Floridians and Texans to come to California for its “freedom,” his bravado is undermined by an inconvenient fact: For the first time in state history, California has begun to shrink. People have been fleeing Newsom’s business lockdowns, school closures, high taxes, and other policies.

California’s outmigrants are bringing lots of income with them. The state shed an average of $270 million of annual income to Florida from 2010 to 2018. The annual loss jumped to $1.2 billion from 2018 to 2019, and then to $2 billion in 2019–2020. California’s losses, and Florida’s gains, have almost certainly accelerated in the intervening years. And Florida is not the only state picking up California exiles. The Golden State’s losses are at or near record levels with other states, too—in particular, states like Texas that Newsom targets with criticism.

Newsom wants Americans to believe that he has it figured out in California, and that the new American model for freedom is a progressive one. Yet his state’s aggressive population pivot has coincided almost precisely with his tenure as governor, making Newsom the first California leader to preside over a shrinking state rather than a growing one.

No amount of political rhetoric can mask California’s reality under Governor Newsom. Low-income students are being left behind, the rule of law is eroding, and residents are leaving in record numbers. The many former Californians watching Newsom’s ads in Texas and in Florida can only marvel at the hubris of the man.

Read the whole thing.

READER FAVORITE: LED Floor Lamp for Bedroom Living Room with Remote & Touch Control. #CommissionEarned

JANUARY 6 WAS A JOKE, THIS ISN’T. Failed Kavanaugh Assassin Wanted to Kill 3 Justices, Alter the Political Makeup of the Court ‘for Decades.’

I have a plan for preventing this sort of thing in the future.

Related: Bernie Bro James T. Hodgkinson, Attempted Assassin Of Steve Scalise, Already Being Erased From History. And additional examples of leftist violence and eliminationist rhetoric at the link.

THE THEORY OF THE RULING CLASS: All the Trips to Davos Have Gone to Larry Fink’s Head. The Black Rock CEO and Mike Bloomberg are part of “an agglomeration of billionaires who have decided that they’d quite like the world to be run according to their personal policy preferences – thank you very much – and that they don’t intend to subject themselves to indignities like getting elected in order to achieve that end.”

As Larry and Mike (and Brian Moynihan of Bank of America and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs and the rest of the Davos crowd) “force” American corporations to sign on to political-schedule decarbonization because they’re so personally passionate about it, they’ve also engineered an exemption from the European Union’s new “green” fuel tax for – do you even have to guess? – private jets.

Larry & Co., you see, mean not only to rule like dictators, but to live like dictators.

Come on, you can’t expect Larry and Mike to pay a penalty for flying to Davos for their conferences to save the world with other people’s money. Fuel taxes are for the little people.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? U.S. Offers to Exchange Russian Arms Dealer for WNBA Star and Former Marine. “If the swap is successful, wouldn’t this set a very bad precedent? Yes, it would, but the political benefits to Biden outweigh any danger to Americans traveling abroad. Biden’s agreement to exchange a terrorist for a basketball star and security consultant puts a bullseye on the back of Americans overseas — not just in Russia but everywhere that a thug thinks he can grab an American and exchange him or her for someone in our jails. Future hostages have Joe Biden to thank for their ordeal.”

SPACE JUNK, BETTER PUT UP MY UMBRELLA: Chinese rocket stage to hit Earth in uncontrolled descent. “A hunk of Chinese space rocket junk weighing roughly 25 tons will fall back to Earth on Sunday, according to researchers at the Aerospace Corp.’s Center for Orbital Re-entry and Debris Studies. . . . According to CORDS researchers, the falling Chinese space debris is 53.6 meters high and, due to the uncontrolled nature of its descent, there is ‘a non-zero probability of the surviving debris landing in a populated area.'”

HOW CANCEL CULTURE BOOSTS THE POWERFUL — AT EVERYONE ELSE’S EXPENSE. I don’t think most members of cancel culture mobs realize they’re dancing to the tune of those who lead powerful institutions, but you can be 100% sure those leaders know it.

CAROL ROTH: The GDP numbers are out: The Great Reset-sion. “Where does the economy go from here? At the end of the day, the label doesn’t really matter. Whether we have stagflation (a stagnating economy with high inflation) or a recession, we know that the economy is generally headed in the wrong direction. What truly matters is that Americans are hurting financially, that this outcome was caused by government and Federal Reserve policy, and that it was completely avoidable. That’s the bottom line.”

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: In Portland, the Sexual Revolution Starts in Kindergarten. The city’s public schools teach K-5 students to subvert the sexuality of “white colonizers” and begin exploring “the infinite gender spectrum.”

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Vitamin D supplements fail to lower risk of fractures in healthy adults, study says.

HMM: Biden administration offers convicted Russian arms dealer in exchange for Griner, Whelan. “The families of Whelan, who has been held by Russia for alleged espionage since 2018, and WNBA star Griner, jailed in Moscow for drug possession since February, have urged the White House to secure their release, including via a prisoner exchange if necessary.”

NEW EVIDENCE OF J6 COVERUP: Patricia Tolson of The Epoch Times has obtained a Capitol Hill Police Use of Force Report on January 6 that includes orders not to use heavier, less-than-lethal weapons like flash bangs for crowd control. There is also a significant amount of repetitive use of language by multiple officers in their reports, which raises some serious questions about the veracity of those reports.

GREAT MOMENTS IN DEFUNDING THE POLICE: Stacey Abrams Can’t Find a Georgia Cop Who Supports Her.

INFILTRATION AND CORRUPTION IS THE STANDARD CHINESE APPROACH: China tried to obtain internal info and build a network of informants inside the Federal Reserve, says a new GOP Senate report.

‘SCHLONG COVID:’ Tucker Asks Viewers For Best Alternative Names For Monkeypox.