I DON’T TRUST THEM: Voter company stays silent on whether it deletes private student FERPA data obtained for study.

‘HUNDREDS OF RACIST PLANT NAMES WILL CHANGE AFTER HISTORIC VOTE BY BOTANISTS.’ Seems like this could be confusing, but I guess it could be worse, right? Oh, it is. “A second change to the rules for naming plants that aimed to address problematic names, such as those recognizing people who profited from the transatlantic slave trade, also passed — albeit in a watered-down form.”

THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Ford’s Latest Pivot Shows That the EV Craze Has Fizzled Out.

TIGHTENING THE REINS ON THE LEFTIST MONEY LAUNDRY: Virginia public colleges asked to verify investments aren’t tied to politics.

FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH…: I couldn’t help but notice that between the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, there’s only one story on the Democrat effort to oust Biden from the ticket. That one story is in WaPo and it’s below the virtual fold.

CAN YOU HANDLE ‘THE TRUTH IN TRUE CRIME?’ That’s the implicit challenge in the title of J. Warner Wallace’s latest book. He’s the now-retired Los Angeles Police Detective and former NBC Dateline regular who is a master at solving murder cases that have gone unsolved for decades.

Wallace is also one of the world’s most effective and personable apologists for the Christian faith and in his latest book, which I enthusiastically review on HillFaith this morning, he digs deep into what the realities of death teach us about life. It’s a fascinating and unusual approach to a subject that we instinctively avoid.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: RNC 2024 Wrap — Donald Trump the Elder Statesman Has Entered the Chat. “Trump’s sotto voce, conversational tone was perfect, and a counter to the angry maniac that the commies in the mainstream media like to portray him as. He was the adult in the room at a time when the Republic desperately needs that. His recounting of the assassination attempt provided yet another deeply emotional moment at this convention.”

PRIME DEAL: Coway Airmega AP-1512HH(W) True HEPA Purifier with Air Quality Monitoring. #CommissionEarned

THEY LIKE AND FOSTER VIOLENCE FROM THE LEFT. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THUS. John Lucas: The New York Times’ Tolerance of Calls for Civil War and Political Murder. “The New York Times would have us believe that it has always opposed violent political rhetoric. It is a sham, a lie.”

HMM: ‘It’s a Bitcoin Play’: Mark Cuban Says Silicon Valley’s Embrace of Trump Revolves Around Crypto. “Under Trump, who appears to be ahead of President Joe Biden, the stage is set for inflation and uncertainty about the role of the U.S. in geopolitics, Cuban said. ‘You can’t align the stars any better for a BTC price acceleration,’ he wrote.”

“Trump will cause inflation” is a bit of MSN-DNC deflection that cropped up everywhere a couple of weeks ago — remember the Journolist? — and shows no signs of abating.

BUT THAT’S NOT COUNTING THE GRAFT: Biden to earn more in retirement than as president.

GOOD QUESTION: Why Would Any Legit Dem Presidential Prospect Jump Into This Mess?

Related: Democrat Civil War Update: It Has Heated Up.

Also: Trouble In Paradise: Obama Tells Other Democrat Leaders that Biden‘s Re-Election Effort is No Longer Viable.

And: ‘Presidents Are Not ‘Talent’ to Be Replaced With a Snap of the Finger.’

Meanwhile in a discussion about Trump’s speech last night — consensus: Started out great, went on too long — a friend makes this observation: “He spoke, often seemingly extemporaneously, for an hour and 32 minutes. Regardless of context, imagine Biden trying to speak like that for 11 minutes and 32 seconds. Huge contrast.”

Heck, he can barely manage one minute and 32 seconds, and that’s only when they get the drugs right.

HEH: Run Faster! Video of Senators Chasing Secret Service Chief Is the Wildest Thing You’ll See All Day.

UH OH: Major IT Outage Hits Banks, Airlines Businesses Worldwide. It’s not a hack, but a botched update from those losers at Crowdstrike.

Crowdstrike, you may remember, is the Democratic-Party-connected “security” company that “investigated” the nonexistent Russian hacking.

A SOCIAL SEA-CHANGE IS COMING: Aria Babu: pro-natalism in the shadow of empire. “Today Razib talks to Aria Babu, a British think-thank professional who is part of the growing number of young men and women who are taking an interest in population decline and promoting pro-natalism. Babu has a degree in chemistry from University College London, and has long worked in areas related to the study of economic growth and entrepreneurship. Prior to her interest in pro-natalism Babu held conventional views about population growth and its ties to environmental alarmism. But she quickly saw that actually fertility is crashing worldwide, and with that there might be dire economic and social consequences. If that trend is left unchecked, she foresees a worst case scenario of massive economic decline and the replacement of our riotously varied modern civilization by a select few narrow subcultures, like the Amish or Somalis, who continue to favor reproduction as a social value. On the state level, declining populations will likely lead to the rise of culturally stagnant and politically authoritarian societies reminiscent of The Children of Men.”

Do tell.

TRUE:

Dems still own legacy media and ballot harvesting. No matter how united Republicans are, how untethered Dems are, and how horribly Dems policies over last 4 years have been, scoring an R win will still be a challenge.

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) July 18, 2024

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Portland is so lawless drivers are now ignoring roads and speeding their cars through parks, after dystopian city defunded its police department.

This might be as much about Portland’s descent into a low-trust society as it is about defunding the police.

TRUST THE PROFESSIONALS: Whistleblowers Reveal What Secret Service Said During Briefings Before Trump Assassination Attempt. “The United States Secret Service acknowledged it had ‘limited resources’ during briefings held before the July 13 Trump rally in Pennsylvania at which an attempted assassination occurred, according to whistleblower disclosures to the House Judiciary Committee.”

Punish the decisionmakers behind this in ways that will be remembered by bureaucrats for decades.

“INDEPENDENT AGENCIES” ARE A CONSTITUTIONAL VIOLATION: NCLA Asks Supreme Court to Restore Presidential Control over “Independent” CPSC Commissioners. “Today, the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed an amicus curiae brief urging the Supreme Court to hear Consumers’ Research v. Consumer Product Safety Commission, taking this golden opportunity to overturn the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor v. Federal Trade Commission decision and revamp CPSC’s unconstitutional structure. Under current law, the President supposedly is only allowed to fire CPSC commissioners “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office,” which insulates them from removal in violation of the ‘take Care’ clause of Article II of the Constitution. To approve CPSC’s structure, the Fifth Circuit below invoked Humphrey’s Executor, which upheld the constitutionality of FTC Commissioners’ similar tenure protections on the flawed theory that the Federal Trade Commission does not exercise executive power.”

Reminder/Disclosure: I’m on the NCLA’s advisory board.

RNC2024: Undaunted, Unafraid, ‘Serene’: Trump Details His ‘Painful’ Experience of Assassination Attempt.

THIS IS WHY THE BABYLON BEE IS AMERICA’S PAPER OF RECORD:  Republicans Concerned It’s Going To Be Harder Than Usual To Blow This Election .

THEY SHOULD HAVE SEEN THIS COMING: To Cancel The Cancellers. “I regard these people as my personal enemies and collectively as a public menace. History has demonstrated, categorically, that when the left takes over the destruction it wreaks is solely limited by the means at hand and the forces that hold them in check.”

One of which is payback.

IT’S CRACKING ALL OVER:  Cracks in the NY Climate Act Facade.

DO THEY HAVE A LEGIT PROSPECT ANYWAY? OR JUST — LIKE BIDEN — SOMEONE WILLING TO BENEFIT FROM FRAUD:  Why Would Any Legit Dem Presidential Prospect Jump Into This Mess?

AN IDEA SO CRAZY IT JUST MIGHT WORK:  Can We Let the Voters Decide—Not the FBI, CIA, DOJ, Lawyers, Prosecutors, and Judges?