WHO LET THE DOGES OUT?

Ruth Marcus is rending her garments at the Washington Post over what she describes as “the most damaging first two weeks in presidential history,” and bless her heart for describing it in terms meant to scandalize and horrify her readership, but send my soul soaring: “Trump’s second term is all about curtailing government’s power and reach.” (God forbid.) Susan Glasser at the New Yorker is wailing about Elon Musk’s “revolutionary terror,” informing us of the delightful existence of a “19-year-old high school graduate” on Elon’s team who goes by the nom-de-guerre “Big Balls.” (She’s appalled, but I’m just hoping the kid’s an AC/DC fan as opposed to afflicted with some unfortunate condition.)

Glasser’s piece is notable, not just because of its panic-button hysteria, but because she accurately captures the magnitude of what is currently going on inside the federal government while failing to grasp the strategic calculation Musk and his DOGE team are making. Beyond any doubt they have hit the ground running, with a pre-existing plan of attack and enormous ambitions: to reorganize the federal government, shear its hull of all the barnacles long since attached to it via long unexamined log-rolling contracts, and cleanse it as much as possible of its engrained “deep state” mentality.

Needless to say, it’s a prospect to horrify all Democrats everywhere, as well as many a mild “good government” type. But Glasser and her ilk completely misunderstand the reason Musk is moving so abruptly and quickly — she is thrown off by his admitted inability to stop trolling on social media — attributing these actions to cruelty and a desire to instill fear in the entire federal government. (The analogy to revolutionary terror is typically overheated for Glasser; Felix Dzerzhinsky did far more than merely cancel people’s opposition newspaper subscriptions in Lenin’s Soviet Union.)

Such nonsense isn’t just easily mocked, it’s self-defeating for the Left; it fails to understand the true purpose behind Musk’s methods. The cruelty isn’t the point of these sudden and (purportedly) indiscriminate cuts, the speed is. Musk and his team are no strangers to the world of litigation; they know as well as anyone else that these firings and defundings and restructurings are going to be litigated fiercely in court for years to come, and that to delay this process now — in a hopeless attempt to make every cut politically palatable — is to give up on it altogether by slow-rolling it to death. It is this urgency which shocks so many progressives and media types, but it is an urgency borne of years of experience reforming sclerotic systems. We have long accustomed ourselves to the idea that the entire edifice of federal government, with its deep entanglement in left-wing causes and funding, has simply gotten too immense and overgrown to ever prune back in any substantive way.

We ran CNN’s infamous 2020 “Fiery But Mostly Peaceful” Chyron in the last hour, so it’s only fair to mention last night’s banger as well: Musk’s DOGE Team: CNN Panel Gets Testy Over Accomplished Teen Genius Named ‘BIG BALLS.’

As with Brooke Baldwin’s classic 2017 freakout over Clay Travis’ line that he believes in “the First Amendment and boobs,” it doesn’t take much for CNN’s distaff newsreaders to dive for the fainting couches:

BETSY DEVOS: Shut Down the Department of Education.

I can understand how that idea, which President Donald Trump is committed to advancing, might sound a bit radical. But having spent four years on the inside as secretary of education, struggling to get the department’s bureaucracy to make even the smallest changes to put the needs of students first, I can say conclusively that American students will be better off without.

Nothing could be more important to our success as a nation than having well-educated citizens. But don’t be fooled by the name: the Department of Education has almost nothing to do with actually educating anyone.

The Department of Education does not run a single school. It does not employ any teachers in a single classroom. It doesn’t set academic standards or curriculum. It isn’t even the primary funder of education—quite the opposite. In most states, the federal government represents less than 10 percent of K–12 public education funding.

So what does it do? It shuffles money around; adds unnecessary requirements and political agendas via its grants; and then passes the buck when it comes time to assess if any of that adds value.

Here’s how it works: Congress appropriates funding for education; last year, it totaled nearly $80 billion. The department’s bureaucrats take in those billions, add strings and red tape, peel off a percentage to pay for themselves, and then send it down to state education agencies. Many of them do a version of the same and then send it to our schools. The schools must then pay first for administrators to manage all the requirements that have been added along the way. After all that, the money makes it to the classroom to help a student learn—maybe.

In other words, the Department of Education is functionally a middleman. And like most middlemen, it doesn’t add value. It merely adds cost and complexity.

The only certain benefactor of the DOE’s existence is its patron saint: the teachers unions. After all, it was the endorsement of President Jimmy Carter by the biggest teachers union—the National Education Association—that gave us a federal education department in the first place. That original sin explains much of what’s transpired since.

We all know how unacceptable the situation is in K–12. But the results aren’t much better in higher education.

Consider the colossal fiasco the Biden administration made of FAFSA, the college financial aid form. Every parent of a college-aged student is painfully aware of the mess this became—as a result of a congressional order in 2021 to simplify the form, no less. The prior administration screwed it up so badly that even Sen. Bernie Sanders was left with no choice but to criticize them.

Simultaneously, the agency focused on “canceling” student loans, despite being told explicitly by the Supreme Court that its schemes were plainly illegal. A department so brazenly willing to defy the rule of law and the separation of powers is one whose existence should most certainly be reevaluated.

These financial and operational calamities alone make the case to shutter the department. But closing down the DOE would also bring an end—at long last—to federal ideological intrusion.

Which is why, to revise and extend the remarks made by the honorable Gov. William J. Le Petomane, Democrats want to protect their phony-baloney jobs there at all costs: Dept of Ed to Maxine: I Hear You Knockin’ But You Can’t Come In; UPDATE: DOE Responds.

Hey, for once I agree with Maxine Waters! The federal bureaucracy has grown unresponsive and inaccessible. The only solution is to shut it all down now!

Wait … was Waters trying to defend the Department of Education with this stunt? What in the world …?

Rep. Maxine Waters is currently pestering a federal employee outside of the Department of Education. pic.twitter.com/I3r7Ttz96l

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 7, 2025

* * * * * * * *

In the first place, members of Congress are not law enforcement. They do not have the authority to demand someone’s ID. In this clip, it’s very clear that the ‘federal employee’ has already identified himself once for Waters’ stunt; what was the point of having other members of Congress — again, who have no authority to demand identification — to repeat that demand for each member there?

And for that matter, what’s the point of haranguing a low-level employee over administration policy?

“Are you making this decision to stand in front of the store on your own behalf, on behalf of the Department of Education, or were you told to come out here and block members of Congress,” Frost asked the stone-faced security guard to which he simply replied, “I’m doing my job.”

That’s practically a “Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s” moment. And besides, is it not the position of these House Democrats that they want to defend the rank and file of the Department of Education? They are claiming that Donald Trump is abusing his authority by terminating tens of thousands of bureaucrats, all of whom probably have more authority than this hapless security guard targeted by Waters for her rage.

Instead, all these Democrats did was paint that bureaucracy as unaccountable and unresponsive, even to elected officials. That is exactly what Republicans have argued all along, which is why Trump and Elon Musk are dismantling that bureaucracy. And the fact that Democrats really can’t do anything about it except rage for the cameras is clearly driving them crazy.

Which is why:

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, Tony Kinnett of the Daily Signal tweets. “Three years ago, Democrats wanted to hear NOTHING from parents concerned about their kids’ schools. They sent the FBI after parents. Now they’re claiming to represent them. Hilarious.”

As America’s Newspaper of Record notes: Country With Record Illiteracy Worried What Will Happen If Education System Reformed.

HOW MUCH OF 2020 WAS A USAID PRODUCTION?

Must Watch @RandPaul Exchange with USAID Post-Pandemic
pic.twitter.com/QAVWVyuYJe

— Chip Roy (@chiproytx) February 4, 2025

Let me see if I got this right:
USAID gave money to Black Lives Matter.
BLM rioters burned down the cities.
The riots were covered by journalists, also funded by USAID, who said burning down the cities was "mostly peaceful."

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) February 7, 2025

Mostly peaceful, but slightly fiery as well:

But a very piquant, aromatic and full-bodied fire, according to the wife of a would-be vice president: Tim Walz’s Wife Gwen Kept Windows Open During BLM Riots to ‘Smell the Burning Tires.’

Ace of Spades adds: Trump to Gut USAID; Deep State Strikes Back as Unions Sue.

I’ve been worried about inflation — how is Trump going to cut it? We don’t want the fed keeping interest rates high forever. That throttles the economy.

But chopping down government spending, which pays people out in freshly-printed Fantasy Dollars, will be a big help.

Elon Musk pointed out that 90% of USAID’s payments go to recipients in the, get this, Washington DC area. It’s just a funding mechanism for the left. It’s just guaranteed employment for leftwing operatives when they’re out of government.

Yes, I’m sure a fraction of that money is eventually paid out to people in the developing world — after it’s laundered through a dozen leftwing NGOs and all the parasites of the left have taken their share.

Exit quote: “Professional political scientists are generally feigning horror at Elon right now, but that’s because they are members of the [professional managerial class], even if they are only minor and distant dependents on DC.”

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Trump’s Youth Revolution.

News alert: Washington Post journalists are panicked that some DOGE employees previously worked at Elon Musk’s private-sector companies and “are in their early 20s.”*

The horror.

Outrage over Musk’s whiz kids reveals another progressive double standard: Young activists are praised when they are on the Left and denounced when they join the Right.

The Post, moreover, is blind to the real story. Trump may be the oldest man elected president, but he leads a youth movement that will shape politics for decades to come.

Trump shattered the cliché that Republicans are the party of seniors and Democrats the party of young people. And he’s staffing his administration with men and women who will form the next GOP governing class.

The Beltway is only beginning to grasp the implications. Young people not only define the cultural landscape. They carry the political categories they learn in their 20s for the rest of their lives.

Such is the power of youth that even losing candidates who win over young people have lasting influence. The young people who worked on George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, were the liberal future.

Ron Paul’s collegiate supporters in 2008 and 2012 previewed the anti-Establishment, anti-war GOP. And Bernie Sanders’s bros and girls in 2016 and 2020 pointed toward the Democrats’ coming lurch to the Left.

When a youth-driven campaign wins power, the consequences are profound. Think JFK accepting the torch passed to a new generation of Americans. Or Reaganauts forging the doctrines that guided the GOP for 40 years.

* Curiously, up until last month, Washington Post journalists used to demand that full attention be paid to exuberant youth:

● Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed French lawmakers. Right-wingers boycotted and mocked her.

—The Washington Post, July 23rd, 2019.

● Why a 24-year-old gun-control activist is running to help lead the DNC.

—The Washington Post, January 10^th, 2025.

UPDATE: Paul Farhi of the Washington Post wants Musk’s young digital hooligans to keep off the USAID grass:

NEO: Trump’s second term so far: I guess this is what “draining the swamp” looks like.

There’s so much going on that I can’t cover everything in depth. What I’ve been doing, and what I plan to keep doing, is concentrating on the efforts I find most interesting or important, and also providing overviews such as this one. And of course links such as these:

From Ace, “USAID and the CIA Funded Trump’s First Impeachment.”

At Legal Insurrection, “US State Department Recalls All USAID Staffers from Foreign Assignments.”

From The Federalist, “The Constitution Vindicates Trump’s Firing Of 17 Inspectors General.”

From The Federalist, “If Presidents Can’t Control Executive Agencies, Elections Are Fake.”

There’s much, much more.

It’s also one thing to make light of the reaction of the left, such as “heads are exploding.” But there’s really nothing light about this. The press and the left are labeling it a coup, a dictatorship, an illegal takeover. The grounds for believing that – even on the part of relatively moderate Democrats – have been prepared for many many years. This is an extremely volatile situation.

Interesting times.

Indeed. And note the formulation the left is making by calling Trump’s efforts to shrink the federal bureaucracy a “coup:”

If it’s a coup, who is Trump taking power from? https://t.co/pTbSQNjlNU

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) February 6, 2025

For once in his life, Reich is actually right about something. A “coup d’etat” is a brief and bloodless revolution. In America, we have those every four or eight years — they’re called elections.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Reader John Steakley writes: “Anyone shocked at why Trump did far better than expected with sub-30 voters need only look at videos like this of a balding, unshaven, eye-bagged, multi-sweatered Robert Reich ranting hyperbolically about Trump. To the sub-30 voter, if Grandpa Reich and Grandma Pelosi are against something, then it’s probably something new and cool that the sub-30 voter should check out. Just because Reich is ranting from home nowadays doesn’t mean he can’t shave, comb his hair, and don a collared shirt. Instead, he looks like he’s sitting in the corner of a nursing home waiting for his mid-afternoon pudding delivery. That’s not how you win over the sub-30 voters.”

Or anyone else.

AOC LATEST DEM PARTYING LIKE IT’S 1859: Ocasio-Cortez: Illegal Aliens Are Why Americans Survived Coronavirus Pandemic.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claimed during a recent interview that the reason Americans survived the COVID-19 pandemic was because of illegal aliens.

AOC made the remarks during an interview with Maria Hinojosa on Latino USA while talking about the subject of illegal immigration.

“These are human beings, but they are also assets to the United States of America,” AOC said. “Now, when I move to the economic case, I want to say first that, yes, it is fraught, you know, because it is painful to see sometimes people only talk about the economic case because we’re more than just a labor force. We’re more than just a people to be exploited.”

Ocasio-Cortez said that people who vote on the issue of illegal immigration are not compassionate and do not see the “humanity” in people.

“And so if you want to be hard-nosed about it, understand that America’s immigration force and our community of immigrants, including and especially the millions of undocumented people in this country, are why America has prospered, especially why we survived the COVID-19 pandemic,” she claimed.

“And for all of the people who cast a vote based on grocery prices and inflation, if you think your groceries are expensive now, wait until the farms are empty,” she said. “If you think houses are expensive now, wait until there’s no one building them.”

Wait, don’t you mean rebuilding them? From David Harsanyi right around this time in 2019, “The 10 Most Insane Requirements Of The Green New Deal,” including:

Gut and rebuild every building in America. [Sen Ed Markey, D-MA] and Cortez want to “retrofit every building in America” with “state of the art energy efficiency.” I repeat, “every building in America.” That includes every home, factory, and apartment building, which will all need, for starters, to have their entire working heating and cooling systems ripped out and replaced with…well, with whatever technology Democrats are going invent in their committee hearings, I guess.

Oh and speaking of Markey:

It’s probably just a health and safety issue while the building is being retrofitted with “state of the art energy efficiency.”

CHANGE: NCAA Bars Men from Competing in Women’s Sports.

‘EVERY NIGHT:’ MSNBC Seems to Have Found a New Obsession in Elon Musk.

On Tuesday night’s episode of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, Stephanie Ruhle picked up where she had left off the previous night in vitriolically attacking Elon Musk and his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk was a central feature of a panel discussion she hosted, featuring Bloomberg senior executive editor Tim O’Brien, and Max Chafkin, also of Bloomberg, who is also co-host of a podcast entitled Elon & Co., which, based on the name, is apparently and a little bizarrely devoted solely to the subject of Elon Musk.

“All right, Max,” Ruhle said, turning to Chafkin, “let’s talk about Elon Musk.” She fumed that Musk was “more than front and center” in the new administration. “I mean, this guy is getting more headlines than Donald Trump.”

Strangely, it seemed that in her eyes Musk’s involvement in government was pretty much criminal, while she showed no sign of having any problem with, for example, George Soros exercising tremendous influence for left-wing causes.

To paraphrase the Gipper, sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the far left hand is doing. Back in 2011, MSNBC was running ads calling for new Hoover Dam-level projects (I know, I know). Surely the man making massive breakthroughs in rocketry and electric cars counts is playing in that league, right?

#WINNING: Carl’s Jr. Super Bowl ad brings back bikini-clad burger models after yearslong clampdown.

Carl’s Jr. is bringing back its bikini-clad burger models just in time for the Super Bowl.

TikTok influencer Alix Earle stars in a new commercial from Carl’s Jr. promoting its new “hangover burger” for football fans needing a pick-me-up after game day.

“Just what you need to cure that post party bug,” Earle says, dressed in a skimpy outfit as she parades through a car wash and takes a bite of the super-loaded breakfast burger.

The Super Bowl-themed ad comes about eight years after the fast-food chain vowed to end its sexualized campaigns, which included partnerships with Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.

The brand’s return to racy advertising comes as major companies have been dismantling their diversity programs, following President Trump’s call for “merit-based” policies.

Studying this year’s Super Bowl ads, Kremlinology-style for their tone and subtext will be fun on Sunday. (Hopefully the game will be watchable as well.)

BEGORRAH: Israeli Defense Minister: Countries like Ireland ‘legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories.’

Israel’s defence minister has said countries like Ireland, Spain and Norway are “legally obligated” to take in Palestinians.
It comes as Defence Minister Israel Katz said he has instructed the army to prepare plans for large numbers of Palestinians to leave the Gaza Strip in line with US president Donald Trump’s proposal for the war-ravaged territory.

Mr Katz said on Thursday that the plan “will include options for exit at land crossings as well as special arrangements for exit by sea and air”.

He said he welcomed Mr Trump’s “bold plan, which could allow a large population in Gaza to leave for various places in the world”.

Mr Katz did not say whether Palestinians would be able to one day return to Gaza, which has been rendered largely uninhabitable by Israel’s 15-month military campaign against Hamas.

When asked who will take in the Palestinians, Mr Katz said it should be countries who have opposed Israel’s military operations in Gaza.

“Countries like Spain, Ireland, Norway, and others, which have levelled accusations and false claims against Israel over its actions in Gaza, are legally obligated to allow any Gaza resident to enter their territories,” he said.

“Their hypocrisy will be exposed if they refuse to do so. There are countries like Canada, which has a structured immigration program, that have previously expressed a willingness to accept Gaza residents.”

Well, the Palestinians will feel right at home in Ireland: As William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog warned in December, “Ireland maybe be about to Bud Light itself:” Ireland has brought a diplomatic disaster on itself.

OUT ON A LIMB: If Presidents Can’t Control Executive Agencies, Elections Are Fake.

If the executive cannot control his own personnel, agencies, and funding lawfully given to him by a duly elected Congress, elections mean nothing. If the executive is not actually an executor, then the entire bureaucracy is an autocratic, self-licking ice cream cone. It runs the country, not any elected official. And Congress is complicit, because it allows the distribution of opium funds to Afghanistan and queer “safe spaces” in Kenya without ever having to take a public vote on any of this garbage, so long as these taxpayer-provided slush funds slather their retirements and relatives with “nonprofit” and “contractor” lard.

Whatever you want to call unelected bureaucrats and “nonprofit” grifters distributing funds obtained from American citizens against our consent as expressed in elections and line-item votes, it is not a republic, nor a democracy. If Trump can’t fire his own employees and redistribute public funds the executive branch has been given by law, he’s not really the president, and elections are fake.

All this means Trump isn’t “weaponizing” or “politicizing” these agencies. He’s fighting their inherent weaponization. Firing and investigating people who abuse public power, and ending the theft of American labor to fund evil international patronage schemes — that isn’t retribution, it’s justice.

Nervous employees of the Ministry of Truth tell state-run media that their current state is an “Orwellian nightmare!”

UPDATE: Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein on the Crazy USAID Spending Being Uncovered.

HEH, INDEED: Pictured: The golden pager symbolizing Israel’s renewed friendship with the US.

Benjamin Netanyahu gave Donald Trump a golden pager in a symbolic reference to the covert operation that turned Hezbollah devices into lethal explosives in an attack last year.

Text on the pager, placed in the middle of a dissected tree trunk, reads: “Press with both hands.”

A small placard on the bottom of the trophy-like gift, says: “To President Donald J. Trump, our greatest friend and greatest ally. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

A source familiar with the gift told The Telegraph that Mr Trump replied on receiving it: “That was a great operation.”

Mr Trump then gave the Israeli prime minister a photo of the two of them from the latter’s US visit, inscribed: “To Bibi, a great leader.”

The US president used the meeting a the White House to announce his ambitions to resettle Palestinians from Gaza and take the Strip into US ownership.

Yes, the golden pager will look awesome in the lobby of the Gaza Trump Tower.

NEW FRONTIERS IN PAYOLA:

WELL, YOU’VE GOT TO START SOMEWHERE:

Wise words
pic.twitter.com/kuSuFSNEWh

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 5, 2025

This is a modest start as well: Trump’s Federal Buyout Offer Expires Today—As Over 40,000 Staff Agree To Leave: Here’s What To Know.

And in sharp contrast: Army Hits Best Recruitment Month in 15 Years Under President Donald Trump.

Exit question: Whatever Will Become of All the Displaced Swamp Creatures?

CONFIRMED: CBS LIED to Voters About No ‘Deceitful’ Editing for Kamala.

After being compelled by the Federal Communications Commission to turn over the unedited transcript and video of their infamous interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris for 60 Minutes, the FCC released it to the public.

After reviewing the video (clip from the raw video below), NewsBusters can confirm that what appeared on 60 Minutes was highly edited. Not only did they edit what appeared on 60 Minutes, they also edited what appeared on Face the Nation, including cutting out a hard hitting question that called out the Biden-Harris administration for looking weak on the world stage.

Below is the transcript of the exchange in question between CBS’s Bill Whitaker and Harris. Note that in Harris’s answer for 60 Minutes, they pulled out a fragment of one sentence of a much, much larger answer which appeared on Face the Nation (FTN):

[BOTH 60 MINUTES AND FTN] BILL WHITAKER: We supply Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, and yet, Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to be charting his own course. The Biden administration The Biden Harris administration has pressed him to agree to a ceasefire. He’s resisted. You urged him not to go into Lebanon. He went in anyway. He has promised to make Iran pay for the missile attack, and that has the potential of expanding the war. Does the US have no sway over Prime Minister Netanyahu?

[ONLY ON FTN] KAMALA HARRIS: Well, let’s start with this, um, on this subject. The aid that we have given Israel allowed Israel to defend itself against 200 ballistic missiles. That were just meant to attack the Israelis and the people of Israel. And I think that is the most recent example of why what we do to assist in their defense around military aid is important. And when we think about the threat that Hamas, Hezbollah presents, Iran, um, I think that it is without any question our imperative to do what we can to allow Israel to defend itself against those kinds of attacks. Now

[60 MINUTES ANSWER STARTS HERE] HARRIS: the work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles

[ONLY ON FTN] HARRIS: which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for. This war to end the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and and and create a ceasefire and we’re not gonna stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and and in the region including with other leaders in the region including Arab leaders.
It’s also worth noting that Harris’s first sentence in her answer didn’t make it into either airing of the interview.

The things you learn from CBS — I had no idea that Harris was the first Vulcan-American woman running for the White House:

At very end of unedited @60Minutes video posted today by CBS, @BillWhitakerCBS called Harris’ economic policy proposals “logical.” When cameraman asked to get an over the shoulder shot of Whitaker: “Well we were talking about how you’re gonna pay for it and I mean I truly do mean… pic.twitter.com/Nj3eRf0mMk

— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) February 5, 2025

UPDATE: Kamala flubbed the “why do you want to be president” layup question even worse than Ted Kennedy in 1980:

. @JesseBWatters EXPOSES parts of the disgraceful @60Minutes interview with @KamalaHarris .

Just think … @TheDemocrats believe this bumbling fool is currently their top Presidential candidate.

Keep in mind @DNC, the media has just lost their governmental financial arm thru… pic.twitter.com/HcUhN5o6Jf

— C-Reason🇺🇸 (@CreasonJana) February 6, 2025

CNN DATA GURU HARRY ENTEN LANDS COUP DE GRACE ON DEMOCRATS AFTER TRUMP SIGNS EO PROTECTING WOMEN’S SPORTS:

CNN's @ForecasterEnten found that **79%** of Americans oppose transgender athletes in female sports yesterday, including 67% of Democrats.https://t.co/MQ5u1rtZU5 pic.twitter.com/PFWzuqx7VE

— Andy Kaczynski (@KFILE) February 6, 2025

This was always a stupid, non-sensical hill for Democrats to pick to die on from a political standpoint. I mean, they really thought they were on the “winning” side by catering to the fringe elements in their party on co-called transgender “women” while at the same time trying to have it both ways by falsely claiming they were protectors and defenders of women.

Just like “Defund the Police” hurt Democrats in prior elections, coddling the extremists in the Alphabet Mafia had consequences for them in 2024. And the even worse news for them (and the even better news for Republicans) is that the opposition to men in women’s sports has, as Enten noted, only strengthened over the years across all party lines.

Exit quote:

The thing about this image is that it’s an 80-20 issue that Dems simply handed to Trump and the right to appease some extreme activists.

It’s about as easy of a win as there is in politics.

pic.twitter.com/Gdqi7h3s1b

— AG (@AGHamilton29) February 6, 2025

Related:

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Beyond The Jetsons: New Fantastic Four trailer offers a new vision of a fantastic future that never was.

From the opening shot of the superhero team’s living area (see image below) in their skyscraper headquarters to their swept-wing rocket to an altered 1960s Manhattan skyline, we are shown a thoroughly Up Wing world. As with the The Jetsons — the 1962 cartoon that’s arguably the most influential futurist work of the twentieth century — Fantastic Four is infused with the real-world Googie aesthetic, a style that projected mid-century American optimism through Atomic and Space Age flourishes: stylized atoms, boomerangs, and parabolas.

Googie architecture emerged from 1930s Southern California’s car culture, where businesses needed eye-catching designs visible from highways. The style featured the dramatic curves and futuristic elements that by the 1950s perfectly captured the era’s fascination with space exploration and rapid tech advance. This aesthetic shaped iconic structures like the LAX Theme Building and early McDonald’s restaurants.

When people talk about a retro-futuristic vibe, they typically mean it has big Googie energy. “Googie is undeniably the super-aesthetic of 1950s and ’60s American retro-futurism — a time when America was flush with cash and ready to deliver the technological possibilities that had been promised during WWII,” explains retro-futurism historian Matt Novak.

And as architectural historian Alan Hess told Surface in 2022:

[Googie] didn’t only capture the future, but it brought it in a meaningful way to people. And you see this in interest in these futuristic ideas not only in architecture or car design, but in cartoons like The Jetsons and places like amusement parks—in advertisements, in magazines, and so forth, certainly in the movies as well. This interest, this intrigue, this appeal of living in the future just went all across the culture.

And then came the ugly, dreary 1970s, as Pethokoukis goes on to write. Read the whole thing.

In terms of production design, The Fantastic Four looks absolutely brilliant (based on his love of Googie architecture, I suspect James Lileks will be first in line at his local multiplex this summer). But will it be a decent superhero movie? The Critical Drinker is hopeful, but with a few reservations, based on both the comic book franchise’s dreadful history on the big screen, and its cast:

OLD AND BUSTED: With Six You Get Eggroll.

The New Hotness? With USAID You Get Liz Cheney:

No kidding https://t.co/v2ITgs7TL4

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2025

Exit quote:

BEHOLD. My shocked face. https://t.co/KmBwUMiQZi

— Sarah A. Hoyt (@SarahAHoyt) February 6, 2025

Related: Why, it’s as if:

Democrats Warn Trump’s Unelected Shadow Government Is Dismantling Their Unelected Shadow Government https://t.co/ZD1Z8wOPYp pic.twitter.com/JKCOwjdA3S

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) February 5, 2025

STATE-RUN MEDIA ANGRY ABOUT COFFERS BEING CUT: NBC, ABC Remain Bitter Over DOGE Obliteration of USAID.

CBS — which tried to sway the 2004 election and had newsreaders reciting pro-Obamacare Christmas poems in 2009 isn’t very happy, either:

CBS News treating a government employee like they are in witness protection is amazing. Blurred silhouette and everything. https://t.co/1av8WDMqwN

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 6, 2025

Related: You Knew This CNN Panel Was Going to Descend Into Total Chaos. Scott Jennings has “the patience of a saint:”

The man faces of @ScottJenningsKY during the DEI segment pic.twitter.com/85uffqU4lw

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) February 6, 2025

ELI LAKE: Radicals Have Burned California Before.

The veneer of civilization was peeling away, and the average Californian blamed one man: San Francisco mayor Joseph Alioto. He was a Democrat, but a traditional one: the kind who runs on a platform of being tough on crime. Nevertheless, the people wanted regime change.

Enter: George Moscone, a fun-loving, charismatic California state senator. In 1975, he began campaigning to be the next mayor of San Francisco. He appealed to the traditional constituencies like the labor unions, but he also embraced the legendary gay activist Harvey Milk. He appealed to environmentalists, hippies, and other radicals who were on the outside looking in. It was a political coalition as experimental as any of the art being made across California at the time.

In David Talbot’s history of the San Fran ’70s, Season of the Witch, he describes Moscone’s visit to a commune, where the candidate was given the “ultimate Haight-Ashbury test:” a “pillow-sized reefer.” He and his staff were sitting at a giant wooden table with some hippies while the joint was being passed around. One of Moscone’s aides tried to intercept it, to save the future mayor from violating federal and city law, but Moscone was having none of it.

“Wait a minute,” he said.

Then he proceeded to take a huge toke.

“The whole room burst into applause,” Talbot writes. “The candidate passed the test. The Haight was in his column.”

Moscone’s rival in the race was John Barbagelata, a realtor who wanted to return San Francisco to what it was like before the hippie invasion. But Moscone had an advantage: The 1975 mayoral election was the first race under a new law that limited campaign spending to just over $120,000. This tempered the influence of the wealthy downtown real estate developers and lawyers who had powered Alioto’s campaigns in 1967 and 1971, and would naturally get behind Barbagelata.

In a runoff on December 11, 1975, Moscone beat Barbagelata—albeit narrowly. In a city of 700,000 people, the margin was 4,315 votes.

Many of Moscone’s moves were admirable. He got rid of the mayor’s limousine and announced that his door would always be open for any San Franciscan who wanted to talk. He appointed Milk to the powerful board of permit appeals, making him the first openly gay city commissioner in the U.S.

But other reforms were ill-considered. Moscone appointed Charles Gain—a so-called “sociological cop”—to be the chief of police. One of Gain’s first moves was to remove the American flag that hung outside the commissioner’s office and replace it with a plant. He also insisted on repainting all the police cars baby blue. And, in the fall of 1977, he attended something known as the Hookers Ball, “the social event of the year for heterosexuals, bisexuals, trisexuals, transexuals, nonsexuals, and other minorities who feel they are discriminated against.” Gain was photographed wedged between one of the city’s prostitues and someone calling herself “Wonder Whore,” a superhero with a dildo in her holster.

San Francisco’s rank-and-file cops couldn’t stand Gain, whose policy interventions were rarely relevant to the actual fighting of crime. Their attitude was best captured in the 1971 movie Dirty Harry, in which Clint Eastwood played Inspector Harry Callahan, who doesn’t care for the mayor’s passive approach to crime. He’s got his own approach—killing the bad guys.

Moscone, who stood by Gain, was exactly the kind of do-gooder liberal who Dirty Harry despised. Whereas his predecessor sent SWAT teams to the Haight communes, the new mayor shared a joint there. But he was popular in the city because he was willing to share power with the left-wing street organizers and political activists that had been relegated to the margins.

To build a new San Francisco, Moscone was willing to work with anyone—and I mean anyone.

Take the Reverend Jim Jones. He’d been the leader of a religious cult known as Peoples Temple for a couple of decades by the time Moscone welcomed him into his administration in 1975.

There’s a condensed version of this story in the video version narrated by Lake that the Free Press uploaded to YouTube yesterday. From the wondrous background shots in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to acid casualties and Altamont to Jim Jones and the birth of the homeless crisis is quite an amazing descent for a once beautiful American city:

FASTER, PLEASE: The American Brezhnev era is over.

Since 9/11, Washington has spent billions of dollars promoting “democratic norms” abroad. The policy mirrored the late Soviet Union’s attempts to promote communism in countries outside Moscow’s direct control, as witnessed under the leadership Leonid Brezhnev. And now at last it appears to have ended, following Donald Trump’s executive orders and yesterday’s State Department takeover of the United States Agency for International Development.

This American Brezhnev policy has had a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland effect: democratically elected leaders such as Ukraine’s ill-fated Viktor Yanukovych could be violently overthrown in the name of democracy.  Over the past quarter century, countries such as Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and Romania, have at one time or another been deemed insufficiently “democratic” (i.e. insufficiently in thrall to the dictates of Washington) and thus found themselves the target of sanctions and none-too-subtle propaganda campaigns. Under Joe Biden, such efforts were redoubled as “protecting democracy” became the leitmotif of American strategy at home and abroad.

Brezhnev 2.0 would not be possible without the scores of “independent media” outlets that receive funding from agencies such as USAID or from the constellation of “non-governmental organizations,” or NGOs, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute. NED’s first president, Allen Weinstein, famously bragged that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty-five years ago by the CIA.” Now Donald Trump has frozen all manner of foreign assistance. And by defunding media projects, Trump has deprived Washington’s empire builders and their disciples of a crucial weapon in their project of overthrowing regimes deemed insufficiently pliable.

Trump’s funding freeze is one of those rare occasions when the prerogatives of the national security state are actually being challenged. As expected, the media is going bananas—after all, in the US, the priorities of the media and the national security state are often one and the same. Doubt it? Consider the current smear campaign aimed at former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard conducted by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius, the New York Times editorial board and Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

If American media outlets can be relied on to tee up the propaganda at home, government-and NGO- funded media outlets carry Washington’s water abroad. Allegedly independent media outlets such as CivilNet in Armenia, New Voice of Ukraine, the Kyiv Post and Magyar Hang in Hungary exist not because of domestic demand, but because they serve Washington’s political agenda.

Last year, both VDH and Niall Ferguson discussed DC being trapped in the Brezhnev era. At the moment, particularly given the breakneak speed at which the Trump administration is moving, it appears to be Morning in America again, to coin a phrase. And speaking of which!

This is also highly reminiscent of when Reagan himself replaced the portrait of Thomas Jefferson with Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room on the very first day of his administration, as symbolism that there wasn’t just a new sheriff in town, he had a very different worldview than those — of both parties — who held the office for the previous half century.

LEE SMITH: The End of ‘Palestine.’

Yesterday, President Donald Trump single-handedly collapsed the most destructive idea of the last hundred years—Palestine. During meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, Trump said he was going to move 1.7 million Palestinians out of Gaza. And just like that, he broke the long spell that had captured generations of world leaders, peace activists, and Middle East terror masters alike, who had paradoxically come to regard the repeated failure and haunting secondary consequences of the idea of joint Arab Muslim and Jewish statehood in the same small piece of land as proof of its necessity.

Palestine was a misshapen idea from the beginning, engendered by an act of pure negation. The Arabs could have gone along with the U.N.’s partition plan like the Jews did, and chosen to build whatever version of Switzerland or Belgium on the eastern Med in 1948. Instead, they resoundingly chose war. That’s the storied “Nakba” at the core of the Palestinian legend—the catastrophe that drove the Arabs from their land and hung a key around the neck of a nation waiting to go home. The Arabs chose the catastrophe; they chose war, based on the premise that they would inevitably win and exterminate the Jews.

Yet despite repeated military failures, and the increasing distance between the first-world powerhouse that the Israelis built and their increasingly war-torn, third-world neighborhood, the global conscience was always predisposed to rebuilding what the Palestinians destroyed. Accordingly, the Palestinian Arabs became a tribe of feral children whose identity was carved out of the relentless vow to eliminate Israel and slaughter the Jews en masse—despite repeated failures, each one more crushing than the last.

Trump said, enough, we’re not rebuilding Gaza. Time for a new idea—the Gazans have to to go, they can try to start again somewhere else, in a land where every building still standing isn’t already wired to explode.

I’m curious to see how Trump’s seemingly off the cuff remark plays out, but as Scott Adams notes:

JIM TREACHER: Biden’s State Dept. Gave $25K to Ecuadorian Drag Queens.

I absolutely love the reaction to all these revelations of ridiculously wasteful spending. The Biden administration was utterly corrupt. Grandpa Joe has dementia, so the neighborhood kids were running around the house after nabbing the keys to the liquor cabinet.

Now Americans are finally learning how badly their hard-earned money has been wasted, and they’re justifiably pissed off at their self-appointed betters. That includes my favorite government agency of all: the State Department.

Ryan King and Josh Christenson, NY Post:

An LGBTQ group in Ecuador tapped into a $25,000 grant from the Biden State Department to produce a two-day drag workshop intended to promote diversity and inclusion abroad…

Fundacion Dialogo Diverso, a nongovernmental organization that aims to promote democracy and the “LGBTIQ+ population” of the South American country, organized the drag show and published footage of it last July.

The State Department footed some of the bill for the show through its Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration, for which the nonprofit thanked the department.

Why did the Biden administration fund a two-day Ecuadorian drag workshop? Because it wasn’t three days.

And yes, there’s video.

Think of the children, America’s Newspaper of Record reminds us!

DO NOT TRUST CHINA. CHINA IS ASSHOLE: China-linked firm gets EZ pass contract in New Jersey, former senator calls it ‘worse’ than TikTok.

In September, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority awarded TransCore – owned by Singapore Technologies Engineering, known as ST Engineering – the full authority to run the operation for $1.73 billion, beating out Newark’s Conduent, Inc., whose final offer was $1.479 billion.

* * * * * * * *

Former U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., who is a consultant to Conduent, said that the situation with a foreign-owned company like TransCore having access to America’s tolling systems is “worse” than the threat from TikTok.

“I don’t really understand why this hasn’t gotten a lot, frankly, a lot more attention,” Torricelli told FOX Business in an interview. “I would rather the Chinese knew what I was watching on TikTok than have the Chinese monitoring my car going up and down the New Jersey Turnpike. I don’t really understand why people aren’t more upset about it.”

The New Jersey Turnpike is one of the busiest highways in the U.S., and is a principal artery between the major cities on the East Coast.

Torricelli warned that every major U.S. government official traveling between New York and Washington, D.C., could potentially have their transportation patterns monitored if TransCore secures the contract to run it. He said that important cargo like chemicals and even U.S. military equipment and movements could be routinely tracked.

“There has to be some national security concern here,” the former senator said. “It is enormously more important than whatever nonsense is going on with TikTok, but it largely has been under the radar.”

Earlier: Chinese-Made Patient Monitor Contains a Secret Backdoor. Along with several other examples of Chinese-made tech with information backdoors.

ARMOND WHITE: The Karla or Carlos Controversy Confounds Hollywood.

Instead, the trade press has attacked Gascón for social media posts uncovered by a renegade freelancer, Sarah Hagi, who identifies as a black Muslim and who is Canadian but writes hit-pieces for U.S. media. The trade press has heroized Hagi for exposing dated “racist tweets” by Gascón. Gascón’s posts ranged from criticizing Black Lives Matter and questioning the credibility of the George Floyd scandal to what Hagi claims were endorsements of Adolf Hitler.

So a Muslim in a hijab attacks a trans performer who identifies as a woman yet doesn’t kowtow to all the liberal pieties. It’s an almost humorous fulfillment of the prediction that the Left will eat itself. This is an aberration of progressivism — the flip side of beleaguered social media gadfly Andy Ngo, the independent muckraker who exposes mainstream media’s protection of Antifa. Ngo recently tracked the January 20 killing of a border-patrol agent in Vermont to an alleged violent trans cult.

But the unserious Hollywood trade press remains trivial. Variety went for standard left-Hollywood accusations. Daniel D’Addario wrote a piece on the Gascón affair, with a headline calling Gascón “the Donald Trump of Oscar Season.” D’Addario mentions President Trump nearly as often as he mentions Gascón. A former television critic for Time, D’Addario uses prejudiced phrases — “the politics of prejudice emanating from President Trump,” “our current, entertainment-obsessed president” — even digging-up the Obama birth certificate controversy and the tired comparisons of Trump to Hitler. D’Addario practices code phrases the same way that Gascón’s old tweets, according to Hagi, issued “dog whistles.”

Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and The Wrap betray their own integrity by waging industry vendettas against Gascón and Trump as if both were infidels to the DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) cause.

What makes this fracas serious is the underlying media mania for cancellation and censorship — of a performer and a president. It’s an extension of the angry zeal that has overtaken the media in general, from legacy publications to the internet upstarts that all mistake partisan activism for journalism. The idea is to effect the revolution in gender and identity that is part of the social transformation progressives demand be installed in our language and thinking. The Academy’s endorsement of Karla or Carlos Gascón has exposed the trade media, transforming it into a medium of spite.

Earlier signs that the entertainment industry trade papers were going far off the rails were in 2022 when they insisted on using The Flash actor Ezra Miller’s “preferred pronouns” to the point where publications such as Variety appeared “More Concerned Over Misgendering Ezra Miller Than His Assaulting Victims,” Brad Slager wrote at Red State:

The ridiculousness begins early, as Variety works hard to address Miller in the proper fashion, and the fractured language that follows delivers this ridiculous diction.

Miller…became a regular at bars in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, where locals came to know and even befriend them. Many recognized Miller from their earliest breakout movies, 2012’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” where they played a troubled teen.

Resorting to the they/them pronoun while describing encounters with a crowd of people leads to obtuse reporting. When it becomes unclear if you are describing the group or the preferred pronoun reference you have veered from your charged duty of providing clear reporting on a matter. It would be more concise to simply use ‘’Miller’’ to designate the actor. But then, there is a possible conflict in using the gendered term actor, so Variety has painted itself into a rainbow corner.

From here, Variety takes the position that this correct pronoun usage is the important way to cover this story. When it comes to interviewing one of the women from Iceland, who had violent encounters with Miller, the corrections to her testimony are glaring and rather offensive. Even as the entertainment outlet affirms the likelihood the woman had no idea about Miller’s pronoun preference, Variety changes her quotes to avoid offending Miller and any potential activist positioning.

“I think it’s just fun and games — but then it wasn’t,” she said. “All of a sudden, [they’re] on top of me, choking me, still screaming in my face if I want to fight. My friend who’s filming sees [they’re] obviously not joking and it’s actually serious, so he stops filming, and pushes [them] off me as [they’re] still trying to fight me. Two guy friends of mine are actually holding [Miller] back as [they’re] screaming, ‘This is what you wanted! This is what you wanted!’” (At the time of the interview, it was unclear whether the woman was aware Miller uses they/them pronouns.)

This decision by Variety echoes a recent piece I covered concerning the BBC and a report that the British outlet delivered about a sexual assault. When a lesbian woman detailed an encounter with a trans woman who was still physically male and ultimately raped her, the BBC took the steps to correct her quotes where she referred to her attacker as him, and “improperly” used the term “his penis.”

These are the inane levels the media is sinking towards where they are fearful of angering a group if they manage to use the wrong pronouns of a violent individual. The willingness to alter the quoted testimony of a victim is journalistically inept, to say nothing of violating the recent narratives we have been spoonfed from this very same journalism complex. Believe all women has now given way to Correct any women who misgender their attacker.

Will next month’s Oscars be a full-on anti-Trump leftist freakout, or does the industry’s attempt to tamp down Gascon’s activism represent an attempt to find the off-ramp? In any case, Ricky Gervais was and is spot-on: