HOW IT STARTED: Next mayor wants NYC to be even more of a ‘sanctuary’ for illegal immigrants.

Every single one of the eight Democrats running for mayor vowed to protect illegal immigrants from deportation, solidifying the Big Apple’s often infamous status as a “sanctuary city.”

* * * * * * * *

Entrepreneur Andrew Yang, the son of legal Taiwanese immigrants, said, “I appreciate anyone who comes to this country or New York City for a better life.”

And Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said migrants were his neighbors growing up in Queens.

“My mother worked two jobs to provide for the six of us and we had a group of undocumented residents that lived in our community,” Adams said.

The other candidates — city comptroller Scott Stringer, former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan and nonprofit leader Dianne Morales — also voiced their support for the Big Apple as a sanctuary city.

—The New York Post, June 2nd, 2021.

How it’s going: Eric Adams wants FEMA to ban cities from busing migrants to NYC — as 1,300 arrive this week alone.

—The New York Post, today.

This isn’t who we are. Adams clearly needs to reread the words on the Statue of Liberty — and his own promise that New York is a sanctuary city.

Earlier: Sanctuary Cities Seethe as Illegal Immigrants Actually Arrive.

The surest sign that public policies are simply virtue signals is when the messages don’t cost anything. The easiest way to tell when that signal starts to fail is to watch politicians flounder as the costs start to rise and voters demand relief.

It was free—and meaningless—for progressive churches to post banners calling themselves “nuclear free zones” during the Reagan era. Their dwindling congregations loved it. It was free, after George Floyd‘s murder, to post woke catechism signs on your front lawn, proclaiming “In this house, we believe: Black Lives Matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal” and so on. Maybe the neighbors gave you high-fives. And for years it has been free for deep-blue cities to proclaim themselves “sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants. That’s changing now that voters want some sanctuary for themselves.

Changes like this happen when voters realize the old virtue signals actually entail serious costs—and that they will have to pay them. That is exactly what’s happening in New York City and Washington D.C. now that Texas governor Greg Abbott is sending those cities a few busloads of illegal immigrants from his state.

These progressive bastions were silent when the Biden administration flew planeloads of illegal immigrants to suburban airports in the middle of the night. TV coverage was prohibited, and the arrivals were secretly dispersed. Abbott’s buses, by contrast, arrive downtown greeted by local TV crews. Now you can hear the politicians screech.

Why, it’s as if: Democrats Discover Only The Federal Government Can Solve The Border Crisis.

STAR TREK: PICARD SEASON 3 REVIEW: Bad Fan Fiction With Noble Conviction.

I will say that season three of Picard is easily the best of the bunch, and certainly better than anything Star Trek-related that has come from [Alex] Kurtzman and company over the last fourteen-or-so years.

However, the man brought the bar down so low that even a fractional increase in quality feels like a galactic paradigm shift. At the end of the day, Picard is still a badly-written show. It’s just less badly-written than before.

Should you watch it? That’s a very hard question to answer. There were many moments in season three that I lauded and enjoyed, and just as many that caused me to double-facepalm like Picard in the classic TNG episode “Offspring.” It’s not a fantastic show, but it’s not a total train wreck, either. In comparison to season two, which I rightfully dubbed “unfathomable garbage,” season three can best be summed up as “bad fan fiction with noble conviction.” There’s a love for TNG here, to be sure, but it’s mired with incompetence and a remarkable lack of faith in its own fan base.

It’s always great to see Patrick Stewart on screen as Picard. If only he was served with much better writing than the three seasons of Star Trek: Picard.

DESANTIS NUKES REPORTER OVER ‘TOTALLY BS’ CLAIM: ‘Focus On The Facts And Stop Worrying About Narrative.’

DeSantis forcefully rejected the claims made by former detainee Mansoor Adayfi, who claims that he saw a picture of DeSantis on Twitter and remembered his face from nearly two decades ago.

“No. No. Not at all,” DeSantis said when asked if he witnessed any instances where Al Qaeda terrorists were allegedly force fed. “That’s BS. Totally BS.”

When the reporter mentioned that the former detainee claimed that DeSantis was present at force-feedings, DeSantis quickly fired back at the reporter.

“Who said that? How would they know me?” DeSantis responded. “Okay, think about that. Do you honestly believe that’s credible? So this is 2006, I’m a junior officer, do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from that? Of course not.”

“They’re just trying to get into the news because they know people like you will consume it because it fits your pre-ordained narrative that you’re trying to spin,” DeSantis continued. “Focus on the facts and stop worrying about narrative.”

This is the way.

KEEP ROCKIN’! Biden’s pre-written questions present a crisis of confidence.

So how does a question from a White House reporter make it to the president of the United States’ hands before she even asks it? One would think the White House itself, most likely the comms shop that works directly with them, has to be involved making preselection demands of reporters. Then reporters would have to be willing to go along with this, which violates all sorts of long-standing ethics about speaking “truth to power.” Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer tweeted, “No WH reporter would ever tell me what question they intended to ask POTUS. It would be unethical — not to mention soft — to do so.”

This should be a legitimate scandal for this White House, as they try to push an eighty-year-old president onto the country for a second term while it appears he cannot answer questions without a cue card. Subramanian should explain who at the White House she’s coordinating with, and her bosses at the LA Times should say something, too. Yet so far, no explanation has been offered. Subramanian herself is refusing to answer inquiries and the LA Times has simply gone silent on the matter. The White House isn’t accountable, either, because they are clearly in cahoots with the people who should be holding them accountable.

“Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines” has been an Insta-phrase for years. But it was nice of the L.A. Times and the White House comms shop to make it official yesterday.

(Classical reference in headline.)

MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Britons ‘need to accept’ they’re poorer, says Bank of England economist. Chief economist Huw Pill says workers and firms should stop trying to pass on rising costs by hiking prices or demanding better wages.

ON THE SAME DAY TUCKER CARLSON ACCUSES ELITES OF ‘COLLUDING,’ THEY GET CAUGHT COLLUDING:

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson made his first comments on Wednesday evening since parting ways with the giant cable news outlet, accusing the government and elites of “colluding” in support of a “one-party state.”

Calling most debates in mainstream media “unbelievably stupid” and meaningless, Carlson said in a short viral video, “And yet, at the same time… the undeniably big topics, the ones that will define our future, get virtually no discussion at all.” He listed some, “War, civil liberties, emerging science, demographic change, corporate power, natural resources — when was the last time you heard a legitimate debate about any of those issues? It’s been a long time.”

Carlson continued, “Debates like that are not permitted in American media. Both political parties and their donors have reached consensus on what benefits them, and they actively collude to shut down any conversation about it.”

“Suddenly, the United States looks very much like a one-party state,” he added. “That’s a depressing realization. But it’s not permanent.”

During a White House press conference on Wednesday, President Joe Biden was caught holding a cheat sheet that gave him advance knowledge of a question topic from a reporter.

Keep Rockin’!

RIP: Jerry Springer dies aged 79: Legendary talk show host passes away ‘peacefully’ at Chicago home months after being diagnosed with cancer — as family says ‘he’s irreplaceable and his loss hurts immensely.’

NIKKI HALEY NUKES HER CAMPAIGN, SIDES WITH DISNEY IN RIDICULOUS ATTACK ON RON DESANTIS:

Hey @Disney, my home state will happily accept your 70,000+ jobs if you want to leave Florida.

We’ve got great weather, great people, and it’s always a great day in South Carolina!

SC’s not woke, but we’re not sanctimonious about it either. pic.twitter.com/uf1PWQjGc5

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 26, 2023

I assume she popped the top on a can of frosty cold Bud Light after taping this segment, just to go fully non-DeSantis.

KEEP ROCKIN’! Biden cheat sheet shows he had advance knowledge of journalist’s question.

A cheat sheet held by President Biden during a Wednesday press conference revealed that the 80-year-old commander in chief had advance knowledge of a question from a journalist.

“How are YOU squaring YOUR domestic priorities — like reshoring semiconductors manufacturing — with alliance-based foreign policy?” read a question from Los Angeles Times reporter Courtney Subramanian.

The revelation came during a joint press conference with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol that discussed growing nuclear threats from North Korea — as the nations celebrate the 70th anniversary of their alliance.

Another cheat sheet showed the names of other Biden administration officials to relay the order remarks would be delivered at the press conference.

It’s not the first time Biden’s crib notes have been outed by speedy photojournalists — which fuel Republicans’ speculation about his mental acuity. His physician reported the president was in good health in February, but refused to field questions from reporters about his cognitive strength.

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and their willingness to go along with (P)resident Biden’s handlers makes perfect sense.

(Classical reference in headline.)

ENVIRONMENTALISTS WANT TO MAKE THEIR RELIGION OFFICIAL: “Now I am actually all for this. Hear me out: if we start making Earth Day and the theology of this article officially recognized religious holidays, we can go to federal court to invalidate environmentalism as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. We can’t be mixing up church and state you know.”

IS THE HOUSE OF STEPHANOPOULOS TURNING ON SUNDOWN JOE?

Corporate Media reporter just asked Biden why he's running for re-election when over 70% of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, DON'T want him to run

Brutal. pic.twitter.com/TA9wye3gWw

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 26, 2023

Meanwhile, is the Gray Lady turning on the elderly president? Even the Times Is Airing Concerns about Biden’s Age and ‘Cognitive Abilities.’

THE LID: Randi Weingarten Is An Enemy Of America’s Schoolchildren.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A MUCH BIGGER BLOG: Three huge problems with Biden’s new ‘equity’-based mortgage policy.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Eco-Terrorist ‘Pipeline’ Bombs at Box Office.

James Cameron caught little heat for a shocking admission. He hearts eco-terrorism.

It’s one thing for the “Avatar” director to be so green he makes his cast and crew eat vegan. That seems quaint compared to a quote that got ignored by most press outlets.

Now, we have an entire film dedicated to eco-activists willing to employ violence to suit their needs. And it’s clear where the story’s empathy lies.

“How to Blow Up a Pipeline” deserves some sort of Truth in Advertising award. The story follows a gang of eco-thugs plotting to deliver on the title’s promise.

HiT guest critic Joshua Sharf called it “really good agitprop” along with this warning.

In other exchanges, we hear the familiar refrain, “you can’t make omelets without breaking a few eggs,” unaware that violent revolution generally produces a lot of broken eggs and few omelets.

The film enjoyed a limited release April 7 but expanded to north of 500 theaters last weekend. The results?

A measly $600K to date.

I’m glad to see the film bomb, but it will likely have a quite a shelf life in the form of DVDs, cable and satellite reruns and streaming platforms. (See also: Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, which is an excellent Manchurian Candidate-style political thriller, but execrable as a history lesson.)

THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND:

Shot: Jim Cramer Is Surprised No One Is Buying This ‘Very Good Bank’ Amid Crash.

Celebrity stock picker and CNBC host Jim Cramer tweeted early Tuesday that First Republic is a bargain buy and he was surprised that a big broker wasn’t interested in it.

“Fear is so palpable that no one seems to want to step up and buy a very good bank like First Republic which can probably be had for one fourth of what it was worth three months ago,” he said.

“It has an amazing client base. Surprised a big broker isn’t interested.”

—Business Insider, March 14th.

Chaser: First Republic Bank Expected to be Seized by US Government.

First Republic lost more than 40 percent of its deposits, approximately $72 billion, in the first quarter of this year. Its shares sank nearly 50 percent as of end-Tuesday. This is according to a Monday announcement by the bank.

The bank has seen record drops over the past month and a half, particularly since the Silicon Valley Bank was closed in March. Multiple big banks have also struggled, however, it looks like First Republic will be falling into the hands of the US government soon.

—Watcher.Guru, today.

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Anthony Fauci Says Don’t Blame Him for COVID Lockdowns and School Closures.

The interview is framed by the Times as an inside look at Fauci as he “wrestles with the hard lessons of the pandemic—and the decisions that will define his legacy.” But when it comes time to answer the tough questions about who was at fault for America’s botched response to COVID-19, the good doctor is happy to pass the buck. The blame is spread around, not only to the CDC and the other public health apparatuses for which Fauci became a convenient (and willing) personification but also to the politicians who followed public health recommendations without any consideration of the costs involved.

Here’s the most interesting and illuminating part of the exchange:

“I gave a public-health recommendation that echoed the C.D.C.’s recommendation, and people made a decision based on that,” says Fauci. “I’m not an economist. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is not an economic organization. The surgeon general is not an economist. So we looked at it from a purely public-health standpoint. It was for other people to make broader assessments—people whose positions include but aren’t exclusively about public health. Those people have to make the decisions about the balance between the potential negative consequences of something versus the benefits of something.”

In a certain way, Fauci is correct about all this. He never called for the closure of specific schools, nor did he stand at the podium in the White House briefing room and announce which businesses could stay open and which must close. Those acute decisions were made by other people—by governors, mostly, but also by local elected officials and school boards. And they were made, in the case of schools specifically, with teachers unions weighing heavily on the scales.

But in October of 2020, Fauci told an interviewer, “I recommended to the President [Trump] that we shut the country down.” Shameless Anthony Fauci tries to completely rewrite history on his starring role in COVID shutdowns.

Fauci in October 2020 on the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic: “I recommended to the President [Trump] that we shut the country down.”pic.twitter.com/B6CeXPbPcA https://t.co/ZnZCPFAMOg

— Jerry Dunleavy 🇺🇸 (@JerryDunleavy) April 25, 2023

Why, it’s as if: Fauci Has No Idea Why People Are Mad At Him.

GOODER AND HARDER, SAN FRAN: San Francisco Target puts entire inventory on lockdown amid shoplifting crisis.

San Francisco’s last Republican mayor left office at the beginning of 1964.

OUT ON A LIMB: Aaron Rodgers doesn’t realize how good he had it in Green Bay. He’ll soon find out with Jets.

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: Biden Bemoans Banning Of Pornographic Children’s Books.

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Aaron Rodgers Retires From Professional Football To Play With The Jets. “At publishing time, Aaron Rodgers had asked if anyone had some psychedelics because he just sobered up enough to realize he had actually signed with the New York Jets.”

IT’S COME TO THIS: Belgium Destroys Thousands of Miller High Life Cans Over ‘Champagne of Beers’ Slogan.

RIP: Harry Belafonte, award-winning actor and singer, dead at 96.

TO BE FAIR, THAT MAKES HER A GOOD FIT WITH PRESIDENT TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE: Biden’s Pick For Top Africa Job Twice Failed Foreign Service Officer Test, ‘Couldn’t Get Through the English Grammar Section.’

In a July 2021 interview with Ghana’s CitiTV, then-United States ambassador to Ghana Stephanie Sanders Sullivan recounted her “strange” first attempt to complete the Foreign Service Officer Test, a written exam required for most career diplomats.

“I couldn’t even get through the English grammar section, which was my forte,” said Sullivan, a native English speaker and Brown University graduate. The diplomat, who Biden nominated last November to serve as the chief envoy to the entire African continent, said she bombed the test because she “was on village time.” Though it’s not clear what “village time” means, Sullivan says she left a third of the questions blank, leading her to fail the exam. Nevertheless, she persisted.

“There’s a little bit of that ‘Little Engine That Could’: I think I can, I think I can,” Sullivan told the interviewer. “So, the next year I tried again, and I also didn’t pass.”

The ambassador to the African Union has grown increasingly important as Washington attempts to strengthen ties with the continent as a bulwark against Chinese influence. The CCP’s Belt and Road initiative entices developing countries with the promise of infrastructure projects and low-interest loans, which often leave the nations in debt to Beijing. Senior American officials have visited an African nation four times in 2023 alone in an effort to shore up alliances on the continent. Vice President Kamala Harris recently concluded a high-profile African tour.

Why would Biden care about the CCP getting a stake in African nations? GOP lawmakers say they’re ‘getting to the truth’ about Biden family payments from China: ‘Reeks of corruption.’

DISPATCHES FROM THE ICE FLOE: Dianne Feinstein and the Cult of Indispensability.

Dianne Feinstein is incapable of doing the most elemental part of her job, but she’s still adept at discrediting my work. Back in January, I wrote a defense of gerontocracy, occasioned by the end of Nancy Pelosi’s long run as speaker of the House. I argued that oldsters just do it better, because nobody is born to effectively wield power; it’s a learned skill. My primary evidence was the trio of senior citizens—not just Pelosi but also Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer—that orchestrated the two most fertile years of legislation in recent memory.But the 89-year-old Feinstein, who is out with shingles, is making a compelling counterargument: Octogenarian politicians sometimes behave like grandparents refusing to hand over the keys to the car. They stop in traffic for no apparent reason and never accelerate above 20, but they’re under the delusion that they’re still good drivers.

I understand that acknowledging this may make some uncomfortable. All of us, if we are lucky, face the indignities of aging. In other circumstances, the fact that Feinstein can’t cast votes in the Senate might not be terribly meaningful for the country. But the Senate is evenly divided—and when she is out of pocket, the Democrats can’t prevail on a party-line vote. Because she sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee—and Republicans refuse to let her trade the assignment with a colleague physically fit for the job—Democrats are unable to send any of their nominees to the bench to the floor of the Senate.

This isn’t a trivial part of Feinstein’s job. Without a majority in the House, it is more or less the entirety of it. A more liberal bench is the only lasting achievement available to her party, and she’s preventing its realization. This is a fleeting opportunity, moreover: Even if Biden wins reelection, the political map nearly guarantees a Republican majority in two years’ time. These next few months are the narrow window for Democrats to aggressively erode the GOP’s capture of the judiciary.

Ed Morrissey adds, “A reasonable question, but in [Franklin] Foer’s telling, the answer is: only when it interferes with Democrats’ agenda. It’s not just a gerontological issue either, given John Fetterman’s obvious impairments. Both parties have been guilty of refusing to let go of impaired pols, but for now this is clearly a Democrat issue — especially in the White House.”

Flashback: The Democratic Party’s Ice Floe Politics.

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Tucker Carlson for president? “Tucker has served as a sort of kingmaker for American conservatives and Republican politicians in recent years. But what would happen if Tucker decided that he himself is the king now? What if Tucker acted on a long-held fringe rumor that he might actually jump into the 2024 GOP primary, upending any expectations of a two-man race between former president Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis? Carlson’s sudden departure from Fox will no doubt kick the speculators and pollsters into action. His name, whether he intends for it to be or not, will likely begin to appear in polling.”