“MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE:” Fourth of July BBQ price up $10 one year after White House celebrated 16-cent discount.

OKAY, GROOMERS: What Do A Cartoon Robot, Tampons, Transgenderism And Kids Have In Common? Disney’s Latest Attempt To ‘Queer’ Content.

WELCOME BACK, CARTER! Oil industry agrees. Refineries likely not coming back online under current conditions.

FINALLY, THE CURE FOR RISING OIL PRICES, INFLATION AND AN OUT OF CONTROL BORDER: Democrats unveiling ‘Transgender Bill of Rights.’

“VINDICTIVE SORE LOSER BUREAUCRATS HAVE ENDANGERED PEOPLE’S LIVES AND INVITED CONFLICT BY ILLEGALLY RELEASING CONFIDENTIAL PRIVATE INFORMATION:” Massive Trove of Gun Owners’ Private Information Leaked by California Attorney General.

WHERE’S HUNTER, FAT? Voicemail Proves That Joe Biden Did Speak To Hunter Biden About His Business Dealings, Specifically With His Dealings With The Man Hunter Biden Himself Identifies as “The Spy Chief of China.”

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: ‘The Jewish Factor, It’s Money:’ Biden Ambassador Pick Under Fire for Anti-Semitic Tirade.

BOMBSHELL? Surprise Jan. 6 Witness Claims Trump Grabbed Limo Wheel, Wanted to Join Capitol Protesters.

It’s two Trumps in one!

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): That didn’t last long:

As usual, the salacious stories about Trump turn out to be made up.

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): From the comments: “Will someone in D.C. please dress up as a steering wheel and hold a dramatic press conference? ‘Ohhhh, he tried to grab me! And Mark Judge saw the whole thing!'”

Plus, this, via the open thread:

Also, from tonight’s Open Thread: “If the Ds are doing so awesome with the abortion issue, why did they change the news cycle with the bogus Trump steering wheel stupidity?”

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Ghislaine Maxwell Sentenced To Prison In Spite Of Years Of Faithful Service To Nation’s Leaders.

THE COUNTRY’S IN THE VERY BEST OF HANDS: Justice Nominee Promises She’ll Divest Her Stake in Avantor.

President Joe Biden’s nominee for a top post at the Justice Department intends to sell her remaining $14.5 million stake in a company her father chairs, amid questioning about a report the company sold chemicals diverted by Mexican drug cartels to make heroin.

Vanita Gupta made the pledge in written responses to questions from Senator Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, as part of the nomination process. Grassley cited a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation that found a chemical Avantor Inc. makes, acetic anhydride, was easily tapped by narcotics gangs.

I guess that did the trick, as Gupta was confirmed in April.

HERE’S YOUR DAILY REMINDER THAT YOU CAN THREATEN SCOTUS JUSTICES BUT THE BABYLON BEE HAS BEEN BANNED SINCE MARCH FOR MISGENDERING SOMEONE.

LET ME JUST GET OUT AHEAD OF THE STORY AND SAY THAT GHISLAINE MAXWELL DID NOT COMMIT SUICIDE: Ghislaine Maxwell Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Sex Trafficking Crimes.

Maxwell was sentenced on Tuesday to 20 years in prison in her New York sex-trafficking case for procuring teen girls for Jeffrey Epstein for him to abuse. Maxwell, 60, has maintained her innocence.

Epstein, a convicted sex offender and financier whose elite associates once included Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton, was captured by federal authorities in July 2019, on sex-trafficking counts. He killed himself in a New York City federal jail just over one month after his arrest.

Maxwell’s attorneys had pushed for leniency in sentencing, saying that she should receive “well below” the 20 years recommended by federal probation officials. Prosecutors pushed for a sentence of 30 to 55 years in prison.

Maxwell, a former British socialite, was convicted on 29 December of five of the six charges she faced.

Related: “Maxwell looked at her victims, saying, ‘I am sorry for the pain that you experienced.’ ‘I hope my conviction and harsh incarceration brings you pleasure.’”

REPORTS: At Least 42 People Found Dead Inside Truck Carrying Migrants In Texas.

But no need to worry: Karine Jean-Pierre: It’s a fact that the border is closed.

DON’T GET COCKY: Allen West Says Dobbs Won’t Prevent a Red Wave in November.

WHY IS THE LOS ANGELES TIMES SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Is California ready for more Black people to legally carry guns in public?

Screenshot, in case they change the headline.

UPDATE: Some thoughts on the actual column from Ed Morrissey: LA Times wonders: Are progressive Californians ready for gun-totin’ black people?

Er … wut? Don’t let the headline throw you entirely because Erika Smith scores real points in the column, but that headline alone is worth attention in the wake of the Bruen decision last week. Let’s screencap it just in case someone at the Los Angeles Times thinks twice about the message it actually sends, rather than whatever it is they intended. Assuming those are two different things, that is:

[Screenshot included above — Ed]

Are they two different things? YMMV, but that headline strongly implies that the oh-so-progressive state of California is pretty danged racist, no? Actually yes, as Smith argues, and it’s not limited to the rapidly decreasing number of conservatives in the Golden State. Smith has a strong enough point to sustain that headline, emphasis mine:

Read the whole thing.

(Updated and bumped.)

THREE PEOPLE DEAD AFTER AMTRAK TRAIN DERAILS IN MISSOURI: “Roughly 243 passengers and 12 crew members were aboard the train when it derailed and there are early reports of injuries, though the railway company did not specify how many people were wounded. The incident occurred after the train struck a dump truck at a public crossing in Mendon, causing several cars to derail, Amtrak said…The derailment in Missouri occurred just one day after an Amtrak train collided with a car in Brentwood, California, killing three people and injuring two others, ABC 10 reported.”

IT’S THE RETURN OF “MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS!” This time thanks to ABC15 Arizona reporter Melissa Blasius:

We’ve been here before, of course: Bari Weiss’s November 21st Substack on “The Media’s Verdict on Kyle Rittenhouse” contained this now-viral screenshot of the unintentionally ironic Chyron by CNN from the previous year:

In accordance with the prophecy: Authorities Warn Tonight’s Protests May Escalate From ‘Mostly Peaceful’ To ‘Somewhat Peaceful.’

—The Babylon Bee, Friday.

NEW YORK SUPREME COURT DELIVERS A VICTORY FOR ELECTION INTEGRITY: “The New York State Supreme Court delivered a crushing blow to the Democrats’ power grab in New York City, ruling that non-citizens cannot vote in local elections.”

YOUR TERMS ARE ACCEPTABLE: Pop Star Pink Demands Pro-Life Americans ‘Never F**king Listen to My Music Again.’

Related: ‘F*** America:’ Green Day Star Billie Joe Armstrong says he’s renouncing his U.S.  citizenship during London concert in wake of SCOTUS overruling Roe. “The musician said he was staying in the UK and that ‘there’s just too much f***ing stupid in the world to go back to that miserable f***ing excuse for a country.'”

As Jim Treacher notes, “Okay. Goodbye and good luck. Hey, wait… he’s moving to England? Doesn’t the UK have stricter abortion laws than California? Forget it, he’s rolling.”

MILTON FRIEDMAN ISN’T RUNNING THE SHOW ANYMORE: Millions in California to Get up to $1,050 in ‘Inflation Relief.’

California Governor Gavin Newsom announced late Sunday night that he had reached an agreement with state legislators on a $17 billion “inflation relief package.”

“Millions of Californians will be receiving up to $1,050 as part of a NEW middle class tax rebate. That’s more money in your pocket to help you fill your gas tank and put food on the table,” he tweeted.

What could possibly go wrong? Hint: Bloomberg’s use of scary quotation marks in the headline seems quite appropriate in this case.

(Classical reference in headline.)

HOW MSNBC ACCIDENTALLY KILLED ROE: Tell your viewers conservatives are Neanderthals and they just might get complacent. “Democrats, here’s your game-changer: third-trimester abortions at every post office. And then, when you get shellacked in November, when you lose both houses of Congress, just remember this: the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards frantic attempts to normalize the gruesome.”

FAUXCAHONTAS ON THE WARPATH: Mad About Abortion, Elizabeth Warren Calls for the Destruction of the Supreme Court As We Know It.

YOU STAY CLASSY, CHICAGO! (Video) Chicago Mayor Lightfoot: “Fuck Clarence Thomas.”

Chicago’s last Republican mayor left office in 1931.

THE MILLION VOTER MARCH: Guess who’s winning the party-switching sweepstakes this cycle?

Hint: Don’t get cocky.

JOHN PODHORETZ REVIEWS ELVIS:

Elvis is 2 hours and 40 minutes of camera swoops and dissolves and wipes clearly intended to evoke not only Luhrmann’s own past work but Elvis’s own physical gyrations. This thing never slows down to the speed limit, not even for a second. The problem is that after 10 minutes of dazzlement—the sets and costumes and cinematography are absolutely gorgeous—the whole project starts seeming crazily desperate rather than refreshingly exhilarating. By the time the first hour has passed, you feel simultaneously overstimulated and under-entertained. By the time the second hour mark has come, you start wondering where Fat Elvis is already so you can see the end coming. And when it’s over, you may feel like you never want to go into a movie theater ever again.

Aside from Luhrmann’s welcome insistence that Elvis’s use of African-American musical tropes was born out of love and respect rather than an act of cultural appropriation, he has absolutely nothing of interest to say about Presley and clearly has no clue what the man was about. That is no sin—Elvis’s best biographer, Peter Guralnick, points out that it’s very hard to get a bead on Elvis because he “never kept a diary, left us with no memoirs, wrote scarcely any letters, and rarely submitted to interviews.” Still, if you’re going to make a biopic, you have to present a compelling character we’re willing to follow for the length of the movie—and Elvis here is a total cipher.

Read the whole thing.