ICYMI:

🇵🇦🇺🇸🇨🇳 | URGENT

Panama breaks with China and aligns itself with the US: Mulino abandons the Silk Road, resumes military exercises with Washington, and joins forces with Hegseth to secure the Canal, curb migration, and contain the communist advance in the region. pic.twitter.com/CTWgT46JBv

— BowTiedMara (@BowTiedMara) April 9, 2025

SAVE THE PLANET:

95% of all plastic in the world’s seas and oceans comes from 10 rivers, 2 of which are in Africa and the rest are in Asia. The great lie of modern environmentalism is that anything we do in the West will make a difference as long as Asia and Africa continue to pollute like this. https://t.co/KZOlUMY60H pic.twitter.com/nr966mEgla

— RAW EGG NATIONALIST (@Babygravy9) April 8, 2025

STANDING UP AGAINST RACISM: Top conservative civil rights advocates seek repeal of Minority-Serving Institutions program: Proposed alternative legislation to redirect funds toward need-based financial aid.

CHANGE: Free speech surges on college campuses: A Gallup poll of over 2,300 currently enrolled bachelor’s degree students found that the majority believe they are able to speak freely on their campuses. But: “Free speech challenges still remain for pro-Israel and conservative speech.”

ARREST, IMPRISON, EXPEL, DEPORT: Princeton Radicals Disrupt Event With Naftali Bennet, Yelling ‘Genocide’ and Pulling Fire Alarm: ‘This is our land, you came from Europe running away from the Holocaust!’ one activist yells.

BOSTON POLITICS: Could plea deal get Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson deported? “The terms of a plea agreement Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson reached with federal prosecutors raises questions about whether her decision to plead guilty to two public corruption charges could get her deported. . . . Fernandes Anderson, 46, was born in Cape Verde, and at the age of 10, immigrated to Roxbury. She was the first African immigrant, Muslim-American and formerly undocumented immigrant elected to the City Council, in November 2021. The plea agreement states that by pleading guilty to two of the six public corruption charges that were lodged against her in a December 2024 federal indictment, Fernandes Anderson may be at risk of deportation from the United States. . . . Fernandes Anderson said Tuesday that she intends to resign from her $120,000 position on the City Council. The prior indictment states that she carried out a bonus kickback scheme in a City Hall bathroom.”

TWO BIG STORIES AND A NOTHING: Trump Freezes Funding at Cornell and Northwestern, Plus Obama Weighs In. “The Trump administration has frozen more than $1 billion in funding for Cornell and $790 million for Northwestern amid civil rights investigations into both schools, two administration officials said.”

TRUTH IS WHATEVER SERVES THE NEEDS OF THE PARTY AT THE MOMENT: Now They Tell Us: How Top Democrats Changed Their Tune on Biden’s Decline After the Election: In cruel twist of irony, Hillary Clinton may have been the only one who wasn’t lying.

KAROL MARKOWICZ: Democrats lit the ‘assassination culture’ fuse — now their silence equals violence.

Related:

Democrats routinely call for street violence and refuse to condemn it when it happens because they know it’s effective. Weak losers like Mitt Romney and Amy Barrett get eaten alive by these tactics.

The failed assassination of Kavanaugh wasn’t a failure. It was a huge success. https://t.co/NF0UCfNPLD

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) April 8, 2025

Plus: Let’s Kill the Republicans. “It has been a while since Democrats have assassinated a Republican president, but that peaceful interlude may be ending soon.”

Stop tolerating this behavior and hold those behind it accountable.

WELL, THAT’S A PROBLEM:

A single shipyard in China can, within a year, out-produce decades worth of ships in the US. That’s a huge problem.

An unclassified slide released by U.S. naval intelligence last year estimated that China’s total shipbuilding capacity was now more than 632 times that of the US. https://t.co/AtWFUuA7UP

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 8, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Blogging on a groovy Tuesday.

SO COMMON IT’S NOT NEWS ANYMORE, BUT THAT’S NEWSWORTHY ON ITS OWN: SpaceX launches 27 Starlink satellites on brand-new Falcon 9 rocket, aces Pacific Ocean landing (video).

“WE’RE HELPING CLEAN UP THE PLANET:” “Voilà. Over 150 barrels of human shit.”

GOOD NEWS: Donald Trump’s Energy Department Saved Your Appliances: Decades of efficiency mandates have made dishwashers weaker, A.C. units feebler, and appliances more expensive. A new rollback offers a rare win for function over dogma.

Is it really “efficiency” if you have to run your dishwasher twice to get your dishes clean?

STANDING ON PRINCIPLE:

This guy didn’t resign when IRS employees leaked the sensitive tax information of 405,000 citizens to ProPublica, but draws the line at a legitimate law enforcement request for information on non-citizens. https://t.co/AFTyzkIqlo

— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) April 8, 2025

WELL, GOOD: Acting ATF Director Kash Patel Announces an End to the Agency’s Abusive ‘Zero Tolerance’ FFL Inspection Program.

FASTER, PLEASE: Gene discovery reveals potential for growing new heart arteries.

EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: Surprise! Ferrari Might Not Have Built Its Last Stick-Shift Sports Car: The exclusive exotic carmaker hasn’t built a manual-transmission vehicle in over a decade, but never say never.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Pepper Spray: Do It Right The First Time: Point and shoot still requires some skill to use.

THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Scientists discover new microbes in Earth’s deep soil.

TRANSPARENCY: NASA to livestream Senate confirmation hearing for Trump’s nominee to lead space agency.

ABDOMINAL BLOATING: This common cause of bloating has nothing to do with food. “For many people, frequent bloating has little to do with gas or stool; it could be an abnormal muscle response, researchers in my field have come to understand.”

UNSURPRISING: Study flags low blood sugar linked to weight-loss drugs.

SALENA ZITO: My Decade With Donald Trump.

MORE LIKE THIS PLEASE: CU Boulder pro-Hamas protestors barge into class – get yanked out by their keffiyehs.

A trio of pro-Hamas student activists barged into a University of Colorado Boulder classroom last week, and were promptly hauled back out by their keffiyehs.

The Daily Camera reports after entering the “Designing for Defense” class, one of the activists went to the front of the room and prepared to read a statement, whereupon a man who appeared to be the instructor said “No you may not.”

He then grabbed the statement and said “Get out.”

The students say they were “violently assaulted,” but it sounds like a clear case of molliter manus imposuit to me.