COULDN’T HAPPEN TO A NICER BUNCH: ‘Ozempic Face’ Destroying the Hollywood Beautiful People?

WELL, YES: Activist Groups Trained Students for Months Before Campus Protests: Left-wing groups and veteran demonstrators provided guidance and support before rise of pro-Palestinian encampments.

For the last decade, donations to NSJP have been received and administered by the Wespac Foundation, according to Howard Horowitz, Wespac’s board chairman. The donations are passed on to NSJP “for projects in the United States,” he said, declining to provide further details.

Wespac, a nonprofit based in Westchester County near New York City, is decades old, according to its website. It has supported humanitarian causes, as well as organizations that propagate antisemitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Wespac has posted support of pro-Palestinian protests on social media and posted videos in which protesters held signs that refer to President Biden as “Genocide Joe.” . . .

“There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas,” Kates said. “These are the people that are on the front lines defending Palestine.”

Samidoun didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment. The German government banned the group last November after saying it supported terrorism and antisemitism, and incited the use of violence to enforce political interests.

This is just the surface.

OPEN THREAD: Light this candle.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA awards studies for commercial Mars missions.

IT’S HOW THE MACHINE WORKS: Thoughts on Selective Law Enforcement. “You have a right to free speech, but that doesn’t give you a First Amendment right to camp out on my lawn with protest signs. That’s trespassing. But government officials sometimes allow trespassing when they sympathize with the trespasser’s viewpoint. Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC have refused to remove progressive anti-Israel protesters camping out at private universities — Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and George Washington University.”

This should give rise to civil rights lawsuits. Plus:

As a University of Pennsylvania alumnus notes, these illegal protests are only being allowed by progressive officials because of the viewpoint they are expressing. If the protesters were “white nationalists waving nazi flags and telling black people they should go back to Africa I’m sure [police] would be out there pretty quickly” to remove them. . . . This favoritism by progressive cities violates the First Amendment. According to the Supreme Court, the government cannot favor certain kinds of protests over others.

But that’s how the left rolls: “For my friends, everything. For my enemies: The law.”

Plus: “From what I can gather, the problem in cities is usually not that the police department itself is unwilling to assist, but that they are under orders from the mayor, afraid of upsetting far left constituents, to stand down. This is going a bit beyond my expertise, but from what I understand the Justice Department could and should, but won’t under the Biden administration, investigate whether these police departments are violating the terms of their federal funding, and also denying equal protection of the law, by refusing to enforce the law for ideological and political reasons. An added factor is that this lack of enforcement is to the specific detriment of Jewish students who have disproportionately faced threats, intimidation, and violence from people at the encampments.”

SO IN PROSECUTING TRUMP FOR MISHANDLING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS, THE PROSECUTORS MISHANDLED THE CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: Prosecutors: Docs in boxes seized from Mar-a-Lago were inadvertently jumbled. “Special counsel Jack Smith’s team acknowledged Friday that some evidence in the prosecution of former President Donald Trump for hoarding classified documents at his Florida home may not be in the same sequence FBI agents found it when they swept into the Mar-a-Lago compound with a search warrant in August 2022. The concession from prosecutors in a court filing Friday afternoon came after attorneys for one of Trump’s co-defendants asked for a delay in the case because the defense lawyers were having trouble determining precisely where particular documents had come from in the 33 boxes the FBI seized almost two years ago. In their filing, prosecutors acknowledged the government had previously — and incorrectly — told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that the boxes remained ‘in their original, intact form as seized,’ other than a decision to replace classified documents with placeholder sheets.”

YOU DON’T WANT TO BE STUCK WITH AN OBSOLETE PLATFORM: Experts Discuss The Dark Likelihood of ‘Abandoned’ Brain Implant Technology.

THIS SHOULD MAKE TERRAFORMING EASIER: NASA’s Curiosity Rover Uncovers Signs of an Earth-Like Environment on Ancient Mars.

IT’S LIKE JURASSIC PARK FOR BIRDS: What happened when scientists taught parrots to video chat?

OF SORTS: Tested: 2023 Mercedes-Maybach S680 4Matic Is a Bargain of Sorts.

THE ATF PERFORMING TO ITS USUAL STANDARDS: South Carolinian Faced 115 Years in Prison Until ATF Admitted They Got the Wrong Man.

VROOM: Ferrari 12Cilindri Deep Dive Preview: No electric here, just pure V12 beauty.

HE COULD DO A LOT WORSE, AND PROBABLY WILL: Is Winsome Sears on Trump’s Short List for a Running Mate? “She’s a rising star in Republican politics. Like Trump, she is known for delivering unfiltered opinions on controversial topics. At a time when college campuses are being disrupted by pro-Hamas demonstrations, the Trump campaign may be thinking about a strong show of support for law and order to contrast with Biden’s cowardice in addressing the problem. And, she is a black woman. Sears would provide a sharp contrast to Kamala Harris on a debate stage.” Well, yes, she can speak in coherent sentences and everything. Plus she has actual experience and substantive knowledge.

The born in Jamaica thing is an issue, though. You can’t be VP if you’re ineligible to be President. But the story just says her father is Jamaican. I don’t know if her mother is a U.S. citizen but if so she’s good no matter where she was born.

MICROBIOME NEWS: Researchers discover compounds produced by gut bacteria that can treat inflammation.

HEALTH CARE COST CONTAINMENT HAS GOTTEN OUT OF HAND: Orangutan treats facial wound with medicinal plant.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Anxiety is rising among Americans amid economic struggles, looming election.

JOHN LUCAS: The Latest News About the Antisemitic Attacks on University Campuses? “Republicans Pounce.”

I’D JUST LIKE TO SAY GOOD LUCK, WE’RE ALL COUNTING ON YOU: NASA and Boeing “Go” for Historic Starliner Test Mission.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UW-Milwaukee employs about one administrator for every five students.

YEAH, BASICALLY: Student protesters are no different than babies, an analysis.

SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP — LAWYERS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE TOUGH, NOT WUSSES: “Irrevocably Shaken”: Columbia Law Review Editors Demand Cancellation Of Exams Due To Campus Protests.

As Jonathan Turley notes: “[T]he question is how such law students are emotionally prepared for the pressures of practice when such protests shut them down and leave them ‘unable to focus.’ However, they have been educated in systems that have fostered the sense of victimization or trauma from opposing views.”

LOL, TAYLOR LORENZ:

Taylor Lorenz suggests that members of the LGBTQ community are treated the same in Texas and Florida as they are in Gaza where they’re thrown off rooftops.

She somehow manages to even make Don Lemon sound reasonable! 🤡pic.twitter.com/ysmjOtxgUC

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 3, 2024

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Pew: Catholic Vote Swinging to Trump — By Double Digits — Over ‘Devout’ Biden.

COLLUSION: Hillary Clinton group wired $500,000 to climate activists behind disruptive protests.

WELL, GOOD: The toppling of the woke authoritarians: From Scotland to New Zealand to Canada, politicians are on a collision course with the public.