DID BROOKINGS BIRTH TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME? The Epoch Times’ Jeff Carlson has found something crassly partisan and almost wholly unexpected at the Brookings Institution, one of the most establishmentarian institutions of the Washington Establishment.

CALIFORNIA, HERE BE MONSTERS: J. Frank Bullitt, writing on Issues & Insights, catalogues the once-Golden State’s current and growing woes as driving factors in the creation of what Victor Davis Hanson calls “America’s first Third-World state.”

HOPE HICKS DESTROYED RUSSIA COLLUSION HOAX, AGAIN: Congressional Democrats who thought former Trump 2016 campaign and White House insider would somehow revive the Russia collusion narrative got bumpkus, according to Margot Cleveland, writing this morning in the Washington Free Beacon.

Among much else, Cleveland reports “Hick’s responses during last week’s hearing also provided fresh insight into Trump’s behind-the-scenes response to news of Russian interference. Hicks noted that the campaign only ‘became aware that the Russian government was attempting to interfere in the 2016 elections’ when the story hit the press. The president’s former confidant added that any conversations she was privy to during the campaign concerning Russia interference in the election mirrored what Trump said publicly.”

Cleveland also helpfully provides in a separate piece the eight most VIP takeaways from the Hicks testimony and cross-examination.

ROSIAK EXPOSES ANOTHER HILL COMPUTER OUTRAGE: The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Luke Rosiak busted Pakistani computer rogue Imran Awan in 2017, and now he’s peeling back the layers of deception, deceit and denial in yet another Hill IT scandal.

Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) is a former CIA agent and freshman congressman, who hired Samantha DeForst-Davis, accomplice to convicted felon Jackson Cosko, the former Senate IT aide behind what federal prosecutors called “the largest data theft in Senate history.”

“Spanberger’s spokesman Connor Joseph did not respond to a request to explain whether the congresswoman’s office called anyone in the Senate to get a job reference and why her central Virginia constituents should trust that her office safeguards their personal data,” Rosiak reports today.

“Capitol Police spokeswoman Eva Malecki did not respond to a request to explain why it did not alert Spanberger that the House’s newest pending hire was a suspect in an ongoing criminal investigation. Spanberger is a member of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee, which deals with information of interest to America’s adversaries,” Rosiak writes.

If you haven’t already got it, be sure and get your hands on a copy of Rosiak’s “Obstruction of Justice,” his detailed account of how he broke open the Awan outrage. Just click on the Shop Amazon button above.

HONG KONG SEA PARTS; MOSES UNAVAILABLE FOR COMMENT: World attention has been garnered by those massive protests in Hong Kong of an extradition bill that would result in residents accused of crimes being shipped to mainland China for trial.

A major factor in the protests is Christianity, thanks to both Catholic and Protestant groups, so much so that, as HillFaith points out, even the New York Times has noticed. Be advised, Beijing: The world is watching. And a lot of us remember this. And this. Berlin Fang remembers because he was there.

WHAT IF TRUMP ACTUALLY CAN DEPORT A MILLION OR MORE ILLEGALS? The president’s immigration critics instantly condemned as impossible his vow to deport “millions” of illegal aliens starting next week. But a close look at the data suggests Trump can put a huge dent in their ranks.

OH WHAT A TANGLED WEB HUMA WEAVED: Huma Abedin, the former Hillary Clinton Deputy Chief of Staff at the Department of State and close personal aide during the 2016 presidential campaign, said during a 2016 deposition that she first learned of her boss’ home-brew unsecured email system by “reading in some news articles about a year, a year-and-a-half ago, when it was—it was being publicly discussed.”

But now along comes another former Clinton aide, Justin Cooper, who previously worked for President Bill Clinton and for the Clinton Foundation, claiming he worked with Abedin to set up Hillary’s private email account in 2009.

Somebody appears to be indulging in a particularly blatant misrepresentation of fact, which could be viewed as perjury or obstruction or … But, as Judicial Watch chief Tom Fitton points out this morning in The Epoch Times, Attorney General William Barr has to take the lead in seeing that justice is done.

IS THIS HOW TO BEAT BIG TECH? Rich Logis at The American Thinker sees a way the Conservative Media Industrial Complex (CMIC) can defeat Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the lefty Silicon Valley giants.  What do you think?

UAW LOST CHATTANOOGA VW PLANT VOTE, AGAIN: It kind of got lost in news, but on Friday night VW workers at the German auto giant’s Chattanooga, Tenn., plant again voted against forming a UAW-affiliated union.

As LaborPains noted, the margin of victory for the anti-union forces was slightly smaller this time than in 2014, but the defeat was still a loss and came after the UAW spent who knows how much on its campaign:

“Regardless of whether you were pro- or anti-UAW, local news reports made clear it was impossible to miss the union’s message in Chattanooga. The union’s lavish spending on television, radio, digital and even gas station advertisements ensured that workers were well-educated on what they were voting for (or against) this week. A pro-union reporter even suggested that the city was “mobilized” in favor of the UAW.”

HEY, BERNIE, WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO WON’T JOIN THE COMMUNE? Or, as the scribes of Issues & Insights put it in a thought-provoking editorial: “The big question that never gets addressed regarding these and other ‘explanations’ of socialism is: Why do the self-identified ‘democratic socialists’ feel it’s OK to force those who’d rather be free into their collective?”

IS THIS THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT’S BIGGEST FAILURE? President Donald Trump has been able to appoint legions of qualified conservative federal judges in great part thanks to the years of cultivation by the Federalist Society of potential candidates. Similarly, there have been lots of smart conservative economists available for key positions in the White House and Department of Treasury. There are even growing numbers of young, smart, capable conservative journalists who will be media giants in coming years.

But where are the legions of smart conservatives who know how to manage a Department of Housing and Urban Development or a Department of Health and Human Services, while implementing a genuinely conservative policy agenda? Such people are few and far between, according to Lyman Stone, writing today on The Federalist.

“Some administrations just make compromises: They fill positions with people who are mostly conservative or sort of conservative, or at least conservative enough. The result is an administration that is Republican, but not actually conservative,” Stone writes.

Speaking from my years in the executive branch during the Reagan administration and before that on Capitol Hill, I know Stone is hitting the bullseye. I believe he’s pointing out the conservative movement’s biggest failure.

Liberals and Democrats love government, know how to manage its expansion and fight the political battles to protect it. Conservatives, with few exceptions, have no idea how to deal with, much less manage on a day-to-day basis, career bureaucrats who are masters of the turf wars.

Stone has a fine suggestion:

“We need a Federalist Society for socially conservative federal workers, we need Masters of Public Administration/Masters of Public Policy programs staffed and funded with academics friendly to conservative programs, we need existing talent recruitment and internship programs to re-orient their curricula towards actually training people to take on the state, and we need conservative donors to put up the money to support these efforts.”

As Glenn says, just keep scrolling because Stone has much of immense value to say on these matters.

TIME TO STOP IGNORING SEX TRAFFICKING OF BOYS (GIRLS, TOO!): It’s a horrendous evil for anybody, male or female, to be held in captivity by sex traffickers, the modern-day form of slavery, but The Epoch Times’ Bowen Xiao reports that males “are severely neglected in an already hidden problem when it comes to resources, services, and public awareness campaigns—which focus predominantly on women.”

I can just about guarantee that reading Xiao’s reporting will break your heart, especially when you realize how traffickers abuse the U.S. foster child system.

NOW STENY HOYER AIDE LINKED TO OBAMA’S SPYGATE: Judicial Watch released documents Wednesday that show the national security advisor to the number two House Democratic leader coordinated Steele Dossier work during and after the 2016 presidential election with top Obama administration officials at the State Department.

MAFIA HIT MAN ASSESSES JOHN DEAN: The aging Watergate felon came back for an encore Monday before the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York.

The American Spectator’s George Parry, a former federal attorney, talked to an old informant, a reformed Mafia hit man, who knew Dean in federal prison. The hit man’s assessment of Dean? Nadler should hold on tight to any silver coins he has.

AOC WANTS A RAISE? ISSUES & INSIGHTS HAS A BETTER IDEA: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) thinks her current salary of $174,000 a year isn’t enough to keep her colleagues from using all those evil “dark-money loopholes.” House Democrats are considering allowing a $2,500 Cost-Of-Living Adjustment (COLA), but AOC says that’s not enough.

Now along comes the Issues & Insights crew with an absolutely brilliant proposal: AOC’s current salary is three times the Median Household Income (MHI) for her congressional district of $58,331, which clearly makes it a prime illustration of America’s yawning income gap.

So how about AOC and every other member of the House be paid whatever the MHI is for their district? Just think of the incentives that pay structure would instantly create for every representative to get serious about the growing the U.S. economy, creating new jobs and opening the doors of opportunity for everybody in their district. Why, it might even make Supply Sider Reaganauts out of them!!

NOTHING SMALL-TOWN ABOUT U.S. CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: President Donald Trump has all but declared war on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (CoC), saying he’s a member of it but probably not for much longer. The CoC, Trump claims, “is more for the companies and the people that are members than they are for our country.”

Harsh judgement? Not at all, at least according to Sundance at The Last Refuge, who  argues that “the CoC is the lead U.S. member of the multinational ‘Big Club’, and has driven policies directly against Main Street USA for three decades.  Until now no modern U.S. president has ever been willing, or fearless enough, to take them on … ‘until now.’ And that’s just for openers. It gets better here.

STEELE HAD CLINTON LINKS BEFORE FUSION GPS: A new batch of State Department emails obtained by Judicial Watch in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation shows former British spy Christopher Steele had a key aide to Secretary of State John Kerry promoting him within the government. Kerry’s role in Spygate may be more significant than heretofore realized.

And, perhaps even more important in some respects, the emails further show that Steele was dealing with Clinton inner circle types before he was retained by Fusion GPS and paid indirectly by Hillary’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

TIC-TOC-TIC … Go here.

IF YOU HAPPEN TO BE IN DC TUESDAY OR THURSDAY: If your schedule permits and you have the inclination, I absolutely love meeting Instapundit readers (who in my experience constitute a noticeably classier bunch of folks than I am accustomed to here in The Swamp!). Check out my “Office Hours” schedule here.

UNDERCOVER VIDEO FROM CHINESE LABOR CAMP: Never-before-seen undercover video shot inside one of China’s labor camp shows inmates forced to spend long hours doing menial work at desks, with “cabbage swimming” soup their basic sustenance. Protesters of the terrible conditions are beaten badly, chained to beds, according to The Epoch Times, which has extensive sources inside China.

AFTER HOROWITZ, THE BARR DELUGE: That’s the prediction of Margot Cleveland this morning on The Federalist. She’s a 25-year veteran of the federal judiciary system, so her insights about Department of Justice procedures are particularly interesting. Should be read in conjunction with the column by the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone, highlighted here earlier today by Glenn.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE ABOUT D-DAY: Here.

ANOTHER LEFTY DARK MONEY FRONT GROUP EXPOSED: Ever hear of or contributed money to SalmonState? You probably thought it’s an Alaska-based environmental non-profit. It’s not, it’s a front for the New Venture Fund. Hayden Ludwig of the Capital Research Center explains:

“Together with its three ‘sister’ nonprofits, the New Venture Fund forms a massive ‘dark money’ network housed in the D.C. headquarters of Arabella Advisors, a for-profit philanthropy consulting firm created by ex-Clinton administration staffer Eric Kessler.

“And Arabella’s empire is dark. Between 2013 and 2017, its four interlocking nonprofits brought in a staggering $1.6 billion—largely from untraceable donors and major foundations on the Left, including George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.”

Ludwig has much more here.

THINK MILLENNIALS ARE AMERICA’S FIRST “POST-CHRISTIAN” GENERATION? MIGHT BE TIME TO THINK AGAIN: A new joint survey by the Barna Group and Alpha USA finds non-Christian millennials are twice as likely as non-believing members of older generations to be interested in learning more about the faith and what it could mean in their life. More here on HillFaith where the graphic captures the high points.

And BTW, if you think this data is irrelevant, I am posting this item while sitting in the Longworth House Office Building cafeteria surrounded by Millennials who have a great deal of influence. They may be the most obscure power group in Washington, D.C.

Yes, only senators and representatives have a vote, but guess who writes the bills, does the research for background briefings, lays out legislative strategy options and handles a hundred other daily chores that go a looonnng way to shape what happens in Congress. What these people believe — and don’t believe — is a big deal.

IS A PERMANENT EARMARK BAN REALLY PERMANENT? That’s the worry among Porkbusters old-timers when they hear that the Senate Republican Conference approved Sen. Ben Sasse’s permanent extension of former Sem. Jim DeMint’s 2011 moratorium.

NO, VA BEACH IS NOT INDICATIVE OF A MASS SHOOTING EPIDEMIC IN U.S.: A standard trope from Democrats whenever there is a tragedy like the Virginia Beach massacre is that such mass shootings are at epidemic levels in America. And so it was Friday in the wake of the Virginia crime.

But compared to the most of the rest of the world, the U.S. has comparatively far fewer such crimes, according to data from 97 countries compiled and analyzed by Dr. John Lott, founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center (PPRC).

Lott is often harshly (and unjustly in my view) by gun control advocates, but Spencer Critchley, a former investigative journalist-turned Democratic communications guru, offered in The Epoch Times both a reasonable critique and some sound advice about appealing to gun owners for the swarm of Democrats seeking to unseat President Donald Trump in 2020.