IT’S ABOUT BRINGING AMERICA DOWN, NOT RAISING UP THE PALESTINIANS: If anybody with a brain and a pulse remains who doesn’t know the “Pro-Palestinian” movement is actually all about being anti-America, they should check this out:

“The people of Palestine have called for this movement to escalate its pressure. We are here to answer that call and help this movement ESCALATE. We want this movement to break out of the confines of universities, to spread throughout society, paralyzing the economy that is driving the genocide of the Palestinian people, and has made all of us complicit in decades of colonial war.”

That quote from one of movement’s front-groups is in the fourth installment of Richard Pollock’s deep-dive into the leadership, the tactics and the ultimate aims of the radical Left leaders of the Pro-Palestinian movement. Pollock is the former New Leftist who trained legions of his comrades using Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals.” He knows whereof he speaks.

MOST HILL DEM AIDES NOT PROUD TO BE AMERICANS? It’s an informal survey with self-selecting respondents to boot, but the results of a recent CNCT survey are nevertheless startling.

Among GOP congressional staffers, 89 percent said they are proud to be Americans. The percentage dropped by half of the GOP figure among the Democratic aides, at 45 percent. There are marked divisions on gender and age, too.

DRUGMAKERS’ ROYALTY PAYMENTS TO NIHers EXPLODED AFTER PANDEMIC: OpenTheBooks.com reports more than $710 million in drugmakers’ secret royalty payments went to NIH scientists, executives and researchers in 2022 and 2023.

That’s more than double the total of all such known payments between 2009 and 2021. Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose NIAID crew got $690 million of the $710, will be asked about these payments today by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

HERE’S WHY FLIES ARE SO HARD TO SWAT: Thanks to AI and robotics, scientists are now able to detail the house fly’s remarkable hinged wings. Whether you think the explanation of how the hinge came to be is in naturalist evolution or as an example of irreducible complexity, you gotta admit this is simply amazing.

WOMEN ON THE HILL CHECKING OUT? New informal survey of congressional staffers on Capitol Hill finds significantly more of the men – 77 percent – think having children and a family is “Very Important” than the women – 50 percent. Interestingly, on the under/over 30 years of age split, almost the same percentages responded that they view it as “Very Important.”

NYT AND EPOCH TIMES HEAD-TO-HEAD: Compare and contrast how the publication once known as the Old Gray Lady and the emerging media power, The Epoch Times, report on consecutive days how Biden and Trump are approaching Black voters.

DOD GOING TO THE DOGS: To do drug-testing, that is, which DOD isn’t supposed to be doing, according to the White Coat Waste Project.

IS NIH THE BIGGEST ABUSER OF THE FOIA? A bunch of internal emails obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic make it clear senior NIH officials were coached by none other than NIH FOIA officials on how to evade the transparency law.

Now the House panel has opened an investigation and FOIA/transparency-in- government advocates like US Right to Know and Open The Books are hoping this could be the start of something hugely important. The subcommittee is part of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

NO, THE HOUSE SPEAKER’S STAFF IS NOT “REELING:” One of the congressional “insiders” digital newsletters even led its coverage of aides leaving Speaker of the House Mike Johnson with the familiar question: ” Will the last one left please turn out the lights?”

In fact, as I report this morning on The Epoch Times, Johnson has a low staff turnover rate, compared to all of his House colleagues, and he pays generously.

Have a thankful Memorial Day! And big congrats to Joseph Newgarden for two in a row at Indy! Last-lap passes for the win two years in a row is simply incredible.

UPDATE: EricinDallas and DJ9r, y’all are exactly right. Fixed. And thank you for pointing it out.

PREDICTION: That $2.8 billion settlement between NCAA and college players will effectively professionalize college sports, especially football. The deal includes revenue-sharing between the schools and players, but it won’t be long before the schools will be able to force revenue sharing with the players on their merchandise, commercials and appearance revenues. That will in turn pressure schools to drop eligibility limits, thus enabling popular (i.e. profitable) players to remain “enrolled” for years after their undergraduate “work” is completed in order to keep playing and producing revenue.

Anybody else remember the days when the college all-stars played the NFL champion each year?

TEETH FOR THE FOIA: No one has ever gone to jail for violating the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). And we wonder why politicians and career bureaucrats alike thumb their noses at the public’s right to know?

BEGINNING OF SECTION 230’S END? House Energy and Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on communications and technology appears set to move forward a bipartisan bill to suspend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 on Dec. 31, 2025.

The suspension would take effect if Congress has not approved and the President has not signed into law a reform or outright repeal. of Sect 230. That section is the one that exempts social media giants like Facebook from being held accountable for publishing content that promotes sex trafficking, suicide, child abuse, illegal drugs and much else.

ABOUT THE CYRUS CYLINDER: King Cyrus was a VIP dude in the ancient world and Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, had a lot to say about him. Kyle Butt explains on HillFaith why King Cyrus is still a VIP dude 2,500 years later.

WHAT THE PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTS ARE REALLY ABOUT: In the third and final installment of his essential-reading series on Saul Alinsky and the current wave of Radical Left-led pro-Palestinian protests, Richard Pollock explains why “it’s not about Israel, it’s about political power, Stupid.” Here. In America. Instead of the Constitution.

ANTI-SEMITISM AT THE WASHINGTON POST: The editors of the Washington Free Beacon appear to be right on target.

UPDATE: I somehow missed that Instapundit’s Ed Driscoll much earlier in the day had a superb deep-dive into this disgrace.

WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ABOUT CHURCH? Empty pews are becoming a more common sight in thousands of churches across the country and the average age of attendees is steadily going older. But the latest video on HillFaith from the Colson Center offers three solid reasons why going to church on Sunday is good medicine for body and soul.

BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW THIS ABOUT ISRAEL: Richard Pollock explicates a superb piece of historical reconstruction reporting in the Jerusalem Post by Alex Winston. The point is to correct the recurring crude distortion by the radical Left and Islamic Jihadists  of the truth that the movement that led to the re-founding of Israel after WWII was part of a world-wide anti-colonialism crusade.

ISN’T THIS INTERESTING! Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) has an interesting donor in Pennsylvania who just happens to be the best buddy of Turkey’s Erdogan. Just coincidental, right? Right??

ALL OF THE MSM’S BIDEN-TRUMP DEBATE QUESTIONS: You’re reading it first here … well, actually Daniel Oliver’s roundup of utterly predictable questions the MSM debate moderators will ask Biden and Trump is over at American Greatness.

THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ INDEED: Is this a political blockbuster-in-the-making? Latest Cygnal Battleground Survey of 1,500 Likely Voters in 39 key congressional districts finds that 55 percent of the Blacks responding consider the Democratic Party to be more extreme than the Republicans. That’s a 20 percent increase over the responses in March when the same question was posed. Cygnal also found significants shifts away from the Democrats among married and college-educated women.

DID YOU KNOW WE ALMOST LOST THE INTERNET LAST MONTH?: It’s true, and Jonathan Bartlett has the scoop at Mind Matters. At the heart of this close call is a mysterious programmer by name Jia Tan, an obscure programming compression library known as xz, and an alert Microsoft software engineer.

UPDATE: Boy, good thing that Microsoft software engineer wasn’t as “alert” as I was while writing this original post. Y’all are the best copy desk editors in the business!

SO MANY LEFTIST ‘LOCAL NEWS’ OUTLETS: You may well have heard of States Newsroom or the Courier Newsroom because they are leading lights in the Left’s surge to dominance of what is left of local news reporting, according to Scott Walter of Capital Research Center (CRC).

It’s not to report the latest doings of your county board of supervisors or the local city council, however. It’s all part of the drive funded in part by $500 million from the John D. and Catherine T MacArthur Foundation, and more from other Lefty funders, including Arabella Advisors. Expect lots of school and local government-related DEI stuff.

On the other hand, there are a bunch of innovative Right Media operations moving ahead, too, and Walter provides some genuinely encouraging news about several of them. One especially intriguing project involves the Baltimore Sun, long ago one of America’s great daily newspapers, and Sinclair Broadcasting Group chief Dave Smith.

THOUGHTS ON FRIENDSHIP: Spent a bit of quality time jawing with a good friend from way back on Capitol Hill yesterday, and it sparked some reflections on HillFaith about why close, lasting friendships are uniquely human and so deeply vital to our individual happiness. And I share some thoughts on the ultimate Best Friend Forever as well, and point to a collection of 15 scripture verses that lay out the good, the bad and the source of friendships in blunt detail.

DO WORDS MATTER?: Well, the “right” words matter quite a lot actually if you are following Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals,” as clearly is the case with the radical Lefty activists and organizers behind the continuing wave of anti-semitic Pro-Hamas/Pro-Palestinian, former New Left protest riot trainer Richard Pollock explains in the second of a series of three explanatory columns.

This is essential reading for those who want to understand why the protests and riots continue unabated and why spineless liberal administrators on all of the “best” campuses are caving to the demonstrators’ demands faster than a greased deck of cards.

WHY BIDEN IS LOSING: Former Americans for Prosperity (AFP) chief Tim Phillips gets around and talks to a lot of folks across the country. He sees in a new column on Cyberreport “a jarring and growing disconnect” between decision-makers in Washington, D.C. and the rest of the country.