YES: Rubio Urges NATO Members To Increase Their Own Defense Spending To 5% Of GDP.

“I understand there’s domestic politics, after decades of building up vast social safety nets that maybe don’t want to take away from that and invest more in national security,” Rubio added. “But the events of the last few years … full-scale ground war in the heart of Europe as a reminder that hard power is still necessary as a deterrent. We do want to leave here with an understanding that we are on a pathway, a realistic pathway to every single one of the members committee, and fulfilling a promise to reach up to 5% of spending.”

Rubio stated the United States would also spend 5% of its GDP on defense as well.

“The majority of the 32 NATO members currently spend 2% of their nation’s GDP per previous NATO commitments, eight nations – Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Spain – have yet to meet their defense spending pledges,” Fox News noted. “Only Poland spends over 4% of its GDP on defense, while four other nations spend over 3% – Estonia, the U.S., Latvia and Greece.” The United States spent 3.38% of its GDP on defense in 2024.

We fell badly behind during the Biden years and it shows.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN):

Every single nation in this photo combined wasn’t enough to stop the Houthis from closing the Suez Canal

Together our navies are weak. That’s just a fact minister. And some (e.g. Canada) are straight up pathetic. https://t.co/J79JxvOdww

— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) April 4, 2025

Why are American taxpayers defending Europe rather than European taxpayers, defending Europe? pic.twitter.com/c7ZAdvvedf

— Steve Gill (@TheGillReport) April 4, 2025

KRUISER: When Dems Don’t Like What They See in the Mirror, They Insist That It’s the Mirror’s Fault. “The Democrats are obviously struggling with coming to terms with the rejection they faced last November. They’re always bad at introspection and taking responsibility for anything, but this is like nothing I’ve seen in all of my years in politics. It’s gotten to the point where I have to read at least one or two of the 2024 post mortems in the mainstream media every day to get my fix. Yeah, it’s a blast watching them not get it. The real joy for me, however, is seeing the myriad ways that they are finding to not come to the proper conclusions about why they lost.”

FRAM2 IS NEARING SPLASHDOWN:

https://t.co/ERTGAPK49M

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 4, 2025

MORE ON “ADOLESCENCE”: Netflix’s ‘Adolescence’ Has Heart But Doesn’t Understand Its Subject. “The show is designed and has been promoted in a way to scare middle-class white parents with the message, ‘Don’t get too comfortable; it could be your son [who murders a female classmate].’ However, that doesn’t bear out in reality. The show conflates incels with the manosphere, and Jamie’s profile doesn’t map onto known incel archetypes, let alone the most murderous ones. It’s being used to advocate for censorship and crackdown on content like Andrew Tate on the basis that it radicalizes young incels (a completely different camp) into murdering young women. While sexless young men have always posed a real danger for malevolence and violence, the majority of incels are more suicidal than homicidal. Young boys who watch Andrew Tate are more likely to grow up to be objectifying misogynistic douchebags obsessed with money and status than sexless murderers.”

And as Stacy McCain wrote in a post linked by Ed yesterday: “How many actual murders in England have been inspired by ‘incel subculture’ on social media? If it’s not zero, it’s pretty darned close. Which is to say, the plot of Adolescence is entirely fictional. No such teenage suspect as ‘Jamie Miller’ has ever committed a murder in England with a motive like the one dramatized in this series.”

Netflix race-swapped a murder — the kind that rarely happened in Britain before mass Third World immigration — but that is now commonplace enough to make a (heavily) fictionalized movie about it. That’s because the elites in politics and entertainment fear the reaction, justifiable as though it might be, if the popular culture reflected the reality of what the elites hath wrought.

So as Glenn noted on Monday, “Denial of that reality is the whole point.”

WELL, BYE: Yale ‘Fascism Professor’ Flees Country to Escape Trump’s Fourth Reich.

IT’S DIFFERENT NOW BECAUSE REASONS:

1) 1996 Nancy Pelosi encourages all of Congress to back reciprocal tariffs

2) 2008 Bernie Sanders wants tariffs, says jobs are going overseas

3) 2018 Barack Obama calls for reciprocal tariffs

4) 1988 Donald Trump says foreign countries must pay tariffs

Only 1 hasn’t sold out pic.twitter.com/6jqXqaYALC

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) April 4, 2025

HOW’S THAT SPACE PROGRAM COMING ALONG: NASA catches a glimpse of ‘city-killer’ asteroid before it disappears until 2028.

Astronomers are watching 2024 YR4 closely, trying to learn everything they can before it disappears from view by mid-April, Kelly Fast, a planetary defense officer at NASA, told ABC News earlier this year. Its unique elongated orbit takes the asteroid around the sun and into Earth’s vicinity before it ventures far out between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter and out of sight, Fast said.

NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies used the James Webb Space Telescope — the largest, most powerful telescope ever launched into space — to capture photos of the asteroid, the space agency announced on Wednesday.

New infrared observations indicate that the asteroid measures between 174 feet and 220 feet in diameter — about the size of the 10-story [sic] building, according to NASA. While it is not forecast to strike Earth in 2032, the asteroid now has a 1.7% probability of hitting the moon at that time, the space agency said.

Luna takes a lot of hits for Team Earth.

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED TO FIND GAMBLING IN THIS ESTABLISHMENT: The ‘Mary Poppins of Disinformation’ Says There’s No ‘Censorship-Industrial Complex’ in America.

WINNING: Trump Cancels Biden Grants to China-Tied Think Tank Behind War on Gas Stoves.

The Department of Energy canceled two climate grants the Biden administration awarded to the Rocky Mountain Institute, a left-wing climate think tank that has pushed for heavy restrictions on gas stoves and that has collaborated with the Chinese government.

The first grant was worth about $5.3 million and designed to fund the Rocky Mountain Institute’s pilot project retrofitting a 120-unit building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with green energy technology. Then-energy secretary Jennifer Granholm said in March 2022 the grant funding proved the Biden administration was “in an all-out sprint to beat the climate crisis” while Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) said it would help protect the country “from upheaval caused by the global fossil fuel market.”

The second was a $1.5 million grant to fund research into the viability of electric vehicle carshare programs. The research, according to the Department of Energy, would assess business models in the United States for resilience and “equity.”

Let lefty billionaires pay for their own BS.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The World Is Suddenly Full of International Economics Experts. “I may not be an expert on the economy — domestic or global — but I do know that the mountain of messes that Trump inherited for his second term aren’t of the easy fix variety. Yeah, executive orders got the ball rolling on a lot of things, but there’s still a lot work to be done on every issue that those addressed. “

BLUE STATE BLUES:

Roblox has filed to leave Delaware and reincorporate in Nevada. pic.twitter.com/5jXI0kA2Su

— Robert Anderson (@ProfRobAnderson) April 2, 2025

More:

This is becoming worrisome for Delaware, not only because this keeps happening, but also because the companies seem to be coalescing around Nevada. That will make it viable.

I think Delaware’s amendments made a difference, but they may have just come too late in the proxy season after companies had already gone through their processes. The decision to vilify Musk and explicitly deny him the benefit of the law his case inspired probably hurt as well.

Companies like Roblox leaving are the known costs. Then there are the companies that might have incorporated in Delaware but will do so elsewhere due to unknowns about its current business climate.

ICYMI, IT’S THIS WEEK’S THURSDAY VIP ESSAY: The Case For (and Against) Trump’s Tariffs.

Members asked for longer pieces and I’ve been happy to oblige.

CHANGE: Hungary withdraws from International Criminal Court during Netanyahu visit.

A senior official in Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government confirmed this hours after Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who is sought under an ICC arrest warrant, arrived in Hungary for a state visit.

Orban had invited Netanyahu as soon as the warrant was issued last November, saying the ruling would have “no effect” in his country.

In November, ICC judges said there were “reasonable grounds” that Netanyahu bore “criminal responsibility” for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas.

Netanyahu has condemned the ICC’s decision as “antisemitic”.
The ICC, a global court, has the authority to prosecute those accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In theory, maybe. In practice, the ICC is just another far-left enforcement mechanism.

DOG BITES MAN: Well, Lookie Here: Congresswoman and Harvard Prof Are Caught Planning Massive Anti-Trump Riots?

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Amber Ruffin Weaponizes ‘Very Fine People’ Hoax.

The former Peacock talker got hired, and then dismissed by the White House Correspondents Association to emcee its April gala.

The WHCA didn’t mention Ruffin’s name in the cancellation announcement. Nor did anyone from the corrupt group explain why she was chosen for the honor and, later discarded.

She deserves better. That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t be a train wreck on the night in question.

Even by far-Left standards, Ruffin is a progressive bomb thrower, a clapter-approved satirist who hits mostly one side. That’s exactly the image the WHCA wants to avoid on its biggest night of the year.

Case in point: Ruffin threw a public tantrum on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” this week. And, in the process, she cited one of the biggest Fake News stories of the past decade.

She never should have been tapped for the WHCA gig in the first place.

I’m assured she’s a comedian but I just don’t get it.

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: The Case For (and Against) Trump’s Tariffs. “Today’s essay is a tricky one because tariffs are a surprisingly emotional issue, involving jobs, buying habits, and sometimes sentimental notions about the good old days, on top of the drier macroeconomic and geopolitical concerns. So before we go any further, please understand that I have more questions than answers. What I have for you today is more of an exploration than an argument in favor of one side or the other.”

CHANGE: Reversal of fortune in Homer City: new manufacturing project a ‘Game Changer.’

The emotion coming from hometown boy Shawn Steffee was palpable — not just because the build will resurrect Homer City, which has seen six generations of Steffees, but also because it will create thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs for at least the next four to six years.

“It is a game changer for the region and for the state of Pennsylvania,” said Steffee, the business agent for the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 154, in an interview with the Washington Examiner.

Steffee said part of what makes this a big deal is that the HCR is building up to 4.5 gigawatts of natural gas generation. Homer City will now be the largest electricity producer in the state, and Steffee’s members in Western Pennsylvania will be instrumental in building and maintaining the facility.

Opportunity, Steffee said, has not been available to his members for four years, forcing them to leave their families and communities behind to travel to New Mexico, Washington, Ohio, West Virginia, and Tennessee because nothing new was being built in Pennsylvania.

“What this means for us is I can bring the boilermakers home back to Pennsylvania. This will be anywhere from a four-to-six-year job. They will need hundreds of boilermakers and thousands of construction workers. This is good for everybody in the building trades,” Steffee said.

Building things is good work.

ATHENA THORNE: