THIS SEEMS LIKE A NO-BRAINER: White House eyes reopening oil refineries amid high gasoline prices.

The Trump administration is looking to reopen closed oil refineries, including an embattled one in the Virgin Islands, amid high gasoline prices spurred by the Iran war.
A White House official confirmed to The Hill in an email Thursday that the Trump administration “would like to see refineries across the country reopen, especially the St. Croix refinery.”

The official said this refinery is of particular interest because it was built to refine Venezuelan oil and because of its “strategic” location.

Cool. Then do California.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONE: Agitators in Madison Use Boards With Nails to Defend Their BLM Encampment, and the City Is Helping.

Well, now Madison, Wisconsin, has CRAZ: the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone. In case you missed it, Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other communists are trying to make Ruiz the next George Floyd. Ruiz was shot and killed by Madison police after he pulled a knife and stabbed an officer while being apprehended. As we’ve reported, activists have set up bicycle barricades around the intersection of Williamson Street (Willy Street) and South Baldwin Street, where Ruiz, a career criminal with a long rap sheet, was shot.

Laura Schulte, a reporter with The Journal Sentinel, has been on the scene and notes that agitators have now placed boards with nails in them around the intersection where a memorial site has been set up. Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong set down a candle herself the night of Ruiz’s shooting, declaring it an “execution.”

Worse yet, Schulte reports that the city itself, which is as woke as it gets, has lent its assistance in setting up barriers.

If that isn’t insurrection, what is it?

CHECKS OUT:

Libs when you ask them to explain why it was okay to burn down Minneapolis but illegal to attend your grandmother’s funeral pic.twitter.com/KUt4sfUXP3

— The Drunk Republican (@DrunkRepub) July 30, 2026

I WAS HOPING FOR THE PILLORY, BUT APPARENTLY NOT: What’s Next for Fauci?

YES: Failure — or the threat of failure — can lead to success.

“MIGRANTS”:

All fighting age men.
Curious. https://t.co/BLuXAwEs8z

— 𝓐𝓵𝓵𝓮𝓷 𝓡𝓪𝔂 (@2CynicAl65) July 30, 2026

#METOO: RFK Appalled That Fauci Hid His Own Vaccine Injury From the Public.

TONY WOODLIEF: ‘Restorative Justice’ Brings Violent Schools.

The Education Department will no longer count racial disparities in K-12 school suspension rates as proof of discrimination, it announced on July 23. This is a welcome change, but it won’t automatically restore order in the thousands of schools pressured by the Obama and Biden administrations into adopting “alternative discipline” methods whose chief objective is race equity. Many such programs have come at the cost of student safety and education.

These methods go by many names, like “restorative practices,” “social-emotional learning” and, most telling, “restorative justice.” In lieu of suspensions, administrators invite offenders to reflect in a soothing place on the feelings and trauma that led them, say, to hit another student or disobey a teacher. Students may also be invited into a “restorative circle” with school staff and other students, where they can share their feelings, and others in the circle can talk with them about how peace in the community might be restored.

Reality often falls short of this vision. Concerns about restorative justice emerged soon after the Obama administration began pushing it. Public schools in Philadelphia that implemented it experienced “skyrocketing truancy, serious misbehavior, and declining achievement,” Manhattan Institute researchers observed in 2017. Other cities experienced similar results.

Read the whole thing.

IT USED TO BE MY FAVORITE, MUST-READ MAGAZINE…:

The late 90's / early 2000's were the golden age of magazines.

The Economist was one of the best. Its "anon" articles allowed it to shape public opinion without the author getting in the way.

Let's check in with them today pic.twitter.com/MHF1Y0ifgf

— Jeff 🇺🇸 (@NavyInnovator) July 30, 2026

…but that was 20 years ago or longer.

DECLINE IS A CHOICE: California’s Impending Energy Disaster Nobody Talks About. “When and if the world’s fourth-largest economy implodes, you’ll be able to say, ‘I told you so,’ thanks to a chilling report today from two experts in oil refining and energy production.”

FLASHBACK:

A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China.

There is zero evidence for this. Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.https://t.co/GDTo2geUng

— NPR (@NPR) December 31, 2020

THE NEW SPACE RACE: SpaceX Gets $1.6 Billion US Space Force Order for 18 Falcon 9 Launches.

The 18 missions were assigned to SpaceX ‌across two task orders under ‌the U.S. Space Force’s flagship launch procurement program, in which SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, Blue ⁠Origin and ⁠other U.S. launch firms inducted into the program jockey for lucrative mission ​assignments.

SpaceX has bagged at least $7 billion worth of Pentagon contracts this year as the Trump administration has laid groundwork for its Golden Dome missile defense shield, a roughly $185 billion multi-year endeavor heavily featuring Elon ​Musk’s launch and satellite company.

SpaceX in May won $6.5 billion worth of satellite contracts from the ⁠U.S. ⁠Space Force. That included $4.16 billion ⁠for a ​network of airborne moving target indicator satellites and $2.29 billion three days later for communications satellites ​that can pass data between ⁠missile warning and tracking sensors to interceptors in near real time.

The SpaceX award announced on Wednesday was part of an “unprecedented two-month acquisition timeline,” Space Force acquisition official Eric Zarybnisky said in a news release. For years, the service has sought to ramp up the pace with which ⁠it buys spacecraft and rocket launches from the private sector.

For perspective, that’s a little under $90 million per launch — which sits at the low end for military launches, and well below typical ULA or Blue Origin prices.

And 18 launches is only six or seven weeks worth of Falcon 9 launches at the current cadence.

Incredible.

SCENES FROM THE COUNTER-RECONQUISTA:

🇲🇦🇪🇸 One of the Moroccan migrants who illegally crossed the Spanish border today fled Morocco because he is accused of murder.

“I have problems with people, with a colleague who died. I can’t stay there because they say things that are not good for me. A person can die, and I am… pic.twitter.com/yXSxahmQfW

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 30, 2026

Portugal is doing much better, but it also isn’t governed by socialists.

CHRIS QUEEN: Progressive Christianity Watch: Blasphemy in a Wedding Dress.

ELI LAKE: Pleading the Fifth Won’t Spare Fauci from the Truth.

FARCE: Stephen Colbert Wins Anti-Censorship Award. “The group behind the honor? The Before Columbus Foundation, which the far-Left Associated Press dubs a body that ‘champions diversity in U.S. literature and culture.'”

HE’S GREAT TO HAVE, BUT HE CAN’T DO IT ALL: Elon Musk Rides to the GOP’s Midterm Rescue

GRRRR:

Those not forced to get the Covid vaccine:

1. Members of Congress

2. Illegals

Telling.

— C3 (@C_3C_3) July 30, 2026

Congress exempting itself from the laws, mandates, etc. it imposes on everyone else seems like the kind of thing that could be addressed at an Article V convention.

CORN, POPPED: ‘900 megabytes’: Group suing UC system over affirmative action in admissions scores huge data dump.

The University of California was recently forced to hand over a massive data dump to the group suing the system over alleged racial discrimination against white and Asian students in admissions.

“It’s 900 megabytes of data, and I can’t tell you much more than that, because of a protective order,” said UCLA Law School Professor Richard Sander, one of the founders of Students Against Racial Discrimination, the coalition suing the system.

Sander made the comments Saturday during a talk at the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation’s annual summit in Irvine. The professor said obtaining the data was hard fought.

First, he said, the group had to survive attempts to get the lawsuit dismissed, which it did.

“Once you get past motions to dismiss, then you’re in the discovery stage, and discovery means that the two sides try to find out information about each other,” he said. “Of course, what we want is the UC admissions data, data that I’ve been trying to get in various ways for 20 years.”

Discovery can be fun.

CORRECT ON ALL COUNTS:

This letter is demented for obvious reasons; J Street doesn't speak for the Jewish community or faith. But it also skips the fact that the Torah has expectations of "strangers." One of them is respecting the host's laws and society. Mahdawi wants to destroy our society. https://t.co/9kx1SeMXkf

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) July 29, 2026

IF HE MEANS IT, HE SHOULD DROP THE (D) AND CAUCUS WITH THE GOP: Fetterman Votes With Democrats, Then Defies Them When Courage Counts.

21ST CENTURY PROBLEMS: OpenAI’s rogue models roamed the internet for 4 days and staged a second attack.

The powerful artificial intelligence models from OpenAI that went rogue and mounted an unprecedented, autonomous cyberattack earlier this month spent more than four days loose on the internet orchestrating the hack, according to a new analysis from the platform that was breached.

Separately, a second AI company confirmed that one of its customers was also targeted by OpenAI’s models during the same event, raising questions about how OpenAI failed to detect the alarming activity for days.

OpenAI admitted last week that two of its most advanced models escaped a closed testing environment and strung together a series of advanced hacking techniques to breach AI developer platform Hugging Face before being discovered.

But in a new analysis published Tuesday, Hugging Face said OpenAI’s two models — one publicly released and a second unreleased — did much more: They carried out 17,600 hacking actions on the internet between July 9 and July 13, during which time the models moved from their first foothold on the open internet to inside Hugging Face’s servers.

And OpenAI has yet to come fully clean on what happened.

THROW ALL THE BOOKS AT HER:

In addition to hauling Birx before the committee, and leveling charges, how about a full-blown airing of the entire lockdown scam.

Bring in the doctors and epidemiologists who were cancelled. Bring in parents. People who lost their businesses and their jobs.

Go at the medical… https://t.co/IxvmpsEqUp

— Northern Barbarian (@xnoesbueno) July 30, 2026

THAT’S A BRAVE ACT IN TODAY’S UK: Boy George Chooses Truth Over the Anti-Israel Mob.

HMM: California underwater drone sneaks up on Chinese ‘ghost ship’ off ally’s coast in bombshell video.

Stunning video taken by a covert sea drone shows a Chinese warship lingering inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

The 42-second clip shows a ship identified by Reuters as a Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy Type 052D guided-missile destroyer, floating 65 miles off Luzon Island in the Bashi Channel on June 16.

The ship was identified by “the deck layout, superstructure, crane and ​mast,” according to the company, “which matched archive imagery.”

Seasats, a San Diego startup, told The Post its drone, the Lightfish USV, was “conducting a commercial operation to prove the feasibility of autonomous operations in the Taiwan Strait.”

Message delivered: You might not even know when you’ve been seen until we choose to tell you.