DANA MILBANK: Trump’s rhetoric is a hallmark of totalitarianism.

Brave of him and the #Resistance to continue smuggling his columns out of prison camp.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Memorial Day Edition.

SEA STORY: It’s Official: The U.S. Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship Is a Complete Failure.

When the Navy in the 1990s first began shaping the LCS program, the idea was for the ships to be small, fast, inexpensive and lightly-manned “trucks” into which the sailing branch could plug a wide array of “modules” carrying equipment for specific missions including surface warfare, anti-submarine warfare and minesweeping.

In a bid to speed up the production of as many as 55 LCSs, the Navy selected two shipyards — Lockheed Martin’s facility in Wisconsin and an Austal yard in Alabama — each to build their own variant of the class. Complications and cost compounded.

“The Littoral Combat Ship program has been unnecessarily complicated from the beginning,” the Project on Government Oversight explained in 2016. “Initially the Navy aimed for each ship to cost $220 million, but the Government Accountability Office estimates procurement costs for the first 32 ships is currently about $21 billion, or about $655 million per ship—nearly triple what they were supposed to cost.”

It took the Navy nearly two decades to realize the LCS program had failed.

What a waste.

LIFE… FINDS A WAY: Baby Anacondas Born At New England Aquarium — Without Any Male Snakes Involved.

HMM: The Next Citizens United? Freedom Foundation Fights Back After Dems Weaponize Campaign Finance Law.

THEY SAP AND IMPURIFY ALL OF OUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS: ‘This is crazy’: AOC says ‘casual tornadoes’ are a new threat to the country.

YOU’LL NEVER GUESS: Remember The Judge Who Wouldn’t Block House Subpoena for Trump’s Financial Records? Guess Who He’s Donated To.

PRIVACY: Snapchat Employees Abused Data Access to Spy on Users. “Multiple sources and emails also describe SnapLion, an internal tool used by various departments to access Snapchat user data.”

DECOUPLING: Microsoft Pulls Huawei Products From One of Its Cloud Server Catalogs.

COME WITH ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE AGAIN: Linda Hamilton Returns as Sarah Connor for ‘Terminator: Dark Fate.’

She looks amazing, and the picture looks like it might be a return to form after the disappointment of the last two movies.

WHEN OCD TURNS TO CRIME: Someone breaks into home, takes nothing, gives it good scrub.

EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATICAL: Weight Watchers Removes “Weird Al” Statue After Controversy.

Weight Watchers has officially removed the statue of “Weird” Al Yankovic from its corporate headquarters in Manhattan and will no longer play Yankovic’s “Now That’s What I Call Polka!” in their television commercials, the organization announced in a statement on Monday.

This follows last week’s decision by Jenny Craig to suspend the use of Yankovic’s rendition of “Dare To Be Stupid” in their latest exercise video release “Let’s Lose It 2019!” while they investigate an allegation of sizeism against the singer.

The statue of Yankovic in front of the Weight Watchers Madison Avenue office was first covered and then removed.

Channel 8’s RJ Fletcher reported Thursday there are conflicting claims about Yankovic’s 1988 song “I’m Fat.” Some say the song was a parody of a pop song and was considered satire, but has also been said that Yankovic, a vegan, hates obese people.

It’s a funny song, the video was quite clever, and so who cares why he wrote it?

YES: Continuing plunge of CNN, MSNBC ratings reveals that fake news is a bad business strategy.

John Nolte of Breitbart points out that the unmasking of the Russia Hoax is only the latest example of fake news purveyed by both progressive cable networks (as well as most of the MSM). He lists the fake news frauds of recent memory:

• George Zimmerman: White Racist Killer
• Hands Up, Don’t Shoot
• Trump Can’t Win
• Brett Kavanaugh: Serial Rapist
• The KKKids from KKKovington High School
• Trump Colluded with Russia

To that list must be added the incredible on-air promotion of Michael Avenatti, just indicted for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his client Stormy Daniels, adding to his existing indictments in New York and Los Angeles for attempting to shake down Nike.

Heckuva job.

HERMAN CAIN: Trump ‘Wasn’t Racist Before He Became President and He’s Not Racist Now.’

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Flashback: “It seems apparent that the NYT set out to find out if there’s any evidence that Trump is a racist. Read the article. They found strong evidence that he is absolutely not any sort of a racist. The headline ought to come out and celebrate his excellent record.”. It didn’t, of course.

CLAUDIA ROSETT: Huawei’s An Asset All Right — But It’s Not Our Asset. “Whatever the details of Huawei’s officially private ownership, or the marvels of its innovations and industry, Huawei is for strategic purposes an asset of the globally ambitious despotism that is the government of China. Which makes it dangerous.”

I’ve been calling Huawei a “communist front corporation” for a while now, which seems more apt than ever — and do read the whole thing.

BLUE STATE BLUES: An RV Camp Sprang Up Outside Google’s Headquarters. Now Mountain View Wants to Ban It.

The Bay Area wants to enjoy wealth concentration like Manhattan, but also the population spread of the suburbs. Something’s gotta give.

CHANGE: DeVos family ends longtime Amash support.

WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Under Skyborg program, F-35 and F-15EX jets could control drone sidekicks.

Roper told lawmakers this month that Valkyrie would transition to a prototype program known as Skyborg, where the drone will be outfitted with new sensors and payloads and will be networked to manned fighter jets. In March, he characterized Skyborg as an artificial intelligence wingman that would train and learn alongside pilots, or possibly be incorporated into a manned fighter cockpit to act as an assistant to the pilot like R2-D2 in the “Star Wars” films.

But until now, the Air Force had not identified the platforms are under consideration to be equipped with Skyborg or teamed with the XQ-58 Valkyrie.

The Valkyrie, which flew its first test flight at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, on March 5, was designed to perform and maneuver like a fighter jet. It can fly at high subsonic speeds, takeoff without a runway, and, according to Kratos, meet or exceed the Air Force’s requirement for a 1,500-nautical-mile range with a 500-pound payload.

When produced in volume, Roper predicted that they will cost “a couple million bucks” each — not cheap, but inexpensive compared to the F-35A and F-15EX, which are expected to cost about $80 million per jet over the same time frame.

If nothing else, they nailed it with the name Skyborg.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Declassification-It’s What’s for Breakfast.

The White House Statement reads:

“Today, at the request and recommendation of the Attorney General of the United States, President Donald J. Trump directed the intelligence community to quickly and fully cooperate with the Attorney General’s investigation into surveillance activities during the 2016 Presidential election,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

“The Attorney General has also been delegated full and complete authority to declassify information pertaining to this investigation, in accordance with the long-established standards for handling classified information.”

OH SNAP.

Much more at the link.

EVERYTHING IS PROBLEMATICAL: Having Siri, Google Assistant & other intelligent assistants female by default is sexist, says UN.

I guess the UN has to find something to do, having secured world peace and all.

NOT GONNA HAPPEN: Mark Zuckerberg should hire Microsoft’s Brad Smith as CEO, says former Facebook security chief.

Former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos said on Tuesday that Mark Zuckerberg should hire a new CEO and turn his focus to building products.

“There’s a legit argument that he has too much power,” said Stamos, who left the company in 2018, at the Collision Conference in Toronto. “He needs to give up some of that power. If I was him, I would go hire a new CEO for the company.”

Stamos even offered a specific suggestion: Microsoft President Brad Smith.

FLASHBACK: Why the Zuckerberg-Facebook Cyborg Will Continue Crushing Skulls for Years to Come.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Is euthanizing pets to be buried with dead owners OK?

DAN WALTERS: Blue-state California now harassing journalists.

Let’s assume, hypothetically, that an independent journalist working in Washington somehow obtained a confidential FBI report on the death of a prominent Trump administration official that described its lurid circumstances, including the presence of a woman not his wife and the use of illegal drugs that caused, or at least contributed to, his demise.

Let’s also assume that the Justice Department responded to the disclosure by raiding the journalist’s home and confiscating computers and other tools of his trade, hoping to learn who leaked the report.

Democratic politicians and civil libertarians would erupt in outrage at a heavy-handed government act intended to discourage journalists from delving into areas that officialdom considered off-limits.

So where is that outrage about the San Francisco Police Department’s May 10 assault on journalist Bryan Carmody, who had obtained a police report about the death of San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi under exactly those unbecoming circumstances?

Read the whole thing.

HE SEEMS NICE: Barack Obama, Envious of Michelle’s Memoir Success, Throws Her Under the Bus.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: The Burger Joint Everyone Is Talking About In Your State.