THEY HATE YOU, THEY REALLY HATE YOU: Google May Face RICO, Defamation Lawsuits Due to SPLC Partnership, Lawyers Say. Google will pay employees to work for the SPLC for up to six months.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: The End Is Nigh (Not Really).

RUN ALL THE CANDIDATES! Eric Holder Considering Candidacy Seriously.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The state of our union is … ON. “Yesterday, I went to an event at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Riveting, I know. What I saw there was truly remarkable, however. Radical feminists and a man who used to identify as a woman spoke to a conservative audience, and received a standing ovation.”

There’s a genuine fissure here opening on the Left, and a politician like Trump might be able to exploit it.

And Tyler is filling in for Liz today.

CORRECTION: “UNEARNED SWAGGER.” Has the State Department Been Stripped of Its Swagger?

Two years into the Trump administration, dozens of ambassadorships remain vacant, with U.S. embassies doing business without a boss in the office.

And it’s not just ambassadorships. Back in Washington, the State Department’s top leadership ranks are riddled with empty offices. There is no chief financial officer. The undersecretary for democracy and human rights is operating without a Senate-confirmed nominee. The undersecretary for management, the person in charge of making sure the trains at Foggy Bottom run on time, is MIA. According to a running tally from the Washington Post , sixty-seven of the State Department’s 197 confirmed positions are without permanent officials, an astounding 34 percent.

Upon entering the department’s front door, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised to bring the “swagger” back to America’s diplomatic corps.

Staffing issues aren’t helping, certainly. But the post-Cold War period, particularly after 9/11, requires a State Department which is proactive, nimble, and most of all imaginative. Instead we’ve had a foreign policy establishment almost entirely dedicated to, well, the establishment. State has long been shorter on fresh thinking than it is on fresh butts in chairs.

REALITY CHECK: Support for Single-Payer Healthcare Craters When Americans Discover Higher Taxes, Longer Wait Times.

As PJ O’Rourke quipped more than two decades ago, if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it’s free.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Clinton-Appointed Judge Refuses to Unseal Documents Pertaining to Raid on Alleged Clinton Foundation Whistleblower.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: If You’re All About Agave, Check Out the Best Tequilas Under $20.

BOOM: U.S. Authorities Unveil Sweeping Set of Actions Against China’s Huawei.

The Trump Administration unveiled a sweeping set of actions—including criminal charges—against China’s Huawei Technologies Co. in its latest salvo against the telecom giant, with authorities unsealing a set of indictments just days before U.S.-China trade talks are set to resume.

In a pair of cases unsealed Monday, federal prosecutors accused Huawei of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and of stealing trade secrets from a U.S. business partner, portraying the company as a flouting U.S. laws while trying to do business in the country.

More details to come.

VIDEO: Ann Coulter Launches Into Anti-Gingrich Tirade Over ‘Fantasy Land’ Comments. “How do you break Newt Gingrich’s nose?”

MAXINE WATERS: More Diverse Financial Institutions Needed, Particularly in Management. “I probably will” support reparations bill after studying, Waters said following her speech at a Center for American Progress event.

“Probably.”

ANGELO CODEVILLA: Desperate Embrace At Europe’s Core.

Glenn linked to this a couple of days ago, but one part stuck in my head all weekend:

The United States will now be faced with continental Europe’s two major powers asserting not so much a common affirmative defense policy as a common non-defense policy. When it comes to foreign affairs, the United States is far less likely to enjoy automatic joint support than automatic joint attempts at backseat driving. At the U.N.—for all that matters—the United States is likelier than ever to be completely isolated, leading Americans to value that institution ever less.

In sum, the new Franco-German core is sure further to erode the EU, NATO, and the United Nations. But even as the French and German alliance is poised to disrupt so many international institutions, it is soft inside because it arises from both regimes’ alienation from their own peoples.

It was revealed that Trump privately mulled over the U.S. role in NATO, and the whole world freaked out — or at least pretended to. France and Germany have very publicly and successfully worked to undermine the entire postwar order, and hardly anybody could be bothered to do so much as yawn over it.

DEVIN NUNES: ‘The Process of Discovery Is Going to Be Fascinating’ in Roger Stone Case. “I think the Mueller investigation is really at the bottom of the barrel.”

Video at the link.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update for January 28, 2018.

JEFF DUNETZ: On Holocaust Remembrance Day ‘Never Forget’ Is Being Forgotten.

In most of the world, “Never Forget” was a nice but meaningless thing to say, along the lines of, “Genocide is bad, mmkay?” To the Israeli Defense Force, it means, “You’ve got to come through us,” and they take it with deadly seriousness.

THE MASK SLIPS: The New York Times’ Roger Cohen Declares Himself a ‘European Patriot.’

To be fair, it wasn’t much of a mask.

MATT MARGOLIS: It’s always the same, pathetic accusations from the left when we make fun of one of their own.

Maybe that’s at least in part because they know they provide such a target-rich environment for mockery.

WELL, GOOD: Saudi’s Falih sees no impact on oil markets from Venezuela turmoil.

This shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. American frackers have been more than taking up the slack created by Venezuela’s plummeting production, and Venezuela’s OPEC partners are increasingly hungry for market share.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Open for Business and Much, Much more. “Patricia Arquette who won an award for something or other, thanked Robert Mueller during her speech. Arquette thanked Mueller and ‘everyone working to make sure that we have sovereignty for the United States of America.’ These idiots are delusional. What do they think Mueller is going to reveal when all said and done? So far, the big fish Mueller has “gotten,” like Manafort, Flynn, Stone, Cohen have nothing to do with RUSSIA, they’ve been busted on process crimes. Only a few major players are still available who are viable candidates for the kind of serious crimes the left is fantasizing Trump committed and that would be Kushner and the Trump sons. Even Carter Page, the patient zero of RUSSIA collusion, is walking free this very minute.”

LEGALIZED ELECTION THEFT: Get Ready: California-Style Elections Are Coming to Your State. “Automatic voter registration, ‘seeding’ mail ballots to every registrant, and then ‘harvesting’ them may be in your state’s future.“

Why bother winning elections the precise, factual, and correct way when you’re morally entitled to victory by any means?

FREEDOM OF NAVIGATION: U.S. Navy sails warships through Taiwan Strait.

I’ll repeat my suggestion that any nation opposed to freedom of the seas should restrain itself from maritime trade.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF (SLIGHTLY DELAYED EDITION): Kushner’s security clearance, no wall deal, and much, much more. “I’ve heard people in the administration complain that the security clearance system has been weaponized by anti-Trump deep-staters who slow-walk and obstruct pro-Trump people from getting jobs that need clearances. So here I see a story written by the lead cheerleader for the firm that peddled the salacious and unverified pee-pee dossier used as a pretense to spy on the Trump campaign and I don’t immediately trust the story. One other thing: where did this story come from? Did some ‘sources’ just contact NBC News out of the blue or was there a special interest pushing this story into the news cycle when it really is barely relevant to current events? Cui bono?”

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Ilhan Omar Endorsed Somalia’s New President. Four Days Later, Omar’s Brother-in-Law Had a Powerful Job in His Administration. “Pelosi caused a natsec nightmare by seating Omar on Foreign Affairs.”

What’s national security compared to the political-cultural power of intersectionalism?

DAVID HARSANYI: You can’t be morally right and factually wrong at the same time. That’s a big problem for socialists.

For instance, has anyone ever asked Ocasio-Cortez if, generally speaking, she believes a billionaire-free Cuban system that ostensibly offers free health care, guaranteed housing, a free education, and greater income equality is preferable to the United States’s vulgar, capitalistic model? If not, why not?

After all, what guiding ideological principle stops Ocasio-Cortez from supporting confiscatory policies? Why not nationalize the fossil fuel industry? This is our last chance to save humanity, after all. If she really believes the fight against climate change is analogous to the war against fascism — a war that cost the lives of somewhere around 80 million people worldwide — then why wouldn’t she propose taxing the wealthy at 50 or 60 percent across the board? If income inequality and concentrated wealth are a problem almost as dangerous as climate change, would she be negligent if she failed to support those policies?

That is, of course, the end goal. Ocasio-Cortez, like many others, likes to claim that the rich do not pay their “fair share.” Right now, the top 50 percent of taxpayers pay around 97 percent of all individual income taxes. The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined. Has anyone asked Ocasio-Cortez what a reasonable percentage would be for them to contribute to the common good? Ninety-five percent? Ninety-nine?

What Ocasio-Cortez genuinely gives “zero f***s” about is your cisnormative reality-based values system, hater.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: A new hope in Venezuela. “In a typical move for South American countries, an opposition leader attempted a coup on Wednesday. I don’t usually like coups, but anyone who cares about the horrific destruction big government socialism has wreaked on Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro should support Juan Guaidó.”

A counterrevolution built on hope?

Tyler O’Neil is filling in for Liz this morning, and he has some very exciting personal news.