PAGING MR. SLOPODOPOULOS:
🚨 LMAO! PRESIDENT TRUMP: "We'll take a couple questions. I'm sure they'll be extremely non-hostile and friendly, like JD went through a very friendly interview with George Slopodopolous, who's nice enough to pay me $16 million!" 🤣🔥pic.twitter.com/DCrBPjlUUZ
"It was worth having…
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 14, 2025
A TRILLION HERE AND A TRILLION THERE…: JPMorgan Chase launches $1.5 trillion plan to bolster US economic and national security. “The effort — dubbed the ‘Security and Resiliency Initiative’ — will direct $1.5 trillion toward projects spanning energy, manufacturing and defense. As part of the plan, the financial giant will invest up to $10 billion in direct equity and venture capital to help select U.S.-based companies ‘enhance their growth, spur innovation and accelerate strategic manufacturing,’ the company said.”
Even JPMorgan Chase is on board with making America great again.
CHRIS QUEEN: Forgiveness Feels Impossible, but It’s Essential.
THERE’S NO LOVE LOST BETWEEN THE CLINTON AND THE OBAMA/BIDEN FACTIONS OF THE PARTY: Hillary Clinton Applauds Trump’s Mideast Breakthrough.
Bill gave Trump “great credit,” too.
My statement on the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas: pic.twitter.com/lN0xQxGHfT
— Bill Clinton (@BillClinton) October 13, 2025
But all the praise is less about Trump and more about intra-Democrat factionalism.
THE ROAD TO PEACE NECESSARILY BYPASSED HAMAS: Peace in Gaza! ‘Ceasefire Now!’ Crowd Hardest Hit.
SCHUMER SHUTDOWN UPDATE:
OMG — @SpeakerJohnson blows the cover on the Democratic agenda.
For Dems to reopen the gov they want "$24.6M for climate resilience in Honduras…$3.9M for LGBTQI+ democracy grants in the Balkans…& $2M for feminist democratic principles in Africa."
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 14, 2025
They won’t quit until they get a few more of your billions for their stupid, weird, or destructive pet causes.
FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS:
Santa Clara is one of the first law schools to publish 2026-27 tuition. Historically, Grad PLUS loans have had no limits. Starting next year, professional school borrowing will be capped at $50k/year. Notice anything about the trend in tuition?
I expect many schools to copy this. pic.twitter.com/9CDzYERdIB— John Arnold (@JohnArnoldFndtn) October 13, 2025
NOTE: If you didn’t click through, Santa Clara Law just dropped its tuition to match the $50k loan cap.
From the replies: “It’s almost as if tuition was being set based on what the Universities could get away with instead of on what actual costs were.”
Almost…
THIS ONE IS FROM LAST WEEK, BUT IT’S STILL WORTH SHARING:
“Vials of liquid” is an interesting way to describe a Molotov cocktail https://t.co/PEn2XIYoAu
— Dr. Ben Braddock (@GraduatedBen) October 6, 2025
Remember, we not only have the worst news media, we have the worst possible news media.
VOTE WITH YOUR FEET, AND AS THOUGH YOUR CHILDREN’S LIVES DEPEND UPON IT: California Schools Are About to See Waves of Children Flee After Gavin Newsom’s ‘Demonic’ ‘Kidnap’ Bill.
MUCH MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: UT To Host Seminar On Evils Of Communism. “Whether UT and other institutions of higher learning can really shed their soft-spot for communism and socialism, two of the most disasterous failures of any political-economic theories in history, remains to be seen.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Trump’s Middle East Grand Strategy: No Gaza, No Iran, No Excuses. “For a president whose critics often accuse him of just winging it, we are witness to a grand strategy unfolding in real-time.”
IT WAS ALWAYS A GOVERNMENT- AND NGO-ENABLED SOCIAL CONTAGION:
More evidence that the phenomena of rising trans identification is a social fad, not the result of a "more tolerant society" as some social scientists have argued.
Boys wanting to put on dresses and girls wanting to wear boys clothes is as old as antiquity. https://t.co/tDEhGzsAJD
— Rich Baris The People's Pundit (@Peoples_Pundit) October 14, 2025
More:
2/ Non-conforming sexual identity (queer, questioning, etc) is also in sharp decline.
Gay and lesbian are stable while heterosexuality has rebounded by around 10 points since 2023. pic.twitter.com/fKD4G1rwi5
— Eric Kaufmann (@epkaufm) October 14, 2025
But, wait — it gets better: After years of progress on gender, the male gaze is back.
Trump brought back Columbus Day, and he’s even made T&A great again.
Is there anything he can’t do?
PRIORITIES: Oregon Now Spends More On Program Offering Free Health Care For Illegal Immigrants Than State Police. “Oregon officials expect to spend $1.5 billion in combined state and federal taxpayer dollars on a program that offers health benefits to illegal aliens from 2025 to 2027. They expect to spend $717 million on Oregon State Police over the same period, the documents indicate.”
THEY CAN’T LET GO OF THOSE HIGH SCHOOL GLORY DAYS: Sad New York Times Keeps Beating What’s Left of the J6 Dead Horse.
At the moment, the Dems are in political exile in Washington, D.C. Not by much, but it’s exile nonetheless. As we have discussed many times, they aren’t making much of a case to the American people to be brought out of it. Who knows? Maybe their “raining f-bombs on the Republicans” strategy will pan out. I remain skeptical about that.
They’re also struggling with the government shutdown. The public knows that it’s Chuck Schumer’s Senate Democrats who are mucking up the works.
Now, the man who they have been calling Literally Hitler for the better part of a decade just brokered a peace deal that brought Israeli hostages home after two years in torturous Hamas captivity. What ever is a struggling opposition party to do?
Why, keep leg-humping the ghost of J6, of course.
Sad!
CHANGE (IT BACK): Gen Z is desperate for landlines — and creating their own makeshift versions with cellphones.
Uhls, the UCLA researcher who often works with members of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, said young people are acutely aware of how much time they spend on their phones, and often make efforts to spend less time on them. She said even though they spend a lot of time on social media, they recognize that it’s not particularly deep or fulfilling.
“They’re craving connections and craving more meaningful experiences,” she said.
Some Gen Zers are so desperate for connection that they’ve embraced the Luddite movement. At an anti-technology rally in New York City last month, dozens of young people put Apple on a mock trial and smashed iPhones. Others are embracing “appstinence,” a term coined by a 24-year-old grad student at Harvard.
Chaining her phone to a wall was one of several experiments Ng has done as part of her newsletter, Cyber Celibate, which she uses to explore our relationship with technology. She’s also printed out her TikTok “For You” page to read like a newspaper and sent carrier pigeons instead of texts.
Previously: I started buying DVDs and CDs again in 2025 and it changed my mind about streaming.
Maybe someday we’ll look back at the tech that GenX came of age with as something special — high quality and generally affordable, but not yet all-encompassing.
SPACEX DID IT AGAIN: Was That One Small Step Or One Giant Leap? “With the success of IFT-11, that’s it for Version 2 (V2) of Super Heavy and Ship. The company has learned enough over the course of the last few missions to move on to V3 of both stages — and the improvements are nothing short of radical.”
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: After Unspeakable Darkness, a Time for Joy and Celebration. “Once it was announced last week that Hamas had agreed to release the remaining living hostages and send home the bodies of those who died, I didn’t need to think about the other points of the peace plan. Most of what I have seen written leads with skepticism about long-term prospects for peace in the region but, as I told our VIP Gold friends on the last couple of episodes of ‘Five O’Clock Somewhere,’ the whole thing would be an unqualified success as far as I’m concerned if all of the hostages came home.”
CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: ASA, NRA, SAF, FPC File Lawsuit Challenging the Constitutionality of the National Firearms Act.
You have to love the strategy. If you’ll remember, back in June when the Big Beautiful Bill was being haggled over, there was much sturm und drang over the existential nature of the National Firearms Act, and how the Senate Parliamentarian would treat efforts to pull items like suppressors and SBRs out as part of the reconciliation process. Again, reconciliation measures can sidestep the Senate’s 60-vote requirement and pass with a simple majority.
As many pointed out, the courts and the DOJ had for decades made the case that the NFA is tax measure. That’s how its primary champion justified it as not infringing on Americans’ gun rights when the NFA was being considered back in 1934. That being the case, inclusion of both the SHORT Act and the Hearing Protection Act in the B³ should have been a no-brainer.
The Senate Parliamentarian, however, saw things differently and ruled them out. That’s why, instead of pulling suppressors, SBRs and SBSs out of the NFA and regulating them like any other firearm you can buy today, the only step forward included in the final version of the B³ was the elimination of the $200 tax stamp (which will take effect on January 1).
But wait. Zeroing out the tax stamp isn’t nothing. As we and others have pointed out, eliminating the tax stamp undercuts any remaining argument that the NFA is a tax…because there is no longer a tax involved. On top of that, cans and SBRs are in common use. That means they pass the Heller test. There’s also no text, history or tradition of regulating them which means doing so doesn’t pass the Bruen test.
More at the link.
ICYMI: Trump’s Middle East Moment. “For his part, Trump seems to take it all in that odd combination of pride and stride that is uniquely his.”
VIRGINIA SHAKEUP: Earle-Sears surging, Miyares overtakes Jones.
Virginia’s races for governor and attorney general, newly jarred by a turbulent debate and a texting scandal, have suddenly changed three weeks before Election Day, giving new hope to Republicans.
After sitting in a holding pattern for months, Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears has cut Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger’s lead in half, and Attorney General Jason Miyares, running for reelection, has overcome Democrat Jay Jones’ lead.
In a new Trafalgar Group poll of likely general election voters completed Friday, Earle-Sears trailed Spanberger by just 2.6%, 47.7% to 45.1%. And Miyares has overtaken Jones, 48.9% to 43.1%.
That Friday poll couldn’t include the full effect of Spanberger’s Thursday debate performance.
Previously: Watch Spanberger’s Super-Cringeworthy Semi-Demi-Backpedal. “If you watch the clip, you’ll see a candidate who would be in panic if she weren’t a total sociopath incapable of basic human emotion.”
TRUMP: Rubio Will Go Down As the ‘Greatest Secretary of State In History.’
He’s already the most consequential — in a good way — since George Schultz.
InstaPundit is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.