CLAUDIA ROSETT: A Vital Warning About China and the Looming “Decade of Concern.”

Read the whole thing.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: RUSSIA, Trump Hotel Attacked and Much, Much More.

ROBERT SPENCER: CAIR Enraged by ROTC Exercise Featuring Jihadis as Enemies. “ROTC’s got a lot of nerve to notice the global jihad.”

If CAIR is enraged about something, there’s an excellent chance we should be doing more of it.

YUGE: Michigan State University reaches $500 million settlement with Larry Nassar victims.

WELL, GOOD: House votes to expand veterans’ access to private care.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER LIST: 5 Things Most Men Have to Learn the Hard Way in Life.

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Boulder, Colorado, unanimously votes to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines.

The following is an actual exchange from my concealed carry class:

Instructor: “You need to travel through an area where your firearm is banned — what are you going to do?”

Me: “The speed limit.”

Boulder’s gotta Boulder, I suppose. But the next time you’re there, try asking any of the locals to define “assault weapon.” Or even just “magazine.”

NOW THAT’S MY KIND OF ANARCHY IN THE U.K.: U.K. man hits 160km/h in his motorized shed to break land speed record.

That’s right: In his motorized shed.

Because if you have a shed and a spare Audi RS4 engine laying around, this is the kind of thing that’s going to happen.

COMMERCE SECRETARY: ‘Trade Tit-for-Tat’ with China Won’t be ‘Life Threatening’ to U.S. “‘China sells us far more than we sell them, and given the lopsided balance, they would run out of targets for tariffs much sooner than we would,’ argues Ross.”

The most powerful force in the universe might just be the American consumer. If not, it’s certainly the most sought-after.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Blackouts, hyperinflation, hunger: Maduro faces reelection as Venezuela deteriorates.

Since Maduro took over from Hugo Chávez — his mentor, who died in 2013 — Venezuela’s crisis has steadily intensified as a result of lower oil prices, corruption and a socialist system plagued with mismanagement. But as Maduro has sought to further consolidate power in the past 12 months, the economy, public services, security and health care have all but collapsed.

Armed gangs and Colombian guerrilla groups are operating unchecked on Venezuela’s borders. Pro-government militias are terrorizing urban areas, while police stand accused of extrajudicial killings. Four of the 10 most dangerous cities in the world are now in Venezuela, according to a 2017 study by the Igarapé Institute, a Brazilian think tank that studies violence.

Hundreds if not thousands of members of the armed forces are deserting, in part because of meager rations, according to military analysts. Power and water grids and the transportation systems are breaking down. In just the first three months of the year, Venezuela suffered 7,778 blackouts.

Saddled with a soaring inflation rate that has put food out of reach, Venezuelans, weakened and thin, are getting extraordinarily sick. Doctors say cases of diseases once thought largely eradicated — malaria, diphtheria, measles and tuberculosis — are not only resurfacing but surging.

In a nation that lives off oil, production is collapsing as plants break down and the bankrupt government cannot fix equipment. Venezuela’s unpaid creditors are beginning to tighten the financial noose, going after the country’s offshore assets.

[The Venezuelan oil industry is on a cliff’s edge. Trump could tip it over.]

At the state oil giant, 25,000 workers — more than a quarter of its staff — quit last year in a mass exodus. Fleeing workers are joining a flood of humanity, at least 5,000 people a day, exiting the country. The outflow has left schools without teachers, hospitals without doctors and nurses, and utilities without electricians and engineers.

“A failed state is one that cannot meet the most basic functions of government,” said Jean Paul Leidenz, an economist at Ecoanalítica, a Caracas-based analytical firm. “Venezuela now certainly has that characteristic.”

Unexpectedly.

And without comment from Bernie Sanders, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, et al.

The media seem finally to be taking serious note, usually framed around the upcoming election. One suspects they want to see Maduro go because he’s making Leftism look so bad.

PRIVATE SECTOR SPACE RACE: Chinese company OneSpace sends OS-X rocket to 40 km in maiden flight.

IN SOVIET GOOGLE, YOUTUBE MUSIC LISTENS TO YOU: Google announces YouTube Music and YouTube Premium.

TREAT FEMALE RAPISTS LIKE MALE RAPISTS AND MAYBE WE’LL SEE FEWER OF THESE STORIES: Female Teacher Who Had Sex With a Student Won’t Have to Register as a Sex Offender. “She can also reapply to teach again.”

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Could reviving Woolly-Mammoth genes fight the effects of global warming?

Most of the hype so far has focused on bringing these shaggy beasts back to life using their permafrost-preserved DNA. But this time, scientists aren’t aiming for a “Jurassic Park” scenario — they’re not trying to bring back entire mammoths exactly as they were in the last ice age. Rather, they’re hoping to mingle some of the mammoths’ ancient genes with those of today’s Asian elephants (Elephas maximus), to increase the elephants’ tolerance to the cold, said George Church, a Harvard and MIT geneticist who is heading the Harvard Woolly Mammoth Revival team.

Cold?

Fallen Angels was just a science fiction novel, right guys? Right?

THEY SHOULD BE: NBC is jittery as Farrow prepares to tell his side of the story about what went down at the network while he was reporting on Harvey Weinstein.

DEMOGRAPHICS IS DESTINY: US births hit a 30-year low, despite good economy.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: The Morning Briefing: RUSSIA, DACA, Net Neutrality and Much, Much More. “The New York Times has an awful, biased, misleading story ‘Code Name Crossfire Hurricane: The Secret Origins of the Trump Investigation.’ The piece is really a propaganda/PR piece for the intelligence community, extolling their virtues and how they toiled and battled with ethical dilemmas over the Clinton and Trump investigation. Gimme a break. It’s so obvious an attempt to get out in front of whatever will be revealed in the IG report.”

PARTISAN SPIN ASIDE, IF PERMANENT THIS WOULD BE A HEALTHY DEVELOPMENT: Putting ‘White House’ on the resume is less of a boost.

ALLIES: Turkey urges Islamic world to unite against Israel, calls summit.

Meanwhile: Young Saudis get behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reform drive, mostly.

Turkey and Saudi Arabia switched places so slowly, I hardly even noticed.

JUST ANOTHER PEACEFUL PROTEST: Houses in Sderot Struck by Machine Gun Fire from Gaza.

I DON’T KNOW ART, BUT I KNOW WHAT I DON’T LIKE: Stormy Daniels will perform with naked Trump statue in Oregon.

CLAIM: Kremlin Used NRA to Help Trump in 2016, Senate Report Says.

The NRA spent a record $30 million on Trump and the FBI is reportedly investigating whether any of the money came from Russia. U.S. law prohibits foreign money to be spent on elections.

Two Russian nationals figure prominently in the alleged scheme: Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of the Kremlin’s central bank, and his then-deputy Maria Butina.

Torshin met Donald Trump Jr. at the NRA’s 2016 convention in Kentucky and hosted an NRA delegation in Moscow in 2015. Torshin was previously accused by Spanish investigators of laundering money for Russian mobsters, an allegation he denied. (Last month he was sanctioned by the U.S.)

Well, that’s certainly no way to treat someone who supposedly helped get you into the Oval Office.

Plus:

In May 2016, the same month Torshin met Trump Jr. at the NRA convention, Erickson emailed a Trump advisor about setting up a meeting between the candidate and Putin.

“Putin is deadly serious about building a good relationship with Mr. Trump,” he wrote, according to the New York Times. “He wants to extend an invitation to Mr. Trump to visit him in the Kremlin before the election.”

How’d that work out for him?

JAMES HOHMANN: The far left is winning the Democratic civil war.

THE BIG IDEA: Tuesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for Democratic moderates.

The success of very liberal candidates in primaries across four states is causing a new bout of heartburn among party strategists in Washington, who worry about unelectable activists thwarting their drive for the House majority. But it also reflects a broader leftward lurch among Democrats across the country since President Trump took office.

— In Nebraska, a liberal social worker and political neophyte who built her campaign around “Medicare for All” scored a shocking upset in a Democratic primary to take on Rep. Don Bacon (R). Kara Eastman, 45, beat former congressman Brad Ashford, 68, in an Omaha-area district that national Democrats believed they could pick up in November.

Eastman advocated for universal background checks to buy guns, raising taxes and decriminalizing marijuana. “I’m tired of hearing Democrats don’t have a backbone, that we don’t stand for anything,” she said in a commercial that touted her support for universal health care. “That changes now!”

Ashford had the full-throated support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which must now reevaluate whether to invest in the race.

That’s just the initial bullet point in the wake of this week’s primary races. There’s a lot to unpack in this one — none of it good for Democrats seeking to haul their party back towards the center.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Trump-Hating MSM Hacks Just Wrapped Up Their Most Embarrassing Week Yet.

Related? Twitter kills Kruiser’s Twitter link to his Twitter-critical PJM column.

REVIEW: Cobra Kai Is Exactly the Kind of Toxic Masculinity We All Desperately Need. “The YouTube reboot of ‘The Karate Kid’ is right on point.”

I caught the trailer for this a week or two ago, and went quickly from “You’ve got to be kidding me” to “I’ll have to check this out.”