ANALYSIS: TRUE. Scott Pruitt Is Trump’s Biggest Asset. That’s Why The Left Wants Him Gone.

Mollie Hemingway:

There are poor ways, average ways, and shrewd ways to tackle the constitutional problems that arise from the administrative state. Many Republicans either don’t realize the problems of an unelected bureaucracy’s power, or fail to combat those problems effectively. Pruitt is in the final category, demonstrating competency and a devotion to rule of law. And he has the courage that so many of his GOP peers lack, not being intimidated by the normal media frenzy that intimidates other Republican appointees.

Recently, a coordinated attempt to oust him has taken shape, as this liberal TV producer notes:

Just think of them as Democratic operatives with bylines and… you know the rest.

The most charming of which might have been Bill Kristol, about whom Hemingway notes, “this week tweeted his desire for Michelle Obama to run and defeat Donald Trump, said Pruitt was a parody of sycophancy for supporting a conservative deregulatory agenda.”

STEPHEN KRUISER: Only Week 2 and the Coordinated Industry Attacks On Roseanne Have Begun. “The woman and the show.”

The more they tighten their grip, the more stars will slip through their fingers.

SHIPBUILDING: Huntington-Ingalls Sinks $2B Into Shipyards: Digital Plans & Computerized Welding.

The Navy’s new acquisition chief, James “Hondo” Geurts, was impressed by HII’s high tech tools during a visit to the company’s giant Newport News yard in Virginia. Newport News builds all nuclear-powered carriers and half of the Navy’s nuclear submarines. New England’s Electric Boat, owned by General Dynamics, builds the other half of each sub; the two yards ships components back and forth on huge barges.

Huntington-Ingalls’ other major yard, its namesake facility in Ingalls, Miss., builds conventionally-powered destroyers and amphibious warships — competing with General Dynamics’ Bath Iron Works in Maine and NASSCO in San Diego — as well as the Coast Guard National Security Cutter, a version of which HII’s proposed as the future Navy frigate.

While HII wouldn’t give precise figures, about $850 million of investment is going into Newport News and $950 million into Ingalls.

This is a great sign, because we were never going to get to a 355-ship Navy with our current infrastructure.

DAVID HARSANYI: Democrats, get set to lose your ‘collusion’ delusions.

And the dream of impeachment? Well, that would probably die, as well.

Much of the case for the impeachment of Trump is tethered to the alleged illegitimacy of his election — and much of that case relies on the findings of the Mueller investigation. Judging from the reaction we’ve seen so far to the reports that Trump is merely a subject, but not a target, of the special counsel, it seems most Democrats haven’t fully prepared themselves for the eventuality that the investigation may end up vindicating Trump.

Circumstances can change, obviously, but what happens if election interference amounts to nothing more than Russian hacking, fake Facebook accounts and Twitter bots, all of which went largely ignored by the Obama administration until it became politically advantageous for Democrats to make an issue?

What will Democrats do if Michael Flynn, and others who misled investigators, did so for political and personal reasons having nothing to do with “collusion?”

If the durability of Bush Derangement Syndrome is anything to go by, I suspect not much would change.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Pruitt Public Enemy #1 and Much, Much More. “After an 8 year hiatus from scrutinizing high level political appointees, the media and progressive fronts have begun an assault on Trump’s EPA secretary.”

DEEP STATE BLUES: Nunes Demands FBI and DOJ Turn Over Un-Redacted Documents. “Committee will pursue ‘all appropriate legal remedies, including seeking civil enforcement’ for noncompliance.”

THAT’S ALWAYS THE CHOICE: Cuba’s next president faces choice between economy and communism.

Diaz-Canel will face serious challenges from the moment he takes over. Cuba’s Soviet-style economic model is not working. Raul has acknowledged as much and in 2011 began to implement economic reforms that allowed many Cubans to become self-employed and buy and sell residences. These changes have allowed some Cubans to achieve relative prosperity, while the majority is stuck in low-paying jobs.

Although the self-employed and small entrepreneurs have little interest in politics, they became advocates of additional economic structural reforms that would facilitate their business activity. Their success caused a reaction from inside the Communist Party that saw the rise of these non-state workers as a threat to the system. Recognizing these concerns, Raul told the National Assembly last summer that he took personal responsibility for “errors” and froze the concession of most new business and self-employment licenses.

Diaz-Canel faces a dilemma. To pull Cuba from its economic morass, he must introduce urgent reforms to eliminate economic distortions such as the use of two national currencies and inefficient state industries. He must also attract private foreign investment to generate new exports and rebuild Cuba’s decaying infrastructure, and allow Cuba’s incipient private sector to grow.

Many in the Communist Party fear that if Diaz-Canel implements a comprehensive economic reform agenda he could become a Cuban Mikhail Gorbachev whose actions would destroy the party and the revolution.

Fingers crossed!

ON JANUARY 21, 2025. NEXT QUESTION? When will the media accept that Trump is not a criminal target?

FEMALE PRIVILEGE: UC Davis to Hand Out $10,000 Grants to ‘Feminist Researchers.’

NANCY PELOSI: Democrats Will Repeal the GOP Tax Law When We Retake the House.

Either Pelosi thinks this is a winning issue, or she’s already written off November but is trying to keep the base rallied.

Or perhaps it’s just one of those ironclad promises like the one about repealing ObamaCare.

LIKE PUTTING A BAND-AID ON A TUMOR: Facebook restricts APIs, axes old Instagram platform amidst scandals.

That’s why it’s moving up the shut down of part of the Instagram API. It’s significantly limiting data available from or requiring approval for access to Facebook’s Events, Groups, and Pages APIs plus Facebook Login. Facebook is also shutting down search by email or user name and changing its account recovery system after discovering malicious actors were using these to scrape people’s data. “Given the scale and sophistication of the activity we’ve seen, we believe most people on Facebook could have had their public profile scraped in this way” Schroepfer writes.

Instagram will immediately shut down part of its old platform API that was scheduled for deprecation on July 31st. TechCrunch first reported that developers’ Instagram apps were breaking over the weekend due to a sudden reduction in the API call limit. Instagram refused to comment, leading to developer frustration as their apps that analyze people’s followers and help them grow their audiences stopped working.

With all this confusion and broken features, this might be a good time to drop Instagram and cut back on your Facebook usage.

MIA LOVE: DACA Not ‘Dead,’ Allow Votes on Existing Proposals.

BRIDGET JOHNSON: Rosenstein Names Former McCain Campaign Lawyer His Right-Hand Man at DOJ. “Ed O’Callaghan, who has been serving as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the National Security Division, is moving over to be acting principal associate deputy attorney general.”

WELL, YEAH: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App.

The company confirmed the practice after an interview published earlier this week with Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg raised questions about Messenger’s practices and privacy. Zuckerberg told Vox’s Ezra Klein a story about receiving a phone call related to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. Facebook had detected people trying to send sensational messages through the Messenger app, he said.

“In that case, our systems detect what’s going on,” Zuckerberg said. “We stop those messages from going through.”

Some people reacted with concern on Twitter: Was Facebook reading messages more generally? Facebook has been under scrutiny in recent weeks over how it handles users’ private data and the revelation struck a nerve. Messenger doesn’t use the data from the scanned messages for advertising, the company said, but the policy may extend beyond what Messenger users expect.

For your own good, of course.

WHOA: Bahrain’s largest oil find estimated at 80 billion barrels.

Bahrain’s oil minister and energy executives detailed the find at a press conference, saying the tight oil was discovered in the offshore Khalij Al-Bahrain Basin, which spans some 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) in shallow waters off the country’s western coast.

The field also contains an estimated 14 trillion cubic feet of gas.

But: Bahrain Seeks Big Oil’s Help to Develop New Shale Discovery.

The amount of oil and gas that can be recovered from hard-to-reach pockets in shale rocks under the sea is uncertain, and development is potentially an expensive proposition. Halliburton Co. will drill two wells this year in the offshore Khaleej Al Bahrain Basin to appraise how much of the oil contained underground is actually recoverable.

“Only a fraction of the 80-plus billion barrels is likely to be recoverable,” Tom Quinn, senior analyst for Middle East upstream at consultant Wood Mackenzie Ltd., said by email. “The oil will also be technically challenging and potentially high cost to develop,” while Bahrain’s previous oil contracts offered meager returns for international oil companies, he said.

American frackers are going to earn all-new fortunes selling their expertise to Bahrain.

TYLER O’NEIL: Larry Nassar Googled ‘Vaginal Massage’ and ‘Intravaginal Manipulations’ Before FBI Arrest in 2016.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END: Trump instructs military to begin planning for withdrawal from Syria.

CHANGE: Search is dead, long live the new search.

The writing’s been on the wall for a very long time.

Consumers are sick of being exposed to endless marketing, they don’t like their data being mined to provide advertisers and crafty political operators with tools they use to try to manipulate them.

They’ve read the stories about Cambridge Analytica and they are beginning to grasp what’s sexy about privacy and the need to make sure the sites, services and solutions providers they use are truly protecting the customer data they gather.

In other words, they want search services with new business models. Ad-blockers in Safari, the ultra-private Duck Duck Go search engine, and Mozilla’s Facebook Container Extension all reflect this emerging need.

This growing understanding will (I predict) eventually create a consumer blowback against firms that have not protected customer data responsibly – we’ve already seen the impact of that shift hit the fan to blow down the value of Facebook stock.

Faster, please.

BUT OTHER THAN THAT, HOW DID YOU ENJOY THE WEBSITE, MRS FOX? Sadistic YouTube Deletes Channels, Demonetizes and Censors Content and Refuses to Respond to Press.

BLUE WAVE? Expanding map creates tough choices for GOP.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) must decide how much focus should be placed on competitive and Democratic-leaning districts that Hillary Clinton carried — or if the party should put more energy into protecting solid GOP seats that could be in danger if a wave materializes this fall.

“Not every seat is created equal. … Ultimately, you have to decide what is the best path to holding the majority,” said Matt Mackowiak, a GOP strategist based in Texas. “You’re dealing with a chess board that has 30 or 40 pieces on it, and you’re trying to figure out how to get from here to there.”

“It’s a judgment call both sides have to make,” he added. “And it’s challenging.”

Republicans are bracing for tough midterm elections, with anxiety running high over whether anti-Trump sentiment could hurt the GOP at the polls.

The GOP election strategy has been further scrambled by Democrat Conor Lamb’s upset victory in a Pennsylvania special election last month, which suggested the GOP could even be vulnerable in areas of the country where Trump was strong in 2016.

Historically, the president’s party loses about 32 seats on average during the midterms. Democrats will win back the majority if they flip a net 23 seats.

As Glenn has written here several times: If you want to make a difference, spend less time online and more time volunteering for a local candidate.

UH-OH: Russia’s Dangerous S-400 Air Defense System is Headed to China (And Maybe Turkey).

“A priority task in the sphere of military technical cooperation is the implementation of the contract for supplies of S-400 Triumf missile systems to Turkey,” Russian president Vladimir Putin said during of the Russia-Turkey Cooperation Council according to TASS. “We hope that the sectoral intergovernmental commission will look into the prospects for further supplies of Russian-made military hardware to Turkey at its next meeting.”

Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told TASS that Moscow would do everything possible to deliver the S-400 to Turkey—which has already made a down payment—by 2020. “Turkey did raise this issue. As far as I know, steps will be taken to meet Turkey’s wish,” Ushakov said.

Turkey, for its part, is determined to buy the S-400 despite the threat of sanctions by the United States.

“The U.S. understands Turkey’s desire to improve its air defenses,” a Trump administration official told the Hürriyet Daily News. “But we are concerned and have said so publicly about potential acquisition of Russian S-400 missiles, which would have implications for NATO interoperability and which would potentially expose Turkey to sanctions due to the new sanctions law recently passed by Congress.”

Program costs aside, if Ankara takes delivery of the S-400, we need to seriously reconsider Turkey’s participation in the F-35 program. The S-400 was designed in part to beat fifth-generation stealth fighters like the F-35. If Turkey were to field both systems, the operational intelligence they could provide to Moscow would be invaluable to the Russian military — and dangerous to us and our actual allies.

WINNING: Businesses added 241,000 jobs in March.

STEPHEN KRUISER: Top 10 Reasons Liberals Reflexively Blame the NRA for Shootings.

ANTI-ANTISOCIAL MEDIA: Zuckerberg Abandoned By Peers, Mocked By Street Artists.

“There are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay” for a service, while having an “advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people,” Zuckerberg said. “If you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford.”

No word if Cook has recovered from Zuck’s epic burn, though “rich people” have propelled Apple to revenues of nearly $230 billion in 2017 vs. Facebook’s $40 billion generated almost entirely from advertising – and as we have come to learn, letting app developers have their way with our personal data and helping candidates they favor.

Meanwhile, Zuck’s been Sabo’d.

While Facebook stock has been kneecapped to the tune of around 16% since the Cambridge Analytica story broke – and down 20% since February all-time highs, Mark Zuckerberg has been given “the treatment” by notorious conservative street artist, Sabo.

Banners reading “You can’t watch your kids 24/7, but we can” were put up in Times Square and several other public locations on Monday night – along with fake street signs warning “Caution, Facebook sells your data.”

Several of the signs feature a grotesque graphic of Zuckerberg’s face melting into Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) – along with other mentions of the Senate Minority Leader whose daughter works for Facebook.

I wonder how many in the Bay Area will get or care about the Schumer reference.

BEGUN, THE TRADE WAR HAS? China Threatens U.S. Cars, Planes and Soy in Response to Trump.

China’s cabinet, the State Council, said Wednesday that the tariffs will cover 106 categories of products and affect $50 billion of Chinese imports of U.S. products. The tariff rate and the sum of goods targeted match the proposal unveiled by the Trump administration Tuesday to punish Beijing for what it says are unfair practices to acquire American technology.

Neither the U.S. nor Chinese tariffs take effect immediately. The Chinese government didn’t specify when its penalties would be imposed. A Finance Ministry statement said that authorities are watching how the U.S. implements its proposed trade actions.

“Frankly speaking, we’re facing huge challenges today,” Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told reporters at an official briefing following the release of the plan.

The Chinese plan makes good on warnings that Beijing would respond to U.S. trade actions with proportional measures. In a key difference, Beijing has targeted the biggest American exports to China: soybeans and airplanes. Many of the other goods on the list—including sorghum and beef—intentionally affect the U.S. Farm Belt, where voters supported President Donald Trump, according to people familiar with the plans for retaliation.

Soybeans and cars both come from the heart of Trump Country.