ANDREW MALCOLM: Trump vows major changes to NAFTA. Good luck with that, sir.

The U.S. and Canada have the largest bilateral economic relationship in the world, along with the world’s longest undefended border, 5,524 miles. Imagine the costs of that wall.

They’re tied by vast electrical, financial, intelligence and law enforcement networks. Nearly $2 billion in trade flows across that border every single day. More trade transits the old bridge between Detroit and Windsor each year than flows between the U.S. and Japan.

Americans have $380 billion directly invested in Canada, while Canadians have about $260 billion investments down south. Exports of goods and services to Canada support about 1.7 million U.S. jobs. The U.S. trade deficit there narrowed to $11 billion last year.

Fully 40 percent of U.S. imported oil comes from Canada before the Keystone XL pipeline.

Canada is 10 percent larger than the United States and forms the only geographical buffer with Russia. Its politics are way more liberal than the U.S., but Canada has probably been our staunchest ally. On a per capita basis, in fact, Canadian families sacrificed more lives in Afghanistan than the U.S.

As for Mexico, exports there support around 1.2 million U.S. jobs. The exchange of goods and services last year totaled about $597 billion with Mexico earning a surplus of around $55 billion, compared to the $336 billion U.S. deficit with China in 2015.

Americans have about $92 billion in direct investments in Mexico. Mexicans have about $17 billion in the U.S.

Those numbers are yuge.

SPENGLER ON ISRAEL’S 69TH INDEPENDENCE DAY: Remarkable Achievements, Continuing Dangers.

TURNABOUT: Dems blast DOE study as biased toward coal, nuclear.

As biased, say, as threatening to bankrupt the coal industry — and then delivering on the threat?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqHL404zhcU

AFTER 15 YEARS OF WAR: Taliban Controls or Contests 40 Percent of Afghan Districts.

BUT THE NARRATIVE! From Czechia with Love.

Russian intelligence, supported by its propaganda machine, is going to great lengths to claim that Trump is tied to Moscow. Russian propaganda outlets such as Sputnik released stories about Page’s visit to Moscow and views on American foreign policy. Moreover, while Russian maneuvers with Page are being exposed, Putin is unrelenting in his efforts to paint Trump as a Kremlin asset.

Sputnik released another story alleging a Trump-Putin connection, this time a purported state visit in April with President Trump by Czech President Milos Zeman, known to the U.S. intelligence community as Putin’s mouthpiece. Czech analysts call him Putin’s Trojan Horse. The White House has never confirmed any visit by Zeman, but Russian propaganda outlets began reporting on a “substantive agenda” of the meeting as soon as Zeman announced it. Raising questions about whether the visit was in the bilateral interests of the Czech Republic and the United States or Vladimir Putin’s sole interest.

A recent filing under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) by lobbying firm SPG may help answer the question. The firm identified itself to the U.S. Department of Justice as an agent of the Czech Republic to facilitate the state visit of President Zeman.

Shockingly, the Czech Republic denies the existence of any such agreement with SPG.

“Shockingly” — heh.

If there were substance to the Trump-Putin narrative, then the Kremlin wouldn’t have to work so hard to create the appearance of substance. And that goes double for the Kremlin’s willing tools.

FAKE NEWS: Death-row inmate did not eat Bible for last meal.

He wouldn’t have needed the roughage anyway.

“IF YOU CAN’T BEAT IT, EAT IT.” Maryland’s Grossest Invasive Fish Has a New Predator: High-End Chefs.

When hundreds of mostly juvenile snakeheads turned up in a pond in Crofton, Md., in 2002, the progeny of discarded pets dumped by one owner, the government poisoned the pond. Two years later, when an angler caught a snakehead in a lake 25 miles west, Maryland drained the lake.

But soon snakeheads were spotted in the Potomac River, which divides Maryland and Virginia as it flows to the Chesapeake Bay. Poisoning and draining weren’t an option. Since then, Maryland has adopted a different tack: If you want to beat it, eat it.

The state sponsored snakehead-fishing tournaments and now sells $15 commercial licenses aimed at those who snag the hard-to-catch fish with a bow and arrow. The Potomac’s commercial harvest, sold to restaurants and wholesalers, has risen from almost zero in 2011 to 4,320 pounds in 2016.

“What better way to try to wipe something out than to get humans involved with it and create demand?” said Chad Wells, corporate chef for the group that owns Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia.

Indeed. But serving up invasive species is nothing new to Instapundit readers.

HERE WE GO AGAIN? GOP on verge of losing health care vote.

NOT REALLY: Trump on the Line in Special Election You Might Not Know About.

WESLEY PRUDEN: A pity party for the unloved press.

There was a broken heart for every wine glass and beer bottle at the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, where the White House Correspondents Association dined at their slimmed-down annual imitation of Hollywood glitz, grandeur and glamour.

The reporters, editors, pundits and wise men and women, sitting stiffly in their rented tuxedos, with the ladies in expensively gowned splendor, all felt unloved, reviled and disrespected, suspected by millions to be peddlers of fake news. The correspondents even put out a red carpet at the door where the limousines arrive, but it still felt a Scotch-and-water or two short of an Oscars night.

The president, who made a point of being three hours and a hundred miles away in Pennsylvania, was the most derided man not in the room. The evening’s not-so-great entertainer, hired to make everybody laugh, complained that the president was campaigning in Pennsylvania “because he can’t take a joke.” Celebrities stayed away, too. Several comedians whose names wouldn’t have escaped anyone turned down the gig. The streets in the fashionable nearby Kalorama neighborhood, usually clogged with the limousines of the rich and famous en route to hot-ticket “after parties,” were deserted this year. Nobody was up to staying up.

The schadenfreude is strong with this one.

CENSORSHIP: Turkey cuts off Wikipedia amid dissent crackdown.

DAVE MAJUMDAR: “It’s Like Fighting Mr. Invisible”: How I Went to War Against Stealth F-22 Raptors and F-35s (And Lost Badly).

“Even if you were in an Eagle or J-20… You felt the same thing,” a senior Air Force official with an air superiority background told me after my flight—referring to the feeling of utter helplessness of being attacked by an invisible enemy. “Because of the security cloak, it’s just impossible to explain. If everyone really knew and we asked to ‘choose their weapon’—there would be no doubt.”

Flying back to Langley, the experience was an eye-opener. I have been covering the Raptor and the F-35 since beginning of both programs. It is one thing to intellectually grasp the power of stealth, but seeing it in action makes one a believer—our flight had no idea, no warning from the AWACS or GCI that we were about to be hit until it was all over. It’s nearly impossible to fight an enemy you can’t see.

While the Raptor would be the most formidable fighter in the world due to its raw performance even without stealth, it’s now clear to me that even the F-35 with its mediocre kinematic performance will be an extremely dangerous foe in the air due to its low radar cross-section and sensors.

What’s most interesting is how well the Royal Air Force Typhoons play with U.S. stealth fighters. It makes the case for maintaining our own “high/low mix” of expensive stealth jets and less-expensive traditional jets.

SEPARATE BUT EQUAL? President-Free Correspondents’ Dinner May be ‘Healthiest Thing,’ Says CNN Reporter Don Lemon. ‘He wants to talk to his crowd. Good for him. Go for it.’

FASTER, PLEASE: End the discrimination against nuclear power.

Gov. John Kasich has long championed cost-effective action for clean air and the environment and last year vetoed legislation that would have repealed the state’s solar and wind mandates.

Unfortunately, those mandates exclude nuclear power, which provides 90 percent of Ohio’s clear energy. As a result, Ohio’s nuclear plants are at risk of closing — and killing over 1,300 high-paying, high-skill jobs.

Cheap natural gas has played a role in nuclear’s troubles, but why then have solar and wind been booming during a time of low natural gas prices? The answer is obvious: They benefit from over 23 years of federal subsidies and state mandates like the one Kasich supports for wind and solar — and which excludes nuclear.

Like most environmentalists, I used to be opposed to nuclear power. I thought solar and wind would be enough. But the more I learned about solar and wind, I realized they could never power a high-energy industrial civilization.

Anyone serious about reducing carbon emissions has to be serious about nuclear power, unless their real goal is a serious reduction in the number of living human beings.

“PROMOTED?”: Briton who promoted Islamic State with special cufflinks jailed for eight years.

From the Reuters headline, you might be under the mistaken impression that a man was sent to prison for wearing pro-ISIS cufflinks — but no:

A British man who stored material about missile systems on data sticks disguised as cufflinks and created an extensive online manual for members of Islamic State was sentenced to eight years’ jail on Tuesday.

Samata Ullah, 34, an unemployed man from Cardiff in Wales, had admitted five terrorism charges including membership of Islamic State (IS).

Police recovered 30 pairs of USB sticks disguised as cufflinks, which contained a guide to missile systems and instructions on how to avoid detection online.

That sounds a bit more serious than mere “promotion.”

CHARLIE MARTIN: Remember the VICTIMS of Communism on May Day.

There are around 100,000,000 of them.

CONRAD BLACK: Make-or-Break Moment At Hand for America Over Economic Growth.

GDP growth declined from 4.5% annually in the last six Reagan years, to 3.9% in the last six Clinton years (as the current-account deficit and the housing bubble ballooned), to 2% in the George W. Bush years, to 1% in the Obama years. If per capita GDP had increased in the first 15 years of this new century as it had in the years between 1945 and 2000, families and individuals in the United States would be 20 percent wealthier than they are. In the Reagan years, the federal debt increased to 50% of GDP from 40%. That debt declined a little in the Clinton years, but, in this century, even as a percentage of GDP, it has more than doubled.

These are extremely dangerous trends. The average American is aware of a 15-year flat-lined income in terms of buying power, and the absence of job security despite an official level of unemployment of a very acceptable 4.7%. Most would know, from their own experiences or acquaintances, that the labor force has shrunk, in fact by 15 million people.

There are now over 20 million Americans of prime employment age (25 to 54) who have dropped out and are sustained by the benefit system, especially Medicaid-supplied painkillers, food stamps, and activities that generally escape official compilation. Many of these are among the 750,000 people released each year by the bloated and corrupt prison system, which does all it can to demotivate, stigmatize, and render unemployable those released — and make more likely the return to its embrace. The system in any case always imprisons at least as many new convicts each year.

If the Trump administration does not get a tax bill through that rekindles economic expansion, the entire American project is going to face its greatest crisis since Roosevelt came in to grapple with the Great Depression.

Read the whole thing.

SHOW ME THE MONEY: Paul Ryan’s crucial cash surge.

First in Axios: Paul Ryan had another monster fundraising month for House Republicans, with his political entities sending $2.75 million to the National Republican Congressional Committee in April. That’s more than half a million more than the Speaker sent the committee in April 2016 — an election year.

Why this matters: Republicans need a ton of cash and fast to deal with an increasingly unstable political landscape. It’s only a few months past Election Day but the off-year special elections are tougher than many expected, with Democrats seeing each race as an opportunity to channel the entire progressive movement against Trump.

And House Republicans are already sweating 2018. Members are going home every weekend and facing angry progressive protesters. They’re already visualizing the inevitably brutal Democratic attack ads on everything from budget cuts to the unpopular Obamacare replacement bill.

Context: Ryan’s political operation tells us he’s sent nearly $20 million to the NRCC since the start of 2017. Over the same period in 2016 Ryan sent about $13 million to the NRCC. Ryan has also directly helped raise cash for the special election candidates, signing fundraising emails for candidates in Kansas, Georgia and Montana.

Ryan is almost certainly safe as Speaker while he brings in that kind of money.

KEEP PORTLAND VIOLENT AND OPPRESSED: Portland’s May Day March Quickly Spins Out of Control.

RYAN COOPER: The New York Times‘ staggering own goal on climate change.

It isn’t what you think:

Over the weekend, The New York Times found itself in a lot of hot water over the climate change views of its new columnist, Bret Stephens. The former Wall Street Journal editor has long espoused a sort of breezy science denial-lite, so liberal Times readers (i.e. most of them) reacted with stunned disbelief that the paper would waste the most valuable op-ed space in America on not only a third boring conservative white man, but one who downplays climate change, the most important problem in the world.

Stephens reacted by making his very first effort a defensive, smarmy column, full of gaping logical holes and disastrous scientific errors, about how the left was being mean to him over climate change. Many liberals were enraged enough to cancel their subscriptions over it. It’s both an excellent illustration of warped thinking about climate change, and how upper-class liberals’ need for civil discourse can lead to staggering own goals.

Got that? Gentry liberals attempted to shout down Stephens’ call for dialog and cast him out as a heretic on climate change because of their need for civil discourse.

HMM: Democrats confident they can block Trump’s agenda after spending-bill win.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) secured nearly $5 billion in new domestic spending by exploiting disagreements between Trump and GOP lawmakers over spending priorities.

Democrats’ lopsided victory on the five-month deal, which is likely to be approved this week, means it will be very difficult — if not impossible — for the GOP to exert its will in future budget negotiations, including when it comes to Trump’s 2018 budget blueprint.

That’s because Republicans are hopelessly divided over how much to spend on government programs, with a small but vocal minority unwilling to support such measures at all. That has forced Republicans to work with Democrats to avoid politically damaging government shutdowns.

And that means Democrats are in the driver’s seat when it comes to budget battles, even with Trump in the White House.

When Republicans force a government shutdown, they take the blame. When Democrats force a government shutdown, Republicans still take the blame.

GOOD MORNING: Liz Sheld’s Morning Brief will make it even better.

FIGHTING WORDS: Kate Upton Might Not Be Perfect.

SAD: Girl, 12, forced to withdraw from chess tournament for wearing ‘seductive’ dress.

The photo at the link shows an adorable and age-appropriate dress.

THAT MEANS IT’S WORKING: Oregon lawmakers consider ending Medicaid expansion to shore up budget.