YOU DON’T SAY: At 100 Days, Trump’s No Russian Stooge or Fascist.

OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD: Rachel Maddow Could Be Big Winner In Wake Of O’Reilly’s Ouster.

THUNDER RUN TO SEOUL: Assessing North Korea’s War Plan.

My own guess is that ROK forces would fight very well—especially on defense. But there are ways in which North Korea may attempt to undermine ROK morale: Both sides consider the other to be cousins awaiting liberation and this could be used as part of a skillful information operations campaign—particularly if ROK forces seek to advance into the North. The possible combat performance of DPRK forces is even less predictable. On the one hand, the DPRK population has been brainwashed from birth. On the other hand, North Korea’s people fear their own leadership and are often on the brink of starvation. It is possible that they might fight fanatically, but also that, given a chance, they would turn on their leaders. We simply don’t know.

The second main variable is the potential DPRK use of WMD. Finding and killing these will be a high priority for ROK/US commanders, but it is possible that some will survive, especially in the first few days. The North’s leaders may decide to use chemical weapons for battlefield advantage or, if they fail to enter Seoul, may seek to blackmail the ROK government with the possibility of chemical or even nuclear attack against it. Of course the use, or even threatened use, of WMD might invite US retaliation in kind, but a desperate or simply risk-taking Kim regime could gamble that our side would blink first.

The third and related variable is what the DPRK regime would do in defeat. Facing defeat, it is possible that army commanders, or even their troops, would turn on the leadership and depose the regime. On the other hand, if Kim retains enough control over his forces but believes that he is on the brink of being deposed, it is possible that he could—with nothing left to lose—simply unleash whatever WMD he still possesses.

Fascinating read, highly recommended.

THOMAS RICKS: The Air Force doesn’t have a pilot crisis, it has a leadership crisis.

The United States Air Force is facing a crisis, seemingly a recent one, which will define the service for decades to come.

This “Dear Boss” letter is instructive for describing exactly why so many pilots are choosing not to stay in the Air Force, and are instead leaving to go to the airlines. There is a deep lack of faith in leadership at all levels of the Air Force, but especially at the Squadron Commander and above levels, and, from within, it seems that the organization is promoting toxic managers (not leaders) who are not promoted on their merits, but instead on how well they toe the party line.

Complaints range, but highlights are; a lack of accountability, protection of the deficient leaders at all costs, overemphasis on promotion versus performance, and too much “queep” (an Air Force term for paperwork). There is no single root cause for pilots bailing out in such large numbers, and the issue contains much more nuance than simple bad leadership, but there is a glaring problem that is a significant contributor, and helps illuminate the distinct lack of Air Force leadership: In the USAF pilots are not provided the opportunity for meaningful leader development. I will explain.

Clear out the deadwood, give pilots enough jets to fly, and allow them much more flight time.

TRIGGERED: Antifa Activist Punches Journalist on Camera, Then Claims Self-Defense.

HERE WE GO AGAIN? Writers Guild Members Vote for Strike Authorization With 96% Support.

The WGA released the results Monday, a day ahead of the resumption of contract negotiations on a master contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. A work stoppage could start as early as May 2, after the current three-year master contract has expired.

The AMPTP issued a statement in response to the strike authorization announcement: “The companies are committed to reaching a deal at the bargaining table that keeps the industry working. The 2007 Writers Strike hurt everyone. Writers lost more than $287 million in compensation that was never recovered, deals were cancelled, and many writers took out strike loans to make ends meet. We remain focused on our objective of reaching a deal with the WGA at the bargaining table when the guild returns on April 25th.”

I’d have more sympathy if most movie scripts didn’t seem to come out of an automated factory, untouched by human hands.

HMM: Trump opens the door to delaying funding of border wall.

The president said — according to tweets from conservative media at the gathering this evening — that his administration could get the funding for the wall this week or they could come back to it in September.

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) quickly seized on the remarks in an off-camera response Monday evening saying it’s good for the country that the president is taking the wall off the table in the funding negotiations.

“It’s good for the country that President Trump is taking the wall off the table in these negotiations. Now the bipartisan and bicameral negotiators can continue working on the outstanding issues,” Schumer said in a statement.

When Chuck Schumer talks about bipartisanship, keep a hand on your wallet.

QUESTION ASKED: Will Dem Leaders Be on Board with Bernie’s Big Tent? “Warren, Pelosi underscore their pro-choice credentials after Sanders stumps for pro-life candidate.”

That there’s this much controversy over the existence of less than a handful of pro-choice Democratic candidates shows that the Big Tent is a myth. But expect to see the appearance of change if the Dems decide to get serious about taking the House next year.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG? Founder of fake encyclopedia to fight fake news.

GOOD MORNING: Start it off with Liz Sheld’s Morning Brief.

IT’S COMPLICATED: French election is a backlash to the backlash.

The backlash to the backlash to the backlash is when things will turn truly ugly.

WHEN EVERYTHING IS TRANSPHOBIC, NOTHING IS: Activist Says Having ‘Genital Preferences’ In Dating Is Transphobic.

“Do your own thing” morphed into “Do what we say” so slowly I hardly even noticed.

FEEL-GOOD ITEM OF THE DAY: Man drinks 13 beers during a half marathon he didn’t train for.

A former high-school cross-country and track athlete, Farnan completed his feat at the Holy Half Marathon on April 1. He finished a Coors Light before starting the race, and then downed another at each mile marker. (He arranged for a friend with a backpack full of reserves to accompany him on a bike.) Still, he completed the race in 1:43:42, running just under eight-minute mile splits, and captured the whole thing using a GoPro. (See it here; includes some not-safe-for-work language.)

“There was no point where I thought I wouldn’t finish,” Farnan says, despite deciding to run just the day before the race. “I thought, you know, I’ll do it, but I haven’t been training properly. How do I run it without being worried about my time?” The answer was “beer.”

Isn’t it always?

RICK MORAN: The plot is thickening in the Debbie Schlussel-Sean Hannity sexual harassment incident.

RED LINE: U.S. announces ‘sweeping’ sanctions on Syrian scientists for chemical attack.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? How to Set Up a Room in Your Home Just for VR.

Tips include a beanbag chair to fall into, and a swivel chair with at least seven feet of clear space around it.

Until VR developers find a way around the amount of stuff and space required by VR, it’s going to remain a marginal consumer technology.

GOOD TIMES: You Are Richer than John D. Rockefeller.

There really wasn’t very much in the way of movies for you to watch, even though you could afford to build your own home movie theater.

Your telephone was attached to a wall. You could not use it to Skype.

Your luxury limo was far more likely to break down while you were being chauffeured about town than is your car today to break down while you are driving yourself to your yoga class. While broken down and waiting patiently in the back seat for your chauffeur to finish fixing your limo, you could not telephone anyone to inform that person that you’ll be late for your meeting.

Even when in residence at your Manhattan home, if you had a hankering for some Thai red curry or Vindaloo chicken or Vietnamese Pho or a falafel, you were out of luck: even in the unlikely event that you even knew of such exquisite dishes, your chef likely had no idea how to prepare them, and New York’s restaurant scene had yet to feature such exotic fare. And while you might have had the money in 1916 to afford to supply yourself with a daily bowlful of blueberries at your New York home in January, even for mighty-rich you the expense was likely not worthwhile.

Your wi-fi connection was painfully slow – oh, wait, right: it didn’t exist. No matter, because you had neither a computer nor access to the Internet.

Being on the internet all day makes it all-too-easy to get lost in the trees and miss the forest.

WELL, GOOD: New Orleans Removes ‘White Supremacy’ Confederate Statue in the Dark of Night.

This wasn’t a typical Civi War monument to a leader or a battle, but a monument erected to white supremacy, explicitly, following a “revolt” against New Orleans’ racially integrated police department.

THEY CAN’T EVEN MANAGE A PARTIAL REPEAL: Obamacare tax delay unlikely in government funding bill.

The “Health Insurance Tax” is mandated under the Affordable Care Act. It levies insurance companies with a 4 percent to 6 percent tax on every health plan sold in America, with the exception of coverage provided by firms that self-insure their employees.

Republican sources on Capitol Hill said Monday that there are no plans to delay implementation of the tax in a government funding bill that Trump must sign by Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown.

“It’s not on the table for negotiation,” a senior House Republican aide familiar with the budget talks said, requesting anonymity in order to speak candidly.

If that holds, industry sources said that insurance companies would move immediately to pass along the cost of the tax to consumers in health plans being priced for sale later this year for coverage in 2018.

Zero congressmen will have to pay this tax.

IRONY: Second Handwritten Copy of the Declaration of Independence Discovered in England.

DAN HANNAN: Theresa May is about to become the most powerful leader in Europe.

Thatcher took over in 1979, at what must be reckoned Britain’s lowest moment. The country had been in decline since 1945, partly because successive governments had sought to inflate away the vast debts Winston Churchill had run up to win the war and partly because of wrong-headed interventionist policies, including the regulation of prices and wages. She faced constant sniping from within her own party and was never much liked by the electorate. The magnitude of her achievement was this: that she defeated every vested interest, took Britain from the being weakest economy in Western Europe to being the strongest, went on to win three general elections and the Cold War – and did it all from a position of relative weakness.

May starts from an altogether more enviable place. She was the overwhelming choice of Conservative MPs – so overwhelming, indeed, that her rivals pulled out of the race. She faces no serious opposition from the other parties. Labor has retreated into far-Left introversion and, according to opinion polls, is heading for its worst defeat since the 1930s, when it first emerged as one of the two main parties. UKIP, which came third in terms of the popular vote at the last election (though the vagaries of the electoral system gave it just one MP) has secured its primary objective – that is, it helped win a referendum on leaving the European Union. Its sole MP, Douglas Carswell, is standing down with a cheerful smile, job done. Its voters are drifting to the party that is actually delivering Brexit, namely the Conservatives.

What May shares with Thatcher is a genuine willingness to turn back the ratchet effect.

BILL NYE THE SINGING VAGINA GUY: That’s entertainment!

HMM: How Rising Sand Prices Could Undermine U.S. Shale Recovery.

The techniques used to wring increasing volumes of crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids (NGLs) out of shale continue to evolve, and as they do, producers are facing mounting costs for securing frac sand and for disposing of produced water from the wells. These costs are squeezing producer profits, and—in an era of sustained low hydrocarbon prices—sometimes even flip production economics from favorable to unfavorable.

Historically, American business has thrived on solving logistical problems just like these. If prices are rising for sand and waste-water disposal, that’s a strong profit motive for entrepreneurs to create new efficiencies — not a mortal threat to the fracking industry.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: U.S. Citizen Arrested in North Korea.

The arrested man, a Korean-American professor named Tony Kim, had been teaching at a university in Pyongyang set up by a Korean-American Christian businessman, two people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Kim is the third known U.S. citizen to be detained by North Korea in recent months. Pyongyang last year sentenced Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia undergraduate, and Kim Dong-chul, a Korean-American businessman, to terms of 15 years and 10 years of hard labor, respectively.

A U.S. State Department spokesman on Sunday declined to comment on the case, citing privacy concerns, but said the department typically works with the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang when U.S. citizens are detained there.

Westerners should stay out of North Korea, period. Not only are they asking to be used as pawns by the Kim regime, but just by being there they also lend that foul government a legitimacy it doesn’t deserve.

THE LEFT’S LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS: Who Does the Anne Frank Center Represent?

The Jewish world is full of organizations that advocate against anti-Semitism and discrimination, including groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Unlike the Anne Frank Center, these organizations have years of experience, dozens of offices, and sizeable grassroots support. They also have clear frameworks for defining and combatting anti-Semitism—even the ADL, which is known for its strongly worded statements, didn’t call Spicer’s ill-advised comments “Holocaust denial.” The Anne Frank Center has reliably been willing to criticize the Trump administration in more aggressive and hyperbolic terms than any of these well-established groups, and media outlets have credulously rewarded it with extensive coverage.

The center’s transformation was no accident. It recently got a new board chair, a private-wealth manager named Peter Rapaport, and he brought on Goldstein, who has a background in political organizing. It shuttered its small museum and disbanded its board of advisers comprised of Holocaust experts. All of the staffers who were working there when Goldstein arrived have left.

With just its famous name and a savvy social-media strategy, the Anne Frank Center has transformed into a putative authority on anti-Semitism and American politics. But it’s not at all clear the organization speaks for anybody other than its own leaders—not Holocaust scholars, Anne Frank’s family, or the Jewish community. Ultimately, by politicizing Anne Frank, the group may undermine her legacy.

“Background in political organizing” is about all you need to know.