DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONE: Calif. cannabis market posts biggest sales drop in legalization history.

Taxable sales at California’s legal cannabis stores amounted to $1.088 billion in the first quarter of 2025, the lowest figure in five years and an 11% drop in sales compared to the same quarter a year earlier, according to an SFGATE analysis of tax data. That’s the largest such drop in the history of legal cannabis sales in California.

Tamma Adamek, a spokesperson for the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, did not dispute SFGATE’s analysis of the drop. However, she said comparing the latest figures to earlier reported taxable sales is like comparing “apples to oranges” because the tax figures are constantly being updated as more cannabis stores file their tax reports.

“We know that the gap will shrink,” Adamek said, without providing an estimate for how much the agency expects the reported sales to change.
Experts have been warning for years that California’s legal market is in dire straits, as legal operators face extraordinarily high regulatory fees, taxes and competition from the unlicensed market.

“Unlicensed,” heh.

Sacramento forgot that, long before legalization, California had a robust “unlicensed” infrastructure in place for the production, distribution, and sale of pot. Were they stupid enough to think they could tax and regulate licensed producers and sellers to the point where their product was more expensive than the “unlicensed” stuff — and still collect their precious taxes?

I suppose they were that stupid.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Here’s How Dems Can Win Back Men (But They Won’t).

YOU DON’T NEED A FORTUNE TELLER TO TELL YOU SHE WON’T GET ONE: ‘Daily Show’ Owes Megyn Kelly Huge Apology. “So don’t expect Kosta, ‘The Daily Show’ or Comedy Central to apologize to Kelly for getting the story wrong. It’s another reason consumers are flocking to Kelly’s broadcasts and tuning late-night propagandists out.”

Good stuff from Christian Toto.

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE WAS LAST SEEN ON A REMOTE PERUVIAN MOUNTAINTOP: Princeton Fails To Enforce Its Rules on Free Speech, Antisemitism.

Princeton’s President Christopher Eisgruber has positioned himself as perhaps the leading academic defender against the Trump administration’s crackdown on universities, citing the importance of universities and academic freedom, as well as his belief that the administration has greatly overreached in its attacks, especially against Harvard.

Yet his ability to lead credibly this defense was challenged in April by an event at Princeton featuring former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is considered one of the favorites to succeed Benjamin Netanyahu next year. Demonstrators inside McCosh Hall shouted Bennett down and a fire alarm was pulled, apparently by a protester, ending the event. Outside, Jewish attendees were called “inbred swine,” among other slurs, and told to “go back to Europe.” President Eisgruber apologized to Bennett and university officials promised a serious investigation. A number of observers noted the importance of Princeton enforcing its rules in this situation. I attended the April 7 event, and I volunteered to speak as a witness to university investigators, with whom I met twice for over two hours.

I was therefore shocked when on May 19 I received the results of that investigation in a letter from a university official: No students would be disciplined for their premeditated disruption and blatant antisemitism.

Shocked, shocked.

I DON’T WANT TO MEET ANY OF THEM, BUT I SURE WANT ICE TO KEEP ARRESTING THEM: Meet the Serial Child Sex-Offender Arrested by ICE in a Blue-State 500-Illegals Sting.

FASTER? PLEASE! After More Than 60 Years Of Development, Here Is The Nuclear Engine That Is Set To Go To Mars With NASA.

For decades, NASA has been working on an engine that is faster and more efficient than traditional chemical propulsion. One of the most serious avenues is nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP). How does this work? Heat a gas, usually hydrogen, in a nuclear reactor, then expel it at high speed to generate a much more powerful thrust. With this system, Mars could be reached in just 45 days. General Atomics, a key player in nuclear research, has just announced a major breakthrough in this technology. Scott Forney, President of GA-EMS, is delighted with the latest tests: We are very encouraged by these positive results proving that the fuel can survive these operating conditions, bringing us closer to the realisation of safe and reliable nuclear thermal propulsion for cislunar and deep space missions.

The DRACO programme, piloted by NASA and DARPA, plans to demonstrate an NTP engine as early as 2027. But the challenges remain: ultra-resistant materials, heat management in space and, above all, astronaut safety in the face of an on-board nuclear reactor. Meanwhile, SpaceX continues to make progress on the chemical propulsion front with its Starship rocket, designed for interplanetary missions. Elon Musk still has a head start on reusable launchers, but if nuclear propulsion becomes viable, he could well find himself facing unexpected competition. What’s more, with the rise of China, which is aiming for a manned mission to Mars by 2033, the duel with the United States looks set to be fierce. And this time, it’s hard to predict who will get there first.

It’s less about who gets there first and more about who can get there most often, and with enough gear to establish a permanent presence.

But first is good, too.

UPDATE (AND BUMPED): Not so fast…: Some parts of Trump’s proposed budget for NASA are literally draconian.

New details of the Trump administration’s plans for NASA, released Friday, revealed the White House’s desire to end the development of an experimental nuclear thermal rocket engine that could have shown a new way of exploring the Solar System.

Trump’s NASA budget request is rife with spending cuts. Overall, the White House proposes reducing NASA’s budget by about 24 percent, from $24.8 billion this year to $18.8 billion in fiscal year 2026. In previous stories, Ars has covered many of the programs impacted by the proposed cuts, which would cancel the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft and terminate numerous robotic science missions, including the Mars Sample Return, probes to Venus, and future space telescopes.

Instead, the leftover funding for NASA’s human exploration program would go toward supporting commercial projects to land on the Moon and Mars.

NASA’s initiatives to pioneer next-generation space technologies are also hit hard in the White House’s budget proposal. If the Trump administration gets its way, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, or STMD, will see its budget cut nearly in half, from $1.1 billion to $568 million.

What a shame. There is plenty of fat to trim, including at NASA and particularly SLS. But exotic tech like DRACO is the kind of thing NASA could and should do.

When Blue Origin CEO said last week that NASA should focus on “really exotic missions,” I believe this is the kind of thing he was talking about.

Glenn added, “I agree” the other day, and so do I.

LEADERSHIP MATTERS: Army hits recruiting goal four months early.

The U.S. Army hit its recruiting goal four months early, reaching the 61,000 target before the Sept. 30 deadline.

The Army’s goal this year is more than 10% higher than the 55,000 recruitment target for the prior fiscal year, the military branch said in its announcement Tuesday.

“This achievement represents a significant turning point for the Army and indicates a renewed sense of patriotism and purpose among America’s youth,” according to the Army.

Daily average contracts have exceeded “last year’s levels by as much as 56% during the same period,” the military branch said.

Warriors want to join a warfighting organization, not a drag show.

WHO CARES? IT’S ALL OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Guess How Much D.C. Dems Wasted on Streetcars They’re Now Ditching?

CHANGE:

Perhaps an interesting milestone: @SpaceX commercial revenue from space will exceed the entire budget of @NASA next year.

SpaceX revenue this year will be ~$15.5B, of which NASA is ~$1.1B.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 3, 2025

Most of SpaceX’s revenue comes from Starlink, a SpaceX subsidiary. Starlink subscriptions provide the cash flow that keep SpaceX growing, and the launch cadence needed to keep their costs down and their rocket technology at least one step ahead of the competition.

It’s maybe the cleverest business model you’ll ever see.

EVERYBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE: Guns Aren’t Just Tools for Safety, They’re Also ‘Enforcers of Dignity’ for Some Trans People.

I LIKE WINE: Can I See a Wine List? Man Thinks He May Have Found the Site of the Wedding at Cana.

I’D REALLY HOPED I’D RETIRED THIS SERIES — ALAS: It’s the Return of Your Daily Dose of Doom & Gloom. “Nothing clears a room faster than a fiscal crisis column — and yet, in the immortal words of Whitesnake, here I go again.”

THE MEDIA CHOSE A SIDE; THEY CHOSE POORLY:

Already seeing the sob stories about the terrorist’s poor children who had big dreams before their dad tried burning a bunch of Jews to death in broad daylight.

When do we hear the sob stories of the actual victims, mainstream media? Jackasses.

— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) June 4, 2025

More:

This story is a good allegory to the war in Gaza. Her father preferred to try and murder Jews over keeping her safe, but god forbid anyone pin the blame on what's happening to her now on him. No, it's the laws that are wrong. https://t.co/9Nle1vdCTq

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) June 4, 2025

And:

The fact that there were several people involved in making this story see the light of day should give you a good indication of how corrupt journalism is. They have zero sense of how normal readers will perceive this as offensive.

Anyway, there's a reason why USA Today is no… https://t.co/8FYfW6p7DE

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) June 4, 2025

The media still doesn’t understand why their reputation is in tatters.

UPDATE (From Ed): “Choices have consequences:”

Here’s a video from the Boulder suspect where he declares that Jihad is more important to him than his family. Choices have consequences.

pic.twitter.com/KWWkvALD8Y

— Political Sock (@politicalsock) June 4, 2025

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Genghis Khan was a nice guy. Israel is evil. SF parents push back on ‘ethnic studies’ mandate.

San Francisco parents aren’t happy about the district’s year-long “ethnic studies” class, which is now a graduation requirement, report Ezra Wallach and Anya Kaiser on The Standard. All ninth graders — and 10th-graders who opted out last year — will have to take the course, which focuses on the evils of structural racism, colonialism, capitalism and heteronormative thinking.

Looking at the curriculum on the district website, parent Viviane Safrin found only “four lessons out of 55 highlight contributions by ethnic groups, she wrote in a memo last year. The word “hegemony” appeared 81 times.

“They are taught how to organize — what it means to resist,” Safrin told The Standard. “They’re taught about dominant and counter narratives. It’s an upper-level college course for one way to examine history, but it is not teaching any actual history.”

Some lessons were removed in response to her comments, write Wallach and Kaiser, but “one exercise still in use places the Red Guards, a student-led paramilitary organization from Mao’s Chinese Cultural Revolution, alongside the U.S. civil rights and feminist movements as emphasizing ‘the resistance that oppressed groups have shown in history’.”

Another calls for students to read a 2012 article called “Straight white male: The lowest difficulty setting there is” and asks, “What would white males need to give up (or relinquish) in order to make a more equitable society?”

Communism, straight up.

BIG BROTHER WANTS TO SCAN YOUR ID: UK Labour Party Floats Digital ID to Monitor Illegal Immigrants.

HMM: Ukraine Hits Kerch Strait Bridge Again.

“Ukraine reports this one took several months. During that period of time SBU agents of Ukraine place mines along the supports of the Crimean bridge. Today the device was detonated. The underwater supports are reported as being severely damaged at the bottom level.”

“The supports being structurally compromised and destroyed, as seems to be the case here, means that the bridge is, to use a technical term, ‘knackered.’”

“The bridge is still standing. It has not been downed.” But it has been structurally weakened.

There were similarly optimistic assessments after the previous two strikes, so we’ll see.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It’s Pride Month — Tim Walz Should Really Think About Coming Out. “One of the most striking things about the 2024 revamped and unelected Democratic presidential ticket was that they managed to find a running mate who was even more inauthentic than Kamala Harris. That’s quite a feat.”

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: 2 Chinese nationals charged with smuggling ‘potential agroterrorism’ fungus into US.

Yunqing Jian, 33, and Zunyong Liu, 34, citizens of the People’s Republic of China, were allegedly receiving Chinese government funding for their research, some of which at the University of Michigan, officials said.

“The complaint also alleges that Jian’s electronics contain information describing her membership in and loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. It is further alleged that Jian’s boyfriend, Liu, works at a Chinese university where he conducts research on the same pathogen and that he first lied but then admitted to smuggling Fusarium graminearum into America — through the Detroit Metropolitan Airport — so that he could conduct research on it at the laboratory at the University of Michigan where his girlfriend, Jian, worked,” according to a DOJ press release.

This stuff has to be ripped out down to the roots.

CLUB CARTEL: Not Your Average Nightclub Raid: Inside DHS’s Shocking Discovery Near Charleston, S.C. “Around 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, 200 federal, state, and local law enforcement officials went to the underground nightclub and conducted a raid that they called ‘Operation Last Stand.’ You’re probably thinking that since ICE was involved, they found some people who were in the country illegally — and they did — but they also found so much more than that.”

WEIRD, BUT LET’S GIVE IT A TRY: Don’t let people who hate America move here.

I pledge allegiance to the flag …

I heard those strange words for the first time at Riverside Elementary School in 1976, as a first-grader who had just moved to the United States with my family. I learned quickly how to say the words, but it took me much longer to learn what they mean.

Like Jefferson, Franklin and Washington, I was born English but chose to become an American. I took US history in middle and high school, got a degree in history, and later taught American history to 8th- and 11th-graders.

But though I knew the names and dates, nothing taught me to love my country like spending half my life outside of it, including 23 years as a US diplomat in Africa, Asia and Europe. The singularity of American freedom and opportunity is best proven through comparison.

Like many other Americans who came here legally and became citizens, nothing rankles me more than seeing disrespect, ingratitude, and even homicidal violence from some who have been granted the opportunity to come here — or allowed to remain despite coming illegally.

You’d figure the least they could do would be to obey our rules and respect our culture and values.

“Assimilation” is a dirty word to Americans who don’t like America very much.

QUESTION ASKED: Why Won’t Trump 47 Enforce the Law Trump 45 Wanted?

SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM: Top Five Movie Nazis Who Got Exactly What They Deserved.

NOT MESSING AROUND:

Six One-Way Tickets for Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon. ✈️ pic.twitter.com/R32j1Ic8Ml

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 3, 2025

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: I Have Seen the Future of the Air Force and it Is Good. “I had the honor of spending quality time (and more than a few drinks) last week with several just-commissioned Air Force officers at an Academy graduation party we threw — and let me tell you, the future looks solid.”

LISTEN TO THEM, THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT. WHAT MUSIC THEY MAKE: When the Swamp Screams, You Know You’re Over the Target.