MUST-SEE TV: Rubio Makes Van Hollen Look Like a Fool During Senate Hearing.

NOT GOOD:

Trump’s shipbuilding agenda is sinking.

I returned this week from shipyard tours in California to a flood of calls and DMs from DC and none of the news is good.

Friday marks 45 days since the president signed the Executive Order mandating a full shipbuilding review in 45 days.… pic.twitter.com/UAt84Zz0gx

— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) May 20, 2025

Excerpts:

Friday marks 45 days since the president signed the Executive Order mandating a full shipbuilding review in 45 days. So far, only one Cabinet Secretary has shown any urgency, and only in the past few days.

I pray I’m missing something, but sources inside every relevant department say otherwise. There’s no indication @SecDuffy, @KristiNoem, or @SecDef are prioritizing this effort.
…
The acting head of MARAD is a West Point classmate of Mark Esper—yes, the same Esper who helped auction off the Army’s watercraft fleet. Sources claim he’s undermining both Trump’s and Esper’s maritime goals.
…
On the Navy side, there’s no serious effort underway to reorganize the 83,000-person shipbuilding & repair enterprise. The critical SUPSHIP AGM role is still up in the air.

No admirals have been fired. No CNO appointed. The acting CNO is offering nothing but bureaucratic word salad.
…
No one with real, hands-on experience building commercial ships at world-class yards has been hired.

Finally, after a promising bipartisan start, several top maritime leaders are breaking ranks publicly voicing concern about last-minute changes made to the bill and there are rumors that Mark Kelly’s strong anti-Trump rhetoric could sink the effort.
…
Silver lining? Trump & JD are, by all accounts, more interested in shipbuilding lately, not less.

Trump has an awful lot on his plate, but he needs to reiterate what he expects and demand results — or else.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: ‘NORM!’ — Farewell to Television Legend George Wendt. “George Wendt did something much more than become famous from ‘Cheers’ — he turned his character into an icon. His entrance into the bar to the shouts of ‘NORM!’ became the most anticipated moment of each episode. Thanks to streaming and YouTube, those moments will live on.”

YES, THEY SHOULD: Shouldn’t the IRS Look at Why the Tax-Exempt Brady Gun Control Org (Allegedly) Offered a Former NRA President Millions to Stop Promoting Gun Rights?

The allegation says the offer was made in 2018. According to language in the lawsuit, Hammer immediately reported the offer to then-Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.

“This is not the kind of offer a tax exempt organization should be making under any circumstances,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “First and foremost, nobody’s First Amendment rights should ever be for sale, and secondly, the nature of this allegation almost appears as though the gun control group was offering Mrs. Hammer a bribe to walk away from an issue to which she had dedicated most of her adult life.”

Hammer’s legal action involves an apparent contract dispute between her and the NRA.

“We have absolutely no interest in, nor are we taking any position on, Mrs. Hammer’s lawsuit,” Gottlieb stated. “Our sole interest is in this apparent attempt by a wealthy gun prohibition lobbying organization to essentially silence one of the nation’s most respected and effective voices in support of Second Amendment rights.

I don’t know if this actually happened, but I do know that lefties will silence the opposition whenever possible.

ICYMI: Resuming Control of Gaza Is a Terrible Idea. But What the Hell Else Can Israel Do?

GOOD: Hegseth announces accountability review of Afghanistan withdrawal.

Thirteen service members and about 170 Afghans were killed in an Aug. 26, 2021 suicide bomb attack at the airport’s Abbey Gate. An investigation into the incident later found that a Marine general wanted to close the gate on Aug. 25, but an Army general decided to keep it open until Aug. 27 to allow British troops more time to finish their evacuation effort.

“Over the last three months, the Department has been engaged in a review of this catastrophic event in our military’s history,” Hegseth wrote in Tuesday’s memo. “I have concluded that we need to conduct a comprehensive review to ensure that accountability for this event is met and that the complete picture is provided to the American people.”

Chief Pentagon Spokesman and Senior Advisor Sean Parnell will lead the review, which will look into previous investigations to “analyze the decision making that led to one of America’s darkest and deadliest international moments,” the memo says.

“This team will ensure ACCOUNTABILITY to the American people and the warfighters of our great Nation,” the memo says.

Maybe they should start by looking into who in the White House actually called the shots.

LEFTIES LOVE EUTHANASIA: Canada Might Begin Euthanizing Kids Without Parental Consent.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Space Force official: Commercial satellites can do a lot more than we thought.

Now, the military is starting to use a commercial model for missions that, at least today, lack any meaningful commercial market. In these cases, the Space Force and the NRO must go out and pay a company to build an entire fleet of satellites that will exclusively serve the government. But rather than dictating stringent requirements and micromanaging every phase of the program, as the Space Force and NRO have typically done, they’re going with a more hands-off approach.

This change in procurement strategy is yielding results, officials said last week in a hearing convened by the House Armed Services Committee. Numerous companies are now manufacturing satellite buses, the basic chassis that hosts instruments, sensors, and payloads tailored for a range of missions. Most of them come from SpaceX, which mass-produces satellites for its Starlink broadband network. But there are others, and the market is richer than many US officials thought.

“We’re finding that commercial buses are not only available, but they’re also capable of doing a lot of what our missions require, and they’re available at a much lower cost than going off and developing a brand-new bus,” Scolese said.

It’s amazing what private enterprise can accomplish when Uncle Sam stays out of the way, but only to Uncle Sam.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Another Blue City Luxury High-Rise Goes Belly-Up.

HIT’EM WHERE IT HURTS: Harvard loses another $60 million in grants over antisemitism.

IF YOU LOOK AROUND THE WEST WING AND YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THE SUCKER IS…

Been reading Original Sin the past few days and the funniest part so far is this bit about Andrew Bates: pic.twitter.com/N4BF0B0KXH

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) May 20, 2025

…then you’re the sucker.

SCOTT PINSKER: The Five Biggest Questions of the Biden Health Cover-Up.

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Federal Court Strikes Down Biden Tranny Business Guidelines. “The social justice left isn’t just at war with Christianity, American patriotism and traditional sex roles, but with biological reality itself. In the future, the pronoun police and sex as social construct idiocy will be seen as an inexplicable madness of our age the same way that Pyramid Power and the Bermuda Triangle are exemplifiers of the craziness of the 1970s.”

Then again, the pyramid stuff was for harmless kooks and wasn’t enforced by law.

WALZ IS A JOKE: DHS Slams Walz’s ‘Gestapo’ Comments, Highlights Criminals Arrested.

THE NEW SPACE RACE (VIDEO AT THE LINK): Starship Flight 9 will NOT Catch the Booster. “SpaceX is not attempting to catch the Super Heavy Booster for Starship Flight 9 due to a strategic decision to prioritize other mission objectives and reduce risks. The booster, Booster 14-2, previously flew on Flight 7 and is set to perform a landing burn in the Gulf of Mexico instead of returning to the launch tower for a catch. This choice likely stems from the need to focus on resolving ongoing issues with the Starship upper stage, which has failed in the last two flights (Flights 7 and 8) due to engine-related anomalies. By opting for a simpler booster landing profile, SpaceX can concentrate on testing and refining the Block 2 Starship design, particularly its heat shield and reentry capabilities, without the added complexity of a tower catch. Additionally, posts on X suggest that SpaceX may be avoiding unnecessary risks to the launch infrastructure while iterating on fixes for the upper stage’s ‘harmonic response’ problem, which could delay the program if a catch attempt fails.”

SPOILER: THEY ARE NOT KIDDING HER WITH THIS HORSE SHIT.

You have got to be kidding me with this horse shit.

Gosh, USA Today, NOW you're wondering? https://t.co/kmjeeVzyqN

— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) May 20, 2025

INDEED: They Lied to Us. We’ll Never Forget It.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Joe Biden’s WH doctor was a longtime family friend who once worked with his shady brother — as cancer ‘cover-up’ speculation mounts.

IT DIDN’T WORK: Biden’s Cancer Announcement Was Timed to Distract From the Cognitive Decline Coverup.

SUSTAINABILITY: Ray Dalio says the risk to U.S. Treasurys is even greater than what Moody’s is saying.

Bridgewater Associates founder and billionaire Ray Dalio warned Monday that Moody’s downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating understates the threat to U.S. Treasurys, saying the credit agency isn’t taking into account the risk of the federal government simply printing money to pay its debt.

“You should know that credit ratings understate credit risks because they only rate the risk of the government not paying its debt,” Dalio said in a post on social media platform X.

“They don’t include the greater risk that the countries in debt will print money to pay their debts thus causing holders of the bonds to suffer losses from the decreased value of the money they’re getting (rather than from the decreased quantity of money they’re getting),” the Bridgewater founder said.

Moody’s on Friday cut the U.S. credit rating one notch to Aa1 from Aaa, citing the federal government’s ballooning budget deficit and soaring interest payments on the debt. It was the last of the three major credit agencies to downgrade the U.S. from the highest possible rating.

U.S. stocks fell Monday as the 30-year Treasury bond yield jumped to 4.995% and the 10-year note yield climbed to 4.521% in response to Moody’s downgrade.

“Said differently, for those who care about the value of their money, the risks for U.S. government debt are greater than the rating agencies are conveying,” Dalio said.

Well, we’re still in the “gradually” phase of going broke. The “suddenly” will catch a lot of supposedly very smart people completely off-guard.

COLORADO: Defending Education Sues Colorado Over Sick Trans Law. “You might remember the recently passed Colorado legislation to fund castration of “trans” kids with taxpayer dollars and in spite of parents’ wishes, to mandate pro-trans policies in schools, to criminalize ‘deadnaming,’ and to take supposed ‘misgendering’ into account in custody cases. Defending Education, an organization that stands for parents and against woke indoctrination in schools, is suing the Democrat-run state over the extremely harmful legislation. Colorado Parent Advocacy Network, Protect Kids Colorado, Do No Harm, and Dr. Travis Morrell also joined Defending Education in the suit.”

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Secret Service, DOD, Coast Guard, Border Patrol applications surge under Trump.

In the first four months of the administration, U.S. Border Patrol received 34,650 applications, representing a 44% increase over the same four-month period in 2024, The Center Square reported. Under U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks, Texas’ first border czar, the first quarter of 2025 marks “the most successful four-month recruitment stretch in the agency’s history.”

The U.S. Coast Guard also saw a massive spike of applications after failing to meet recruiting targets every year under the Biden administration.

Since January, the Coast Guard is on track to exceed its recruitment goals by 110%, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says. So far this fiscal year, the Coast Guard has already recruited more than 4,700 new members, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said. Under Trump, the Coast Guard has surged resources to secure U.S. borders and is seizing record amounts of illicit drugs, The Center Square reported.

The U.S. Department of Defense is also seeing a record number of recruits. After failing to meet recruitment goals every year during the Biden administration, in February 2025, all five military services met their recruiting goals.

During an April 30, 2025, cabinet meeting, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described what was happening as a “recruiting renaissance.”

Leadership matters.

MIDDLE EAST: Resuming Control of Gaza Is a Terrible Idea. But What the Hell Else Can Israel Do? “No nation can be expected to accept anything less and Israel certainly won’t.”

DECOUPLING: China’s retail sales disappoint as stimulus fails to spur demand; industrial output defies tariffs.

Retail sales rose 5.1% from a year earlier in April, missing analysts’ estimates of 5.5% growth, according to a Reuters poll. Sales had grown by 5.9% in the previous month.

Industrial output grew 6.1% year on year in April, stronger than analysts’ expectations for a 5.5% rise, while slowing down from the 7.7% jump in March, indicating the impact from U.S. tariffs was not as harsh as was being expected.

“We should be aware that there are still many unstable and uncertain factors in [the] external environment,” the statistics bureau said. “The foundation for sustained economic recovery needs to be further consolidated.”

Fixed-asset investment for the first four months this year, which includes property and infrastructure investment, rose 4.0%, slightly lower than analysts’ expectations for a 4.2% growth in a Reuters poll.

The urban unemployment rate in April eased to 5.1% from 5.2% in March, at a time when U.S.-China trade war had led economists to warn about substantial job losses in China.

We have to rely on polls to try and figure out what’s going on in China because Beijing stopped reporting key economic figures in recent years.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Finally, Consequences Are Making a Comeback. “We don’t know how this is all going to play out, but one thing is certain: Democrats aren’t going to stop their scofflaw ways unless some repercussions are doled out. Now that a we have a leftist county judge and a Democratic congresswoman in legal hot water for not letting ICE do its job, perhaps others with think twice before joining the resistance.”