2028 PREVIEW: Cruz dodges question on 2028 presidential run.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, declined to rule out a presidential run in 2028 as buzz around his possible ambitions made headlines.

Axios on Monday reported that Cruz was “laying the groundwork” for a presidential bid as he continued to attack Tucker Carlson, a close ally of Vice President JD Vance. The same day, Cruz fielded a question from Fox News’s Harris Faulkner about his aspirations.

He declined to answer directly and instead told her that “I got a job. It’s representing 31 million Texans, and it’s fighting every day for 31 million Texans,” The Hill reported.

Cruz might make a damn fine president — but he might be even better on SCOTUS.

DON’T MESS WITH A GUY WHO’S BEEN PLAYING THE MEDIA FOR DECADES: Trump Shreds Reporter Who Wouldn’t Let Him Finish His Answer.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION, NEW YORK CITY?

Keep in mind that the biggest recent experiment we have in rent control is that removing rent control increased supply and REDUCED prices. https://t.co/A47uBdZkyP

— Alex Tabarrok (@ATabarrok) November 17, 2025

This one line from the linked article is worth repeating — endlessly, if necessary: “It was not just that the law was repealed, but also that it was replaced with nothing.”

HIGHER EDUCATION IMPLOSION UPDATE: This Black College Is A ‘Criminal Enterprise,’ Ex-Top Official Says In Lawsuit.

It is one of four similar lawsuits filed in the last few months against the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, its president Heidi Anderson, its provost Rondall Allen, and its diversity, equity, and inclusion czar Jason Casares, that all follow a similar pattern: A faculty member allegedly discovers wrongdoing at the university, and then is retaliated against by the university’s DEI office.

Claims from the suits paint a picture of a university with almost no academic standards, that admits 90% of applicants and looks the other way at cheating and truancy to avoid worsening its 17% on-time graduation rate and keep the federal student loan money flowing.

The lawsuit filed July 28 by Sandeep Gopalan, a Rhodes scholar who until recently was the school’s vice president for research and vice provost for academic affairs, said that after he claims to have exposed a scheme by Anderson and other top administrators to steal thousands of iPads, the university axed Gopalan’s program and Ph.D. students in retaliation.

The students were funded by a $4.6 million grant from the federal Department of Education that Gopalan had secured and the university had no ability to terminate, but it dismissed the scholars anyway, falsely suggesting that the Trump administration had cut off funding to the historically black college, he said.

More at the link, which you can be sure is somehow racist.

ICYMI: Welp, So Much for Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan.

BUBBLES POP: I looked into CoreWeave and the abyss gazed back.

You may not have heard of it because it’s not doing the consumer-facing part of AI. It’s a data center company, the kind people talk about when they say they want to invest in the “picks and shovels” of the AI gold rush. At first glance, it looks impressive: it’s selling compute, the hottest resource in the industry; it’s landed a bunch of big-name customers such as Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta; and its revenue is huge — $1.4 billion in the third quarter this year, double what it was in the third quarter of 2024. The company has almost doubled in share price since its IPO earlier this year, which was the biggest in tech since 2021. So much money!

But as I began to look more closely at the company, I began feeling like I’d accidentally stumbled on an eldritch horror. CoreWeave is saddled with massive debt and, except in the absolute best-case scenario of fast AI adoption, has no obvious path toward profitability. There are some eyebrow-raising accounting choices. And then, naturally, there are the huge insider sales of CoreWeave stock.

After I unfocused my eyes a little, I realized CoreWeave did make a horrible kind of sense: It’s a tool to hedge other companies’ risks and juice their profits. It’s taking on the risk and the costs of building data centers that bigger tech companies can then rent while they build their own data centers which may very well wind up competing with CoreWeave. What’s more, it’s part of a whole stable of companies that are propping up demand for the behemoth of the AI boom: Nvidia.

I don’t think CoreWeave’s weaknesses are a secret. It just seems like a lot of investors are ignoring them.

To be fair, there’s nothing wrong with riding the bubble, provided you’re savvy enough to get off before it pops.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS [VIP]: Dear Hollywood: Have You Tried Not Sucking?

BECAUSE OF COURSE: Air Force wants a $500,000 counter-air missile, despite cheaper options.

“WOMEN’S RIGHTS” IS JUST ANOTHER BULLS*** JUSTIFICATION FOR LEFTY BRUTALITY: UN Women’s Rights Official Denies Hamas Crimes, Blocks Israel.

SOCIALISM IN A NUTSHELL: Mamdani’s Mental-Health Plan Is a Well-Worn Flop.

Mamdani’s mental-health policy seems to have been inspired by former mayor Bill de Blasio, of whom the mayor-elect is a fan. Under de Blasio, the city burned more than $1 billion on ThriveNYC, a mental-health bureaucracy that offered an array of wellness programs but did little for the seriously mentally ill. While Mayor Eric Adams laudably prioritized untreated serious mental illness during his one term, he did not abandon ThriveNYC programming, which Mamdani is rebranding as part of his “Department of Community Safety.”

The lack of novelty is apparent in Mamdani’s most talked about mental-health proposal: deploying social workers instead of cops in response to emotionally disturbed person calls. New York City has experimented with non-cop and “co-response” teams since 2021, with mixed results.

There’s little new, either, in the rest of Mamdani’s mental-health platform, which offers standard progressive talking points, like expanded voluntary mental health and wellness services. Most New Yorkers agree that the city needs to address untreated serious mental illness. But more of the same won’t help allay these concerns.

But maybe with the “right” people in charge…

EXCEPT IN NEW YORK CITY: They’re Dropping Like Flies: Yet Another Country Rejects Communism.

WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL: Jewish New Yorkers rushing to buy guns for protection after anti-Israel Zohran Mamdani’s victory.

TREAT MENTAL ISSUES, DON’T INDULGE THEM:

Trump shooter: Nonbinary
Minnesota School Shooter: Trans
Nashville Shooter: Trans
Colorado Springs shooter: Nonbinary
Aberdeen shooter: Trans
Denver school shooter: Trans
Iowa school shooter: Trans/genderfluid
Charie Kirk kiIIer: Did it on behalf of trans boyfriend

It’s time to…

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 17, 2025

Related (From Ed): Would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks went by ‘they/them’ on DeviantArt, linked account reveals ‘furry’ fetish: report.

MIDDLE EAST: Iran Just Made This Yuge Non-Bombshell Claim. “Now that we’ve covered the newsy stuff and the analytical stuff, let me take just a moment more of your time to share the nightmarish stakes involved.”

CONFIRMING THE OBVIOUS: Colorado losing luster as a migration destination state.

The US Census Bureau consistently updates its methodology for conducting population estimates and forecasts, revising previous results based on new methods.

In its newest standard, the Census Bureau improved its methodology to better estimate the increase in net international migration.

This revision resulted in an additional 1.85 million international migrants into the US from 2020 to 2023 than previously estimated.

For Colorado, the new methods now indicate the state’s population is 5,956,729, which is 24,120 more than previously thought.

Historically, Colorado’s in-migration has been predominantly from within the United States, but most of the newly estimated population growth since 2022 is attributed to international migration, rather than domestic.

In fact, the rate of domestic migration into Colorado has been stagnating and actually declined from 2023 to 2024.

It’s nice to see the Census Bureau catching up to what everybody around here noticed a while ago.

THE COLD WAR DIDN’T END, IT JUST MUTATED INTO A MIND VIRUS:

The why is Cold-War-era Soviet active measures. The woke mind virus originated as a Soviet memetic weapon, though it has since undergone some adaptive mutations its designers didn't anticipate. I think they would have been shocked and fascinated by transgenderism.

The Soviets… https://t.co/UFulN6I57B

— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) November 17, 2025

UPDATE (From Ed): David Thompson on Vice and “Mankeeping:” Let’s Be Alone And Unhappy.

GOOD LORD: Another Bombshell Revelation Shows ‘Source’ Had More Info Than FBI on ‘They/Them’ Trump Assassin.

HE ISN’T JUST A “DISHONEST CREEPY PERVERT,” HE’S ALSO PROBABLY IN THE RUNNING TO REPLACE NANCY PELOSI:

What’s notable about these replies is where they were made: on BlooSky. You have to work very hard to be denounced as a “creepy pervert” on BlooSky.

Wiener makes it look easy. https://t.co/18JOGqjXoO pic.twitter.com/jEL6Zy5OqF

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) November 17, 2025

OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY: Social Justice Investing Advisors Sue Paxton. “Environmental Social Governance (ESG) is a sneaky way for far-left activists to browbeat corporations into supporting far-left social justice warrior causes with company money. Texas passed a law requiring ESG advisors to disclose such fiduciary conflicts of interest, and the SJW set is so mad that they’re suing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over it.”

HAMAS GOTTA HAMAS: Welp, So Much for Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan. “You almost — almost — have to respect Hamas for the sheer audacity of today’s announcement.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Gun Control Orgs Ready to Floor It in Virginia As Soon As Spanberger Takes Office.

Youngkin has vetoed 42 gun reform bills since he took office in 2022, including an assault weapons ban, a prohibition on abusive dating partners owning guns, and a minimum age for rifle purchases, according to a Trace analysis. He vetoed 24 of those bills in 2024 alone. The following year, Democrats reintroduced 15 of the same bills — plus three new ones — knowing they had little chance of passage. Now, with Spanberger set to be sworn in on January 17, Democrats are mobilizing for another try.

“We’re not going to take our foot off the gas,” State Senator Adam Ebbin, who chairs the Legislature’s gun violence prevention caucus, told The Trace. Ebbin plans to reintroduce the bills he sponsored that were vetoed by Youngkin last year. “I know that we’ll have others as well who are strategizing on it currently,” he said of his fellow Democratic lawmakers. “So there’ll be a substantial gun safety package reintroduced. And I expect the bills to be signed.”

Here’s what you can expect, Virginia: The 12 gun bills passed by the Colorado legislature this year and signed into law.

FAIL, BRITANNIA: UK Policeman Fired for Not Treating Knifeman With ‘Courtesy.’ “A large gang fight occurred near McDonald’s, where police constable Lorne Castle decided to arrest a teen accused of assaulting an elderly man and being involved in the fight. A misconduct panel subsequently concluded that Castle had not treated the violent criminal suspect ‘with courtesy and respect,’ which is somehow a problem, so much so that he was fired. But he’s fighting back.”

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Charlotte stabbing suspect was freed twice this year before brutal bus attack. “A Charlotte man accused of nearly killing another passenger on a city bus last week had already been in and out of jail twice this year. Court records show that 57-year-old James Calvin Bennett was free on bond in October, just a few weeks before police say he stabbed a man in the chest during a CATS bus ride.”

Previously in Charlotte: Who Is Decarlos Brown Jr. and Why Was He Free After 14 Arrests.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: A Dictator Singing ‘Imagine’ Should Be Considered a War Crime. “Yes, musical tastes are subjective, but ‘Imagine’ is as close to an objectively awful song as you’ll ever find. It was probably on a lot of the Gitmo playlists. John Lennon did some great things with the Beatles, but ‘Imagine’ was a real legacy buzzkill for me. It’s also a cautionary tale about what too many drugs can do to one’s brain.”

UGH: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warns of ‘perfect storm’ behind ground beef possibly soaring to $10 a pound.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed the soaring beef prices on a “perfect storm” of problems inherited from the Biden administration as well — as the spread of a horrifying parasite from Mexico.

“The beef market is a very specialized market. It goes in long cycles, and this is the perfect storm, again, something we inherited,” Bessent told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

The question from Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo, followed an interview last week with Omaha Steaks President and CEO Nate Rempe — who warned that ground beef could rise to $10-a-pound by next fall.

He said it likely won’t come down in price until 2027.

Ground beef cost an average of $6.32 in September — up from $5.67 a year before, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

I try not to look at the price when I pick up ribeyes at Sam’s Club — but it’s less often than it used to be.