THE COST OF WAR: Parts of Russia face gasoline shortages after Ukraine struck refineries.

Since early August, Ukraine has targeted a number of oil refineries including Novokuibyshevsk, Syzran, Ryazan and Volgograd in response to Moscow’s missile and drone attacks.

In Russia’s far eastern region of Primorye, local media reported lines stretching back kilometres (miles) as motorists queued to fill up with gasoline. Authorities blamed an influx of tourists.

NNK, an oil company, said many of its gasoline carriers in the region were stuck in traffic jams for three to six hours at a time due to repair works on the roads, according to local media.

Yevgeny Balitsky, Moscow-appointed governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, which is mostly under Russian control, said on Thursday that gasoline retail sales in several areas were suffering problems because of peak demand and refinery maintenance.

“In the Zaporizhzhia region, the fuel shortage is further complicated by logistics issues and the threat of enemy attacks on fuel trains,” he said.

If you’d like more details than Reuters can provide, there are plenty of them on this X thread.

This seems relevant, too: Trump suggests Ukraine should attack Russia to win war.

“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country. It’s like a great team in sports that has a fantastic defence, but is not allowed to play offence. There is no chance of winning! It is like that with Ukraine and Russia,” Mr Trump wrote in his Truth Social website.

“Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND. How did that work out?”

I’d rather Trump wrangle an equitable armistice, but since Putin seems determined to slow walk the peace process, I’m very curious to see how Kyiv’s systematic attacks on Russia’s energy oil infrastructure pan out.

PAULA BOLYARD: Rest in Peace, James Dobson, and Thank You.

THEY’RE RIGHT TO BE: Teachers are skeptical of ‘equitable’ grading: ‘Students sink to lower expectations.’

OOF:

I believe you mean $0.00

Thank you for your attention to this matter. https://t.co/RlJ5d2hIQf

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) August 21, 2025

TEXAS TWO-STEP: Democrat Slams Big Money As He Dances All the Way to the Bank.

LEE WILLIAMS: Judge ATF as They Judge Us: They’re All Guilty and They All Need to Go. “No one makes the case that it’s time to end the ATF better than the ATF itself. Rather than allowing the agency to continue on its own or merging it with the DEA as has been recently discussed, President Donald J. Trump should put the agency out of our misery before its agents kill yet another innocent American or violate someone else’s civil rights.”

IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Are We Losing the New Space Race? “The race isn’t to merely plant a flag for prestige and bragging rights. The race is on to establish a permanent and (eventually) self-sustaining presence on the ultimate high ground — and the gateway to the riches of the asteroid belt.”

SUSTAINABILITY: Report warns U.S. national debt predicted to pass $53 trillion by 2035.

By fiscal year 2035, the national debt is set to surpass $53 trillion, or 120% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product, according to a new estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

The updated number – which CRFB reached by assuming that all current trade deals and tariffs remain in effect – is $1 trillion more than projected in the Congressional Budget Office’s January 2025 Budget and Economic Outlook.

Yearly interest payments on the national debt will rise as well, climbing from nearly $1 trillion in 2025 to $1.8 trillion in 2035, a total increase of $14 trillion over the next decade.

This story doesn’t end well.

I DUNNO, SHE’S DODGED EVERYTHING ELSE: After Decades of Scandals, Hillary Finally Faces a Ticket She Can’t Dodge.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: IRS began criminal probe into Clinton Foundation in 2019 but then suddenly stopped, memos show.

“Can’t talk about the CF,” a memo states in recounting how IRS agents suddenly cut off contact with two whistleblowers they had been working with for weeks. One of the whistleblowers was a decorated former federal money laundering analyst who had testified before Congress about issues like terrorism financing.

The documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, add a new body of evidence about the federal government’s concerns about the former first family’s famous global charity as well as a persistent narrative of federal agents being thwarted in their pursuit of investigations tied to major Democratic Party figures.

John Moynihan, a retired Drug Enforcement Agency financial crimes analyst, and Larry Doyle, a corporate tax compliance expert, had spent years researching the Clinton Foundation, testifying to Congress about it and providing the IRS with evidence of alleged financial wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation.

Developing…

“DERP” PRETTY MUCH SUMS IT UP:

Biden called Americans domestic terrorists.
Biden pushed for violence against those who disagreed with him, branding us as extremists.
Biden expanded the government and increased its power.
Biden deployed guards and erected a perimeter of barbed wire around the Capitol.

DERP. https://t.co/epPg4QZI0H

— The🐰FOO (@PolitiBunny) August 21, 2025

SCOTT PINSKER: I’ve Changed My Mind: There Really IS Genocide in Gaza. “Buckle up and pack a sandwich: This headline will make sense in, oh, about six minutes. (Times and distances are approximations; your mileage may vary.)”

KRISTI NOEM: President Trump promised to secure the border. And he’s delivered.

History has immortalized Babe Ruth’s “called shot” in the 1932 World Series. The New York Yankees legend extended his arm toward the centerfield bleachers, then crushed a home run to the spot where he pointed. It was an iconic, seemingly impossible moment.

President Donald Trump, like Ruth, called his shot in the 2024 presidential campaign, saying that “you don’t need eight years, you need six months” to turn our nation around.

Seven months into his second term, it’s clear that the president has done what he said he’d do by reestablishing law and order at our southern border and by removing violent illegal immigrants from our nation. Both actions were necessary for Americans’ peace and prosperity.

President Trump called on me as secretary of Homeland Security to deliver on his promises. The best way to do that was to let law enforcement uphold our laws, to get out of their way and to put excellence at the heart of everything we do.

I had been assured by all the very best people that the border was broken, and that the only solution was massive new legislation that included amnesty.

DEMOCRATS DON’T LIKE MEN; THEY NEVER SEEMED TO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT THE FEELING MIGHT BECOME MUTUAL:

No one forced Democrats to make their entire identity about telling normal men they're evil.

That's on them.

I'm just glad I get to see the fallout. It's glorious. https://t.co/f0MrsUmxez

— RBe (@RBPundit) August 21, 2025

COOL. NOW PUT THE BEEF TALLOW BACK IN THE FRYERS: McDonald’s is cutting prices of its combo meals to convince customers it’s affordable again.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Remember the Virginia County That Protected a Trans Predator? Now It’s Punishing Teen Boys for — What? “The Loudoun County School Board has decided to go to war with the U.S. Department of Education.”

COLORADO: Special session a chance to fix artificial intelligence mistake.

The epitaph on Jared Polis’ gubernatorial gravestone will simply read, “He knew better, but would not stand up to his own party.”

For seven years, our hyperprogressive legislature has sent him one industry-killing bill after another. And he kept signing them, even when he knows they are bad policy, economically devastating, and even if they go against his strongest-held convictions.

One such strongly held conviction is his faith in technology.

In the tech world, the man’s no slouch. As much as I’d like to tease Polis for just being a rich kid who got richer putting his momma’s greeting-card company online, the fact is he made fortunes many times over in varied tech ventures. And most importantly, he understands what the coming artificial intelligence revolution can bring for humanity in general, but also the endless opportunities it could bring Colorado in particular.

So then why did he agree to make Colorado the first state in the nation to effectively stamp out AI development by signing Senate Bill 24-205? This law will repel AI companies from providing us their services or locating here. The AI revolution could skip Colorado.

SB-205 was designed by the “we see oppression even before it exists” crowd. They are going to stamp out discrimination from — get this — software code. Starting next year, the law outlaws “algorithmic discrimination” in AI with ridiculously costly compliance regulations.

Even if AI turns out to be a bubble, that’s no reason to chase money and jobs out of the state.

Then there’s this: “Polis understands why what he signed is horrid. That’s why he included a call for fixing, delaying or repealing SB-205 in the upcoming special session.”

A special session to get Democrats to fix, delay, or repeal a bill they wrote and that Polis signed?

How’s that supposed to work?

ROBERT SPENCER: Adam Schiff Joins an Elite Group of Two Notorious Losers. “Adam Schiff, of course, isn’t like Charles Guiteau in every particular. He didn’t try to kill Trump; he just tried to destroy him. And yet the parallels are clear enough.”

SHHH, EVERYBODY TELL NEWSOM HE’S DOING GREAT:

All Newsom’s bluster has done is start a war Democrats cant win.

So congrats to him. pic.twitter.com/GQQ118FbLw

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) August 21, 2025

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Lee Zeldin tells ‘Pod Force One’ how Obama and Biden alums cashed in on $20B climate ‘slush fund.’

The Biden administration tried to tie the Environmental Protection Agency‘s “hands behind its back” by sticking it with billions of dollars that was later funneled to lefty nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin told The Post’s Miranda Devine on the latest episode of “Pod Force One,” out now.

“When I was going through the confirmation process [in January], this video comes out,” the former Long Island congressman recalled. “It was done through Project Veritas, but it was of a Biden EPA employee who was talking about how the agency was tossing gold bars off the Titanic, rushing to get billions of dollars out the door before Inauguration Day. He was also talking about the desire to get themselves jobs at the recipient NGOs.”

After Zeldin was confirmed by the Senate, he and his staff began investigating “with great enthusiasm and eagerness.”

“Basically, every time we overturned a rock, we found something under it that was either filled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest, unqualified recipients or reduced agency oversight,” he recounted to Devine.

Read the whole thing.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I Would Love to Believe That the Dems Are in a Doom Spiral… “As we have discussed here many times this year, the Democrats aren’t making much of an effort to win back any of those voters they’ve lost. They’ve mostly been putting on a show for the dwindling base. Rather than face reality and try to broaden the party’s appeal, they’re high-fiving each other over South Park episodes about President Trump.”

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Federal District Court Rules NY’s Non-Resident Carry Ban Violates the Second Amendment. “This ruling will, of course, be appealed. The game, after all, is to delay, delay, delay. Still, this is a very positive ruling and another brick knocked out of the gun control wall.”

I choose to think of it as one small step on the way to nationwide constitutional carry.

ICYMI: Tulsi Stares Down UK, Scoring Another Big Win for American Consumers.

SHOT: D.C.’s Murder Rate Is More Than 500% Higher Than The Average State. “D.C.’s murder rate ran 169 percent higher than Louisiana’s, the deadliest state, and an astonishing 523 percent higher than that of the average state.”

Chaser: DC just had a murder-free week, and yes, Dems, Trump did that.

As the wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Trump administration’s takeover of the Washington DC police force begins to fade, the results are coming in, and they are nothing short of extraordinary.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the nation’s capital has had no murders for seven days, something that had not been achieved since March and something I can find no recent record of in summer months when the murder rate is typically at its highest.

Last Monday, when a man was tragically gunned down in Logan Circle just hours after the Trump takeover, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., took to social media to say that “Trump owns this. No word if the congressman agrees Trump also owns the lives saved this past week.

And it’s not just murder, according to the local police union. Robbery dropped 46% in the week after the takeover, carjackings were down a whopping 83%, and violent crime down 22%. Who could possibly argue against that?

Democrats “committed to leg-humping criminals,” as Kruiser put it yesterday — that’s who.

But it’s the kind of change DC’s majority-minority residents might appreciate.

IT REALLY IS: Stephen Miller’s Rant on ‘White, Crazy Communist Hippie’ Rent-a-Mobs in D.C. Is Standing-O Worthy.