THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Honda scraps EV SUV development due to decreased US demand. “Instead, the company aims to curb investments in EVs and redirect efforts towards increasing production of profitable hybrid vehicles.”
Hybrids make a lot more sense, economic and environmental — and don’t require boatloads of tax dollars to get carmakers to build them or consumers to buy them.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Reagan Really Nailed It When He Said Libs ‘Know So Much That Isn’t So.’ “The Democrats are more untethered from reality now than ever before, which has had me pondering this Ronald Reagan gem a lot: ‘Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.'”
HE’S RUNNING: California governor plans to tour 8 GOP-leaning SC counties in effort to engage rural voters.
Newsom will speak in several Upstate counties on July 9, including Laurens, Pickens, and Oconee. He also plans to stop in Marion, Chesterfield, Florence, Kershaw, and Chesterfield counties.
SCDP said the counties Newsom will visit have faced obstacles such as job loss and devastation from natural disasters, including wildfires and hurricanes.
Several Upstate counties faced severe damage from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 and the Table Rock Complex Fire in March 2025.
Each of these SC counties on the tour also holds a strong Republican voter base. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance won roughly 76% of the votes in Pickens County, 70% in Laurens County, and 81% in Oconee County.
It’s easy to laugh at Newsom — and I certainly do — but more Republicans should visit blue districts and listen to their concerns.
Connections matter, and Dems often understand this in ways Republicans don’t seem to.
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Harmeet Dhillon: Civil rights being rebuilt after ‘cultural shift’ under Trump.
The Justice Department‘s Civil Rights Division is undergoing a complete internal transformation under President Donald Trump’s second term — not just of enforcement strategy but of personnel, institutional practices, and long-held assumptions about how federal civil rights laws should be applied.
“When my memos went out, that culture changed,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, head of the division, told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview. “There’s literally been lawyers there who spent their entire careers — over 40 years — doing the same thing, no matter who the president is.”
More than half of the division’s attorneys left during the first quarter of this year, Dhillon said, clearing the way to rebuild the division from the ground up on the promise of sweeping changes under Trump. New hiring of career lawyers and political appointees is underway to align the department’s civil rights enforcement with what Dhillon elucidated as the plain text of the law and the trajectory set by the Supreme Court.
Dhillon explained to the Washington Examiner that many of the attorneys who left had worked under previous Democratic administrations and were not receptive to Trump’s directives.
Say what you will about the corrupt old patronage system, but at least it cleaned house every four or eight years.
ROBERT SPENCER: Here’s Kamala Harris’s Snarling Response to Inquiries About Old Joe Biden’s Condition. “As vice president, Kamala Harris must have known that all that, and more like it, was going on. And yet she still had the audacity to unleash the F-bomb at Democrats who were concerned about Old Joe’s condition, and to give the impression that she was really afraid that Trump would install himself as some kind of fascist dictator, in line with the most febrile of the left’s fever dreams.”
James Gunn is opening up about what “Superman” is really about.
In his Sunday profile with The Times of London, the DC Studios head went deep on the themes and ideas that drive his highly anticipated “Superman.” He explained that the superhero epic encompasses “the story of America,” and at a basic level, is about a man searching for a better life away from his original home.
“I mean, ‘Superman’ is the story of America,” Gunn explained. “An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country, but for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”
All he had to say was, “It’s about truth, justice, and the American way” to get people buying tickets.
UPDATE (From Ed):
And as Frank J. Fleming writes:
That was the topic of a sketch during Saturday Night Live’s earlier, funnier years, when Jane Curtain asked, “What If Superman grew up in Germany, instead of America?”, leading into an appearance from Dan Aykroyd as Hitler-supporting Uberman, and as Klaus Kent, his not-so-mild mannered disguise as a clerk in the Nazi’s Ministry of Propaganda.
JUST DON’T GET RID OF THE GREEN ONES: Kennedy’s Battle Against Food Dyes Hits a Roadblock: M&M’s.
POWER, UNLIMITED POWER: Google Bets Big on Nuclear Fusion.
In the U.S., Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) engineers are developing a fusion project consisting of a doughnut-shaped machine known as a tokamak and called SPARC, which they hope will achieve a nuclear fusion reaction. CFS is a company that spun off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. The firm has raised over $2 billion in funding to develop the machine, although it is not certain how long it will take and whether it will be able to achieve a net surplus of energy once it is up and running. However, the company’s target is to construct the world’s first fusion-fuelled power plant in Virginia by the early 2030s.
This week, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, came to an agreement with CFS to purchase power from its nuclear fusion project. Google signed the technology’s first direct corporate power purchase agreement, according to the tech company. CFS CEO and co-founder Bob Mumgaard stated, “Without partnership and without being bold and setting a goal and going for it, you won’t ever reach over those challenges.” The financing forms part of a new funding round for CFS, after Google invested $1.8 billion into the firm during its previous 2021 round.
It would be nice if this pans out, but commercial fusion power has been just around the corner since I was a kid — at least.
PRETTY MUCH, YEAH:
“The NWS didn’t issue warnings”
They did.“They didn’t send out texts to residents.”
They did that too.“They were understaffed.”
They weren’t.“It was climate change.”
It happened in 1987 too.“It’s Trump’s fault!”
It wasn’t.“Well, we want it to be.”
Yeah, we know.— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) July 6, 2025
DO THE LETTERS F AND O MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU? The New York Times wants your private ChatGPT history — even the parts you’ve deleted. “Soon, lawyers for the Times will start combing through private ChatGPT conversations, shattering the privacy expectations of over 70 million ChatGPT users who never imagined their deleted conversations could be retained for a corporate lawsuit.”
HE TRAVELED THE ROAD FROM “SHARP BUT MAYBE A LITTLE GLIB” TO “APOLOGIST FOR DICTATORS” IN NOTHING FLAT: Tucker Platformed Iran’s Laughable Denial of Assassination Wish Against Trump.
OOPS, THEY DID IT AGAIN: King, Conqueror, and Cultural Makeover: The BBC Did it Again. “But if someone suggested the BBC cast a few white or Japanese actors for a docudrama about Nigeria’s bid for independence, they’d better bring along enough smelling salts for the whole production team.”
INDEED:
Social media is a poison, no different than drugs or booze. Some people can handle it, but almost no one can handle it as well as they think they can. https://t.co/j4NahGic7V
— George MF Washington (@GMFWashington) July 7, 2025
FOLLOW THE MONEY: Uncovering Soros/Singham NGO Soldiers. “If you visit a conservative or MAGA rally, people will be happy to tell you what they think and why they’re there. If you visit a left wing rally, it seems that they creepily tell you that actually talking to people ‘isn’t their role for the day.’ That’s because paid protesters for the shady hard-left NGOs running the show don’t want you to know they’re taking money from Singham and Soros.”
AT LEAST GIVE HER CREDIT FOR LEAVING THE COUNTRY LIKE SHE SAID SHE WOULD: Rosie O’Donnell Fled to Ireland, Now She Thinks She Runs America.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Guess Who Lied About Trump’s NWS Budget Cuts…
BREAKING:
BREAKING: Three federal & TX law enforcement sources tell me an active shooter with a rifle & tactical gear ambushed Border Patrol agents as they arrived at a Border Patrol annex facility in McAllen, TX this morning. Local police and federal agents returned fire, killing him. I’m… pic.twitter.com/xL3qw5G6OW
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) July 7, 2025
Full text:
Three federal & TX law enforcement sources tell me an active shooter with a rifle & tactical gear ambushed Border Patrol agents as they arrived at a Border Patrol annex facility in McAllen, TX this morning. Local police and federal agents returned fire, killing him. I’m told this was a purposeful ambush/attack against federal agents and a press conference is planned for later this morning. No federal agents injured. Im told a McAllen police officer may have been shot, but is in stable condition.
Photos via law enforcement sources.
DHS statement to FoxNews:
“This morning, an individual opened fired at the entrance of the United States Border Patrol sector annex in McAllen, Texas. Both Border Patrol agents and local police helped neutralize the shooter. This is an ongoing investigation led by the FBI. More information will be shared as it becomes available.”
More: Man With Rifle Ambushes Border Patrol Agents in McAllen, Texas.
YOU CAN’T MAKE AN OMELET WITHOUT PARADING OVER THE BODIES OF A FEW DOZEN DEAD CHILDREN:
Whoops… there goes the narrative pic.twitter.com/YdIuzVBszG
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 6, 2025
CHANGE: Expect CBS News to undergo a major overhaul under Skydance boss David Ellison.
In fact, from what I hear, continuing in the grand tradition of Murrow, Wallace and Cronkite is not at the top of Ellison’s mind because, for one, it ain’t so grand any longer, and two (maybe most important), he knows it’s a lousy business.
It’s not worth the trouble that it generates. We don’t even know if it’s profitable since Paramount doesn’t disclose the news division’s P&L statements. Plus, its product has moved so far to the left that it angers more than half the country.
Full disclosure: I don’t know David Ellison personally but people I trust do, and they tell me he’s substantive, much more than a lucky sperm kid that being Larry’s son confers. His independent studio Skydance has produced such recent blockbusters as “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”
He doesn’t get his news from TikTok — far from it.
For the time being, he wants to keep the news division but also move away from its progressive leanings. (A person close to him says look for investments in “truth-based” news.) He does appreciate the CBS News legacy that he is about to buy — as long as the numbers are working and he believes they aren’t, I am told.
And that’s where things could get scary for the news division.
Ellison, I am told, equates CBS with football more than he does with Cronkite. If he’s looking to grow stuff, he and his point man in running the new company, former NBCU chief Jeff Shell, are looking at CBS Sports as the tip of the spear.
Everything else is about to get the mother of all efficiency reviews, my sources say.
Layoffs are likely, as are smaller salaries and squeezed budgets.
The TV news industry is tough. It’s tougher when you make it your mission to annoy more than half your potential viewers.
THE TRUTH HURTS, BUT NOT AS MUCH AS GETTING SHOT BY A BERNIE BRO:
— Rick Partlow (@RickPartlow66) July 6, 2025
HMM: Xi, Putin Absent As BRICS Nations Meet In Rio.
Xi’s absence, the first in his 12 years as president, is widely seen as a setback to the political weight of the summit.
Analysts say the Chinese leader may be seeking to avoid diplomatic friction with the United States after recent talks to ease trade tensions.
Others suggest internal geopolitical calculations, such as avoiding being overshadowed by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is being hosted with full honours in Brazil.
Also missing is Russian President Putin, who will participate virtually due to his standing arrest warrant over alleged war crimes.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian will not attend either, amid lingering tensions following a brief but intense conflict with Israel.
The absence of key figures like Xi and Putin is a diplomatic blow to host president Lula, who is using the summit to showcase Brazil’s global relevance ahead of a busy international calendar that includes the G20 summit and COP30.
“Brazil is the superpower of the future — and always will be” is a joke older than I am.
Meanwhile, just south of Brazil:
Argentina’s economy grew 7.6% Year-on-Year in Q2! 🇦🇷
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) July 6, 2025
Cutting spending and red tape works wonders, but remain anathema to Lula.
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