I DON’T KNOW, I CAN IMAGINE QUITE A BIT: It’s Hard to Imagine a Worse Day for Stormy and the NYC Prosecutors in the Hush Trump Case.

A TIKTOK RANDO NAMED ANNA KEEPING YOU BETTER INFORMED THAN NEW YORK TIMES NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING COLUMNIST PAUL KRUGMAN IS THE 21ST CENTURY IN A NUTSHELL:

You can watch Anna’s viral video here.

KRUISER: Biden’s Handlers Finally Got Him Enough Adderall to Condemn Campus Brownshirts—Sort Of

UNFIT TO PRACTICE LAW:

NEW: The student editors of the Columbia Law Review have issued a statement urging the law school to cancel exams in the wake of the police operation that cleared the university's encampment, saying the "violence" has left them "irrevocably shaken" and "unable to focus."🧵 pic.twitter.com/BOD87x5mwM

— Aaron Sibarium (@aaronsibarium) May 2, 2024

But: “Columbia Law School told the Free Beacon it had no plans to cancel exams.”

Good for them if they stick to it.

HMM: Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer Just Destroyed Bragg’s Case Against Trump.

GOODER AND HARDER: ‘Disturbing news’: San Francisco restaurants dread new state law banning service fees.

George Chen, chef and owner of China Live, levied a 20% service fee on customers upon reopening in 2020 after a temporary pandemic closure to sustain livable wages for his staff amid widespread industry layoffs.

Chen said the extra money has helped maintain salaries across the board at the sprawling Chinatown restaurant, and he’s seen 95% retention among his staff since he instituted it.

But a new state law slated to go into effect on July 1 would effectively outlaw such surcharges, doing away with what has become an increasingly common method of boosting restaurant wages amid rising costs and creating pay equity among front- and back-of-house staffers.

“It’s disturbing news,” Chen said. “They’re trying to change something that’s actually working.”

That’s why they changed it.

CORRECTION: I completely misread the law which, as Eugene Volock was kind enough to point out, is more like a truth-in-advertising regulation and is not an outright ban.

DEEP STATE: O’Keefe Media Group Exposes Alleged CIA Plot Against Trump.

ARI ARMSTRONG: Colorado at the precipice.

To some degree, the sometime-libertarian Polis checks the hard-left contingency of his party. He uses threats of vetoes to does some arm-twisting upfront to limit the number of horrible bills begging for his signature. And once in a while he does veto an especially bad bill.

Here is the problem. Polis is term-limited out in two years. Republican leaders busy themselves, like vultures, with picking clean the bones of their party. The Democrats’ strongest candidate probably is Phil Weiser, the central-planner wannabe who proudly endorses Democratic Socialists and gleefully harasses Colorado businesses for not operating the way he thinks they should.

Do you think someone like Weiser is going to oppose or veto a single bill from the socialist wing of his party? Ha! He’s going to cheerlead such bills from the starting line.

Democratic Socialists and their fellow travelers never will say that producers are taxed and regulated enough. However many controls they impose, they will always want to impose more. Whatever problems they find or imagine in society, they will always find a way to blame owners of businesses and properties. However much harm government does through poorly conceived interventions, they will steadfastly imagine more power in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats as the solution to what troubles us.

But here’s the thing. There is no Berlin Wall keeping businesses and liberty lovers from fleeing the state. California has become a net out-migration state, and the socialistic Progressives seem determined to drive Colorado down the same path. Colorado’s geese who lay the golden eggs do not have to place their necks on the chopping block; they can fly to somewhere like Texas. Once Colorado starts to spiral downward, the trend may become irreversible.

Flashback to 2014: Magpul Moving Headquarters to Texas Over Colorado Gun Laws.

Magpul should have been the canary in the coal mine but all their departure did was make Democrats hungry for more.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Donald Trump Had a Better Week Than Joe Biden Did. “The plan, no doubt, was to have Joe Biden safely tucked away from the spotlight in a modified basement strategy, hiding behind the news of Trump being in court and finally having the walls close in on him. The lawfare abuse was intended to distract from the fact that Joe Biden is the worst president in United States history.”

JOSH BARRO: Stop Letting Histrionic Children Drive Our Politics. “I cannot believe this emotionally incontinent young person and his friends are driving a national news cycle. Perhaps I am just especially used to people saying nasty things to me online,3 but I can’t even believe they were able to drive a shift to virtual classes at Columbia. I think these protests could have been 90% less disruptive if the protesters’ detractors had reacted with less fear and more disdain, working harder to ignore these people as they preen about their “liberated zones,” which aren’t even very large. These protesters are the sort of people who are terrified of bananas and banana vapor, and some of them aren’t even lying when they say the reason they wear masks outside is that they’re afraid of COVID. Letting them scare you away gives them too much credit; brushing them off is a sign of maturity and should be encouraged.”

Alinsky’s Rule 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.”

IT’S A SMALL START: Republican House to Launch Full-Court Press Against Campuses That Tolerate Antisemites.

JOE BIDEN, RESTORING AMERICA’S STRENGTH ABROAD: Russian troops enter base housing US military in Niger, US official says. “The U.S. and its allies have been forced to move troops out of a number of African countries following coups that brought to power groups eager to distance themselves from Western governments. In addition to the impending departure from Niger, U.S. troops have also left Chad in recent days, while French forces have been kicked out of Mali and Burkina Faso.”

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Wait Until You See How Many Venezuelans Were Arrested in Chicago This Year.

AN OLD-SCHOOL FISKING: So a Guy in a Bathrobe Walks Around a Family Cruise Ship…

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Are Americans Finally Done With the ‘Sustainability’ Scam?

“YOU CAN’T LOATHE COLBERT ENOUGH,” SAYS CHRISTIAN TOTO, BUT YOU CAN CERTAINLY TRY: Colbert Defends Anti-Israel Protests, Shamed Anti-Lockdown Voices. “Far-Left host ignores violence, antisemitism and other hallmarks of pro-Palestinian riots.”

OH: Boeing, Boeing, GONE: Another Whistleblower Has ‘Died Suddenly.’

CBD ASKS: How have America’s universities become hotbeds of rabid Islamist rhetoric, foaming-at-the-mouth Jew-hate, and flat-out anti-American insanity?

It’s simple. It was purchased with Arab money. Oh, Academia was primed for that sort of crap, since those beliefs are its default, but for a long time was some rough balance. Academia actually had a vibrant, if small conservative/libertarian presence. They also had brains, so their influence was out of proportion to their numbers.

But oceans of oil money began to flood the hallowed halls of our elite (and not so elite) institutions. It paid for endowed chairs for anti-American and anti-Israel professors. It paid for embedded Islamic Studies departments. It paid for university-affiliated NGOs carefully putting forth the pro-Islam/anti-West cant. And it paid for full-fare students from those oil-rich countries, plumping the coffers of these schools with cash that had a catch.

That catch was simple. Make Islam and the savage authoritarians in the Arab world objects of admiration rather than disgust.

Plus this from Melanie Philips: “The significance of these campus insurrections is far greater than support for Hamas or even murderous hatred of the Jewish world. The universities have become ground zero for the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy of Islamising the west.”

Of course, any attempt to root out this malign foreign, anti-Western influence will be met by cries of “ISLAMOPHOBIA!” helpfully amplified by the universities.

WHAT TWO-TIERED JUSTICE SYSTEM? Alvin Bragg May Not Prosecute Pro-Palestinian Rioters Who Occupied Columbia University.

SEND WEAPONS, NOT MEN: Macron Says He’ll Consider Deploying Troops in Ukraine in Specific Circumstance.

CORN, POPPED: House Republicans Just Put Democrats in a Real Bind.

I CAN’T RECALL AN UPWARD REVISION SINCE TRUMP WAS IN OFFICE: US Factory Orders Rise In March… But February Saw Yet Another Downward Revision. “This is the 17th monthly downward revision in the last 22 months… come on!!!”

THERE HE GOES AGAIN: Antony Blinken’s Big, Stupid Middle East Trip. “Poor SecState Blinken — never the sharpest penny in the pantry — finds himself tasked with the impossible.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE/EASTER EGG: China Releases CGI Video of Moon Base and It Contains Something Very Strange. “The video is also raising eyebrows for a bizarre cameo: a NASA Space Shuttle taking off from a launch pad in the distance.”

ROBERT SPENCER: Why Is the Pro-Palestinian Encampment Craze Sweeping Our Colleges? “Not only is it not spontaneous, it’s clearly orchestrated from outside the colleges and universities where the encampments have sprung up.”