KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: ‘Free Palestine’ Brownshirts Need a Heavy Dose of Consequences. “These administrators, professors, and their youthful charges happened to be throwing their ignorant hatefests the city that has the largest municipal police force in the United States. It was never going to work out well for them.”

GROWTH BUILT ON UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT IS JUST A FARMER STUFFING HIMSELF ON HIS FEED CORN: The Dow plunges 570 points as hopes for an interest rate cut fade.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 1.2% increase in its employee cost index, a measure of wages and benefits — higher than the 0.9% increase seen in the fourth quarter of 2023. The index is one of a growing number of inflationary reports released this year.

Meanwhile, Series I bonds will pay 4.28% annual interest from May 1 through October 2024, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced. The latest I bond rate, which is linked to inflation, has fallen from 5.27% (annually) offered since November and is slightly lower than the 4.3% rate from May 2023.

The Dow dropped 570 points, or about 1.4%, to 37,815 as the market closed. The S&P 500 lost 1.5% and the Nasdaq fell 2%.

With enough wage growth, they might finally catch up with Bidenflation — but that means most Americans will still have missed out on four years (or however long it turns out to be) of increased earnings.

ROBERT SPENCER: I Got Invited to Speak at UCLA. Guess What Happened Next. “The pro-Hamas mob in the campus encampment, however, might not allow someone as dangerous as me to speak there. Yes, they’re the ones in charge.”

HMM: China May Be Preparing to Deploy Economic ‘Nuclear Option.’

“China is preparing for something major. That seems increasingly obvious judging from the stockpiling of important resources. Could it be that they are preparing a major one-off devaluation of the CNY?” Andreas Steno Larsen, CEO of Steno Research, wrote last week.

Currency devaluation is widely described as a “nuclear option” by economists due to the serious global repercussions it could trigger.

By intentionally devaluing the yuan, for instance, China could boost exports by making its goods cheaper and more competitive—but not without serious repercussions such as riling trade partners and worsening the country’s trade war with the United States.

Accumulating resources like gold and oil beforehand could provide some financial security and bargaining power, helping to stabilize the economy against potential negative effects of a devaluation, such as increased import costs and inflation.

China’s central bank continued its gold-buying tear in March, boosting its reserves of the metal for the 17th straight month, in spite of the metal’s record-high price and a weak yuan.

An escalating trade war seems likeliest but they’d be making similar preparations for a shooting war.

VICTORIA TAFT IS ANGRY AND YOU’LL LIKE HER WHEN SHE’S ANGRY: Trump Is Gagged, but Only NOW Does the Judge Wag a Limp Finger at His Trial’s Biggest Trash Talkers.

THEY WEREN’T SO GLORIOUS: The Left Relives Its Glory Days as Kent State Redux Looms.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: China compiled the most detailed moon atlas ever mapped.

SHUT UP, HE EXPLAINED: The Judge Drops the Hammer on Trump for Breaking Gag Order.

THE ELECTRIC VEHICLE BUBBLE DEFLATES: Elon Musk issues brutal email to Tesla staff as he goes ‘absolutely hardcore’ and fires two senior executives, his entire Supercharger team, and moves to lay off hundreds more employees.

The Tesla boss, who sat down with Chinese premier Li Qiang on Sunday promising an imminent roll-out of driverless cars in the country, sent a brutal email to senior managers Monday night, The Information reported.

Rebecca Tinucci, senior director of the electric vehicle maker charging infrastructure, and Daniel Ho, head of the new vehicles program, will leave on Tuesday morning, the report said.

Musk also plans to dismiss everyone working for Tinucci and Ho, including the roughly 500 employees who work in the Supercharger group.

‘Hopefully these actions are making it clear that we need to be absolutely hard core about headcount and cost reduction. While some on exec staff are taking this seriously, most are not yet doing so,’ Musk said.

Plus: “Tesla’s public policy team, which was led by former executive Rohan Patel, will also be dissolved.”

IT’S THE FEEL-GOOD HIT OF THE SEASON: FAFO Video: New Yorker Keys Florida Trump Supporter Car But Then…

SPOILER: THEY’LL STILL DESPISE US. US military pier for Gaza costs $320 million, Pentagon says.

The U.S. military’s initial cost of the temporary floating pier off Gaza’s coast is about $320 million, a Pentagon official said Monday.

“We’ve been very clear this is a temporary solution to help get humanitarian aid into Gaza. This is just one other way of getting aid in,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters.

The figure, first reported by Reuters, has not previously been disclosed about the operation that includes about 1,000 American troops.

The pier, known as Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, is meant to provide a new way to deliver badly needed aid into Gaza. The World Health Organization has warned some 2.3 million Gaza inhabitants face extreme hunger that could become a full-blown famine by next month as Israel continues its war against Hamas militants, who launched a surprise assault in October from the enclave.

President Joe Biden first announced the JLOTS operation on March 7 during his State of the Union speech. One day later, Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said the temporary pier would be operational within about 60 days.

We’re getting laughed at on so many levels.

WATCH: Nancy Pelosi Has a Meltdown After MSNBC Challenges Her Talking Points.

THEY’LL TURN US ALL INTO BEGGARS ‘CAUSE THEY’RE EASIER TO PLEASE: 1 in 4 Worry They’ll Lose Their Job In the Next Year. “The anxiety among American workers appears justified. Biden and his Democrat allies at the state and local level have made immigrant employment a top policy priority — a move that has suppressed the wages of American workers — in the name of combating inflation.”

PRIORITIES: Fatal Truck Crashes Pile Up as the Biden Administration Remains Blasé About Highway Safety.

FIRST, DENVER FORCED WOLF REINTRODUCTION IN COLORAD’S RURAL AREAS. THEN THE INEVITABLE HAPPENED, AS IT ALWAYS SEEMS TO DO: Another calf death reported at ranch where 4 cattle were killed by wolves.

“We’ve got to keep up the pressure,” Ritschard said. “That’s all we can do right now, putting pressure towards CPW, but I don’t know. I really don’t know where we go now.”

Ritschard said the ranch where the most recent kill occurred is going to continue trying nonlethal methods to prevent attacks.

“How many more are we going to have until something’s done?” he asked. “Are we gonna have a yearling, or two yearlings, killed every 10 days?”

A map released Wednesday by CPW shows that gray wolves have crossed into watersheds east of the Continental Divide and onto the Front Range.

“They’ve still been in the area, and we’ve still been seeing them at night,” Ritschard said.

The new CPW map shows collared wolf activity between March 26 and April 23. The map shows that over the past month, at least one wolf with a GPS collar traveled in watersheds in Larimer County.

CPW also said on Wednesday that it has launched a website for wolf depredation reports to keep the public informed about confirmed livestock deaths by wolves.
CPW confirmed the latest cattle death Sunday evening on its website. The agency did not respond to 9NEWS’ questions.

Wolves have now killed six cattle in Grand County this month.

“At the rate this is going, there isn’t going to be any livestock left in this country,” Ritschard said.

Denver-Boulder Democrats don’t care what happens to the livestock, so long as the ranchers are eventually driven out.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Would You Like a Little State Propaganda with Your Amateur Pr0n? “I think they just wanted some edgy girl of color to just tell people – when they nominated Ketanji Brown Jackson, they’re like, ‘Can you say as a person of color, you know, you feel reflected?'”

WOEING: Boeing is borrowing $10 billion as it burns cash fixing its issues.

In March, Boeing CFO Brian West warned investors that fixing his company’s problems would be expensive. He wasn’t kidding: When Boeing presented earnings last week, it reported burning through nearly $4 billion in cash.

Bloomberg reports that there was nearly $80 billion in demand for the debt, which helped Boeing get a better interest rate. Both Moody’s and S&P have Boeing just a notch away from a speculative-grade (or “junk”) credit rating, which would substantially reduce the pool of money that would be allowed to purchase its bonds and notes. Moody’s reiterated its wariness in the rating it put on the new borrowings, giving the notes a “Baa3″ rating, also one step above speculative-territory.

“The negative outlook incorporates Moody’s view that the headwinds buffeting Commercial Airplanes will persist at least through 2026,” the firm said in a note explaining the rating for Boeing’s latest debt offerings. “The path to restoring compliance, higher quality and strong cash flow in its commercial aircraft assembly operations remains fraught with execution risk.”

The engineers need to be back in charge again but the Commercial Airplanes division’s new CEO is finance specialist Stephanie Pope.

SADLY, THE LEFT STILL CAN’T MEME: You Love to See It: Left Goes Memes-Out Against ‘Genocide Joe’ Biden.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Can Turning Office Towers Into Apartments Save Downtowns? “Early in the conversion process, Berman’s construction team removed the fluorescent-tube lighting and the dropped PVC ceilings. Then workers knocked down the drywall that had once delineated corner offices, windowless offices, rest rooms, mop closets. “We do a very thorough gut renovation,” Berman told me. “We literally take everything out.” At 55 Broad, the result was nearly four hundred thousand square feet of raw space, with a potential to generate more than thirty million dollars in rental income annually. But Berman still had a major puzzle to solve: If no one wanted to work in a glum, out-of-date building, why would anyone want to live there?”

Conversions are expensive, time-consuming, and by themselves don’t do anything to address the policy decisions driving people away from Democrat-run urban centers.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Woke Scolds Won’t Be Able to Cancel Jerry Seinfeld. “Comedy has been under assault from the Left for quite a while now. There are a variety of reasons for that, a couple of which we’ll get to here. Chief among them, of course, is the fact that leftists are inherently miserable people who abhor levity. Oh, they’ll insist that isn’t the case, but they’ve got a rather large body of work out there to reference.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY:

BREAKING: 43% of small businesses were unable to pay their rent in full in April due to economic headwinds.

That’s the highest rent delinquency rate since March 2021, per Bloomberg.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) April 29, 2024

More:

Independent restaurants are having the most trouble, with 52% not paying April rent on time. On the other hand, just 20% of small manufacturers are delinquent.

More than half of small-business owners say that their rents are higher now than they were six months ago. Of those, 11% are paying at least 20% more than they did last fall.

Alignable found that fewer than a third of businesses founded prior to March 2020 are earning as much or more each month than they did before the pandemic. And among firms founded after the pandemic, 60% are making less than they did a year ago.

Bidenomics is working.

I’D SETTLE FOR JUST ONCE — AND SOON: Outlaw Joe Biden Wants Us to Believe That He Has Been Arrested At Least Twice.

CORN, POPPED: A Massive Scandal Is Brewing in Los Angeles After DA George Gascon’s Number 3 Is Charged With 11 Felonies.

Unlike many alleged felons in Los Angeles County, the Diana Teran scandal has the potential to topple the county’s power structure, or to put a severe dent in it.

That potential exists because of the sheer volume of personnel and criminal cases Teran was involved with that might now be challenged in court, and because her actions at issue in the criminal case allegedly involve coordination with high-ranking county officials, such as Inspector General Max Huntsman, District Attorney George Gascón, and current and former members of the county Board of Supervisors.

According to a press release from California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Teran “accessed computer data including numerous confidential peace officer files in 2018, while working as a Constitutional Policing Advisor at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and, after joining the LADA in January 2021, impermissibly used that data at the LADA.”

That sounds rather vanilla, but additional details on what Teran is alleged to have done demonstrate that there’s nothing vanilla about it at all. It’s more convoluted than any script Hollywood could come up with.

Read the whole thing.

FROM THE BIRTHPLACE OF ENGLISH LIBERTY: Iranian Arrested in UK for Calling Hamas ‘Terrorist’ Praises Israel, Jews.

MEANWHILE, IN GEORGIA:

Anti-Israel protesters tried to set up an encampment at the University of Georgia but it didn't last long after police arrested protesters who refused to leave for criminal trespassing.

Protesters can be seen screaming and resisting arrest while others shouted at the police. pic.twitter.com/NdC5Fqonc3

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) April 29, 2024

Criminal trespass is still a criminal act in some places.