ROBERT SPENCER: But for Michigan, Joe? “The far-left and Muslim leaders began threatening the Biden regime just weeks after the Oct. 7 jihad massacre; the only surprising aspect of what has happened since then is that it took so long for the regime to turn on the only free society in the Middle East and America’s most loyal ally anywhere.”

OUCH: Fisker deal talks with big automaker collapse, NYSE to delist stock.

The termination of talks with the unnamed automaker has led Fisker to search for strategic options including in- or out-of-court restructurings and capital markets transactions, the startup said on Monday.

The news comes a week after the company paused electric-vehicle production, fanning growing uncertainty around its future.

“I can’t put it if it is next week or next year, but it is inevitable,” Thomas Hayes, Chairman at hedge fund Great Hill Capital, said on the growing chances of Fisker likely to file for bankruptcy protection.

A potential bankruptcy will make Fisker the second failed auto startup from Henrik Fisker, who started his career as an automotive designer and was also a Tesla consultant.

His previous attempt, Fisker Automotive, fell victim to the 2008 financial crisis and filed for bankruptcy in 2013 despite fetching $192 million in loans from the Department of Energy.

Fisker’s latest venture was founded in 2016 and went public through a merger with a blank-check firm for a valuation of $2.9 billion.

But a slew of supply chain issues, production delays and fundraising hurdles sent its market valuation crashing to less than $100 million.

They burned through a lot of cash to not produce many cars or trucks.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: The Discovery From Denmark’s Crime Stats That the Left Doesn’t Want You to See.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Starship could fly again in May. “With a less cumbersome regulatory and hardware update period ahead, SpaceX expects an expedited turnaround time and is targeting the next Starship test flight in six weeks, according to Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and chief operating officer. Some improvements SpaceX will likely try to test on the fourth Starship test flight include better control of the Super Heavy booster on the descent, securing heat shield tiles, and eliminating roll issues on Starship during orbital operations and reentry.”

There’s also this:

Officials from several companies operating or developing small satellite launch vehicles are worried that SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket could have a big impact on their marketability, Space News reports. Starship’s ability to haul more than 100 metric tons of payload mass into low-Earth orbit will be attractive not just for customers with heavy satellites but also for those with smaller spacecraft. Aggregating numerous smallsats on Starship will mean lower prices than dedicated small satellite launch companies can offer and could encourage customers to build larger satellites with cheaper parts, further eroding business opportunities for small launch providers.

Well, yeah … SpaceX’s dedicated rideshare missions are already reshaping the small satellite launch market. The price per kilogram of payload on a Falcon 9 rocket launching a Transporter mission is less than the price per unit on a smaller rocket, like Rocket Lab’s Electron, Firefly’s Alpha, or Europe’s Vega. Companies operating only in the smallsat launch market tout the benefits of their services, often pointing to their ability to deliver payloads into bespoke orbits, rather than dropping off bunches of satellites into more standardized orbits. But the introduction of Orbital Transfer Vehicles for last-mile delivery services has made SpaceX’s Transporter missions, and potentially Starship rideshares, more attractive. “With Starship, OTVs can become the best option for smallsats,” said Marino Fragnito, senior vice president and head of the Vega business unit at Arianespace. If Starship is able to achieve the very low per-kilogram launch prices proposed for it, “then it will be difficult for small launch vehicles,” Fragnito said.

Let him have a second term, and Biden’s DOJ will antitrust SpaceX to death, just when it’s really bringing down launch costs.

IT’S ANOTHER CRISIS BY DESIGN: You Didn’t Think This Squatter Situation Just Appeared Out of Nowhere, Did You?

HOW DARE SHE NOT SERVE AS WISH-FULFILLMENT FOR SOMEBODY ELSE’S NARRATIVE: WNBA Hates Breakout Player Because She’s Straight And White.

ATHENA THORNE: Forget Hillary and Kamala — Here’s a REAL Bad**s to Celebrate for Women’s History Month.

WELL, GOOD: GM stops sharing driver data with brokers amid backlash.

After public outcry, General Motors has decided to stop sharing driving data from its connected cars with data brokers. Last week, news broke that customers enrolled in GM’s OnStar Smart Driver app have had their data shared with LexisNexis and Verisk.

Those data brokers in turn shared the information with insurance companies, resulting in some drivers finding it much harder or more expensive to obtain insurance. To make matters much worse, customers allege they never signed up for OnStar Smart Driver in the first place, claiming the choice was made for them by salespeople during the car-buying process.

Now, in what feels like an all-too-rare win for privacy in the 21st century, that data-sharing deal is no more.

That’s small comfort to people who had their insurance jacked up.

DESPICABLE: Joe Biden Just Made Us a Terror-Sponsoring Nation.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Staff at taxpayer-funded Colorado virus lab were bitten by Covid-infected HAMSTERS and disease-ridden bats in shocking spate of accidents, exclusive documents show.

IT’S BOEING AND THEY’RE GOING: It’s a Bloodbath at Boeing.

IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Coffee Compound Trigonelline Could Keep Muscles ‘Young’ In Old Age.

BREAKING: Trump Gets MAJOR Victory in Fraud Case.

THEY WENT WOKE…: Planet Fitness Is Having Its Bud Light and Drinking It, Too.

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Bee once again produces satire that’s hard to tell from the real news.

Planet Fitness Adds 'Bigot Alarm' To Shame Women Who Don't Want Men In Their Locker Room https://t.co/ThOHU2kWTd pic.twitter.com/QxFH4HMqxO

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) March 24, 2024

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: For Biden & Harris, Politics STARTS at the Water’s Edge. “I try to start Mondays on a positive note, but two of the first few weekend stories that came across my desk made it clear that dead people are far less important to Presidentish Joe Biden or Alleged Vice President Kamala Harris than sucking up to the worst elements of the Democrat base.”

HMM: The World Is in for Another China Shock.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the U.S. and the global economy experienced a “China shock,” a boom in imports of cheap Chinese-made goods that helped keep inflation low but at the cost of local manufacturing jobs.

A sequel might be in the making as Beijing doubles down on exports to revive the country’s growth. Its factories are churning out more cars, machinery and consumer electronics than its domestic economy can absorb. Propped up by cheap, state-directed loans, Chinese companies are glutting foreign markets with products they can’t sell at home.

Some economists see this China shock pushing inflation down even more than the first. China’s economy is now slowing, whereas, in the previous era, it was booming. As a result, the disinflationary effect of cheap Chinese-manufactured goods won’t be offset by Chinese demand for iron ore, coal and other commodities.

China is also a much larger economy than it was, accounting for more of the world’s manufacturing. It had 31% of global manufacturing output in 2022, and 14% of all goods exports, according to World Bank data. Two decades earlier China’s share of manufacturing was less than 10% and of exports less than 5%.

Plus: “Unlike in the early 2000s, however, the Western world now sees China as its chief economic rival and geopolitical adversary. The EU is considering whether Chinese-made electric vehicles are unfairly subsidized and should be subject to tariffs or other import restrictions. Former President Donald Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination for November’s presidential election, has floated the idea of hitting imports from China with tariffs of 60% or higher.”

CRISIS BY DESIGN: Border Patrol Chief Says the 140,000 Migrants Who Evaded Capture Are a ‘National Security Threat.’

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Reversing the global fertility collapse: Tech progress might be the only answer.

Imagine a scenario where a significant shift in societal norms and values dramatically transforms our perceptions of family and childbearing. Fernández-Villaverde has highlighted the stark contrast in birth rates between religious and secular groups in contemporary society, a disparity that was virtually nonexistent half a century ago. This observation underscores the profound influence of sociocultural factors on fertility patterns. It is conceivable that, in the future, people’s beliefs about family structures and dynamics may undergo a radical transformation. Alternatively, the demographic composition of a society could gradually evolve as a result of religious individuals consistently having larger families over the course of several decades.

Or how about this: What if tech-driven economic growth makes us so much richer that we simply choose to work less? Maybe a lot less. With all that extra time and all those extra resources, maybe we would choose to devote more of both to having more kids. As it is, the rich seems to be having more kids than the poor. What if we all were far wealthier than even the top 1 percent are today?

Imagine if we were to build, through faster economic growth, the sort of future imagined by economist John Maynard Keynes in his famous 1930 essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” As the world was being enveloped by the Great Depression, Keynes attempted to create an upbeat picture of the future to persuade the public that anti-capitalist revolutionaries and reactionaries were wrong. He predicted that by 2030, living standards in Europe and the United States would have advanced so far that the “economic problem” would be solved, and people would want for nothing, except perhaps purpose.

It’s an interesting essay — read the whole thing.

I’d just add that while I certainly hope there’s a tech solution to the birth dearth, recent evidence doesn’t inspire much confidence.

OH, SHUT UP: DEI Top Dogs Warn Intelligence Agencies Not to Use Terms Such as ‘Jihadist.’

DECOUPLING CUTS BOTH WAYS: China Aims To Phase Out AMD, Intel Chips From Government Computers. “The new guidance also aims to limit use of the Microsoft (MSFT) Windows operating systems as well as foreign database software. That comes as many Chinese government entities and state-owned enterprises have barred the use of Apple (AAPL) iPhones at work.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Christine Blasey Ford’s Whitebread Anita Hill Shtick Is Beyond Tedious. “There are only so many hit piece memoirs that Christine Blasey Ford can write, but that doesn’t matter. She’s in the mix now. The Democrats’ dutiful media lapdogs will find a reason to write about or interview her every three years or so as long as Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court. And she will make a lot of money off of her sham memoir.”

BLUE STATE BLUES: California home insurance exodus pushes state’s last-resort backup plan toward insolvency.

The number of homes and commercial properties in high-risk wildfire areas covered by the California FAIR Plan has more than doubled, from 154,000 in 2019 to 375,000, and liability exposure has ballooned from $50 billion in 2018 to $336 billion in February, its president told lawmakers at an insurance committee hearing last week.

“These are huge numbers,” California FAIR Plan President Victoria Roach told the committee. “And they continue to grow. … As those numbers climb, our financial stability comes more into question.”

Roach added that one bad wildfire or even a series of smaller fires could overwhelm the plan’s resources, forcing it to bill all the state’s insurers for liabilities it cannot cover, which they in turn would pass on to all their insured home and business customers as higher premiums.

“It’s a gamble,” Roach said. “We are one event away from a large assessment, there’s no other way to say it, because we don’t have a lot of money on hand, and we have a lot of exposure out there.”

The FAIR Plan’s financial instability has emerged as collateral damage from the state’s insurance market meltdown. Major carriers have discontinued or restricted coverage in recent years following a series of costly wildfires — 14 of California’s 20 most destructive wildfires burned the state in the last 10 years. That’s forced property owners who’ve lost coverage onto the FAIR Plan in rapidly growing numbers — with 1,000 applications now every work day.

FAIR is just a band-aid. California’s real problem is “decades of mismanagement” of its forests.

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Nancy Pelosi’s Son Gets Off Scot-Free (Again) for Money and Mail Fraud.

BIG BIDEN IS WATCHING YOU: Courts Demand Info About People Who Viewed Specific YouTube Videos.

Federal authorities have reportedly ordered Google to provide information about viewers of select YouTube videos, including their names, addresses, and phone numbers, as well as provide information about video viewers who weren’t signed into YouTube while watching.

The requests are raising alarms for privacy experts who say the requests are unconstitutional and are “transforming search warrants into digital dragnets” by potentially targeting individuals who are not associated with a crime based simply on what they may have watched online.

Specifically, authorities have reportedly asked for information about individuals who watched certain videos on the site between Jan. 1-8, 2023 as part of an investigation into “elonmuskwhm.” The authorities also requested the user activity for those accounts.

According to Forbes, the investigation into elonmuskwhm is focused on that individual selling Bitcoin for cash, which is a violation of money laundering laws. The sale also constitutes an unlicensed money-transferring business. As part of the investigation, undercover agents reportedly sent links of YouTube tutorials that covered mapping via drones and augmented reality software to elonmuskwhm, and then asked Google to provide details on who had viewed the videos. The videos received more than 30,000 views.

According to documents viewed by Forbes, a court granted the government’s request for the information; however, it asked Google to not publicize the request.

You’d better watch what you watch, comrade.

SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE IS TAKING SOME PERSONAL TIME: California Synagogue Leases Space to Mosque to ‘Ease Tensions,’ But a Lovefest Doesn’t Exactly Break Out.