THE DOGS DON’T LIKE THE DOG FOOD: Why EVs Are ‘Piling Up’ at Dealerships, Despite Massive Taxpayer Subsidies.

In April, the International Energy Agency released a report in which it predicted EV sales to increase 35 percent after a record-breaking year. But economists I spoke with said such predictions were overly optimistic considering current macroeconomic conditions.

This invites important questions. Is the glut of EVs simply a product of tightened money supply?

Apparently not. As Axios noted, the 92,000 EVs currently sitting on lots is comparatively high relative to gasoline-powered cars.

“That’s a 92-day supply — roughly three months’ worth of EVs, and nearly twice the industry average,” wrote Joann Muller. “For comparison, dealers have a relatively low 54 days’ worth of gasoline-powered vehicles in inventory….”

In other words, dealerships are sitting on a lot more EVs than gasoline-powered vehicles—despite efforts to entice consumers to buy EVs with taxpayer-funded credits up to $7,500.

This is evidence that pretty much everyone—from central planners to auto manufacturers—misjudged the demand for EVs, which are not even as environmentally friendly as politicians would have you believe.

The actual plan, of course, is to force people into EVs — or better yet, into taking the bus. Or staying at home in the dark, eating bugs.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Alejandro Mayorkas Would Have Been Fired From Any Other Job by Now. “Conservatives never expect the federal government to actually be functional. Heck, most of the time I don’t even want it to be functional. The Biden administration is, for the most part, criminally dysfunctional, which nobody needs.”

JOANNE JACOBS: Traumatizing math students. “There’s no evidence that ‘trauma-deformed pedagogy’ (oops, ‘informed’) helps students learn more, writes Max Eden, an American Enterprise Institute fellow, on Real Clear Education. Yet it’s cited in support of California’s controversial new math guidelines, which are full of dubious claims.”

WATCH: Whispering Aide Tells Sen. Dianne Feinstein to ‘Just Say Aye.’

COLD WAR II: China’s Threat to Ban Critical Minerals Exports Is a Bluff.

A price shock for critical raw materials would not necessarily be a bad thing. A sharp rise in energy prices across Europe was the first tangible sign of Russia’s decision to curb gas supplies. Similarly, a full-fledged Chinese export ban on any critical raw material would send global prices for that substance spiking. In 2021, for instance, the temporary shutdown of some Chinese magnesium smelters fueled a 260 percent rise in magnesium prices, affecting the automotive, aerospace, and other sectors. However, higher prices for critical raw materials whose production is dominated by China might not have as big an impact as many fear.

For one, the monetary value of these commodities remains small. For example, the European Union’s annual import bills for critical raw materials range from $5 million in the case of beryllium (used for satellites, semiconductors, and weapons) to $4 billion for palladium (a critical component for catalytic converters), with imports for most minerals at just a few hundred million dollars. These numbers are mere rounding errors in the EU’s annual $3 trillion import bill. In other words, the issue with critical raw materials is their availability, not their price. Second, China’s domination of the sector stems from its strategy of flooding the market to depress prices—a textbook case of dumping to suppress the competition. Higher prices for critical minerals would therefore boost the competitiveness of non-Chinese producers and help them enter the market. There are precedents: After gallium prices rose in 2021, a German company announced that it would restart production.

Sanctions and embargoes rarely change behaviors. Well, they do — just generally not in the way that the people imposing them intended.

CENSORSHIP: The Facebook Files Reveal Pressure From the Biden Administration to Crush Free Speech.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints.

In March, Alexandre Ponsin set out on a family road trip from Colorado to California in his newly purchased Tesla, a used 2021 Model 3. He expected to get something close to the electric sport sedan’s advertised driving range: 353 miles on a fully charged battery.

He soon realized he was sometimes getting less than half that much range, particularly in cold weather – such severe underperformance that he was convinced the car had a serious defect.

“We’re looking at the range, and you literally see the number decrease in front of your eyes,” he said of his dashboard range meter.

Ponsin contacted Tesla and booked a service appointment in California. He later received two text messages, telling him that “remote diagnostics” had determined his battery was fine, and then: “We would like to cancel your visit.”

What Ponsin didn’t know was that Tesla employees had been instructed to thwart any customers complaining about poor driving range from bringing their vehicles in for service. Last summer, the company quietly created a “Diversion Team” in Las Vegas to cancel as many range-related appointments as possible.

Plus: “In most cases, the complaining customers’ cars likely did not need repair, according to the people familiar with the matter. Rather, Tesla created the groundswell of complaints another way – by hyping the range of its futuristic electric vehicles, or EVs, raising consumer expectations beyond what the cars can deliver.”

IT’S A FAIR POINT: Aliens? Sen. John Kennedy Has Something to Say About Them.

FASTER? PLEASE! NASA picks Lockheed Martin to develop nuclear rocket.

The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) program may launch as soon as 2027, officials said on a call.

Nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) systems could cut journey times, increase fuel efficiency, and require less propellant, meaning future spacecraft could carry larger payloads than today’s best chemical rockets.

NTP works by pumping a liquid propellant, in DRACO’s case cryogenic hydrogen, through a reactor core, where uranium atoms split apart through fission.

The process super heats the propellant, converting it into a gas and funneling it through a nozzle to produce thrust.

“These more powerful and efficient nuclear thermal propulsion systems can provide faster transit times between destinations,” said Kirk Shireman, vice president of Lunar Exploration Campaigns at Lockheed Martin Space.

“Reducing transit time is vital for human missions to Mars to limit a crew’s exposure to radiation,” he added.

The ghost of Project Orion smiles.

SO? FOR MAYORKAS IT’S MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: Republicans Skewer DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Over Border Failures.

A BILLION HERE AND A BILLION THERE…: Meta’s Reality Labs has now lost more than $21 billion since the beginning of last year. “Meta said in its earnings report that it expects operating losses in its Reality Labs unit ‘to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and investments to further scale our ecosystem.'”

THEY’RE NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS…: Congress Wants More Transparency on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon.

CHANGE: Anheuser-Busch Restructures with Layoffs. “In a move aimed at streamlining its operations and adapting to changing market dynamics, Anheuser-Busch, the world’s largest brewer, revealed its decision to lay off positions across its U.S. corporate staff. The restructuring, announced by the company spokesperson and quoted by CNN, is intended to simplify and reduce organisational layers to position the company for future long-term success. However, the layoffs will not affect frontline staff, including brewery and warehouse workers, drivers, and field sales personnel.”

The smartest thing they could do is relocate marketing back to St. Louis and become reacquainted with their customers. Marketing execs that would prefer to stay in New York are the problem.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: I Couldn’t Believe the Truth About Shoplifting. “It wasn’t until just moments ago that I became aware of just how shockingly bad the shoplifting crime wave is — and I’m the former San Francisco resident who can’t seem to stop writing about the city’s long descent into criminality and accompanying economic decline.”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: California’s War on Math.

Math made California prosper.

It’s most obvious in top universities like Stanford, CalTech, Berkeley, and UCLA. Those schools funneled great minds into California STEM enterprises like Silicon Valley, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and aeronautical engineering. Both the Central Valley and Hollywood—America’s main providers of food and fodder, respectively—rely upon engineering to mechanize production and optimize output.

All of this has made California’s GDP $3.6 trillion—making it the fifth largest economy in the world as of last year.

But now “California is America, only sooner” is a warning, and not just because of the exodus of people and jobs and the decay of our major cities, but because of the state’s abandonment of math—which is to say its abandonment of excellence and, in a way, reality itself.

Perhaps you’ve read the headlines about kooky San Francisco discarding algebra in the name of anti-racism. Now imagine that worldview adopted by the entire state.

Decline has been chosen.

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Why Are Leftists Easy to Control? I Have an Answer.

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): Professor says he was discriminately fired for teaching sex was determined by chromosomes X and Y.

A biology professor filed a religious discrimination charge with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Monday against a Texas community college after administrators allegedly fired him for teaching students sex was determined by X and Y chromosomes.

St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas allegedly fired biology professor Dr. Johnson Varkey in January for teaching his students that sex was determined by X and Y chromosomes and that reproduction must occur between a male and a female to continue the human species. Despite the fact that Varkey taught from school-approved and science-based curriculum, St. Philip’s College claims his teaching was religious.

We’ve reached a place where it’s a religious belief that men are men and women are women, and it’s science to say that they aren’t.

It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world — except for Lola, of course.

THAT WOULD BE A FIRST: It Looks Like Hunter Biden Might Experience Some Accountability.

PRIORITIES: Baby-killing trans death row inmate in California women’s prison to get boob job funded by taxpayers.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Add Mitch McConnell to List of Beltway Elders Who Shouldn’t Be at Work. “A number of this nation’s highest-ranking leaders are a smidge past their primes. Worse yet, almost none of the elders of the village are aging well. We live in amazing times, when humans can live longer quality lives than we have ever been able to before. It would not appear, however, that our political elites have been doing the things they need to do in order to be as robust as possible in their 80s.”

IT’S LENGTHY: Will Republicans Impeach Biden? Here’s The Full Corruption Timeline.

November 2013: Hunter joined with Chinese investors to create Bohai Harvest RST Equity Investment Fund Management Co., Ltd. (BHR), an investment fund controlled by the Bank of China. One month later, then-Vice President Joe Biden traveled with Hunter on Air Force 2 to China and met the CEO of BHR, Jonathan Li. Soon after that, BHR’s business license was approved and Hunter had become a board member.

February 5, 2014: Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani businessman, met Hunter Biden at a Washington, D.C., hotel.

April 23, 2014: Rakishev’s Singaporean company wired $142,300 through his Latvian company to a Rosemont entity. Soon after, that entity wired $142,300 to a car dealership in New Jersey for a new sports car for Hunter Biden.

May 12, 2014: Ukrainian gas producer Burisma announced that Hunter Biden had joined its board of directors.

Much — and I do mean much — more at the link.

COME SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Transgender Policy Allegedly Leads Activists to Make Disturbing Threats Against School Board President.

IF YOU SAY SO: Yale professor: Biden’s economy most successful since FDR’s New Deal.

Previously: FDR’s policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate.

I guess that Yale professor is on to something.

PUBLIC TRUST, ONCE BROKEN, IS DIFFICULT TO RESTORE: Study Suggests U.S. Government Lied About Myocarditis Risk From COVID Vax.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT ‘Never Get Old’ Sinéad O’Connor Dead at 56. “O’Connor’s cause of death hasn’t been announced as I write these words but I reacted to the news with the same utter lack of surprise when George Michael died on Christmas Day, 2016. Apparently deeply unhappy, Michael had been casually working towards ending it all with a combination of drugs and anonymous sex. With her troubled history, it was my sad conclusion 30 years ago that O’Connor would not live a terribly long life.”