OH: LA ‘defund the police’ councilman charged with perjury, embezzlement. “In 2020, in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, Price launched a proposal to cut $150 million from the LAPD and to reallocate those funds to youth services for black and brown communities. He also championed the creation of a social services unit to respond to non-emergecy calls, and fought to eliminate the enforcement of traffic laws, stating that they disproportionately affected black Los Angelinos.”

DISPATCHES FROM WEIMAR AMERICA: State Senator Advises Parents to Flee California If They Refuse ‘Gender Affirmation’ Treatment for Their Kids.

COLD WAR II: China likely sending military personnel into US, Homeland chair says.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., on Wednesday said China is likely sending military personnel into the United States across the southern border.

At a press conference announcing an investigation into Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Green said there are “Chinese Nationals, many of whom are military-aged men” with ties to the Chinese Communist Party who have crossed the southern border and been released into the United States.

“We have no idea who these people are and it’s very likely, using Russia’s template of sending military personnel into Ukraine, China is doing the same in the United States,” Green also said.

“Build the wall,” as the wise man once said.

AMERICA, F*** YEAH: Biden Wants to Build an 8,000-Mile Ocean Train and I Say Let’s Do This! “On today’s installment of ‘What the Hell Did Biden Actually Just Say?’ we have the alleged president of the most powerful country in the world announcing his plan to build, and I quote,’a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean.'”

FASTER? PLEASE! Defense tech firm Rafael reveals first-ever hypersonic interceptor.

According to the company, the Sky Sonic interceptor missile, which has been in development for around three years, will be shown for the first time at the upcoming Paris Air Show next week.

The announcement comes after Iran earlier this month claimed it had developed a new hypersonic missile. Rafael officials said the company had only recently been given approval by the Defense Ministry to reveal the system.

Rafael said the Sky Sonic missile “represents a major technological leap in hypersonic missile defense.”

“Designed with exceptional maneuverability and high-speed capabilities, it effectively neutralizes hypersonic missiles [which travel at speeds of over five times the speed of sound] with unmatched precision and stealth,” it said.

Baking stealth into an anti-ballistic missile to avoid detection by the ballistic missile’s countermeasures is a nifty trick.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: GOP Squish Caucus Saves Evil Adam Schiff From Being Censured. “Good news today gang — we’re not leading with Trump or Pride. In fact, we get to return to a topic that unites us all: going off on the idiot squish Republicans who aid and abet the Democrats’ efforts to destroy the country. You know, the gang that takes the line, ‘With friends like these, who needs enemies?’ as a personal challenge.”

HEH: Tucker Carlson’s Lawyer to GOP Lawmakers: Boycott Fox.

Tucker Carlson’s lawyer Harmeet Dhillon has ended her appearances on Fox News and is urging Republican lawmakers to do the same.

The move comes after Fox sent a cease-and-desist letter to Carlson after his second episode of “Tucker on Twitter.” Carlson took his show to the social media platform after being taken off the air by Fox earlier this year.

Dhillon tweeted on Monday:

For all the friends who have been asking “why don’t we see you on Fox anymore?” — This is why. I am passionately committed to free speech and a free flow of information necessary for a free society. Until Fox stops trying to silence Tucker, it’s not a place for me. And I feel for my friends working at the network which has clearly caved into pressure from some quarter to silence @TuckerCarlson. What you are seeing on Fox today is a censored version of the news. Keep that in mind as you make your viewing and your commenting choices.”

Times like this make me wish PJTV hadn’t gone dark in 2016 — we’d have guests beating down the doors in 2023.

KRUISER: Trump Is Just the Tip of the Dems’ Rogue Law Enforcement Harassment Iceberg. “I’m not one given to existential crisis panics, but it’s safe to say that I am now at least ‘existential crisis adjacent.’ Joe Biden has been in office for only two-and-a-half years, but it feels like the Left has done a century’s worth of damage to the Republic in that time. We don’t want to live in the horror show that would be a second Biden/Harris term.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: World Bank Just Halved Its US Growth Forecast For 2024, Saying The Economy ‘Is Likely To Remain Weak.’

Real gross domestic product (GDP) in the country is now projected to grow by 0.8% in 2024, according to the international lending institution’s latest Global Economic Prospects report. Previously, its forecast was 1.6%.

“In the United States, growth is expected to weaken significantly through 2023 and early 2024, mainly as a result of the lagged effects of the sharp rise in policy rates over the past year and a half aimed at bringing down the highest inflation rates since the early 1980s,” the report stated.

The World Bank noted that while consumption has been resilient in America, it is “expected to slow down substantially.” In particular, higher borrowing costs and tighter financial conditions could impact household spending. At the same time, Americans will run out of savings that they accumulated during the pandemic.

Absent more inflationary stimulus from Washington, I figure we might be lucky to get 0.8%.

MATT MARGOLIS: Is This Proof the Trump Indictment Is a Scam?

AND NOW FOR SOME ACTUAL SCIENCE: Critical social justice ruins science and ‘hurts everyone.’

“The politicization of science — the infusion of ideology into the scientific enterprise — threatens the ability of science to serve humanity,” chemistry professor Anna Krylov and statistician Jay Tanzman wrote in a paper published Monday to Heterodox STEM.

“Today, the greatest such threat comes from a set of ideological viewpoints collectively referred to as Critical Social Justice,” Krylov and Tanzman continued.

The paper was originally presented at the symposium Perils for Science in Democracies and Authoritarian Countries at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva, Israel in January of this year.

The ideology of “critical social justice” is rooted in “Marxism and postmodernism,” they wrote.

“It fundamentally conflicts with the liberal Enlightenment,” which include “ideas that have made the world healthier, wealthier, better educated, and in many ways more tolerant and less violent that it has ever been,” they continued.

The Left has been at war with the Enlightenment since the French Revolution, and from Robespierre to Marx to Lenin and so on, they’ve all claimed to be on the side of science.

But it’s really all blood- and power-lust.

JOANN JACOBS: Still disrupted: Students are missing a lot of school.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Daniel Penny, the Marine Who Subdued Jordan Neely, Speaks Out. “Penny appeared in a video interview and told a harrowing story we haven’t heard from the media.”

UPDATE (From Ed): Daniel Penny faces up to 15 years on 2nd-degree manslaughter charge in chokehold death of Jordan Neely.

HEADLINE OF THE DAY: Pond scum publicly angers algae advocate slinging speciesist seaweed slur.

This is a true story, by the way.

CHANGE: Bud Light Loses Title as Top-Selling U.S. Beer. “Modelo Especial overtook the brand as the top-selling U.S. beer in May, punctuating a monthslong boycott of Bud Light that has reshuffled the beer industry.”

PAULA BOLYARD: Say Goodbye to the America We Love. “Over the last week, we’ve seen the weaponization of the Department of ‘Justice’ in its ugliest form. It’s breathtaking to see the lengths the Biden administration will go to in order to stop his enemies. And make no mistake: You are his enemy.”

WELL, YES: Time To Wean Ourselves From Chinese Semiconductors.

DERELICTION: DHS Secretary Mayorkas Is One Step Closer to Impeachment.

BREAK THEM UP AND THEN BREAK THEM UP SOME MORE: EU proposes breaking up Google over anti-competition concerns.

The European Commission has been investigating Google’s ad business, and specifically its market dominance, since 2021. Following its preliminary report, the EU has now sent Google a statement of objections.

“The Commission preliminarily finds that, in this particular case, a behavioural remedy is likely to be ineffective to prevent the risk that Google continues such self-preferencing conducts or engages in new ones,” says the EU Commission in a statement

In other words, the EU does believe that Google’s advertising business is anti-competitive — and that Google will not voluntarily change that.

“The Commission’s preliminary view is therefore that only the mandatory divestment by Google of part of its services would address its competition concerns,” continues the statement.

Previously: Hotel Googlefornia. “Jason Evangelho reports what happens when your smartphone, computer laptop, and tablet are denied access to ‘Google’s 8,699,648 (!) IP addresses,’ and the results weren’t pretty.”

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: I’ll Have a Half-Double Decaffeinated Half-Caff With a Twist of Racism. “Starbucks is guilty of anti-white racism, according to a $25 million jury verdict in New Jersey.”

Plus:

• “Kids and kink can coexist at Pride,” says someone who totally isn’t after your kids.
• Americans have had it up to their fake nipples with this issue.
• PBS News Hour has a very stern warning for Joe Biden Donald Trump supporters.

So much more at the link, you’d have to be crazy to miss it.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Why Disney Fails: Their Blindness To Real Geek Culture. “Social justice showrunners are woefully ignorant of vast swathes of knowledge held by the fandoms they hold in such withering contempt.”

ASKING (AND ANSWERING) THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Since When Is Donald Trump Not the Big Story? “The news isn’t the news when it makes the newsies look bad — and Donald Trump made ABC’s Jake Tapper and MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace look awful after his arraignment on Tuesday.”

COMMUNISM: China targets ‘unity in thought’ with campaign on Xi’s philosophy.

But there are also signs that the campaign on Xi Jinping Thought is more than just routine.

Before he left Russia after a three-day visit in March, Xi told President Vladimir Putin in Moscow that “right now there are changes the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years.”

According to Andy Mok, a senior research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing, the education campaign is meant to prepare the party members for the challenges Beijing expects lie ahead as China rises on the world stage.

“The people have to be prepared to sacrifice,” he told Al Jazeera.

It always comes down to the people having to sacrifice their own wants, needs, and rights for the vision of the big guy.

BIDENOMICS IS WORKING AS PLANNED: Real Average Weekly Earnings Drop for 26th Straight Month.

LOW EARTH ORBIT IS A MESS: Japan’s Astroscale has a new robot tug to clean up space junk. Here’s how it works.