STEPHEN MILLER: The circus returns to CNN — and CNN employees are very upset.

Employees and contributors woke up Thursday morning very upset to learn that they work at CNN, the network that helped in the great cause of giving candidate Donald Trump billions of dollars in unearned media on his way to steamrolling the 2016 GOP primaries and eventually capturing the presidency.

Media-at-large, and by that I mean CNN, then spent the better part of four years atoning for their failed attempt to engineer an election into a coronation for Hillary Clinton. Now, in a morning hangover rage fest over Donald Trump’s appearance at a CNN town hall (which was really more of a corporate promo for new 9 p.m. host Kaitlan Collins than it was anything to do with Trump or Republican voters), an entire new crop of contributors is very upset to learn who signs their paycheck.

With the ratings boost Trump provides, wait’ll they realize it’s virtually him signing their paychecks.

NEAT TRICK: Trump’s ’Nut Job’ Accuser Helped Get Law Passed That Allowed Her to Sue Him.

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Hollywood Tries to Revive Dan Rather’s Career (Again). “‘Rather,’ set to debut June 9 at the Tribeca Film Festival, looks at the disgraced journalist’s career as well as his re-invention as a Twitter troll. The press notes couldn’t be more clear about the documentary’s objective.”

OR WITH ANYONE ELSE, REALLY: Throttling the Gaffe Machine? Joe Biden Avoids Holding Press Conferences With Visiting Foreign Leaders.

FASTER, PLEASE: Cancer study produces life-changing results as participants achieve 100% remission. “This trial is significant because it paves the way for immunotherapy to be used as a first-line treatment for certain types of rectal cancer, potentially sparing patients from the debilitating side effects of standard treatments of radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy.”

EMBRACE THE HEALING POWER OF “AND”: Is Christopher Wray Covering up for the Biden Family or the FBI Itself?

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Watch China break in new test site for giant moon rocket engines.

WINNING: AOC & the Left Lose Their Minds Over Trump’s CNN Town Hall.

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Man with cleaver slashes passenger on BART.

Temple described a man holding a rectangular butcher cleaver pacing up and down a BART car on an eastbound train in the Transbay Tube. He said he initially saw a passenger at the end of his car “jump out of the way” of the cleaver-wielding man, and then “all kinds of people trying to jump away.”

“Everyone started running through the cars, trying to get as much distance between themselves and this guy as possible,” he said. Temple said people were cowering in their seats, “trying to get as close to the edges of the BART cars as possible” as the man walked back and forth in the aisle.

“I jumped out of the way once and landed partially on a woman who was sitting,” he added. “I was just trying to get away.”

The passengers then fled between cars to the front of the BART train, where Temple said they congregated in a group.

Good thing a scene like that from San Francisco could never happen on New York City’s subways.

MATT MARGOLIS: The Biden Crime Family Must Be Held Accountable. “The House Oversight Committee did all the dirty work in digging this up, handing it to the media on a silver platter.”

You can guess what didn’t happen next.

OH, CANADA: School erases ‘exclusionary’ Mother’s Day sign because woke parent was offended.

The original message, which was crafted by Grade 6 students simply read, “Life does not come with a manual. It comes with a mom.”

“Grade 6 students at Kew Beach came up with the first quote collectively as they prepare for Mother’s Day this weekend, to share how much they care for and depend on their moms,” said Toronto District School Board spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz.

The specific Facebook user in question took issue with how the sign didn’t take into account kids from different kinds of families like LGBTQ families.

After receiving a few emails and calls from people who were also offended by the sign, Kew Beach acquiesced and replaced the message on the signage – ridding it entirely of any reference to mothers.

“Upon feedback, the school recognized that this quote does not reflect the inclusivity of our community, and took immediate steps to address the issue. The sign has now been updated with a new message of an encouraging acronym for May,” explained Schwartz-Maltz.

Mock these Facebook bullies, don’t give in to their petty demands.

WELL, YES: Christopher Wray Needs to Comply With House Oversight Committee Subpoena; He’s Not Above the Law.

HMM: A Bakhmut Reversal?

Over the last several months, Russia would grind out costly gains in the fighting around Bakhmut, only to see Ukraine reverse most or all of those gains a few days or weeks later. This pattern repeated for month after month, with Russia slowly grinding out costly net gains of territory in and around Bakhmut, without ever completely taking the city.

However, in the last 24 hours, Ukraine seems to have made significant gains around Bakhmut.

More at the link.

IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Tucker Carlson’s Twitter Partnership Induces Meltdown by NBC News Actor and Disgraced CNN Stooge Brian Stelter.

WITH GREAT SPEED AND LITTLE CAUTION: How Mark Zuckerberg Led the Tech Industry Into a Metaverse Wasteland. “Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an industry of followers to submit to his quixotic obsession, and then killed it the second that another idea started to interest Wall Street.”

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Santos Arrest Provides Cover for Biden Crime Syndicate News. “The blinding speed with which the feds were able to investigate Santos stands in stark contrast to the snail’s pace of the Hunter Biden investigation. It’s almost as if the DOJ is motivated solely by a political agenda.”

GONE GALT: After 20 Years as a Prosecutor in Illinois, I Quit.

Let me start with the positive. There is not a single day that has gone by that I have not felt truly honored to work with such an incredible group of people who spent every waking hour on behalf of victims. This opportunity has been a gift for which I have no words to explain the extent of my gratitude.

My partners, our Victim/Witness advocates, our Investigators, our support staff, the police officers and detectives, time after time I see each of you putting everything you have into helping people we encounter on the worst days of their lives. So often I see our personal lives, and indeed at times our own well-being, set aside just to do a little bit more on that last case for that last victim. It’s been nothing short of inspiring not as a lawyer, but as a person.

And yet, I’m leaving. Why could that be? The simple fact is that this State and County have set themselves on a course to disaster. And the worst part is that the agency for whom I work has backed literally every policy change that had the predictable, and predicted, outcome of more crime and more people getting hurt.

Read the whole thing.

UM, AT LEAST THEY’RE OUT IN THE OPEN? Deep State Technocrats Convene in D.C. Spy Museum, Collude to Rig 2024 Election.

THIS IS COUNTERINTUITIVE: Sanctions Don’t Threaten the Dollar’s Dominance. They Support It.

Different economies have different incentives for dollar adoption. For example, developing countries like Colombia or Kenya that run current account deficits must import foreign capital; therefore, their growth depends on providing assurance to international investors that their investments will not be threatened by hostile action or subject to expropriation. In these cases, countries that accumulate dollar reserves tacitly signal to foreign investors that their investments are safe, because these governments would be vulnerable to U.S. sanctions in the event of bad behavior. As Michael Dooley, David Folkerts-Laudau, and Peter Garber have argued, reserves should be seen not as U.S. liabilities, but as a form of public collateral for Western investors.

Many developing countries will eagerly expose themselves to the risk of sanctions in exchange for accelerating integration with the West. Sanctions strengthen the credibility of the commitment not to confiscate private investors’ assets, engendering more confidence, more global capital flows, and more secure reserve status for the dollar.

As current account deficit countries move up the development curve, many, like China, have transformed into current account surplus countries. These countries’ excessive productive capacity and savings create a different set of considerations for dollar access and therefore, sanctions vulnerability. Surplus economies derive a wide range of benefits from dollar usage. For example, they require a large consumer market willing and able to absorb their excess productive capacity and savings. If they were forced to recycle savings domestically, their currencies would appreciate significantly, slowing their export-driven economies. Additionally, they also need to import Western technology and, critically, must sell to deficit countries, which are incentivized to use the dollar. Exposure to sanctions is a price they pay in exchange for accessing these direct benefits of participation in the dollar system.

And: “If sanctions pose any threat to the dollar, it is from ineffective use that undermines America’s security standing, not from an active and considered approach.”

Overuse, too.

GOOD LORD: Colorado Mom Sues School After Secret Trans Group Recruits Her Daughter and Does ‘Unthinkable Things.’

ENDORSED: Hey Republicans! Release the Records of the Biden Payments, Dummies!

VODKAPUNDIT PRESENTS YOUR WEEKLY INSANITY WRAP [VIP]: We Have to Talk About the Texas Shooter’s Deeply Weird Origins…

YES, BUT IT GIVES ALL THE RIGHT PEOPLE ALL THE CORRECT FEELZ: Lab-grown meat is up to 25 times WORSE for the climate than beef, study claims.

NARRATIVES DON’T ESTABLISH THEMSELVES, YOU KNOW: The Left Continues to Rail Against ‘Book Bans’ That Aren’t Happening.

HMM: Catastrophic Success: What if the Ukrainian Counteroffensive Achieves More than Expected?

If the counteroffensive is surprisingly successful, Putin will be forced to respond in one of two ways—negotiation or escalation. Given Putin’s belief in the value of a long-game scenario, his willingness to absorb significant costs, and the potentially disastrous domestic political consequences of unfavorable negotiations, it is more likely than not that Putin would choose escalation. In a situation where Russian forces are routed, Putin would face only two realistic escalation options: throw more human bodies at the Ukrainians or use a nuclear weapon.

In the case of the former option, Russia already appears to be preparing new rounds of mobilizations, with the Wagner Group restarting troop recruitment from Russian prisons. However, as was recently seen in Bakhmut and elsewhere, new Russian soldiers are poorly trained. Conscripts are thus often killed in droves—and not even the Russians have an infinite supply of human lives. New recruits could slow the tide of a Ukrainian advance, but if momentum is on Ukraine’s side, it may be unlikely these new recruits could decisively weigh in Russia’s favor.

That leaves nuclear escalation.

It’s an thoughtful article and not at all scaremongering. Worth a read.