TENTATIVELY SET FOR AUGUST 28…:

Preparing for another Starship flight https://t.co/MsML86joOw

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2026

This should include the Ship’s first orbital flight, and first operational deployment of V3 Starlink satellites.

BREAKING: FBI Disrupts ISIS-Inspired Terrorist Attack on New York Statehouse.

HAMAS USES THE WEST’S HUMANITY AS A SHIELD, AND ITS OWN CHILDREN AS HUMAN SHIELDS:

A Palestinian woman in Gaza admits everyone in Gaza is Hamas:

“In Gaza, every house has Hamas. Are you going to kill us all?!” pic.twitter.com/lBE5HJVkl6

— Vivid.🇮🇱 (@VividProwess) August 20, 2026

SHUT UP, SHE EXPLAINED — LITERALLY: Atlanta Dem Mayor Andre Dickens sparks outrage as he tells constituent to ‘shut up’ in bizarre social media spat. “Wow, a mayor telling a constituent to shut up for asking him to uphold voter mandates,” Brimer said. “Stay classy Andre.”

I WISH I COULD SAY THAT I WAS EVEN TRYING…:

I’m trying hard to be Proverbs 24:17-18 over this but man, the schadenfreude is real. https://t.co/ARGa9vzk3p

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) August 20, 2026

BUT DID THEY LEARN ANYTHING? Scott Jennings Schools CNN Panel on Biden’s Inflation Disaster.

EXAGGERATED? I’M LESS CERTAIN:

Exaggerated, but the basic point is valid. George Floyd tested Anglosphere universities, and they flunked. Instead of feeding the hysteria, they should have served as beacons of reason. The Jason Arday tragedy provides another test. Time for academia to face its pathologies. https://t.co/hEd4ej02p8

— Timur Kuran (@timurkuran) August 20, 2026

UPDATE (From Ed): If Nathan Cofnas is being fired for exposing Arday as a fabulist, he’s going out guns a-blazing:

Nathan Cofnas, suspended by the rector of Ghent University, Petra De Sutter, in the wake of Jason Arday’s death, notes that De Sutter used ChatGPT for her inaugural address, which included fabricated quotes.

Previous news reports confirm this.https://t.co/xppHNZk3Wo https://t.co/XjaV0P6zZk pic.twitter.com/9gCl3NsjXs

— Benjamin Ryan (@benryanwriter) August 20, 2026

Here’s the link to the Brussels Times that’s embedded in the above tweet, from the beginning of the year: UGent chancellor Petra De Sutter caught using AI in opening speech.

Not an attack, just the truth, buddy. https://t.co/EGliMQpWNk pic.twitter.com/8nb8XOiTas

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) August 20, 2026

THIS SEEMS MORE THAN REASONABLE: Abbott Wants Foreign Funding, H-1B Employment Banned In Public Schools. Back in January, Texas Governor Greg Abbott froze H-1B visas for Texas state agencies and universities. Now pushing for the same in public schools, plus an end to foreign curriculum funding.”

Especially that last part.

GOOD QUESTION:

Hey Rachel Vindman @natsechobbyist, why are you using different addresses with the FEC for your recurring contributions to ActBlue, your husband's money laundering PAC "VoteVets", and your donations to the Harris campaign? Are you circumventing contribution limits and concealing… pic.twitter.com/UU9cc7Vbea

— Bad Hombre (@Badhombre) September 16, 2024

THE NUMBERS ARE AS INFURIATING AS THEY ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE: I’m Sorry, The Feds Wasted HOW MANY TRILLIONS in Improper Payments?

MARX CAME FROM A SUCCESSFUL FAMILY AND SQUANDERED IT:

Not at all surprising to anyone familiar with the present (and past) of the Left https://t.co/a2rPTIcstV

— Wesley Yang (@wesyang) August 20, 2026

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Trump DOJ’s Path for Restoring Prohibited Persons’ Gun Rights – Here’s How it Will Work.

For more than 30 years, federal law has provided a way for certain people prohibited from owning firearms to petition the government to get their gun rights back. Well, technically.

In reality, you had about as much chance of getting your rights restored through 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) as I have of getting an invite to walk the red carpet at the Met Gala. (Important note: For the record, I would never go.) The process existed. You just couldn’t use it. But that’s about to change.

Exit quote: “Congress created a process for restoring your gun rights and then prevented the agency responsible for administering the process from spending any money to actually carry it out. Or, in today’s terms, they de-funded the ATF when it comes to restoring your rights.”

Typical.

WELL SAID:

turns out when you select for cowardice you get an institution incapable of policing itself https://t.co/bUoLAJgDNU

— Razib Khan 🧬 ✍️ (@razibkhan) August 20, 2026

Cowardice, conformity, corruption…

METAPHOR ALERT: Prospective Vendors for Mamdani’s Low-Cost Grocery Get Tour of Vacant Lot. “The city is on the road to socialism at least for as long as Mamdani is in Gracie Mansion, and so on Wednesday, in a fitting display of what socialism actually gets you, representatives of outfits that may actually run Mamdani’s Santa Claus grocery store got a grand tour of its prospective location: a garbage-filled vacant lot.”

THIS IS A REAL PROBLEM:

They’re not standing for her three kids, whom she killed, but for her.
Some women are too online and it shows. https://t.co/lks6hEE1lx

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) August 20, 2026

And:

Lindsay Clancy brutally strangled her 3 kids to death

Current scene outside the courthouse: pic.twitter.com/LC6do0LdzT

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) August 20, 2026

What’s that a scene from? Mao’s China? Stephen King’s “Women of the Corn?”

SAD: These 6 Artists Censored Their Own Work.

The only way to protect yourself from censored art? Buy the film or TV show on physical media. Except fans of the 1998 film “Pleasantville” will get a rude awakening if they do just that.

Shout! Factory’s new 4K Blu-ray edition of director Gary Ross’s drama snipped a line from the original film. The theatrical version finds Reese Witherspoon’s character saying, “I did the slut thing, David. It got kind of old,” to her brother, David (Tobey Maguire).

The “slut” line got the heave ho in the latest version. World of Reel says Ross himself approved of the censorship. Entertainment Weekly reached out to the director for comment, but the story has not been updated.

If Ross approved the censorship, he’s not alone. Here are five other examples of artists who have censored their own work.

More good stuff from Christian Toto at the link.

THIS HAS TO BE A DEEPFAKE, RIGHT? RIGHT?

From a New York Times video about the suffering among sailors deployed on the USS Abraham Lincoln. The caption, in case it's too small to read, says, "They didn't sign up to be on a ship in the middle of the ocean." pic.twitter.com/p28FmV1NqP

— Chris Bray (@a_chrisbray) August 20, 2026

AREN’T THOSE THE SAME PEOPLE WHO USED TO SAY “PUNCH A NAZI?”: Sadly, It’s Illegal to Punch Democrats Who Constantly Lie About Voter ID.

GOOD: Military kids will learn Western civ and patriotism in DoD class.

Patriotic values will be taught in schools run by the military, says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (That’s not a shocker.) He also wants the school system, which serves children of active-duty military members, to stress classical education.

A new online class on Western civilization will use a textbook on “the ancient world and Christendom,” report AP’s Annie Ma and Konstantin Toropin. The DoD class may use lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school.

“While some classical educators have pushed to incorporate diverse scholars, critics have argued the movement focuses too heavily on foundational texts from Greek, Roman and other Western writers and gives short shrift to achievements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East,” they write.

It appears that learning the classics is now coded as conservative.

That’s because civics and the humanities got hijacked by anti-American Marxists.

ATHENA THORNE: Data Centers and Flock Cameras and AI, Oh My! “Maybe you’re still recovering from the Great Societal Collapse of Y2K. Perhaps you’re still digging out from the rubble of the Cold War nuclear global apocalypse, or you’re busy smothering in the ozone-pollution-acid rain-cold-heat-weather-climate-greenhouse disaster. As for me, I’m just about done with all the panic and handwringing about the technological breakthroughs washing over us at an ever-increasing cadence.”

HMM: Moderna Shares Double on Success of mRNA Cancer Vaccine.

An experimental mRNA-based vaccine succeeded in preventing cancer from coming back or spreading in a study of high-risk melanoma patients, Moderna and its partner Merck said Wednesday, paving the way for a potentially new life-extending treatment for the thousands of people diagnosed with the deadly skin cancer each year.
…
The study looked at people who had surgery to remove a melanoma—the point of the treatment was to reduce the risk of it coming back.

The companies said the late-stage study, which tested the personalized cancer vaccine intismeran in combination with Merck’s blockbuster cancer immunotherapy Keytruda, met its main goal of extending the time before cancer returns in high-risk patients. The study also met a secondary goal of preventing the disease from spreading to different organs.

“I have a feeling that this is just the beginning of a new field,” said Jane Healy, a vice president of oncology at Merck, adding the goal for patients is “to give them longer without having to worry about treatments for cancer.”

Developing…

GOODER AND HARDER:

A disgrace. Republicans are the fiscally irresponsible party, Democrats are the fiscally insane party. Voters claim they want this addressed, but don’t really act accordingly. Meaningful solutions are demagogued to the hilt — so further toward the fiscal abyss we climb. 🤢 https://t.co/BzvCQ5ZbrZ

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 20, 2026

“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop,” the wise man liked to say.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: The Price of ‘Wait Them Out’ Keeps Going Up for Iran. “I’ve written on more than one occasion that there are two wars going on in the region: the actual war, and whatever the hell it is that The New York Times is writing about. There have been days when it seemed as if the Times were getting editorial directives from Tehran.”

SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Russian court jails Kremlin critic for 11 years for opposing the war in Ukraine.

A Russian court on Monday convicted a prominent opposition politician for speaking out against the war in Ukraine and sentenced him to 11 years and one month in prison in the latest crackdown leading up to next month’s parliamentary election.

The verdict against Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was another step by the Kremlin to stifle dissent since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. Yabloko is the only official political party overtly opposing the war.

In a separate ruling Monday, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld its earlier decision to bar Yabloko from the ballot in the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary vote, denying an appeal by the party.

The moves against Shlosberg and Yabloko highlight the Kremlin’s intolerance toward any criticism of the war, now in its fifth year.

Stalin required just 14 months to clear the Ukraine SSR of Nazi troops, and the Ukraine military in 2022 wasn’t exactly the Wehrmacht.

THEY’RE JUST CAUGHT AND RELEASED TO DO THE JOGGER-STABBINGS AMERICANS WON’T DO:

BREAKING: I'm told by federal source that the suspect arrested in Fairfax County, VA for the stabbing murder of a mother near a jogging trail in Great Falls, VA is a Salvadoran illegal alien who was caught and released at the border by the Biden admin in El Paso, TX in April… pic.twitter.com/I3WJ0dcDzR

— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) August 19, 2026