BIDEN IS PIVOTING FOR REELECTION, NOW THAT THE DAMAGE IS DONE: Quietly, a Huge Potential Victory for Border Security.

THEY’RE ALWAYS IN THE LAST PLACE YOU LOOK: Japan just found 7,000 islands it didn’t know it had.

BRAVE NEW WORLD: This AI Knows Who You Are and Who All Your Friends Are (And Is Telling the IRS).

ANDREI, YOU’VE LOST CONTROL OF ANOTHER BORDER? ‘It Hasn’t Stopped’: The Northern Border Is Wide Open And People Are Funneling Across. “The Swanton sector of Border Patrol’s area of operation in New York and Vermont saw a nearly 900% increase in migrant encounters in January, according to agency statistics.”

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: PNC Bank Abruptly Ends Business Relationship with Don Trump Jr.’s News App.

DECOUPLING: Foxconn Plans $700 Million iPhone Factory In India As China Exodus Accelerates. “The Taiwanese manufacturing giant’s new plant will be situated on a 300-acre site near Bengaluru, the capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka. Sources said Foxconn would assemble iPhones and might even produce parts for its electric vehicle business, entirely separate from Apple.”

VICTORIA TAFT: An Unexpected Lesson From the Alex Murdaugh Trial. “I briefly thought about giving Faraday bags to my family last Christmas after hearing spooks and special operators talking about them. Then the Murdaugh trial prompted me to revisit the idea.”

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Disgraced RINO Liz Cheney to teach at UVA after losing congressional seat. “Last year, it was revealed that during her time in Congress, Cheney’s net worth ballooned by 600 percent, jumping from $7 million to $44 million.”

RIP: Wayne Shorter Is Dead, and So Is a Great Era of American Culture.

INFLATION: What Now for a Fed That Has Fallen Behind the Curve Again?

With several hotter-than-expected inflation numbers coming after two successive downshifts in interest-rate increases, an interesting debate is raging as to what the Federal Reserve should do next: Go back to a larger rate increase (50 basis points) or maintain a slower pace (25 basis points) but keep higher rates for longer.

Already an analytically tricky issue, this has become even more complicated by the Fed now falling behind on its inflation fight for the third time in just two years and what that implies for its already damaged credibility.

The argument for the Fed to return to a 50-basis-point increase later this month is based on the recent slew of macroeconomic numbers that suggest inflation is becoming stickier, and not just in the service sector.

The Fed was slow to react, failed to react forcefully enough when it finally did act, and then slacked off too soon.

But you don’t need me to tell you that, assuming you’ve actually bought stuff the last couple of years.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Christianity Is Still Fair Game for Secular Leftist Loons. “If the FBI were to poke around that other major religion that actually does have a track record of terrorism, the proggies would really be in a state.”

DEMOGRAPHICS IS DESTINY: China has lost 41 million workers — almost the size of Germany’s workforce — in 3 years. “The data stems from a rapid rise in the number of people retiring, likely raising pressure on Beijing to accelerate unpopular plans to raise official retirement ages The drop reflects factors such as higher youth unemployment due to the pandemic as well as a shrinking number of people in the ‘classic age group of the working-age population,’ said Stuart Gietel-Basten, a demographer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.”

That last group is the one that matters. Young people can be enticed to work once they get hungry enough and the retirement age can always be raised to keep older workers in the workforce longer.

But when the cohort of working-age people is shrinking, as it is in China, you’ve got a real problem.

LET THE CARDS FALL WHERE THEY MAY: Boom Goes the Dynamite: Entire Senate Passes Bill to Declassify COVID-19 Origins Intel.

LEE SMITH: Biden Sets Israel on Fire.

Biden’s State Department is now directly funding local activists organizing the protests. By publicly putting its prestige and money behind the coalition that lost the latest Israeli election, Washington is openly advertising its desire to bring down Netanyahu.

Maybe it seems strange that the current U.S. presidential administration considers Israel’s government hostile to American interests. Why, it was just months ago that Biden aides mediated an arrangement between Israel and Lebanon over their maritime border. Even practical, hard-minded Israeli officials said the deal enhanced security and may even lead to more positive steps with the Beirut government. Surely that’s indicative of good relations between Washington and Jerusalem, no?

In reality, the maritime agreement was just the latest in a series of initiatives to realign U.S. interests with those of the terror regime in Tehran while alternately sweet-talking and threatening traditional U.S. allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia to fall into line. Accordingly, an Israeli prime minister like the one Bibi replaced, Yair Lapid, who wanted to ingratiate himself with the Obama-Biden faction by integrating Israel into its pro-Iran security architecture that augments Hezbollah’s power, was indeed a friend of the current White House.

Netanyahu, however, is a problem for an administration still determined to reenter the nuclear deal from which Donald Trump withdrew.

Plus: “The anti-Bibi coup looks and feels like the anti-Trump operation because it’s run by the same people—the Obama operatives who hunted Trump and now run the Biden White House.”

This White House seems likely to set the whole region on fire, not just Israel.

We sure could use more mean tweets and Middle East peace right about now.

UKRAINE WAR [VIP]: Stuff Is Blowing Up Inside Russia and No One Knows What’s Going On.

REPO AI: Ford wants cars to lock out drivers who are late on car payments. “If the owner still misses payments and doesn’t reach out to the lender, autonomous vehicles would be instructed to drive to the repossession agency, an impound lot, or a junkyard depending on the market value of the vehicle.”

HEINLEIN’S CRAZY YEARS (CONT’D): What the Fudge? Hershey’s Celebrates Man for International Women’s Day.

FLORIDA MAN: DeSantis Book Hits No. 1 on Amazon, Expected to Outsell Trump, Obama Books in First Week, Publisher Says.

INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR AND RESPONSES ARE AN INDICATOR OF DEMENTIA: Joe Biden Laughs While Talking About Fentanyl Deaths.

Of course, in Biden’s case, it could just be his longstanding disregard for simple human decency.

FOLLOW THE MONEY: Semafor Says It Wants To Fix the ‘Crisis of Trust in News.’ It Just Partnered With a Chinese Communist Influence Group. “Ben Smith, the cofounder of Semafor and a former Buzzfeed editor, says the China initiative is aimed at counterbalancing ‘hawkish’ views in Washington toward China, with an advisory board that represents a ‘diversity of opinion’ on the topic of U.S.-China relations. But a glance at the advisory board’s members calls that claim into question as well.”

SCAM OF THE CENTURY? Canada’s Trans Teacher with the Enormous Fake Boobs Put on Paid Leave. “Bear with me here as we plunge deep into the details of this stand-out story.”

NO TELESCREENS REQUIRED: Meet the software company tracking college students’ behavior.

Established in 2003, the software company provides client schools with the ability to create online reporting forms and keep records regarding student behavior.

“Whether it’s student discipline, academic integrity, care and concern records, Title IX matters, or just an ‘FYI’, Maxient’s Conduct Manager has you covered for all things related to a student’s conduct and well-being,” the company’s website states.

Lance Watson, senior client support specialist at Maxient, told The College Fix via email “the schools using a Maxient system have control over how they utilize it and even how they customize it,” such as how they might label the types of processes or issues being tracked.

According to the company website, Maxient receives 7,000 reports daily from client schools, which “range from small private liberal arts colleges to the nation’s largest public institutions.”

One process that may be facilitated by the software is bias reporting systems, which nearly 500 higher institutions in the U.S. have introduced over the past eight to 10 years to address student behavior perceived as “bias.”

“Bias” can mean most anything college administrations need it to mean, which is the entire point.

AMERICAN STASI: Okay, So It Looks as if the Justice Department Probably Has Spies in Catholic Churches.

HMM: ‘Havana syndrome’ not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds. “One agency, which the officials did not name, determined that it was ‘unlikely’ that a foreign actor was at fault, a slightly less emphatic finding that did not appreciably change the consensus. One agency abstained in its conclusion regarding a foreign actor. But when asked, no agency dissented from the conclusion that a foreign actor did not cause the symptoms, one of the intelligence officials said.”

It would be easier to take the findings at face value if our intel agencies were still trustworthy.

HE REALLY ISN’T UP TO THIS TERM: 68 Percent of Voters Say Biden Is ‘Too Old for Another Term.’