GOOD: Pennsylvania college scraps plan for gender-neutral mascot, will keep Ben Franklin after all.

A NEW ANALYSIS OF 120,000 COLLEGE STUDENTS FINDS THAT WOMEN WITH MORE CLOSE FRIENDS TEND TO BE LESS TOLERANT OF CONTROVERSIAL SPEAKERS. The finding holds for both left- and right-wing speakers, even after adjusting for students’ political ideology and the ideological leanings of their schools.

“RINO” DIDN’T COME OUT OF THIN AIR:

How do you run on a gun control, open borders, pro-choice, pro-amnesty platform and win a Republican primary in 2028? Because that’s what Mayo is proposing here.

— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) November 13, 2026

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Idaho Election Officials Find 2,675 Ballots Left Out of Results. “The ballots, representing a portion of early voting, had been tabulated by election machines but were not included in the county’s publicly reported results. The discrepancy was discovered during the county’s review ahead of its official canvas.”

This should never happen.

FRANKENPOLICY: Expert Warns Dems Are ‘Exhuming the Corpse’ of Climate Alarmism.

AND WHAT DID NVIDIA KNOW? Nobody Roasts a Scandal Like John Kennedy, and Nvidia’s Spy Mess Proves It Again.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Sen. Slotkin’s ‘deterrence message’ backfires as UChicago student demands Senate ethics investigation. “A University of Chicago student who exposed remarks by Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., about deterring young conservatives from working in the administration of President Donald Trump told Campus Reform in an interview that her warning has only motivated students to stand up for their political beliefs. Michael Bicksel, a second-year student and senior editor of The Chicago Thinker, has since filed a formal Senate ethics complaint against the Michigan Democrat for threatening political persecution against young Americans interested in serving in a Republican administration.”

I THINK HE’S RIGHT: Marc Thiessen: The midterms won’t define Trump’s legacy. Iran will. Reagan lost the Senate and won the Cold War. The president can follow his lead.

NO WORRIES, I HAVE MY TOWEL: SpaceX’s S42 Launch Is Named “Don’t Panic.”

WELL, GOOD: ULA’s Vulcan set to return to flight with first Amazon Leo payload. “A Vulcan VC6L, the most powerful configuration of the Vulcan rocket with six solid rocket boosters, an extended payload fairing, and a low-Earth orbit-optimized Centaur V upper stage, is scheduled to fly the Amazon Leo LV-01 mission. Launch is set for Friday, Nov. 13, at 12:54 PM EST (17:54 UTC) from Space Launch Complex 41 (SLC-41) at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch window lasts half an hour and closes at 1:24 PM EST (18:24 UTC). Launch weather is currently 90% favorable.”

WHILE CHINA PLAYS TO WIN, POPULIST AMERICAN POLITICIANS PLAY TO VOTERS’ WORST INSTINCTS:

"I lead our relationship and negotiations with China, and I will tell you, they are looking for every advantage that they can. We are six, 12 months ahead in AI/SI…So we cannot slow down here. But again, I think the industry really has to make their case to the American people,… pic.twitter.com/ct4IUSNWiC

— Heritage Foundation (@Heritage) November 12, 2026

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: What’s One More? Maybe We Can Give Thune to The Democrats. “Thune hit Fox News for an interview with Brett Baier and, once again, he didn’t sound terribly upset about the election. He is also remarkably bad at making excuses. Given how long he’s been in office, one would expect him to be much better.”

HMM: I’m sure it’s a coincidence that Howard Lutnick’s sons have $362 million in Nvidia.

In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent President Donald Trump and top Cabinet members a classified memorandum detailing the relationship between the Huangs and the intelligence indicating that Alice Huang was a Chinese spy. The White House directed the Commerce Department to put Alice Huang’s Megaspeed on the entity list of companies that pose national security concerns. Lutnick refused this request in May; he refused a second attempted crackdown order from Trump in August; and on Nov. 5, Lutnick reportedly stonewalled Trump again. And evidently, this wasn’t because Lutnick knew too little. Rather, the Commerce Department spent months last year conducting an investigation into Megaspeed and specifically whether it was illicitly smuggling Nvidia chips into China, only for Lutnick’s direct underling, Jeff Kessler, to invite Nvidia to reach out to Commerce about the case, bringing the department’s inquiry to an effective end.

I am sure it is just a coincidence that Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial services firm that Lutnick led for 35 years before passing it off to his 20-something-year-old sons Brandon and Kyle, has a $362.3 million stake in Nvidia, which makes up 7% of Cantor’s entire portfolio.

Full details at the link, but here’s the important part that came out earlier this week: Lutnick stalled Trump’s Nvidia–China chip curbs after Oval talks.

WELL, THIS TAKE IS NOT ONLY FUNNY, IT’S CONSISTENT WITH THE COVERAGE:

JUSTICE: Ilhan Omar Is in Real Trouble, and She Knows It.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Alarming Rise of Open Antisemitism.

SOUNDS RIGHT: New Evidence Completely Upends Cornell 7 Case: This whole case was a political operation by the Democrat Party to mobilize female voters ahead of the midterms.

IF SOMETHING CANNOT GO ON FOREVER, IT WILL STOP:

Monthly deficit hits $400 billion – monthly, not annual 🤯

At this pace the deficit will be more than the entire pre-Covid federal *budget* https://t.co/GTOKhYcBjB

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) November 12, 2026

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK IS STILL OUT. Everyone is like, “Why couldn’t it be Teams?”

Plus:

I'm signal-boosting this because Luke clearly knows what he's talking about. I think his diagnosis that Microsoft's running cloud services are only metastable and cannot handle the restart storm is almost certainly correct. https://t.co/hidfQgRIW8

— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) November 13, 2026

UPDATE:

If you read far enough down the thread of Microsoft's explanations you get to this gem: "The servers we returned to service can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic".

Are you fucking kidding me? Did you just say, right out in front of Goddess and everybody, that… https://t.co/cEpgP2aV5X

— Eric S. Raymond (@esrtweet) November 13, 2026

CHRIS QUEEN: The NCAA Revealed an Ugly Truth About the Transfer Portal.

LAW AND ORDER: Send ICE to Harvard: If university administrators won’t restore order on campus, dispatch ICE to disperse the foreigners disrupting undergraduate education.

EARLY BLACK FRIDAY DEAL: Lucky Brand Men’s Venice Burnout V Neck Tee. #CommissionEarned

ELECTING DEMOCRATS HAS CONSEQUENCES: SpaceX Can Have a Public Beach Closed for Its Launches. The New Land Commissioner May Ground It.

Especially dangerous to SpaceX’s operations in Texas could be the revival of a fight over closing a public beach for rocket launches and tests. In 2009, voters approved a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing unfettered public access to beaches, something that had already been protected by statute since 1959.

But in 2013, the Texas Legislature passed a statute enabling the General Land Office to allow closures for spaceflight activity. This was done as the state was enticing SpaceX to build a spaceport in Cameron County. Without this exemption, Boca Chica Beach couldn’t be shut down on SpaceX’s behalf, meaning its rockets couldn’t fly from Starbase. 

Now incoming land commissioner Benjamin Flores, once he’s sworn in on January 19, plans to “request an opinion from the Attorney General on the constitutionality of the beach closure statute,” Flores’s chief of staff, Alex Martinez, told Texas Monthly.

How’s that Louisiana launch facility coming along, Elon?

Democrats will destroy the future, just to stick it to the man bringing it to us.

THEY SHOULD HAVE GIVEN HIM A BONUS: Circle K’s Message to Armed Clerk Who Stopped Robbers: Leave Your Gun at Home.

TUSCANY BAY BOOKS ON SALE FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR:  Entire catalog now on sale.