THIS HAS BEEN OBVIOUS FOR A WHILE TO ANYONE PAYING ATTENTION, JUST FROM HOW THEY WERE ACTING:

THE LEFT DOESN’T WANT TO DEFUND THE POLICE, THEY WANT TO BE THE POLICE: Border Control.

THIS IS THE MOST ENTERTAINING TIMELINE:

IT’S COME TO THIS:

JOHN LUCAS: Thank Your Local ICE Agents for Their Service.

Related (From Ed): Even the perilously far left Bay Area says thanks!

YES, HE WAS THAT GUY:

And Obama sent the money in cash to skirt sanctions.

CDR SALAMANDER: Old and Busted: Air Supremacy. New Hotness: Orbital Supremacy. Hegseth at Cape Canaveral. “One of the foundation stones of any understanding of the national security requirements of the United States is a requirement to fully understand that we are primarily a maritime and aerospace power. That is our comparative advantage. Aerospace isn’t just air-breathing aircraft, it includes space. . . . The best way to find out what the Trump Administration wants to do, what its priorities are, and where the puck is going, is not to read second-hand reports from people who often have their own agendas or blinkered views of personalities and politics. No. The best thing you can do is go to primary sources.”

WAITING GAME ON IRAN: Will there be genuine negotiations seeking a new future for the Iranian people or is President Donald Trump about to whack the Ayatollah’s regime that first came to power in 1979? Richard Pollock wants to know and he’s tuned in with some smart people.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG: Oscar-nominated Iranian screenwriter arrested in Tehran after condemning Khamenei.

One of the Oscar-nominated screenwriters of the Iranian drama, “It Was Just an Accident” was arrested yesterday in Tehran just weeks before the Academy Awards.

Representatives for the film say that Mehdi Mahmoudian was arrested Saturday.

No details on the charges against Mahmoudian were available. But his arrest came just days after Mahmoudian and 16 others signed a statement condemning Islamic Republic leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the regime’s violent crackdown on demonstrators.

Hollywood is too busy patting itself on the back at various awards shows for meaningless virtue signaling about ICE and “stolen lands” to notice.

GOODER AND HARDER, NEW YORK: New York Released Almost 7,000 Criminal Illegal Aliens. “New York released almost 7,000 criminal illegal aliens last year as a result of sanctuary policies, rewarding killers, rapists, robbers, and burglars while defying Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

REAL MONEY: Medi-Cal spends $608M monthly on cooking, cleaning home services, even for illegal immigrants. “These services are part of a federally-and-state-funded program called In-Home Supportive Services, which was designed to get people assistance at home without having to move to an expensive facility. But the program has grown so rapidly that it is responsible for 41% of job gains in California since January 2019, when Gov. Gavin Newsom took office.”

Nope, nothing fishy about that.

More here: 18 Percent of Fed-Funded Home Health Care Is in Los Angeles County, and Fraud Is Rampant.

A CONSCIOUSLY ORGANIZED, FOREIGN SUPPORTED, INSURGENCY: The Riot Beat: Everyone’s debating what happened in Minnesota. Few are talking about the real problem: what these “protests” are really like. “I’ve spent years covering left-wing protests and riots across America, from 2020 through the present. What I’ve witnessed on the ground looks nothing like the noble resistance portrayed in legacy media. The reality: Chaos. Violence. Dishonesty. Truly, the street activists are among the most dishonest people I’ve encountered. . . . The real question isn’t whether federal agents were justified in Minneapolis. The real question is what kind of organized resistance has taken root in American cities and what it will take to uproot it.”

The appeal of “protest” is that it lets you act horribly while feeling good about yourself. This particularly appeals to the Cluster B crowd that the left draws on.

Related: Inside Minneapolis’s ICE Watch Network: One of the city’s protest organizations stoked a raging fire.

UPDATE:

THIS IS NO TIME TO GO ALL WOBBLY: More Than 60% Of Midterm Voters Support Deporting Illegal Immigrants, Poll Finds.

Cygnal’s memo reports that 73% of likely midterm voters say entering the United States without legal permission constitutes breaking the law, a view shared by 82% of swing voters, 70% of independents, and 99% of Republicans, while only 48% of Democrats agree.

The firm argues that this baseline perception shapes attitudes toward enforcement, with 61% of voters supporting deportation of people in the country illegally, including 64% of swing voters and 59% of independents. Democrats break sharply in the opposite direction, with 67% opposing deportation.

According to the survey, 54% of midterm voters back ICE’s enforcement role, compared with 59% of swing voters, 52% of independents, and 94% of Republicans. Democrats again diverge, with 81% opposing ICE enforcement. Cygnal notes that 58% of voters oppose defunding ICE, including 66% of swing voters and 92% of Republicans, while 68% of Democrats support defunding the agency.

The firm says Democrats begin with a D+4 advantage on the generic ballot among all midterm voters, but that margin disappears when voters are told Democrats want to defund ICE, shifting the race to R+0.

Pound that message home for the next 10 months.

#JOURNALISM:

DECLINE IS A CHOICE:

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hide Your Bunnies — Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Now MAGA’s Crazy Ex. “Internecine squabbles are nothing unusual in the Republican Party; we’re not a single-brained organism like the Democrats, after all. Greene’s foot-stomping might have been less irritating and more understandable had she not played a very whiny victim card when she announced her resignation.”

YURI BEZMENOV: Millennial Baizuo Kamikaze: Why white liberal millennials like Renee Good and Alex Pretti are the most demoralized and dangerous demographic in America. “Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both 37 years old when they died. They put their bodies on the line for the Minneapolis theater kid communist insurrection. Walz, Frey, Ellison, Omar, BlueSky, and Signal group chats whipped them up with virtue signaling bukkake. Their final acts were kamikaze attacks against ICE officers who they believed are the Nazi Gestapo of Orange Hitler. They had a death wish to be martyrs for the woke jihad cult. Protecting illegals, fraudsters, and rapists was the only thing that gave their lives meaning.”

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Unable to tame hydrogen leaks, NASA delays launch of Artemis II until March.

The launch of NASA’s Artemis II mission, the first flight of astronauts to the Moon in more than 53 years, will have to wait another month after a fueling test Monday uncovered hydrogen leaks in the connection between the rocket and its launch platform at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“Engineers pushed through several challenges during the two-day test and met many of the planned objectives,” NASA said in a statement following the conclusion of the mock countdown, or Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), early Tuesday morning. “To allow teams to review data and conduct a second Wet Dress Rehearsal, NASA now will target March as the earliest possible launch opportunity for the flight test.”

The practice countdown was designed to identify problems and provide NASA an opportunity to fix them before launch. Most importantly, the test revealed NASA still has not fully resolved recurring hydrogen leaks that delayed the launch of the unpiloted Artemis I test flight by several months in 2022. Artemis I finally launched successfully after engineers revised their hydrogen loading procedures to overcome the leak.

The leak appeared in the same location it did during the Artemis I launch campaign nearly three years ago.

Space is hard, problems crop up — but hopefully not the same problem, one mission after the other.