THEY ARE FED A STEADY DIET OF LIES:

ON PRE-ORDER FOR RELEASE ON THE 23rd: FROM SARAH A. HOYT:  Witch’s Daughter.

#CommissionEarned

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.

WHEN DEMOCRATS TALK ABOUT MORALITY, LOCK UP YOUR DAUGHTERS. AND SONS. AND WALLETS. AND DOG.

Related, from America’s paper of record:

CONGRESS MUST COME CLEAN: Swalwell scandal spotlights the depth of hidden corruption that has plagued Congress for decades. It’s time to shine the cleansing light of transparency, beginning with making public all of the heretofore secret settlements and associated hush fund protecting others like Swalwell, past and present. Check out my new column on PJ Media.

PRETTY SURE WHAT HE SEES IN THE MIRROR IS NOT WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD SEES:

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

THE WALT DISNEY CO. BEGINS LAYING OFF 1,000 EMPLOYEES:

The Walt Disney Co. on Tuesday began layoffs expected to lead to 1,000 job cuts across the company.

Josh D’Amaro, who in February succeeded Bob Iger as chief executive, announced broader layoffs following a move in January to consolidate Disney’s marketing division. The cuts are expected to fall across the Burbank, California-based company’s traditional television businesses, including ESPN, as well as its movie studio. Employees in product and technology, and in certain corporate functions will also be affected.

Let’s check in with the news and opinion division of Disney:

UPDATE: Link in headline was missing before; now added.

GRAY LADY DIVES FOR FAINTING COUCH (AGAIN): NYT Melts Down Over Texas Rangers Statue Outside… Texas Rangers’ Stadium.

The New York Times and its sports section, The Athletic, has found its newest outrage target: a statue of a Texas Ranger outside Globe Life Field, home of the Texas Rangers. Seriously.

That was the basis for Sam Blum’s 2,000-plus-word Wednesday piece about the Rangers installing the “One Riot, One Ranger” statue at the ballpark. Fellow Athletic writer Stephen J. Nesbitt piled on by calling it a “deeply controversial” statue and capping off his post with the always-serious journalistic flourish: “Yikes.”

He also called Blum’s article “important work.” Yes, we need more sports journalists doing deep dives on… statues outside stadiums. These guys are really putting those journalism degrees to work.

OutKick founder Clay Travis responded the way plenty of normal sports fans probably did.

“It’s a statue of a Texas Ranger at a Texas Rangers stadium,” Travis wrote on X, blasting The Athletic for treating the whole thing like Pulitzer Prize-worthy reporting.

Hard to improve on that, but I’ll try.

Exit quote: “Keep in mind: the statue came down during the ‘Summer of Love’ when Black Lives Matter activists were burning American cities to the ground and basically demanding that all American history be erased. The statue removal from Dallas Love Field came at a time that practically any statue that depicted a white person was at risk of being removed, defaced or destroyed. The Athletic tries to make a point that the statue being taken out of the airport is a signal it shouldn’t exist anywhere, publicly. But that ignores the broader context of 2020.”

Of course it does — because the left’s worldview is permanently trapped in that annus horribilis, and they can’t figure out how the rest of us were never trapped in that box canyon.

WELL, THEY’RE NOT WRONG: