April 20, 2026

GONNA CRY! Elise Stefanik Turns Jake Tapper Into a Simpering Mess Over Trump/Iran and It’s GLORIOUS (Vid).

Rep. Elise Stefanik took Jake Tapper to the cleaners… just one look at his pouty, cranky, smug little face while she was going off about his claims that Trump had called for genocide against Iran, and you know she had him where she wanted him.

And where he did not want to be.

Watch this:

As Stefanik tells Jake, “President Trump effectively brought the Iranians to the table. He effectively delivered a ceasefire.”

Would that be a bad thing from CNN’s leftist point of view? CNN’s Man in Iran Tacitly Admits He Had a ‘Minder’ Who Informed Regime.

To answer that question, it’s worth noting:

 

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THIS IS THE OBAMA YEARS FINALLY SNOWBALLING:

But as Salena Zito noted in the replies, “He votes with his party for the majority of the time.” If Fetterman wants to actually do something about his party’s radicalization, maybe he could try costing them hard votes. Until then, it’s hard to take his protests very seriously.

And this, now more than ever:

Posted at 1:59 pm by Stephen Green

FALLOUT: Ruben Gallego’s Political Career May Be Toast.

For Democrats, Gallego wasn’t just a senator from Arizona; he was the future of the party.

That was before Eric Swalwell.

Last week, Swalwell resigned his House seat and withdrew from the California gubernatorial race following a wave of sexual assault allegations, and Gallego has been caught in the fallout. They were close friends, and he chaired Swalwell’s 2020 presidential campaign and publicly backed his gubernatorial run. When the Swalwell allegations broke, the questions about Gallego’s proximity followed almost immediately. What did he know? When did he know it? His answers have satisfied almost no one.

He held a press conference on Tuesday, attempting to distance himself from Swalwell. “I fell for it,” he told reporters, saying Swalwell “lied to all of us.”

Unfortunately, it didn’t go so well for him.

Democratic strategist Anthony Coley, a Capitol Hill veteran who once worked for the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, didn’t even try to sugarcoat it.

“If Gallego’s press conference was meant to reassure potential voters, donors and activists, it failed,” he said. “Folded arms and incomplete answers don’t shut down a story, they extend it. The party faithful will want real clarity on his relationship with Swalwell before he gets serious consideration for higher office in 2028.”

Swalwell is toxic, and was from the start.

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Skunk Works Is Looking for a U-2 Pilot.

When I was a kid, I never thought so many of the Air Force planes of my youth — the C-130, the U-2, the Warthog, and of course the B-52, would still be flying well into the 21st century.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

PULL IT ALREADY:

Posted at 1:28 pm by Stephen Green

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Michigan Dems Nominate Lawyer Who Praised Hezbollah, Called Israelis ‘Demons’ for Powerful University Post.

Michigan Democrats nominated Amir Makled, a radical Dearborn-based lawyer, for the University of Michigan Board of Regents over incumbent Jordan Acker, a Jewish board member who has faced intense backlash for his support of Israel.

Makled secured the nomination for one of the board’s two open seats at the Democrat’s convention on Sunday and will appear on the general election ballot in November. The eight-person board governs the University of Michigan, the state’s largest university and flagship public school.

Throughout his campaign, Makled argued that the university should divest from Israel. In recent years the left-wing lawyer has taken to praising the U.S.-designated terror group Hezbollah and attacking Israel in antisemitic terms on social media. In one since-deleted tweet, surfaced by the Detroit News, Makled described Hezbollah official Abu Ali Khalil, who was killed in a June 2025 Israeli airstrike, as “a martyr on the road to Jerusalem.” In another post, Makled referred to Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as a “martyr.”

Makled also reposted and then deleted a message on X praising Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in June 2020. Makled used the honorific “Haj” ahead of Soleimani’s name, a title of respect given to a Muslim person who successfully completes the Hajj, a pilgrimage to Mecca. As commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, Soleimani directed terror operations that claimed thousands of lives across the Middle East and around the world.

Makled also reposted social media posts from far-right influencer Candace Owens, including one post in which Owens referred to Israelis as “demons.”

The 21st century isn’t turning out as I had hoped, to coin an Insta-phrase:

 

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

VOTING WITH THEIR DOLLARS:

Posted at 12:57 pm by Stephen Green

VIA JK ROWLING: Inside the feverish delusions of the professional arts class.

A few weeks ago, I ventured out to an arts event here in Belfast — something I do rarely these days. It was entitled Working Against the Clampdown: Who’s Afraid of the Arts?, and it was part of the Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics.

I was there with Sara Morrison and Rosie Kay. Both are outcasts from the publicly funded arts sector in the UK — Rosie having been kicked out of her own very successful dance company — the Rosie Kay Dance Company – by her own dancers, who complained to her board alleging ‘transphobia,’ which led to the board launching an investigation into her, and ultimately, the dissolution of the entire company. Sara, as I have written about here and here, was similarly treated by her employer, the Belfast Film Festival, after she spoke in favour of women only spaces at one of Kellie Jay Keen’s Let Women Speak events in 2023.

On a rainy night in late March, sitting in the audience with these two women, l listened to salaried grandees discussing the challenges they faced while existing off the largess of the British taxpayer. It was an experience of cognitive dissonance so sharp it felt like a slap in the face.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green

FROM JONATHAN LEAF, a review of Roger Simon’s excellent new Middle East novel, EMET. I read the book and blurbed it; you can see my blurb at the link.

Posted at 12:36 pm by Glenn Reynolds

“TRUST THE EXPERTS,” THEY SAID:

Posted at 12:31 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DECLINE IS A CHOICE.

How It Started: The real SAS Rogue Heroes: the true stories behind the WW2 drama.

How It’s Going:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

SCENES FROM THE COUNTER-RECONQUISTA:

Posted at 12:26 pm by Stephen Green

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE:

Posted at 12:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds

GOODER AND HARDER, FUN CITY: New York City Isn’t Prepared for a Recession.

In mid-February, just seven weeks into office, New York City Mayor Zohran K. Mamdani delivered somber news to state legislators: the city faces a $5.4 billion deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the result, he said, “of budgetary failures of the past.” Even after spending cuts, he argued, the state should raise income and business taxes and transfer the proceeds to the city immediately—“the most direct route out of this budget crisis.” Thankfully for New Yorkers, the mayor was mostly bluffing: this year’s budget gap is manageable, and the city faces no acute emergency.

But Mamdani’s push unwittingly raised a graver point: If things are this strained when the global, state, and local economies are nominally doing all right, and when city tax revenues are therefore rising, what would happen if the city entered a recession—historically, a matter not of if but when?

No modern New York mayor, save for Mamdani’s one-term predecessor, Eric L. Adams, has avoided a downturn, and the economy is overdue for one. Aside from the sharp unemployment spike caused by the Covid-19 lockdowns in the spring of 2020, the U.S. economy has not experienced a normal cyclical recession since 2008, nearly two decades ago. And no modern mayor is less equipped than Mamdani to grapple with an economic and fiscal crisis.

After attacking him during the mayoral race, Mamdani has wisely attempted to buddy-up to Trump. Will that be enough to prevent the “TRUMP TO CITY: DROP DEAD” headlines that are sure to follow from New York’s tabloids?

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

YES, IT SHOULD:

Posted at 11:52 am by Stephen Green