May 20, 2026

BIG RIGS: Tesla’s Newest Electric Vehicle Could Jolt the Trucking Industry.

Cost and range are two of the main reasons that many logistics and delivery firms have been reluctant to buy electric trucks, which cost at least twice as much as diesel models and account for only a sliver of heavy truck sales.

“The problem with the technology that’s out there right now is their range is limited. They’re quite heavy, and they’re very expensive,” said Jennie Abarca, owner of King Fio Trucking in Long Beach, Calif., which has ordered 20 Tesla Semis. “This is something new coming to the market that kind of answers all those problems.”

Demand for the Semi appears strong. California trucking firms have asked the state government for subsidies to help them buy more than 1,200 Tesla trucks. That’s more than all the applications for other electric trucks since the state’s incentive program began in 2019.

Ivan Torres, a driver for Nevoya, a San Francisco-based trucking company, is a big fan of the Semi. He was at the wheel of one last month hauling power tools from the Port of Long Beach to Ontario, Calif., 60 miles away. Nevoya operates only electric trucks.

As the truck climbed a steep hill that separates Ontario from greater Los Angeles, Mr. Torres marveled at its power. “It hauls the load like nothing, just up,” he said from the padded driver’s seat, which sits atop a shock absorber that smooths out the bumps. Screens on either side of the steering wheel provided a view of the traffic around him.

They sound great — so why should Sacramento pay trucking companies to buy them?

Posted at 8:36 am by Stephen Green

JEREMY CORBYN SMILES:

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

ESCHEW ALL MODALITIES OF COCKSUREDNESS:

 

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll

ASTROTURF ALL THE WAY DOWN:

Don’t miss the highlighted text in that last panel, courtesy of X’s best new feature.

Posted at 8:20 am by Stephen Green

SORE LOSER:

“Then Massie ends his career with this line about Ed Gallrein: ‘I had to find him in Tel Aviv.'”

Posted at 7:49 am by Stephen Green

WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT?

And:

Tweet concludes, “The two teens who killed themselves after the shooting appeared to have left behind manifestos praising Hitler. The mosque is infamous for having some of the 9/11 hijackers among its members.”

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

MONEY: Forget tariffs and the Iran oil shock—a top economist says the Fed is blind to the real inflation threat.

For Luther, the real dynamic behind the recent spike couldn’t be more basic: The overall dollars America’s paying for goods and services is rising a lot faster than the quantities of cars, appliances, or hotel rooms we’re producing and supplying. “There’s a grain of truth in the tariffs and oil price argument,” he says. “But those price increases mainly take money away from what’s spent on other things, and don’t have a major impact on overall inflation. The fundamental problem is that more money is chasing the same number of goods. We have an aggregate demand issue, not a supply disruption issue.”

Luther explains that “aggregate demand” or “total spending” comprises all domestic expenditures by consumers, government, and businesses for everything from plants to inventories. So where is all this excess money coming from? A major source is a ramp in government spending: the CBO forecasts that federal outlays will rise a lofty 6% in FY 2026 (ended in September). An obvious contributor, also cited by Powell, is the king’s ransom being lavished on AI data centers, projected to reach almost $1 trillion this year, multiples of the number three years ago. To boot, consumers—especially the well-to-do—continue to spend big time on everything from dining out to health and wellness. The “wealth effect” from a stock market led by an S&P that’s gained 28% in the past year also likely emboldens folks to reach deeper into their wallets.

The main culprits remain in Washington, where they print whatever money they require to cover their spending addiction.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green

THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE:

Insert obligatory “Are we the baddies?” video here:

Also, note the rather subdued response from the media after Galindo’s ravings:

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.
Evergreen:

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

JEFFREY CARTER: The Coming Boom — If We Let It Happen. “They have used all the various platforms, but they use Anthropic’s Claude the most. I relayed a story to them. An entrepreneur I backed to a successful exit in a company told me he programmed 8 AI agents to program a company. He then programmed an AI agent to oversee the 8 AI agents. He built an entire company in one week that would have taken him a year. The computer guys were not surprised at all by that. One of them told me that they were getting almost 5x more output from engineers and programmers in their firm after utilizing and implementing artificial intelligence.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

UNACCOUNTABILITY AND THE NEW YORK TIMES: Richard Pollock digs into the corporate structure underlying the Old Grey Lady and finds a complex setup that permanently empowers and insulates Sulzberger descendants to maintain a death grip on every aspect of the newspaper, including what is and isn’t reported, and how. Interestingly, the Sulzberger and Ford families use the same technique to maintain iron-clad control.

Posted at 6:32 am by Mark Tapscott

May 19, 2026

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s Groovy.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Civil war brewing at New York Times following publication of column alleging rape of Palestinians.

Nicholas Kristof’s column in The New York Times continues to reverberate a week after publication, and has created an internal rift between the newspaper’s newsroom and its opinion section.

The column, titled “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians,” includes allegations of systematic sexual abuse by Israeli prison guards and soldiers against Palestinian detainees. It cites testimony from 14 Palestinians alleging the use of batons and carrots, threats to rape family members and dogs used for sexual assault while prison staff laughed and filmed the incident.

The article drew widespread reactions around the world, including protests and calls to cancel subscriptions. On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar threatened to file a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper for libel against the State of Israel. Israeli officials and the Israel Prison Service have completely denied the claims, and Netanyahu called them baseless.

Earlier: The Big Tell: NYT Not Reporting Kristof Accusations on its News Pages.

Think about that: the journalists who would run with allegations from the Steele Dossier and make a two-year crusade out of proving it are too ashamed to touch Kristof’s accusations.

That’s how absurd this story is.

Thus the kerfuffle between the Gray Lady’s “news” and opinion departments:

UPDATE:

MORE:

Posted at 8:50 pm by Ed Driscoll