May 29, 2026

VIDEO AND MORE: Blue Origin’s Earth-Shattering Kaboom. “So that was a big badda-boom — very nearly a Wickwick Event. I’ll explain that last part in just a moment, but first the big news.”

Posted at 10:11 am by Stephen Green

CHANGE: ExxonMobil shareholders approve plan to redomicile to Texas.

In March, ExxonMobil Corp., based in Spring, Texas, announced its board unanimously recommended its shareholders approve changing its legal domicile from New Jersey to Texas, where its leadership and core operations have been based since 1989. The board hadn’t held a meeting in New Jersey for more than 40 years, and 30% of ExxonMobil’s global employees are located in Texas. Seventy-five percent of its U.S. employees live and work in Texas.

ExxonMobil said the reason for changing the legal domicile was Texas’ legal and regulatory environment, including its modernized business statutes and new Texas Business Court, The Center Square reported.

Not soon after, the New York City comptroller; Glass, Lewis & Co., and Institutional Shareholder Services recommended ExxonMobil and Chevron investors vote against their boards’ position on the shareholder proposals, including ExxonMobil’s plan to redomicile.

Looks like a shareholder win — Texas, too.

Posted at 9:40 am by Stephen Green

ALIENS AMONG US. Haha.

Posted at 9:10 am by Glenn Reynolds

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Hide Your Kids — Pride Month Is Almost Here. “The rhetoric of the LGBTQ people does not match reality. I would like a list of what any of the letters aren’t free to do. The ‘courageous visibility’ line is utter stupidity. Pride parades have been going on since Richard Nixon’s first term in the Oval Office. After more than half a century of dudes in harnesses and garish drag queens in rainbow makeup marching down the street, trust me, they’re visible.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

#JOURNALISM:

Posted at 8:45 am by Glenn Reynolds

I LIKE THE CUT OF HIS JIB: Florida Governor Calls for Special Session to Eliminate Property Tax for Homeowners.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 27 called for a special legislative session to pass his plan to exempt homeowners from paying property taxes on their permanent residence.

The Republican governor revealed his plans to sign a proclamation that would require state lawmakers to convene in Tallahassee and discuss his “Save Our Homes” proposal starting on June 1.

“Taxing something that you own repeatedly, which is a property tax, is the worst way to do taxation,” DeSantis said in a news conference on May 27.

DeSantis said he hopes that eliminating taxes from Florida homesteads could be a bipartisan effort.

“You pay all these taxes to acquire that property, and then year after year, you’re just having to write a check just for the privilege of being able to maintain ownership of something that is supposedly yours,” he said.

Indeed.

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

JAMES TALARICO COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT:

Posted at 8:22 am by Stephen Green

WINNING: Republicans are poised to finish this year’s redistricting war 10 seats ahead of Democrats.

The coast-to-coast battle to gain an edge in November’s elections through partisan gerrymandering is racing to its conclusion – with Republicans poised to finish with as many as 10 seats ahead of Democrats through redistricting alone.

The GOP kicked off the fight last year in Texas, changing boundaries for US House districts in the hopes of improving the party’s chances of surviving a blue wave this fall, with Democrats responding in turn. The US Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision last month to gut one of the remaining pillars of the 1965 Voting Rights Act further supercharged redistricting efforts across the South, prompting several Republican-controlled states to move election dates and eliminate districts with sizable Black populations.

The moves could be a major boon in efforts to protect House Speaker Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority ahead of the midterm elections. But regardless of the outcome in November, the mid-decade redistricting battle has likely altered American politics permanently – fueling a growing appetite to redraw lines for partisan advantage every election cycle, rather than every decade after the census, as is traditional.

“There is no normal,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount’s law school who runs the “All About Redistricting” website. He pointed to the high court’s string of election-related rulings in recent years, including a 2019 opinion declaring that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymanders, as helping pave the way for the extreme actions now taking hold.

“The Supreme Court has effectively announced that the adults have left the room,” he said. “What you see is what you get when you reward bad behavior, which is a lot more bad behavior.”

With primaries well underway around the country, both parties now have run out of battlegrounds on which to wage new redistricting fights this year. But they are gearing up for even more aggressive gerrymanders in the 2028 election cycle.

This is CNN, so of course the story paints a most unflattering picture of Republicans districting the way Democrats do. Although that’s (D)ifferent because reasons.

But no matter how the media chooses to frame the story, the 10-seat gain is real.

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

FROM CELIA HAYES:  The Quivera Trail (Adelsverein).

The Quivera Trail is intended as a sequel to the Adelsverein Trilogy, as picks up in 1875, with Dolph Becker courting and marrying a young Englishwoman, Isobel Lindsay-Groves. Isobel has several problems, the first of them being a domineering and cruelly judgemental mother, and the second, that she has made a dreadful hash of her debut year and failed to marry – marry well, or marry anyone at all. She is plump, socially inept, loves dogs and horses, and wishes wistfully for a quiet and modest country life. Dolph Becker is the answer to a prayer, for he offers all that … but the price for escape from a gilded world of privilege and the casual malice of her mother and Society … is to marry a man she barely knows, and follow him to Texas.

Accompanying Isobel on the journey to her new home in Texas is Jane Goodacre, her personal maid and confidant. Jane, the daughter of a small country shop-keeper, also has ambitions – and talents that she hardly suspects. The limitations and expectations for a young working-class woman in Victorian England weigh very heavily on Jane, although she does not realize that … until she and her lady mistress arrive in Texas.

Posted at 7:32 am by Sarah Hoyt

CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is Kimmel’s Pratt Assault Start of New Late-Night War?

“Jimmy Kimmel Live!” became the first late-night show to take on the upstart candidate head on. It’s surprising that Kimmel and co. have mostly held their fire up until this point.

Pratt isn’t a traditional Republican. Nor does he mention ideology when promoting his efforts to replace L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. He still seeks to upend California’s Democratic dominance, and that’s a bridge too far for a progressive activist like Kimmel.

“Then you get a guy who is on a reality show, who’s on a lot of reality shows. His profession is to be the screaming jerk on reality shows, and his house burns down, and even though he had no private insurance on his house and doesn’t believe in climate change, he is understandably upset about his house burning down.”

Exit questions:

Earlier, from Glenn: Bringing Back Normality: And striking fear into Democrats.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

ROBERT SPENCER: What One Illinois Speaker Said About Islam and America Has People Talking. “The video, which began circulating on Wednesday and has over 560,000 views as of Thursday afternoon, is arresting on a number of levels. It shows a woman wearing a hijab and leading a prayer at the Illinois General Assembly, which is not all that odd in itself: The General Assembly often features clergy of various religions leading the assembled legislators in prayer. Muslim clerics, however, are universally male, and so in this case, we have a Muslim layperson leading the solons in prayer. What she says, however, is far more striking than the event itself.”

Posted at 7:05 am by Stephen Green

THERE IS NO GREATER SIN THAN STRAYING FROM THE DEMOCRATS’ PLANTATION. RAPE AND MURDER DON’T EVEN COME CLOSE.

Posted at 7:01 am by Glenn Reynolds

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Sex-obsessed prison warden and OnlyFans mom filmed romping with inmate in cell regrets ‘everything I did.’ “The romp went viral and Abreu was arrested at Heathrow Airport after she tried to catch a flight to Madrid, having called her employers to say she was not returning to work.”

Keep an eye on the female judges, too: “Eleanor Ross is the federal district court judge who was subject to a private reprimand for having sex with a police officer in chambers in earshot of law clerks, according to a person familiar with the situation.”

If a male judge had been caught doing this, particularly during the height of the #MeToo fetish, the consequences might have been more severe, and it certainly would have led to much discussion about male sexual perfidy.

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

SING O’ CLANKER: of the writer’s madness. No, really:  A Night of Years.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt