February 25, 2026

SHOCKER:

This applies in many spheres, actually. In 2016, Trump thought he was elected president of a normal America with functioning institutions. Now he knows better.

Posted at 8:02 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHRIS BRAY: Gavin Newsom Is Playing A ‘Trump’ Character He Doesn’t Understand.

Newsom is not yet swaggering into campaign events in a wifebeater, but give him another week. The character he’s currently playing is a rude, crass, and transgressive, and not above dropping hints about coming up from the streets. Of Marin County, but whatever. If you haven’t seen what his hard-talking communications guy looks like, by the way, go take a look.

It’s a baffling performance, but last year the Bay Area lawyer and journalist Laura Powell gave us the key to understand it: Newsom is cargo culting, like a South Pacific islander watching the disappearance of military logistics efforts after World War II. “In isolated societies,” Powell wrote, “so-called cargo cults emerged when indigenous groups constructed imitation airstrips and towers, believing this would cause Western goods to descend from the skies as they once had, without understanding the actual forces that made the planes appear.” He’s performing a set of appearances, thinking that the images are the substance.

Men are turning away from the Democratic Party, so Newsom turned up last year on the podcast of Shawn Ryan, a former Navy SEAL. As Powell noted, “Newsom laced his speech with curse words – roughly one per minute – and called Ryan ‘man’ or ‘brother’ with cringe-inducing frequency.” He talked a lot about football and guns, bro. Powell summarized the performance as Newsom “trying on a new mask.”

This year’s mask is modeled on the Shawn Ryan masculinity mask, but it’s a different version. It’s more directly a Donald Trump mask, but not quite: It’s a mask of what Gavin Newsom thinks Donald Trump is.

Both men were born into privilege, but Trump went on to create real estate and entertainment empires, while Newsom mismanaged a city for years and now an entire state.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green

I THINK WE ALL KNOW WHY:

UPDATE: I stand corrected. But I’ll bet it won’t be on the next cover either. I’d love to be wrong.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

A GOOD CORRECTION FOR THE BLACKPILLERS, DOOMERS, AND PANICANS OUT THERE:

Posted at 7:23 am by Glenn Reynolds

FROM HOLLY CHISM:  Escape Velocity.

An optimistic collection of six stories revolving around leaving Earth, or living (and making a living) further out in the solar system.

Xanadu–Sometimes, making a profit just needs an outside perspective for why it hasn’t yet.
Turing’s Legacy–It takes love to make a person. And maybe an accident.
Theory in Practice–Psychological care may well be more important in a closed environment.
Reasonable Accommodations–Microgravity could be an answer to some disabilities.
You Can’t Go Home Again–The effects of long-term isolation on asteroid miners explored.
Everyday Miracles–What could push someone to emigrate to a new off-planet colony?

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt

AI AS AN EFFECTIVE TOOL:  Refine.

Posted at 6:32 am by Sarah Hoyt

F-BOMBS GALORE FROM THOSE WITH TDS, BUT MY GENTLEMAN FRIEND AND I ARE THE ONES WHO GET EJECTED FROM BLUESKY:  About a year ago, a parade of Democratic members of the California Assembly abandoned X (Twitter) and took up residence in the “safe spaces” of Bluesky.  It’s a lonelier place.  Most of them don’t get too many followers there.

Last summer, I started an account at Bluesky too.  I had almost no followers there, but I didn’t open the account to get followers.  I wanted to be able to tag my posts to the Assembly Members so they (or their staffers) would see them. Call it an exercise of my constitutional right to petition the government. I wanted to inform them about the folly of their latest effort (known as ACA7) to gut the California Constitution’s prohibition on state-sponsored preferential treatment based on race and sex.

My posts were perfectly civil—though I expect I was saying things some of them preferred not to hear.  But within a very short period, I was unceremoniously thrown off of Bluesky—probably at the behest of one of the Assembly Members or staffers.  Evidently, if you’re not a sycophant telling progressive politicians that they’re wonderful, they throw you off.

Much more recently, my gentleman friend was kind off to open an account and post for me.  It’s very tame stuff–sometimes things like “Keep Discrimination Illegal:  No on ACA7.” Much of it was information on polls that suggest ACA7 will lose or links to op-eds.

Still they can’t stand to hear it.  Very quickly he got thrown off too.

Meanwhile, stuff like “[F-bomb] THE UNEDUCATED UNEMPLOYED MAGA MAGGOTS” and “[F-bomb] every democrat [that showed to the SOTU address]” is evidently just fine.  So is “Donald Trump is a [f-bombing] traitor to the United States of America.”

Perhaps I was naive for even trying with these folks.

Posted at 6:28 am by Gail Heriot

SHARIA-FREE AMERICA: That’s the goal of the newest caucus on Capitol Hill. Launched by two Texas Republicans, Rep. Keith Self and Rep. Chip Roy, in December, the Sharia-Free America Caucus already has 40 members.

Posted at 6:11 am by Mark Tapscott