May 29, 2026

A POSTMORTEM: Cornyn’s Slaughter. “It’s pretty rare that a four term incumbent senator gets primaried out of office. Indeed, I think you’d have to go back to Alfonse D’Amato defeating Jacob Javits in 1980 for the last time it happened, back when New York was still capable of electing Republicans statewide. So it’s worth taking a deeper look at why John Cornyn got slaughtered by Ken Paxton in Tuesday’s runoff.”

Posted at 1:48 pm by Stephen Green

NAPALM GIRL: Witnesses in Nick Ut’s Defamation Trial Against Netflix Include ‘Napalm Girl’ Herself.

The film claims that Nghe was paid a miserly $20 by the Chief of Photos in Saigon, Horst Faas, for taking arguably the greatest news photo of all time. Miss Tu, who was in the AP office when the negative arrived, says she witnessed an excited Ut handing the film over to the darkroom technician, Jackson Ishizaki.

Not only that, but Miss Tu says she was the only person in AP who paid local stringers. She kept a record of all such payments, which were sent over to AP’s New York office. In her sworn testimony, Miss Tu dismisses the claims made in the documentary and also says that Faas would never have paid such a paltry amount for a photo like Napalm Girl.

Other testimonies include those by Peter Arnett and Fox Butterfield, who were also present and involved on that fateful day over 50 years ago. As well as the sworn statements, the filings also focus on Carl Robinson, the photo editor at the center of The Stringer who says he was the one who switched the credit on the behest of Horst Faas.

“Carl Robinson opposed publication of the photograph in 1972 and harbored longstanding resentment concerning the impact of the image and the broader consequences of the Vietnam War,” Ut’s lawyers James Hornstein and Martin Pradel argue.

“The submissions further state that Carl Robinson’s wife and family were Vietnamese and that the family suffered significant consequences after the fall of Saigon. The filings argue that Carl Robinson later directed bitterness and hostility toward Nick Ut.”

As Joseph Campbell, who has been writing about the “Napalm Girl” photo for years concluded last November, after attending a screening of The Stringer: More Likely Than Not, Nick Ut Took ‘Napalm Girl’ Photo.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM BLUE SAN DIEGO:

“A county is not the State Department. A county is not an immigration court. A county exists to keep streets safe, roads paved, and the most vulnerable residents cared for.”

Posted at 1:33 pm by Stephen Green

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! Don’t Take Medical Advice from Jill Biden.

Jill Biden, the former first lady and assisted caregiver to the president, has a memoir coming out next month. The publicity tour kicked off this week with a series of interviews and published excerpts. It’s safe to say the esteemed doctor maintains her abiding faith in the American public’s capacity to consume utter bullshit.

For example, Jill recalled how “frightened” she was watching her husband ramble on about beating Medicare on the CNN debate stage. “I had never, ever, seen Joe like that—before or since,” she told CBS News. “I don’t know what happened. I mean, when I, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

Is that so? In the book, which purports to “set the record straight,” Jill recalls her first interaction with Joe as he walked off the debate stage. He wanted to know if he had “really f—ed up,” and she agreed that he had. Granted, I don’t have the ex-first lady’s medical background, but that seems like a harsh way to speak to a loved one who might be having a stroke. Unless she’s lying, which she is.

Jill did not appear to be deathly worried about Joe’s health when she joined him after the debate and told supporters how proud she was that he “answered every question” and “knew all the facts.” She could have taken him to see a real doctor. Instead they made an appearance at a local Waffle House, where Jill looked on in terror as reporters asked Joe about his performance.

Elsewhere in the book, Jill describes being worried that Sleepy Joe had accidentally “drugged” himself with sleeping pills or cough syrup. That she presents this as a plausible scenario does little to dispel concerns that the president’s brain was not functioning and she knew all along.

As Jim Geraghty adds. “When every second counts, you don’t keep the president suffering an ongoing stroke up on the stage, waiting until the end of the debate and hoping for the best. What Jill Biden is unwittingly declaring in this implausible nearly-two-years-late spin is, ‘I thought my husband was suffering a medical emergency that risked permanent brain damage and possibly death, but I concluded that finishing the debate was more important.’”

UPDATE:

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

GOOD IDEA: Don’t make us reteach middle-school math, say STEM profs at ‘test-free’ UC.

Bring back the SAT/ACT testing requirement for University of California admissions, says an open letter signed by more than 360 STEM professors. Would-be STEM majors are being admitted with “preparation gaps so severe that instructors must reteach middle-school mathematics while simultaneously teaching the material students need for sciences, engineering, economics, and other quantitatively demanding fields.”

The number of incoming students with very low math skills has increased nearly thirtyfold, a UC San Diego report warned the Board of Regents. All the UC campuses are seeing many more unprepared students, including those who want to major in technical fields, the letter states. “Failing to measure preparation gaps does not remove barriers; it moves them into the classroom, where they become harder to overcome.”

Why not? Yale did it.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

IT SEEMS TO BE ACCELERATING:

Posted at 12:32 pm by Stephen Green

POUNCING AND SEIZING SPOTTED:

Exit question: Does James Talarico Realize He’s Running to Represent Texas?

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

HAHA:

Posted at 12:22 pm by Glenn Reynolds

TRENT TELENKO TAKES A VICTORY LAP:

Posted at 12:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds

MICHAEL BARONE: California Dreamin’ Ends with, ultimately, Empty Reservoirs and Homeless Tents.

Back in 2011, high-speed rail officials sought advice from SNCF, the French rail operator. But the firm withdrew from California in favor of “less politically dysfunctional” Morocco, where it helped complete a high-speed system in seven years.

California in its golden years made the movie “Casablanca.” Today, Casablanca is better at building public works than California. The state that within six months completed two major bridges across the San Francisco Bay can’t properly route phone calls in Tuolumne County.

Taking a workable system and making it fail requires a particular talent. Reading between the lines, one sees little among California’s well-paid public-sector union ranks of the pride I once noticed in a state employee years ago. Instead, there is an eagerness to extract still more from the state’s private-sector success — SEIU is pushing a supposedly onetime wealth tax on the very rich to boost current employees’ benefits — and a complacent indifference to whether the work actually serves its intended beneficiaries.

Will the politicians astride this rot pay a price? Harris was the Democratic nominee for president in 2024, and Newsom leads in polls for the nomination in 2028. But a countertrend may be visible in the theoretically nonpartisan June 2 primary for mayor of LA. The (sparse) polling shows LA Mayor Karen Bass way below the 50% needed to win reelection next week, and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt overtaking the left-wing council member initially expected to be her chief challenger.

Pratt’s house was burned down in the January 2025 Pacific Palisades fire, which struck as Bass (despite promising in 2002 to take no foreign trips) was headed to the inauguration of the president of Ghana. Pratt’s cheeky ads lampoon Bass’s left-wing policies, which have produced empty reservoirs and streets full of angry, drug-addicted homeless people.

Empty reservoirs and acres of homeless tents — that’s what California’s once-proud public sector has been producing.

As Glenn wrote yesterday at his Substack, “Why don’t Democrats like Spencer Pratt? Because he’s standing up for normal things, and the political system in L.A., as dominated by Democrats and their satraps for decades, has made a point of not delivering those normal things.”

Butt Bass has won the coveted endorsement of, err, Jane Fonda:

Unexpectedly!

From 2020: Karen Bass’s Long March from Communist Fringe to Biden’s VP Shortlist.

UPDATE: “She’s caught the Pratt.”

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

“BOOTS ON THE MOON:” Report urges Space Force deployment to counter China.

The Space Force must plan to deploy troops on orbiting space stations and at bases on the moon to prevent China from winning the new space race and controlling outer space, according to a report by an aerospace think tank.

The report by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies warns that a sustained human military presence in space is needed to counter China’s growing space efforts that are run by the People’s Liberation Army, including plans for a moon base by 2030.

“China is poised to achieve positional advantage in setting norms, standards, and legal frameworks for lunar habitation and lunar economy,” states the report, made public May 22. “This condition is unacceptable for U.S. national security.”

Military troop deployments in space are needed to defend American interests over the long term and to prevent Chinese dominance in the region of low-Earth orbit to the moon in the 21st century, the report states.

Using unmanned drones for military operations or limiting space presence to civilians under the direction of NASA poses national security risks, based on China’s current designs on space, the report said.

A human military space presence is imperative because of the growing likelihood of a high-stakes competition for control of lunar access and resources.

How long before Space Force has its own version of the Navy’s Marine Corps? A “Mobile Infantry,” if you will.

Posted at 11:44 am by Stephen Green

MORE ON THAT BLUE ORIGIN RUD:

My original item is now updated with damage estimates and how long this sets back the New Glenn program.

Posted at 11:28 am by Stephen Green

FRAUD ALL THE WAY DOWN: Former Minnesota employee reveals suspected fraud scheme of ‘fake injuries’ at Somali businesses.

Balsimo spent her last years at the Department of Human Services (DHS) in the Tort Recovery Unit as a tort specialist.

She said that she wanted to blow the whistle on workers’ comp cases after what she noticed the last couple of years at her job—as hindsight and the exposure of fraud throughout Minnesota provided even more perspective.

Balsimo explained how she “recovered taxpayer dollars where another party should have been paying for the bills. For instance, like auto accidents or work comp. So we would get cases from attorneys representing the client.”

“And then when the case would settle, we would get paid, the attorney would get paid his fees. DHS would get paid our portion. And then the client would be awarded whatever type of injury that they had back, usually got more awards than neck or arm. So they would get anywhere from $20,000 to $150,000 for their award for their injuries,” Balsimo explained.

However, she noticed a strange trend emerging in her normally routine work. “About a year ago, I can remember my caseloads of Somalian cases were going way up. They were going up so much I even confided in another coworker. She had noticed it as well,” Balsimo said.

And then nobody seems to have done anything.

Posted at 10:42 am by Stephen Green

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: 442 colleges could close in next decade over ‘financial exigency’: report.

Related:

All is proceeding as I have foreseen.

Posted at 10:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

YES:

You could do much worse than a reality TV star, Los Angeles — in fact, you already have.

Posted at 10:26 am by Stephen Green

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