February 26, 2026

NO ENEMIES TO THE LEFT:

“Definitely not a communist with a Nazi tattoo who thinks political violence is cool.”

Posted at 10:56 am by Stephen Green

CONSTITUENT SERVICE: Oregon Dems vote against notifying ICE when illegal immigrant felons are released from jail. “Under Oregon’s sanctuary state statute, known as the ‘Sanctuary Promise,’ local and state law enforcement are forbidden from cooperating with federal immigration authorities, including ICE detainers. The state has repeatedly released illegal immigrants charged with serious felony crimes, including murder, kidnapping, child rape, and illicit drug distribution, into the public after refusing to notify federal authorities. Many of them have reoffended.”

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: I Blame Obama for the Churlish Behavior of Today’s Dems. “Obama himself put poison in the well whenever he could, referring to us as ‘enemies’ and throwing law enforcement under the bus every chance he got. It’s a simple game of connect-the-dots to get from there to Dem behavior in Minneapolis. Let’s not forget that people who didn’t vote for him were bitter and clinging to our guns and religion.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green

CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN: Over a quarter million federal jobs reduced in 2025 from nearly two dozen agencies.

As a result of a concerted effort by the second Trump administration to reduce the size of the civilian federal workforce, the total staff of 23 of the largest executive-branch agencies shrunk by roughly 3% in the first half of 2025, with 144,000 additional jobs cut by year’s end.

The numbers come from a newly released report from the Government Accountability Office, which was tasked with tracking staffing changes across 24 federal agencies in the first half of last year. One agency did not provide the requested data, so data from 23 agencies is included in the report.

The president issued several executive orders in the first few months of 2025 directing much of the executive branch to trim its workforce, as well as a memorandum that put a hiring freeze on federal civilian employees. (The memorandum did include exemptions for the military, immigration enforcement, national security and public safety positions.)

Despite several ongoing lawsuits challenging the reduction in force, altogether, the 23 agencies shrunk by a total of more than 134,000 employees, or about 6% of their total workforce from January through June 2025. However, during that same time period, those agencies brought on nearly 66,000 new hires, or roughly 3%, for a total reduction of about 3%. As of June, according to the office, the federal government still employed more than 2.2 million people.

That’s still too many. Keep cutting until NoVa is practically emptied out and Virginia is red again.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green

BOTTLE SHOCK: California winery owner gives hottest take yet on why industry is dying.

The owner of a Sonoma County winery believes the industry is dying because Boomers are.

Jon Phillips, the owner of Sonoma County winery Inspiration Vineyards and Winery, told The Post that the population decline of the industry’s top wine-consuming generation has led to a recent downturn in sales.

“A lot of people have a misconception that the Boomers are drinking less,” he said. “This cannot be emphasized enough: it’s not because the Boomers are drinking less, it’s because there are less Boomers.”

Phillips, a Boomer himself at 65 who has produced wine since 1999, says Gen X has been unable to fill the void left by their forebears.

“These were the people that were really responsible for joining wine clubs and Gen X that came after boomers just weren’t really into wine to the same level that the boomers were into wine,” he said.

At one point he struggled with his wine club subscription service, but not because of demand or inferior wine.

“It’s because my customers literally were dying,” he said.

He says in conjunction with the declining Baby Boomer demand is less interest from younger generations like Gen Z and Millennials who have slowly adopted wine. Other factors like tariffs and recent wildfires have hurt wine-growing and producing operations, he added. He also pins new negative messaging concerning alcohol on declining sales.

Jeremy Clarkson writes that for British young people, booze is increasingly being replaced with the stickiest of the icky: “Of course Gen Z loves weed, it’s kale in a Rizla” rolling paper.

Well obviously, health is now an issue because someone with pink armpit hair and a keffiyeh recently decided that if you to go to the pub with your mates and have a couple of pints and a laugh and maybe a kebab on the way home, you may become a red-nosed Tory. Far better to do a downward dog and drink something effervescent from a monk’s limestone well in Nepal. But actually, if you talk to Gen-Z kids, they will tell you that beer at £6 a pint is the main problem. Because £6 may as well be £6 million if you have a student loan to pay off and you’re not prepared to earn a bit extra by going online and putting things in your front bottom.

These kids say they haven’t lost the desire to get a bit of a buzz on with their mates; they’ve simply worked out that weed costs a hell of a lot less than going to the pub and they have a point. One round of drinks for four is £24. A gram of weed is about half that. And remember, they have been told this drug comes from a plant which means it snuggles nicely in the war underbelly of the socialist, woke, anti-meat agenda. It’s kale in a Rizla.

Cheap. Fun. And healthier than booze. But is it? When I was at school no one had mental health issues. There were kids that had what we called ants in their pants and others who were a bit miserable occasionally, but these things could be cured with a bit of light bullying over a nice pint.

Today, you’re weird if you don’t have a mental health issue of some kind. Last year, ten million employees claimed they were suffering from something with a modern acronym. One in five snowflakes and Gen-Z kids actually took time off work because of it. Every year, the cost to the economy is reckoned to be £57 billion.

And worse, as Glenn spotted last week: Adolescent cannabis use linked to doubling risk of psychotic and bipolar disorders.

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 8:35 am by Ed Driscoll

OOPS:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

¡SALUD AL SEÑOR CLOWARD Y A LA SEÑORA PIVEN!

Exit question:

(Alusión clásica en el titular.)

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll

TIME TO SHUTTER NASA? Well, spend a few minutes comparing the records of NASA on its Artemis II project with that of the private sector-based Space X. And for those who recall the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the recurring problems with liquid hydrogen and leaking seals raise multiple red flags.

The Issues & Insights crew observes:

“And what has been happening elsewhere while NASA has been fumbling around with leak-prone, decades-old rocket technology and failure-prone heat shields? Private companies are leaving it in the dust.

“Just since April 2023, SpaceX has launched 11 test flights of its cutting-edge Starship – the most powerful rocket ever built. The first stage is powered by 33 Raptor engines that have been redesigned twice in the past decade. And, unlike the old Artemis rocket, it will all be reusable. SpaceX even managed to catch the 20-story booster in a pair of ‘chopsticks.’

“When NASA last went to the moon in 1972, it was using cutting-edge technology developed at breakneck speed in the midst of the Cold War. Today, it looks like a dinosaur ready for the boneyard.”

 

Posted at 7:35 am by Mark Tapscott

DALILAH’S LAW: U.S. Senator Banks introduces commercial driver’s license-related bill announced by Trump during State of the Union.

Dalilah’s Law, a commercial driver’s license-related bill spoken about at length by President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, was recently introduced by U.S. Senator Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana.

The bill, introduced on Wednesday by Banks, prohibits states from issuing commercial driver’s licenses to individuals who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents of the United States or holders of certain work visas.

Named after Dalilah Coleman, a first-grade student who was injured in a crash involving a semitruck driven by Partap Sigh, an Indian man who was driving a semi-truck in California, Trump spoke about the introduction of the bill during Tuesday evening’s speech.

“Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger or location,” Trump said, according to a transcript of the State of the Union from the American Presidency Project. “That’s why tonight, I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.”

Much more like this, please.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll