WHAT HE SAID:  Reporters and health bureaucrats attack Dr. Jay Bhattacharya for doing the right thing (again). The US government should immediately end all funding for all “test-negative” studies that supposedly measure flu or Covid vaccine effectiveness; they are worse than useless.

REMEMBER WHEN YOU COULD GET BANNED FROM FACEBOOK FOR POSTING THIS CLOWN’S NAME:  Out of everything we now know about the Ukraine impeachment episode, the key point is that Ciaramella was one of the central operatives in the events leading up to Joe Biden getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired. That made him the perfect vehicle for advancing the “whistleblower” complaint, precisely because he himself was implicated in the underlying events.

X-cancel.

OPEN THREAD: Tuesday’s groovy.

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! ‘All Black Guys Look Like Obama?’ Biden’s Awkward Gaffe Goes Viral.

“I always want to turn around to one guy and say, ‘Barack, what are you doing?’”

Biden pulls Syracuse University Board of Trustees Chairman Jeffrey Scruggs into the spotlight mid-speech, saying he looks like former President Obama during the unveiling of the 46th president's… pic.twitter.com/ksf5fc0nP7

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 14, 2026

DERSHOWITZ: Trump Should Move to Expunge 2019 Impeachment.

THE NEW SPACE (INVESTMENT) RACE: Space investing is heating up as SpaceX rockets toward a record-breaking IPO.

KURTZMAN-ERA STAR TREK CONCLUDING: Sadly, The End Of Star Trek Is Now Official.

During the 53rd annual Saturn Awards in March, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds executive producer and co-showrunner Henry Alonso Myers said that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds‘ sets were in storage, giving hope that the spinoff about Captain James T. Kirk (Paul Wesley), Star Trek: Year One, could happen. Those hopes are now dashed with the Enterprise sets being torn down.

Meanwhile, an online petition to save Star Trek: Starfleet Academy has topped 42,000 signatures. Unfortunately, the USS Athena’s sets being torn down means that there’s no chance Paramount+ could reverse course and greenlight Star Trek: Starfleet Academy season 3.

42,000 signatures, huh? Fewer Than 40,000 People Watched Star Trek: Starfleet Academy.

Paramount recently canceled Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the final Star Trek series still in production. Most assumed it was due to low ratings, but no one guessed just how low those ratings were.

Mike Stoklasa, noted YouTuber and friend of Rich Evans, recently revealed during a Red Letter Media re:View that he has a source close to the production of Starfleet Academy. According to Mike, his source told him the series has only been viewed 400,000 times. That’s 400,000 views in total for the entire series.

There are ten episodes of Starfleet Academy. 400,000 divided by ten is 40,000. That means the entire show was watched by fewer than 40,000 people.

“I heard from my source… The entire first season of Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, not individual episodes, the entire season total views, about 400,000. Not per episode. Cumulatively, the entire series. About 400,000 views. Which is an average of maybe 40,000 views per episode.” – Mike Stoklasa

If Mike’s numbers are correct, not only does it mean that Starfleet Academy is one of the most colossal failures in the history of streaming, it also means that most of the show’s defenders are bots. It means that the petition to resurrect the show is also fake, since it has 10,000 signatures. Unless you’re willing to believe 1/4 of all the people who watched the series actually found out a petition exists and then went through the trouble to sign it.

Exactly. At the end of the original Star Trek’s second season, despite averaging about eight million viewers a week, NBC “received some 114,667 [snail mail] letters between December 1967 and March 1968, including 52,151 in February 1968 alone,” pleading for another season.

Found via Ace of Spades in this post, which is well worth a read: DEI Actress: DEI Has Become a Bad Word in Hollywood and We Have to Use Different Words Now to Push Our DEI Grift.

THE VATICAN’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Defiant Trump Nails Copy Of ‘The Art Of The Deal’ To Vatican Door https://t.co/s9JCkHYO3Z pic.twitter.com/6kZpRD29B5

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) April 14, 2026

HMM: Marriage Linked to Lower Cancer Risk In Study of 4 Million Cases.

THEY KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING AND THEY KNOW WHAT HE IS:

This is an absolutely disastrous moment for American liberalism because their top public intellectual just said they should embrace open communists who support mass killings and political terrorism.

I compiled a video showing 65 times Hasan Piker endorsed political killings and… pic.twitter.com/jA6mrUmvzR

— Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 (@DrewPavlou) April 14, 2026

WHEN CAN I TELEPORT TO BORA BORA FOR THE AFTERNOON? Quantum Reality Gets Stranger: Physicists Put a Lump of Metal in Two Places at Once.

LIMITED TIME DEAL: GOOTOP Bug Zapper Outdoor, Mosquito Zapper. #CommissionEarned

WEREN’T THESE ALWAYS CLASSIC SIGNS OF CONCUSSION? A child’s headache, dizziness and mental fog now stand out as the clearest concussion red flags.

RIP: Army Vet Jim Whittaker, First American on Everest, Dies at 97.

THE E.V. BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Volkswagen Ending Production of ID4 in U.S., Future of EVs Unclear.

THE SCIENCE IS NEVER SETTLED: Mammal ancestors laid eggs, and this 250-million-year-old fossil finally proves it.

THAT EXPLAINS IT:

Robert Prevost's politics were somewhere between Rachel Maddow and The View.

Now he's Pope Leo XIV. pic.twitter.com/zPgk8r22J7

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 14, 2026

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Because Democrats and Republicans have collaborated with corporate America to import foreigners by the million to take your job and turn your town into a scene from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. https://t.co/d7lnkRNm7V

— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) April 14, 2026

ICYMI: All in All, It’s Just Another Brick in the Wall Around China.

Carhartt Men’s Force Relaxed Fit Midweight Short-Sleeve Pocket T-Shirt. #CommissionEarned

JONATHAN TURLEY: Disaster Tourism: California and Other Blue States Become Go-To Destinations for Econ Sightseers.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the “first partner” of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), is under fire for stating that she takes her children to conservative and Republican states so that they can see misogyny and racism firsthand.

Putting aside her hellscape phantasm, California may be a draw for a different group: curious economists in the mood for disaster tourism.

Just as people travel to Hawaii to see volcanic explosions in real time, they can visit California to see economic implosions. California is a laboratory for students to see what happens when you ignore basic economic principles outside of the classroom.

California is now the leader in the economic race to the bottom, as its politicians drain away what remains of decades of accumulated social capital, revenue and residents from their state.

Exit quote: “Beyond these politicians who find success in failure, the only group looking at a rosy future in California is the rising class of robotic workers.”

Make sure to decorate your luggage appropriately when visiting California for a little disaster tourism:

IT’S DIFFERENT WHEN THEY DO IT:

Horrific https://t.co/Yxq6A3Z0Fy

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2026

THE POORS’ LIVES DON’T MATTER: Elitist Chicago Doc: Average Citizens Don’t Need Armed Self-Defense Because the Poor ‘Don’t Benefit’ From Guns.

ENDORSED: Sony Pictures Boss Tom Rothman Urges Theater Owners to Stop Having 30 Minutes of Trailers and Commercials Before Movies Start: ‘Get Off the Ad Crack.’

Movie prices don’t bother me that much. Believe it or not, adjusted for inflation, ticket prices were at their highest in the early ’70s and have slowly declined since.

But the barrage of ads is a real turnoff.

TO BE FAIR, MILEI IS RIGHT ABOUT PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING:

In 2024, Milei warned that Pedro Sánchez's wife was corrupt.

All the media outlets and the establishment came out to criticize Milei and claim he was wrong.

Today, Pedro Sánchez's wife was convicted of four crimes, including corruption and bribery.

Milei was right. https://t.co/tnnsBznQEf pic.twitter.com/rMML7cglxj

— BowTiedMara (@BowTiedMara) April 13, 2026