June 16, 2026

HOW IT STARTED: Police investigating large burning cross at Chicago’s Grant Park.

—Chicago’s ABC affiliate, last Wednesday.

How it’s going:

More details here: Person of interest in Grant Park cross burning incident in custody, police say.

[NBC Chicago’s Chuck Goudie]: “Did you make it all the way through almost four years at UIC without somebody teaching you that a burning cross is one of the most divisive symbols in America?”

[Illinois Chicago senior Merlin Lu]: “No, I don’t really have any, like… I never grew up with religion, never really surrounded myself with people with it. My childhood friend’s they, I remember them going to, like, confirmation and stuff like that, but um…”

Goudie: “But it’s a symbol of the Ku Klux Klan. I mean, that really is where it started. Nobody ever taught you that? You never read it in a history book?”

Lu: “I just saw the Wikipedia page with the movie with the, like, I think it’s called like ‘Under One Nation’ or something like that.”

“The Birth of a Nation” is a famous 1915 silent film that romanticized the KKK and showed a cross burning.

Woodrow Wilson’s favorite movie!

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE NEW SPACE RACE:

“This mission isn’t officially on SpaceX’s itinerary, so date and exact information aren’t known with 100% certainty. This should serve as a preliminary glimpse into this mission.”

But here’s something even bigger that is on SpaceX’s itinerary:

The company will attempt to take Starship orbital for the first time starting as soon as July 29.

Posted at 12:58 pm by Stephen Green

HEY, BIG SPENDER: SpaceX locks in $60 billion Cursor deal to power AI coding push.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX said on Tuesday it would acquire Anysphere, the software firm behind the popular AI coding agent Cursor, for $60 billion, in a bid to ramp up its presence ​in the enterprise AI market.

The announcement comes days after Musk took the rockets-to-AI company public in ‌a blockbuster Nasdaq debut that valued the firm at more than $2 trillion and immediately made it one of the world’s most valuable companies.

SpaceX had been eyeing Cursor for several months. The company said in April it had secured an option to either acquire the ​San Francisco-based company for $60 billion later this year, or pay $10 billion for a new partnership.

The deal could ​give xAI, the Grok chatbot maker that SpaceX merged with in February, a stronger foothold ⁠in the AI coding market where it has so far lagged rivals. It would also provide Cursor with more ​computing capacity to develop AI models.

SpaceX’s shares were up nearly 10% in premarket trading, on track to add about $247 ​billion to its market capitalization of $2.53 trillion. At $211.27, the stock has climbed more than 56% from its IPO price of $135.

If the gains hold, SpaceX is set to overtake Amazon in value to become the fifth-largest company.

Anysphere was valued at $50 billion in March.

Posted at 12:43 pm by Stephen Green

YOU WILL BE MADE TO CARE: MLB Continues Shameful Anti-Christian Crusade—Threatens Players Over Bible Verses on ‘Pride Night’ Caps.

In yet another display of its ongoing war on Christian faith, Major League Baseball has issued an official warning to three San Francisco Giants pitchers who dared to write Bible verses on their Pride Night caps.

And by ‘warning’ we mean threat, because what follows a warning in sports? Most likely a fine. Or, you know, as per Rule 3.03 of the official MLB Rulebook, a non-conforming player can be barred from participating in the game.

While the league under Commissioner Rob Manfred eagerly green-lights rainbow alterations and perpetually bows to the LGBT alphabet mafia, it is drawing a firm line at players subtly referencing God’s word.

It’s shameful. Utterly shameful.

According to The Athletic, MLB is putting its collective foot down after San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Landen Roupp and two of his teammates dared to add Bible verses to their ‘Pride Night’ caps. Bible verses, mind you, that explain the true symbolism of the rainbow—God’s covenant with Noah, his descendants, and every living creature after the great flood.

“Similar behavior will not be tolerated,” the report ominously reads.

That warning is backed up by a statement given by Pat Courtney, MLB’s chief communications officer, to Outsports.

“The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” Courtney wrote.

Exit quote: “In reality, this isn’t about rule violations. It’s about whose beliefs MLB is willing to tolerate. The message to Christian players is crystal clear: your faith is unwelcome on the field.”

Well, we wouldn’t want to upset the delicate souls who staff the San Fransisco Chronicle:

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

SAFETY IS THE SALES PITCH, CONTROL IS THE PRODUCT:

Posted at 12:27 pm by Stephen Green

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM:

Related:

Posted at 12:11 pm by Glenn Reynolds

YES: End the Renewable Fuel Standard Now, and Lower Gas Prices. “The Energy Policy Research Foundation (EPRF) has crunched some numbers on this, and the findings paint an expensive and unpleasant picture. These and the other various regulations and requirements are estimated to be costing a typical American family of four an added $734 per annum in fuel costs.”

Posted at 11:41 am by Stephen Green

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Bachelor’s Degrees Aren’t Cool Anymore. “In a new research brief, The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Education found that only 44 percent of American high school students expected to earn a bachelor’s degree in 2022, down from 72 percent in 2002. The study also revealed a parental gap among high school students, with only 33 percent of first-generation students aspiring to a bachelor’s degree in 2022, compared to 60 percent two decades earlier. . . . Pundits typically cite ideological bias, social disaffection, rising costs, credential inflation, and poor labor market returns. Each contributes something, but none has been quite as ignored as this: the internet has effectively dismantled the cultural bottlenecks that historically upheld the fiat value of a college education.”

Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting summarized the problem: “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

Related demographic irony:

Posted at 10:56 am by Glenn Reynolds

CUE THE GOMER PYLE CLIP. AGAIN:A New Study Just Confirmed the Left’s Worst-Kept Secret.

UPDATE (From Ed): “The woman starts shaking, you know how mentally ill they are! She’s totally disconnected from reality. Miserable, angry, crazy!”

Posted at 10:55 am by Charlie Martin

REQUIRED READING:

Amir Makled is an attorney in Dearborn, Michigan.

Recently, 8 students were federally indicted for unleashing a campaign of violence against Board Regents for nearly 2 years.

The pic on the right is Makled with Alex Sepulveda.

Alex was one of the 8 students arrested by the FBI. He threw chemical agents through the windows of Board Regents homes, as well as participated in violent attacks against university officials.

Makled has appeared with these 8 terrorist students multiple times.

He’s now running in an election to become one of those Board Regents at U of M.

He would be serving alongside the regents WHO WERE ATTACKED and marked for death by the “Gang of 8” for their refusal to divest from Israel.

The enemy is inside our education system.

Posted at 10:54 am by Stephen Green

HE’S RIGHT. IT IS BAFFLING.

Posted at 10:51 am by Glenn Reynolds

THEY JUST CAN’T HELP IT: Republicans Saved by Democrats’ Vanity Projects—Again.

Earlier this week, I told you about a Politico story that should send ice through Republican veins: Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at a news conference Monday that the first bill the Democrats plan to pass if they win the House in November would focus on lowering costs, and Democrats are already working on legislation to tackle the biggest struggle Americans are currently facing.

Luckily for the Republicans, that story is already dated.
…
Rep. Jamie Raskin wants voting rights…

Rep. Yvette Clarke said she’d like to see the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act revived in any new H.R. 1. as well as “comprehensive immigration reform.”

Rep. Adriano Espaillat wants H.R. 1 to claw back funding for ICE and redirect it to Medicaid and affordable housing.

Rep. Brad Schneider wants the party to undo Trump’s tariffs in their first action.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is on the health care working group, wants “guaranteed health care.”

Then there’s Rep. Ro Khanna, believed to be considering a presidential run in 2028. He laid out his agenda on a podcast later in the week, and it included the usual progressive priorities: Abolish ICE, expand the Supreme Court, and a billionaire’s tax.

Left unsaid: There hardly a Democrat policy that doesn’t involve making things more expensive.

Posted at 10:39 am by Stephen Green

SO THE SPLC WAS BASICALLY JUST A TERRORIST FRONT GROUP THEN? SPLC boss funneled $1.2 million to lover in neo-Nazi group — pair even had joint bank account.

UPDATE:

What if — hear me out — we’ve had it backwards? What if the Nazis secretly set up the SPLC as a funding channel? Just sayin’.

Posted at 9:56 am by Glenn Reynolds

RENDRE COUP POUR COUP: Trump warns France in exclusive interview with The Post: Kill tech tax or face 100% wine tariffs: ‘I have no choice.’

Trump said he gave the blunt warning directly to outgoing French President Emmanuel Macron, demanding he ditch the 3% tech levy or face devastating duties in the American market, which accounts for a fifth of the French wine industry’s global sales — worth more than $2 billion annually.

“I asked him not to charge American companies, and if they do, I have no choice but to charge a 100% tariff on all champagnes and all wines coming out of France,” Trump told The Post. “All [Macron] has to do is get rid of the sales tax, and he wouldn’t have that kind of pressure.”

The ultimatum drew a defiant response from Macron, who on Monday told French TV channel TF1 that “tariffs don’t do anyone any good, especially tariffs between G7 countries”. Asked if he would yield to the tariff threats, he responded: “No, because that is not how it works.”

I suppose we’ll see about that, including how long Macron can hide behind the fiction that his “tech levy” isn’t effectively a tariff on American tech firms.

Near as I could get Grok and GPT to figure it out for me, if the entire French tech sector were one American firm, it probably wouldn’t rank among the U.S. top 15 in market cap — maybe the size of Sandisk, or at best, Netflix.

Posted at 9:37 am by Stephen Green