May 15, 2026

LARRY KUDLOW: Mr. Xi Can Saber-Rattle, But Mr. Trump Has the Goods

In recent weeks he has watched America end his influence in Venezuela, the Panama Canal, soon it will be Cuba, and of course Iran. I mean Communist China’s buying 90 percent of Iran’s oil and gas exports.

But with Mr. Trump’s air-tight blockade of Iranian ports, China is starving for energy. They might make a deal with us, but that too remains to be seen if it comes under Treasury Man Scott Bessent’s investment board idea.

Meanwhile Mr. Trump has elbowed China out of the Middle East and out of the Western Hemisphere.

And on top of all that, China’s economy has never recovered from the real estate property crash of a couple years ago.

They used to post GDP growth rates of 15 percent or more. Now that’s down to 5 percent or even less, which is essentially for them a recession.

And if they have bad economic statistics cropping up, they have decided not to publish them at all.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 2:50 pm by Stephen Green

THE GOP SHOULD PROBABLY GO AHEAD AND DO IT BEFORE THE DEMS DO, BUT IT WON’T.

Posted at 2:47 pm by Glenn Reynolds

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: AI Might Make Campaign Ads Halfway Tolerable.

If there’s a person on the face of the planet who actually appreciates and enjoys political campaign ads, I’d like to meet them. On second thought, maybe I wouldn’t. We’ve all experienced those weeks of torture leading up to primary or general election battles — where you can’t escape the horror that is political advertising. It’s bad. It’s annoying. It’s grating. It’s irritating. And it’s seemingly endless.

But the rise of AI and social media has introduced a new wrinkle into things, and we’re seeing that play out in particular regarding the L.A. mayoral race. Now, many of the “ads” we’re seeing aren’t actually from the campaign(s). They’re from creative sorts, interested in the race, who have put their imaginations and AI to work and come up with some real bangers.

I happened upon this one last night and couldn’t help but marvel at its cleverness — and its swiftness. This one incorporates components from things that just happened on Wednesday! Watch and enjoy.

I don’t know how Pratt will actually do in the election (John Nolte sounds particularly glum), but his campaign and its supporters have jump-started a new form of political advertising that will be endlessly copied going forward:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

NICE WORK, FELLAS:

Posted at 2:34 pm by Stephen Green

HOORAY FOR PALLYWOOD! Why would the NY Times make such horrific claims about Israel? The reasons are several-fold.

Nicholas Kristof raped my dog. At least that is what I have heard, from an anonymous source. A source who is intensely hostile to the New York Times columnist. And that’s good enough for me. Now I come to think of it, my pet pug has had a strange look on his face lately.

As it happens, the rumor that I have just attempted to spread is far less lurid and fanciful than the one that the New York Times chose to spread around the world this week.

In a piece that has already been widely debunked, Kristof claimed that Israeli prison guards routinely use rape as a method of torture on Palestinian prisoners. The piece portrayed Israeli prison guards and soldiers as rapists, sadists and akin to Nazi prison camp guards. Perhaps even worse.

Kristof’s most grotesque claim is based on an anonymous source who is described as a “journalist” from Gaza. According to this source, while being held in an Israeli prison in 2024, the Gazan man was stripped naked, blindfolded and handcuffed. Then “a dog was summoned.” The dog’s handler — who we are helpfully told was speaking Hebrew — then encouraged the dog to “mount him.”

The “source” goes on to claim that he “tried to dislodge the dog, but it penetrated him.” During this time, the Israeli guards were allegedly taking photos and filming the assault while laughing and “giggling.”

Like a number of other journalists, I have spent far too much time this week reading up on the relevant literature about this claim. My computer’s search engine history is probably now as suspect as Kristof’s.

Exit questions:

I’m so old, I can still remember when newspapers still employed their own reporters, but that was quite a long time ago. These days, just think of the DNC-MSM as the American distribution wing of Hamas propaganda, and it all makes sense.

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

WELL, BYE:

Posted at 1:32 pm by Stephen Green

FASTER, PLEASE: U.S. moving to indict Cuba’s Raúl Castro, sources say.

The U.S. is taking steps to indict Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba and brother of Fidel, in connection with the downing of planes 30 years ago, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The potential indictment — which would need to be approved by a grand jury — is expected to focus on Cuba’s deadly 1996 shootdown of planes operated by humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

The plan comes as the U.S. heaps pressure on the Cuban government. The Trump administration has threatened heavy tariffs on any country that exports oil to Cuba, leading to energy shortages as oil shipments are largely cut off. President Trump has pressed for major reforms in Cuba and has floated a “friendly takeover” of the country.

The pressure on Cuba began to pick up in January, after the U.S. military removed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro from power and flew him to New York to face drug charges. Venezuela was a key partner of Cuba’s before the operation.

Raúl Castro formally stepped down as the leader of Cuba’s Communist Party in 2021, but he is still widely seen as one of the most powerful figures in the country. His grandson Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as “Raulito,” is viewed as both a representative of the 94-year-old and a key point of contact between the U.S. and Cuba.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with the younger Castro on Thursday, following an earlier U.S. visit last month. Ratcliffe personally delivered President Trump’s message that the U.S. is “prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,” a CIA official said. The official added that Cuba can “no longer be a safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere.”

Related: James Piereson on JFK’s revenge. “Still, notwithstanding commentary to the contrary, it is highly likely (given the evidence) that Oswald carried out the assassination in order to protect Castro from efforts by the Kennedy administration to overthrow his regime. If this was Oswald’s purpose, then he achieved it when President Johnson chose not to follow JFK’s policy toward Cuba. With U.S. pressure withdrawn and American attention turned elsewhere, Castro (and his regime) was able to survive for decades thereafter, much as Oswald might have hoped for. Nevertheless, President Kennedy was not wrong in trying to eliminate the Cuban dictator who was a security threat to the United States. Today, six decades later, President Trump is once again using American power to topple the Communist regime in Cuba, in belated vindication of the original campaign sponsored by President John F. Kennedy.”

Soon?

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

NIFTY: L3Harris turns handheld radios into counter-drone jammers.

With small drones inflicting massive losses on both sides in Ukraine, defense electronics maker L3Harris is reprogramming its widely used Falcon IV handheld radios to generate a personal protective electronic-warfare “bubble” for the soldiers carrying them, company executives said.

Branded as Wraith Shield, the capability doesn’t require any new hardware, the company said, just a software upgrade to the existing Wraith communications waveform, which is compatible with over 100,000 Falcon IV radios in service worldwide.

“At the cost of a software upgrade … single-digit thousands of dollars … you can add this capability to a radio they’re already carrying,” Chris Aebli, the company’s president for Mission Critical Communications, told reporters this morning. “[It’s] their own protection bubble for counter-UAS.”

“It’s ready to be delivered,” he said, although international sales are still awaiting export approval from the US government.

Probably not a bad way for L3Harris to sell more radios, too.

Posted at 12:46 pm by Stephen Green

MAKING WAR ON THE NORMALS IS THE CORE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PLATFORM:

Posted at 12:24 pm by Glenn Reynolds

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: A Texas Military Vet Dropped Out of Penn State Law School Rather Than Submit to Its Mandatory Anti-Racism Course.

David Blackman, a native of Plano, Texas, was thrilled to be starting law school at Penn State in the fall of 2025.

A former 911 call operator and a veteran of the Texas State Guard, Blackman, 26, loved the university’s football team and its location in the Appalachian Mountains.

“I’ve been a fan of Penn State since I was a teenager,” Blackman told the Washington Free Beacon. He arrived on campus in August 2025, a 50 percent merit scholarship in hand, excited for game nights in Beaver Stadium and a three-year reprieve from the Texas heat.

Then he sat through his first anti-racism class.

On the first day of “Race and the Equal Protection of the Laws,” a required course for all first-year law students, Blackman listened as a transgender faculty member, Emily Spottswood, explained why the course was mandatory.

“It’s not optional,” Spottswood said, because “being a lawyer is about recognizing and combating injustice.”

In audio of the session obtained by the Free Beacon, Spottswood said that this “institutional message” was “baked into” the law school’s “DNA,” adding that, as a “trans woman,” the course’s focus on “combatting oppression … is meaningful to me.”

Spottswood’s remarks followed a presentation by Jeffrey Dodge, the law school’s associate dean, and Shaakirrah Sanders, who was introduced as “the first associate Dean of anti-racism and critical pedagogy in the country.” The presentation made clear that Blackman wasn’t in Texas anymore; he and his classmates were now conscripts in a political “coalition” that, as Dodge put it in his talk, was dedicated to “building a more anti-racist” future.

“We are taking action to disrupt and dismantle systems that racialize, subordinate, and oppress,” Dodge said. “We … want to acknowledge the reality of systemic racism … as a foundation for this course.”

Thus began a series of struggle sessions in which professors demanded students affirm activist talking points and ultimately drove Blackman, whose first-choice law school had been Penn State, to withdraw from the school after just one semester. (The Free Beacon reviewed Blackman’s transcript.) Over the course of three 150-minute lectures, speakers described all white people as “privileged,” called to “eradicate patriarchy,” and asserted that the justice system is “about keeping black people in their place.” One assignment said students should “consider” framing their essays around “the reality of systemic racism,” implying that doing otherwise could affect a student’s grade.

PJM alum Tyler O’Neil adds, “This is an important reminder of how deep the woke rot runs in many professions — it’s not just that professionals are biased, it’s that they’re forced to marinade in leftist-saturated institutions to get the credentials to do their jobs. Even the sanest will get infected to some degree.”

Exit quote from Blackman:

Posted at 12:00 pm by Ed Driscoll

CREDIT WHERE IT’S DUE: Gov. Polis helps axe bills rolling back business tax breaks.

To those who remember Polis’ 2018 campaign for Governor, eliminating tax loopholes and using the increased revenue to “buy down” the income tax rate was a popular campaign promise.

Colorado’s free-market think tank, Independence Institute, was initially optimistic about such a tax policy because it would increase the tax base while lowering individual Coloradans’ tax burden.

The think tank published multiple reports analyzing Governor Polis’ words versus actions on taxes.

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to Governor Polis’ tax policy promises.

Instead of lowering and eliminating tax breaks, they exploded under Governor Polis’ watch.

That said, Polis’ stated desire to lower the income tax while reducing special-interest loopholes was and remains a commendable idea; it would be better to eliminate both if possible.

However, not all tax breaks are created equal, and targeting those that help keep Colorado somewhat economically competitive is probably worse than targeting those that benefit people who generate the least economic activity (and thus the least revenue for the state).

Apparently, Governor Polis understands that tax breaks for things he likes become unaffordable if the economy isn’t doing well.

As Glenn likes to say on occasion, even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain.

Posted at 11:44 am by Stephen Green