June 12, 2025

MAYBE NOW POWELL WILL CUT?

Posted at 9:51 am by Stephen Green 34

JULIE KELLY: Who Really is to Blame for Anti-Deportation Riots?

As riots now spread to major cities from Seattle and Chicago to New York City, one can safely argue the individual most responsible for initiating the chaos is D.C. Judge James Boasberg. Few people have worked harder to keep illegals here while seeding a dangerous—and false—account of what the president is trying to do.

Boasberg lit the match on March 15 during a series of hasty proceedings to advance the first lawsuit against the president’s Alien Enemies Act (AEA). Within hours of the president signing the act, the American Civil Liberties Union sought a restraining order to stop the removal of illegal Venezuelans associated with the multi-national crime racket known as Tren de Aragua, the basis of the AEA.

Working quickly that Saturday, Boasberg immediately banned the deportation of anyone covered by the AEA. But that wasn’t enough. During a Saturday evening hearing, Boasberg made an outrageous demand of the DOJ, which had been given no time to file a response or even gather their collective thoughts on the matter.

Boasberg: “[Any] plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States, but those people need to be returned to the United States. However that’s accomplished, whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you. But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”

At the time, two planes carrying AEA subjects were about to land in Central America—far out of U.S. airspace and clearly outside of Boasberg’s jurisdiction. Further complicating the issue, likely by design, Boasberg failed to include his unhinged verbal demand to return planes in a subsequent written order. (The planes were not sent back to the U.S., opening the door to Boasberg’s contempt trap, as I explained here.)

Even though the Supreme Court reversed Boasberg’s reckless decisions—and later put a lid on his contempt investigation—the die had been cast.

Needless to say, read the whole thing.

Posted at 9:39 am by Stephen Green 23

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Feature, Not a Bug — Everything Trump Does Triggers the Press. “That doesn’t mean that President Trump is deliberately antagonizing the Democrats. Here’s merely doing his job. His job happens to be doing what’s best for America, and that’s what bothers the Dems.”

Posted at 9:08 am by Stephen Green 9

WOULD THE LEFT EVEN EXIST WITHOUT ASTROTURF AND LIES?

Posted at 8:59 am by Glenn Reynolds 56

THINGS ARE GETTING TENSE:

Yesterday:

Stay tuned.

Posted at 8:50 am by Stephen Green 112

HMM: Toward a New Understanding of Air Dominance.

In a 1998 U.S. Air Force report titled, Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21st Century Air Force, the overall objective of air dominance was outlined as such: “[I]f air dominance is achieved and joint forces can operate with impunity throughout the adversary’s battle space, the Joint Force Commander will prevail quickly, efficiently and decisively.”

Thus, according to this interpretation of air dominance, the baseline objective for air power is to clear the way, so to speak, for all levers of military power to operate with “impunity.” In this new age of unmanned warfare, such as we’ve seen on Ukraine’s battlefields, I’d argue that this concept needs some re-examining.

Even if American F-35s and B-21s crush an enemy’s air force, that does not guarantee command of the air littoral — that low-altitude layer of airspace within which small, tactical drones fly. In other words, an enemy force totally defeated in a traditional air war can still maintain lethal pressure on American forces through unmanned operations conducted at low altitude.

Really, only China would dare directly oppose the US Air Force in the skies. But damn near anyone can contest us in the “air littoral,” as Nolan Peterson called it, but we aren’t taking the threat seriously enough.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green 93

R.I.P. BRIAN WILSON:

Posted at 8:25 am by Glenn Reynolds 21

GREAT MOMENTS IN OPTICS:

Screencap in case Newsom’s office deletes the tweet:

Meanwhile, back on planet earth:

● Stores looted amid continued unrest in downtown.

● Apple and Adid as stores among businesses looted and damaged in downtown LA.

● LA looters bash in front door of popular sushi restaurant as anti-ICE protests rage: ‘Everybody is scared.’

● Curfew remains in effect in parts of downtown LA.

As Jon Gabriel tweeted on Tuesday:

Posted at 8:22 am by Ed Driscoll 39

PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS:

Shot:

Chaser:

● Rep. Maxine Waters Jokes About Threatening Trump Supporters ‘All The Time.’

● Maxine Waters: ‘Americans should be out in the streets screaming’ for Trump’s head.

● Democrat Maxine Waters Makes Public Call For Harassment & Violence Against Members of Trump Administration.

● Democrats Nuke Censure Of Maxine Waters For Incitement Of Violence In Minnesota.

● Maxine Waters Tells Protestors To “Get More Confrontational.”

● YouTube deletes Maxine Waters promise to ‘go and take out Trump.’

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll 50

THIS WAS CNN: CNN Prepares for the Afterlife.

So, what then for CNN? As you may have surmised, running a 24/7 global news network with foreign bureaus is expensive, and the underlying unit economics only make sense to the people inside the building. With the industry in inexorable decline, CNN’s ratings at a nadir, and younger audiences turning to user-generated schlock on YouTube and TikTok for news, those costs are increasingly hard to justify. The high-seven-figure salaries (or eight-figure, in a couple of cases) once seemed only slightly ridiculous. Now they seem appalling—especially since there’s no longer a market for this talent, or many of the producers that stand them up, at comparable rates.

Meanwhile, Fox News, which is built around relatively inexpensive studio programs, not newsgathering, has demonstrated an ability to effectively quadruple CNN’s audience—not just on any given weeknight, but increasingly during major national and international breaking news events where CNN once dominated. Inevitably, Gunnar will look at CNN and decide he can maintain relatively similar profits at a mere fraction of the cost.

This will have perceptible ramifications on the talent side. Why, for instance, would Gunnar pay Anderson Cooper $18 million a year when Kaitlan Collins draws the same ratings at roughly a fifth of the salary? (Of course, by the time Gunnar gets around to it, Anderson will likely have determined that he no longer wants to read the day’s news to less than a million people every night, either.) Does the network need more than a handful of marquee names hosting a few key hours, or can it pay younger, reasonably attractive talent mere hundreds of thousands to read the same transcripts off the teleprompter? Jake Tapper is locked into his own low-eight-figure multiyear deal, so will be the face of the network for a while longer—but is surely the last CNN talent who will ever come close to netting that kind of income.

“No more Jake Tappers” has a nice ring to it.

Posted at 7:35 am by Stephen Green 53

YES, ROLL THEM UP. AND NOT JUST THE FOOT SOLDIERS, BUT THE GENERALS AND THE QUARTERMASTERS.

Including those abroad.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds 53