John Hinderaker

Elon Musk has created a furor in Germany by endorsing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in that country's upcoming election.

The farcical prosecution of Donald Trump in a Manhattan courtroom came to an anticlimactic end today, as Judge Juan Merchan sentenced Trump to be

Meta announced today that it is saying goodbye to DEI. Its memo to employees, which I take it was signed by Mark Zuckerberg, is here . It begins:

As fires continue to destroy Los Angeles, the incompetence of that city's leadership, along with that of the State of California, is coming into focus.

In a rare Q and A session with reporters, Joe Biden was asked his opinion of Meta's abandonment of third-party “fact checkers.”

Minnesota is a purple state, balanced on a knife's edge, as the 2024 election showed.

The lights are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. Energy costs are de-industrializing one former economic power after another. This Telegraph article is mostly about the U.K.: Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned that Britain’s multibillion-pound chemicals industry is facing “extinction” because of soaring energy costs and the shift to net zero. *** Sir Jim, the co-owner of Manchester United and one of Britain’s richest men, said: “De-industrialising Britain achieves nothing for the environment. It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere. Largely to China, which I believe now emits more CO2 than the U.S., the E.U. and India, combined. “The UK, and particularly the North,

Several of Donald Trump’s most important cabinet nominees have now undergone confirmation hearings. I have watched them live in bits and pieces as I have been able, and have seen many clips posted here and elsewhere. Some obvious common threads emerge. First, Trump’s nominees have uniformly done well. Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio and Chris Wright have all come across as competent and likable, in contrast to most of their Democratic interlocutors, who have been shrill at best, and often dim-witted. (My favorite moment so far might be when the bizarre Mazie Hirono asked Pam Bondi whether she had ever made any unwanted sexual advances. Bondi’s puzzlement was understandable.)

We noted here that CNN and Jake Tapper are on trial in Florida, in a defamation case brought by former serviceman Zachary Young. Young helped people escape from Afghanistan; CNN smeared him as an “illegal profiteer” operating within a “black market.” Apparently it is now conceded that this was false. Young alleges that CNN’s smear destroyed his business. We noted in the post linked above, at the jury selection stage, that there were six prospective jurors who said they think CNN purveys fake news, and only one who said he regularly watched CNN. The trial is now nearing its conclusion, and things have not gotten better for the cable network:

We and many others had fun yesterday at Joe Biden’s expense. He tweeted an announcement: the Equal Rights Amendment has been adopted! It’s the law of the land! No one took it seriously; if a president really tried to change the Constitution via executive order, he would be impeached and driven from office. Personally, I doubt Biden has any idea that he tweeted the supposed adoption of the ERA. I assume that was done by some nameless intern in the White House. Democrats see no problem with the fact that we have a president who has no idea what is going on. Happily, we have only two more days to go.