President Trump just posted that Gavin Newsom has dropped out of the 2028 race for president. Here’s what he wrote:   According to Grok, this isn’t true: “The claim inside is false . . .

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I normally leave the reporting of the exploits of Gavin Newsom, California’s ridiculous governor and obvious 2028 presidential candidate, to Ellie Holmes, as she literally wrote the book on Newsom. But given this strange pattern that Newsom seems to be trapping himself in, I’m just going to have to invade Ellie’s space this one time. Gavin Newsom is turning into a slapstick comedy act. It’s like the Marx Brothers are reborn, except there’s only one of them. The first time around, there was Groucho, Harpo, and Chico — not to mention Gummo and Zeppo, who didn’t last for the whole ride. This time, we’re stuck with Neppo, who’s carrying the Marx moniker more out of ideological than familial reasons. And he’s Neppo, because if Gavin Newsom were the self-made man he claims, given his weird string of self-disqualifying statements, he probably wouldn’t have made it in politics beyond a city council or county commission somewhere. (RELATED: The Spectator P.M. Ep. 193: Gavin Newsom Runs Into Trouble With Intelligence Comments) It helps to come from big money and big connections. The Newsom family has been a big deal in California politics for so long that William Newsom Sr., Gavin’s grandfather, was instrumental in backing former governor Pat Brown all the way back when the latter was elected district attorney in San Francisco in 1943. The elder Brown paid Newsom grandpere back as he moved up the political line; as governor, he had the state develop Squaw Valley as a resort town in time for the 1960 Winter Olympics at Lake Tahoe, and then gave Newsom and his business partner John Pelosi (the father of Paul Pelosi, whose wife Nancy ended up as the Speaker of the House) a concession to run Squaw Valley at the low, low price of… one dollar. That partnership soured, but not so much as to prevent Jerry Brown, who became governor in 1974 after Ronald Reagan’s eight years succeeding his father, from giving William Newsom Jr., a lawyer whose main client was the family of J. Paul Getty, a judgeship. Newsom served his old clients quite well; as an appellate judge in the 1980s, he helped Getty’s son, Gordon, secure a change in state trust law that allowed him to claim his share of a multi-heir trust. As Dan Walters of CalMatters noted back in 2019, the coziness was handed down another generation as well… After Newsom retired from the bench in 1995, he became administrator of Gordon Getty’s own trust, telling one interviewer, “I make my living working for Gordon Getty.” The trust provided seed money for the PlumpJack chain of restaurants and wine shops that Newson’s son, Gavin, and Gordon Getty’s son, Billy, developed, the first being in a Squaw Valley hotel. Gavin Newsom had been informally adopted by the Gettys after his parents divorced, returning a similar favor that the Newsom family had done for a young Gordon Getty many years earlier. Newsom’s PlumpJack business (named for an opera that Gordon Getty wrote) led to a career in San Francisco politics, a stint as mayor, the lieutenant governorship and now to the governorship, succeeding his father’s old friend. George Carlin once said, “It’s a big club… and you ain’t in it.” Be a member of that club, and you can get away with all kinds of things. Neppo is busy testing the limits of that, though. A week ago, there was his dustup with Ted Cruz, which, at the time, seemed an almost unfathomable own-goal. Cruz, on his podcast, had called Newsom “historically illiterate,” which to anyone with any degree of common sense would be defined as “don’t know much about history.” But his response was, well… Ted Cruz calling a dyslexic person illiterate is a new low, even for him. https://t.co/XC75ybiGKd — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 16, 2026 Nobody knew Gavin Newsom was dyslexic before this. They did know he was historically illiterate and not a particularly bright guy. And it isn’t that being dyslexic is evidence that he’s stupid. There are quite a few smart people who are also dyslexic. It’s just that Newsom isn’t particularly one of them. So when he was duly ratioed for that stupid X post, somebody at Team Neppo decided to lean into the dyslexia. Boy, did they. The thing is, traditionally speaking, you don’t want to advertise your limitations if you’re trying to get elected president. You want to present yourself as a superhero as much as you possibly can — physically fit, athletic, a full head of hair, smart as a whip, youthful (if possible), and even tall. There’s a tradition of the taller candidate usually winning presidential races going back to the founding of the country. The point being that normal political rules would say that if you’re dyslexic, you just wouldn’t talk about it. But with victimization serving as the chief political virtue and cultural sacrament of today’s Democrat Party, those rules are gone. Gavin Newsom is too white and too male (as beta as he may be) to curry favor with the voters, which is why he still lags behind Kamala Harris in current 2028 Democrat primary polling. Can you imagine the humiliation of trailing behind Kamala Harris? So he needs a victimization hook. And Neppo doesn’t have much. He’s as privileged a white boy as it’s possible to be, and that’s no good in a party of very prideful broken toys. So you get this… Gavin Newsom on his lifelong struggle with dyslexia: “I do think it’s a superpower” pic.twitter.com/7Q0J8d0xks — State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 22, 2026 And then you get what happened in Atlanta… Gov. Newsom to a black crowd in GA: “I am like you. I’m a 960 SAT guy. I can’t read.” pic.twitter.com/4Gk0WKbIYz — End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 23, 2026 This is in front of a crowd of mostly black people. He just told them he’s just like them because he had a terrible SAT score, and he can’t read a speech. On account of his dyslexic superpower, you see. And we’re getting all this because he “wrote a book…” My mom didn’t want my dyslexia to hold me back. I wrote a book about the impact she, and others, had on my life. It’s called Young Man in a Hurry and it’s out on February 24th. pic.twitter.com/nwEGH86U7a — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 23, 2026 He didn’t write the book, of course. He had minions to write the book. By his own account, he doesn’t read or write all that well. Of course, his real superpower is that he’s a Newsom, and the money and connections coming from that have ensured that if he fails, he fails upward. How many of the people in that audience can identify with those problems? Neppo is a very unusual cat, to be sure. Now that he’s decided to inflict himself upon the American electorate, he’s doing it his way — which is that he’s going to humiliate himself again and again while making utterly indefensible statements like the ones he offered in Munich, or this… Donald Trump is a jackass. pic.twitter.com/y0dNhSzYJT — Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 23, 2026 I don’t know what else to say after that, other than to offer a quote from the real wit among the Marx Brothers. Groucho never met Gavin Newsom, but if he had, I’m pretty sure he’d dust this one off… “He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.” READ MORE from Scott McKay: Five Quick Things: The Death of Good Faith Randy Is Just Fine, Say Dogs and Most Americans The 2028 Democrat Contenders’ Pilgrimage to Europe

The left in America is celebrating the Supreme Court’s ruling in Learning Resources, Inc., Et Al. v. Trump, which held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not authorize the president to impose tariffs, as the death knell of Trump’s tariff policy — a policy which is really just one quiver, albeit an important one, in Trump’s broader geoeconomic strategy. But the celebration will be short-lived. As Justice Kavanaugh pointed out in his dissent, and as Inu Manuk of the Council on Foreign Relations explains, there are at least four other federal laws that President Trump can use to impose tariffs. Trump has already used one of them in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision: Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. That act, Manuk notes, authorizes the president to impose tariffs or import quotas to respond to “large and serious” balance of payments deficits. The White House announced on Feb. 20 that pursuant to that act, the president “imposes, for a period of 150 days, a 10 percent ad valorem import duty on articles imported into the United States.” That tariff takes effect, according to the White House, on Feb. 24. The president’s executive order excepts certain items, such as critical minerals, energy products, some agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, some electronics, passenger vehicles, some aerospace products, and informational materials. In the end, the Supreme Court’s decision will have little long-term impact on Trump’s America First geoeconomic policies. “Tariffs,” according to the White House, “will continue to be a critical tool in President Trump’s toolbox for protecting American businesses and workers, reshoring domestic production, lowering costs, and raising wages.” Trump has since raised the tariff to 15 percent. Manuk notes that tariffs under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act expire after 150 days unless Congress extends them. (RELATED: The Productivity Boom Economists Didn’t See Coming) Trump can also turn to Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which authorizes the president to impose tariffs for national security purposes. Trump has already used this act to impose some tariffs (on steel, trucks, buses, lumber, copper, cars, and wood products), which, Manuk explains, unlike Section 122 tariffs, have “no cap on the tariff rate” and can be imposed “following an investigation and recommendations by the secretary of commerce.” Congress can end such tariffs by formal resolution, but, as Manuk writes, this has rarely happened. Another statute that Trump has used against China, and can use against other countries, is Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. To impose such tariffs, Manuk writes, Trump needs to conduct investigations and make findings related to unfair trade practices by other nations — not a heavy lift. The Biden administration continued the tariffs imposed on China by Trump under the authority of this law. (RELATED: While Canada Cozies Up to China, Mexico Imposes Harsh Tariffs Due to Chinese Auto Dumping) Finally, Trump can use Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which authorizes the president to impose tariffs on countries that discriminate against U.S. trade after the International Trade Commission makes a “finding” to support that determination. Manuk notes that this statute has never been used by any president, but it remains on the books. In his dissent in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump,  which was joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, Justice Kavanaugh reviewed the lengthy history of Congressional authorizations for presidents to impose tariffs and embargoes on other countries, citing instances in 1810, 1890, 1922, and noting Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930, Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, Sections 122,  201, and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. Indeed, Justice Kavanaugh noted the “nonsensical” result of the Court’s majority ruling that under the IEEPA, the president can impose a total embargo on imports from a foreign country, but cannot impose tariffs on that same country. And, as Justice Thomas noted in a separate dissent, the Court’s majority somehow excludes tariffs from the authority to “regulate importation.” In the end, the Supreme Court’s decision will have little long-term impact on Trump’s America First geoeconomic policies. The president, who is not bashful about using his Article II powers, will most likely continue to use other laws to impose tariffs for the purpose of protecting American manufacturing, American workers, and the nation’s economic and geopolitical security. Those tariffs, too, will be challenged in the courts, but in the meantime, geoeconomic policy will be made by the Executive — not the Judicial — branch of government. READ MORE from Frances P. Sempa: America Should Celebrate Nixon, Not the Washington Post Anchors Away: The Perils of Our Shipbuilding Imbalance The End of Atlanticism

Well of course. What else would you expect from a supposed “public official” who believes that public service in a democracy is all about threatening to arrest the opposition? Breitbart headlined this latest from former Obama United Nations Ambassador and Biden domestic policy staffer Susan Rice this way: “Susan Rice Threatens Trump Supporters: ‘Revenge Is Best Served Cold’.” The story reported this on Rice’s interview with former Democratic prosecutor Preet Bharara: “President Joe Biden’s domestic policy chief is promising revenge against the voters, business executives, and appointees who support President Donald Trump’s 2024 election mandate.” The story went on to report Rice as saying: A very prominent public figure, who has served at nearly the very highest levels, once told me … “Revenge is best served cold,” and the older I get, the more I see the wisdom of that. …..When it comes to the elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media … it’s not going to end well for them, for those that decided that they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore, is very short-term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to Trump. …They’re going to be held accountable by those who come in opposition to Trump and win at the ballot box. And I can tell you, Preet, as I talk to leaders in Washington, leaders in our party, leaders in the states, if these corporations think that the Democrats when they come back in power are going to, you know, play by the old rules and [say] “Never mind, we’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you violated, all the laws you’ve skirted.” I think they’ve got another thing coming … they’re going to be surprised. Democrats have had a bellyful, and we’re not going to play by, you know, the old set of rules. “We’re not going to be suckers … there will be an accountability agenda.” Amazing — and seriously revealing. What the former Obama/Biden aide has revealed is not the mindset of a serious presidential aide committed to democracy. What Susan Rice has revealed is that she is, in reality, a quite open fascist. America is not, she apparently needs to be reminded, Mussolini’s fascist Italy or Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union. Places where dissent is not only not tolerated but where those who do dissent from any given policy are both targeted and prosecuted because the dissenter has dissented from an “accountability agenda.” In other words, to borrow from Rice, she has taken a knee to the far Left agenda and its decidedly extremist agenda. And if anyone out there dissents and refuses to take a knee to the golden idols of the far Left, the moment they again have control of government, Rice and her fascist comrades will be coming for them in exactly the fashion of history’s fascists. What is particularly telling here is that Rice’s remarks have been greeted with silence from her fellow Democrats. Which sends a message that they apparently agree with this fascist approach to governing the world’s leading democracy. Worse still, the signals they send out are letting varying crazies think it is just nifty to try to target President Trump with violence. As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said of Leftist rhetoric: “They are normalizing this violence. It’s got to stop.” And the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, said: “You have to ask yourself, whenever you just casually throw around terms like Nazi, like fascist, like Hitler and racist, what do you think the consequences of that ultimately will be?” Exactly. And these are the kind of people Americans are being asked in the next presidential election to trust with the Department of Justice? Really? Seriously? The answer — while America is still a democracy — is to stand up and fight back with the legitimate tools a democracy gives us all to use. Something former Ambassador Susan Rice clearly does not understand — or wants to understand. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Trump’s Legacy: Global Peace GOP Congressman Bacon Opposes President’s Constitutional Pardon Power Three Cheers for Attorney General Pam Bondi Image licensed under Public Domain Mark 1.0 Universal.

A headline from Bloomberg on Thursday was indicative of legacy media’s response to new trade data released by the Commerce Department. It declared, “U.S Notches One of Its Biggest Annual Trade Gaps Since 1960.” So, were the mainstream economists and political pundits right? Should we begin to doubt that President Trump’s tariffs are having any effect at all? Can tariffs actually rebalance trade? That, of course, is precisely the reaction the headlines are intended to evoke. (RELATED: The Productivity Boom Economists Didn’t See Coming) The fallacy in the media’s argument is that such superficial treatment of the data obscures what may be the most dramatic trade rebalancing of imports and exports in modern American history. The Trend Is What Matters Yes, the annual 2025 deficit was essentially flat at $901.5 billion (down just $2.1 billion from 2024), but this masks what could be described as a tectonic shift in Q3 and Q4 — and particularly in the last three months. The fourth quarter of 2025 posted the largest rolling three-month trade deficit decline in recorded history, with the three-month average falling $35.3 billion year-over-year, a 45 percent decrease. This reduction in deficit surpasses even the peak months of the Great Recession in 2009. The three consecutive months of 2025’s fourth quarter each posted year-over-year rolling declines that rank among the largest in recorded history in monthly data beginning in 1992. The only comparable period is 2009 — but there’s a crucial difference. The 2009 trade improvements were caused by an economic collapse and falling demand precipitated by the financial crisis and recession. The 2025 improvements in trade imbalances are occurring during a period of unusually high GDP growth in the economy. The mainstream media do a disservice to the public by their preoccupation with the government’s report of a “flat annual trade deficit.” The three-month average goods deficit in Q4 of 2025 was $80.5 billion, down 27 percent from $109.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024 — a decline of $29.1 billion. Moreover, the combined goods and services deficit fell even more dramatically, dropping 40 percent from $83.6 billion to $50.7 billion. Even looking at the data trend for the last half of the year (from July through December), the average goods deficit ran roughly $84.6 billion per month, about 20 percent below the year-earlier period. From the March peak — when importers were purchasing in anticipation of Trump’s tariffs — to December, the combined trade deficit fell 48 percent, from $136 billion to $70.3 billion. First Quarter Buying — Anticipating Tariffs It is important to offer praise when it is due. Of the legacy media, it was the Wall Street Journal that actually gave effect to the timing issue: “The trade deficit soared in the months following Trump’s re-election in late 2024, as companies raced to bring foreign goods onshore ahead of the tariffs they expected him to impose.” The context here is all-important. The unusually large deficits in the first quarter of 2025 — averaging $154.8 billion per month — were artificially inflated by buying in anticipation of tariffs. The subsequent decline partly represents Trump’s tariff rebalancing after that surge in orders. Note of caution: Even accounting for the expected “anticipation phenomenon,” the improvement is remarkable. But the question is whether the current trend represents a sustainable new equilibrium or will deficits edge back up once the inventory correction runs its course. The next several months of data will tell the tale. It’s important historically to note that since 1992, there have been only two periods of comparable trade deficit declines. The first was, of course, the 2009 Great Recession, when significant quarterly declines occurred between March and November, driven by economic collapse. The second is Q4 of 2025, which comprised comparable three-month declines, driven by tariff policy during economic expansion. This makes the fourth quarter of 2025 the largest trade deficit improvement in history outside of a major recession. (RELATED: Trump’s First 12 Months: The Economy, Venezuela, and the American Electorate) The China Issue As is typical, legacy media overlook a major aspect of the real story from Trump’s first year of tariff-driven trade data. In the last three months of 2025, the China trade deficit fell $93.4 billion to $202.1 billion — this represents the smallest in more than 20 years. It also represents a 32 percent decline year-over-year, achieved not through economic collapse or recession but through economic policy rebalancing — tariffs. Trade flows shifted to Taiwan (deficit up $73 billion), Vietnam (up $54.7 billion), and Mexico (up to a record $196.9 billion). While some of this represents true trade rebalancing, portions of it may also reflect supply chain rerouting. But what the data on China shows is that tariffs can, in fact, reshape bilateral trade patterns — and do so significantly. (RELATED: While Canada Cozies Up to China, Mexico Imposes Harsh Tariffs Due to Chinese Auto Dumping) The mainstream media do a disservice to the public by their preoccupation with the government’s report of a “flat annual trade deficit” — it bespeaks both analytical error and, perhaps, a ploy designed to misdirect the electorate towards rhetoric rather than reality. One cannot treat the period January through December as equally weighted when assessing policy impact. The truth is in the details. Trump’s tariffs were announced in April 2025. The relevant comparison, therefore, isn’t 2025 versus 2024 — it’s post-tariff periods versus pre-tariff periods. (RELATED: Trump’s Economy Grows 4.3 Percent, Dashing Economists’ Lower Expectations) Clearly, the critical unknown in the report is whether or not the numbers can be sustained. Several variables cloud a glance forward. First, and this is really important, how much of the second half of the year’s improvement is merely inventory correction after tariff-anticipation buying? Second, as companies finish rerouting their post-tariff supply chains, will the trade deficit stabilize or continue falling? Finally, after the Supreme Court on Friday struck down a portion of Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs across the globe, it is difficult to determine what the balance of his economic agenda will look like going forward, at least as it relates to his tariff policies. The Supreme Court’s decision does not affect all of Trump’s tariffs but does invalidate those implemented using a 1977 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. But this will impact Trump’s efforts to rebalance trade. The economic trade data over the next six months will determine whether we are seeing a permanent structural shift — a rebalancing — in import-export flows or a short-term correction. America just experienced the largest quarterly trade deficit decline in recorded history outside of an economic collapse or recession. And the trend (hopefully it’s more than that) is beyond question — even if the annual deficit figure is “grist for the mill” of legacy media rhetoric. READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf Jr.: Electricity Affordability — Trump’s Achilles’ Heel? The Cost of Harvard’s Intransigence Lord Mandelson: The Albatross Around Sir Keir’s Neck

It was anything but fire and brimstone, just the slow, predictable unraveling of yet another regulation that never learned from the chaos it created. The Trump administration recently announced that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially ditched the 2009 “endangerment finding” that for two decades has been referred to as the Holy Grail of the climate change cult. Greenhouse gases are no longer a menace to humanity. In government terms, the agency is admitting it has been chasing its own tail for years and finally decided to stop the spin. Washington shoveled hundreds of billions into green energy projects that were about as ready for prime time as a unicycle ridden by a tax auditor juggling flaming spreadsheets. This grand “finding” managed to unleash trillions of dollars into regulations that squeezed whole sectors of the U.S. economy like a boa constrictor on a crash diet. Moreover, Washington shoveled hundreds of billions into green energy projects that were about as ready for prime time as a unicycle ridden by a tax auditor juggling flaming spreadsheets. The so‑called endangerment finding empowered the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide and methane, two gases that the Earth’s atmosphere has been exhaling since the dawn of time, as if they were renegade pollutants sneaking across state lines. It was the foundation for federal regulation weaponization of carbon emissions from vehicles, power plants, and major industries. Its repeal effectively removes the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. (RELATED: EPA Proposes to Drive ‘A Dagger Into the Heart of the Climate Change Religion’) For nearly two decades, America has made a fundamental mistake of treating carbon dioxide, the breath of every living creature and the lifeblood of every plant, as if it were poison. The science has yet to prove the apocalypse that the political left keeps breathlessly promising. It did produce enough hot air predictions of impending world peril to make the Epstein files look like a leaflet. (RELATED: The Welcome Demise of Climate Change Catastrophism) The decision followed a marathon review: 52 days of public comments, four days of virtual hearings featuring more than 600 speakers, and a staggering 572,000 submissions weighing in on the rule. This deregulation will dramatically reshape American climate policy by eliminating federal emissions standards and making it far more difficult for future administrations to reinstate them without proven evidence and detailed debate. The overreaction from environmentalists was predictable and swift, with the most outrageous coming out of the Environmental Defense Fund, saying the repeal “could lead to as many as 58,000 premature deaths and an increase of 37 million asthma attacks between now and 2055.” The thing about the word “could” is that it dismisses scientific breakthroughs, shifting populations, and the rest of humankind, especially the world’s leading polluter, China. Climate change has yet to snag a starring role or even a cameo on anyone’s death certificate, to include that bureaucratic purgatory where coroners quietly file the causes politicians are dying to blame, but no one with a medical license will touch without a lawyer present. Human destiny does not hang exclusively on EPA regulations. America will survive the fall of one more overbuilt regulation. What we can’t survive is the superstition that every shift in temperature is a summons to remake the entire economy. The repeal doesn’t guarantee wisdom in future policy, but it does mark a rare moment when Washington stopped hyperventilating long enough to admit that fear is not a governing philosophy. The climate will keep changing, the politicians will keep posturing, and America will move forward not because of bureaucratic prophecy, but because its people are far more resilient than the regulations written in their name. READ MORE from Greg Maresca: Mr. Softee’s America College Football: CFP Punts on Expansion in 2026 America’s Cultural Chasm: Family v. Individualism

Throughout John F. Kennedy's life, he never strayed far from his New England roots, and that connection was reflected in his love for this old-school soup.