White guilt just nuked ANOTHER A24 movie

This man brought a pizza cutter and a BBQ fork to a jailbreak

To anyone who doesn’t live under a rock, things seem chaotic right now. Just in the last month, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. forces, Iran has been riven by civic unrest, mass protests and violence have combusted in Minneapolis over federal immigration enforcement, and a snowstorm has laid bare the shambolic state of the D.C. area’s social services. Certainly, it seems hard to believe that we’re not even one full month into 2026. Why, then, did President Donald Trump seem so calm on Thursday? It’s not as though he didn’t have serious business to attend to. He began the day by hosting the 10th cabinet meeting of his second term. He held a wide-ranging discussion with his secretaries about, among other topics, Venezuela, the potential government shutdown, tariffs, healthcare, the Ukraine-Russia war, housing, energy, and Iran. In short, weighty stuff. Yet perplexingly, in the opinion of The American Spectator’s White House correspondent, the president did not seem overly stressed. In a conversation about drug prices, he joked that an overweight “friend” of his who was famous and notably successful in business was not getting the promised results from Ozempic — he denied that this individual was Vice President JD Vance. Trump also said that he appeared to close his eyes in a previous cabinet meeting because it was “boring” and that he “wanted to get the hell out of [there].” It was later, when the president unveiled a new executive order on combatting addiction, that I realised the reason for his demeanor: he’s comfortable. Despite all of the sound and fury, Donald Trump’s presence in the Oval Office felt as normal as my presence there felt abnormal. It’s not just that one of the executive orders under discussion was the sort of unobjectionable, feel-good policy that didn’t feel stereotypically Trumpian. It seems that after over a decade either serving in or running for the presidency, Trump finally felt secure in his team and his administration. In his first term, Trump was required to endure an uncomfortable cohabitation with a Republican establishment that, at best, tolerated him. His cabinet, such as it was, faced constant turnover and division. Not so in 2026. Trump owns the GOP “lock, stock, and barrel,” to borrow a phrase that he used. While some vestigial intraparty critics remain, it’s nothing like the sort of resistance he faced from the GOP majorities that were elected alongside him a decade ago. One got the sense that this cabinet was the sort of team that he had always wanted. Well, mostly, anyway. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who was seated directly in front of me, was never invited to speak by the president, a fact that was widely interpreted as a slight. But despite warnings of falling approval ratings and a bleak political environment facing the GOP in the midterms later this year, this Trump administration still feels very different from the last one. Later in the evening, the president visited the newly-rechristened Trump-Kennedy Center to watch the premiere of the aptly-named Melania, the film about his wife produced by Amazon. While the first lady stuck to discussing the movie, the president continued fielding questions about politics from the press. Despite the best efforts of yours truly, he didn’t call on me, but did have engaging conversations with nearby reporters about the Federal Reserve and Iran policy. It was the sort of informal and impromptu interaction that sets Trump apart from many other politicians. But it was striking how normal it felt. It’s been a long time coming, but perhaps the consummate outsider has finally become the elder statesman. READ MORE from Stephan Kapustka: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Is as Conservative as Game of Thrones Gets One Year In: Trump’s Show of Force The Prince and the Protests

A student of college athletic history — and not even a very good student — would have to say the Indiana Hoosiers winning the national championship in football last week was the sports story of the century. No, not the college football story of the century, but the sports story of the century. More surprising, more unexpected, more unprecedented than anything that happened in baseball, football, basketball, hockey, volleyball, ping pong, rugby, cricket, badminton, racquetball, pickleball, spikeball, roofball, or any other sport involving a puck or a ball or a shuttlecock in the preceding 25 years of the 21st century. The mind freezes upon attempting to find an analogy. Indiana winning the national football title is like Ron Paul winning the presidency. Like Kim Jong Un winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Like David Spade winning a Best Actor Oscar. Like The Room winning best picture. Like Liechtenstein winning the World Cup. Like the Nebraska Cornhuskers winning March Madness. No! Wait! What? That last one might actually happen. The historically worst NCAA men’s tournament team is 20–1 at this writing, losing Tuesday night for the first time after a 24-game winning streak stretching to last season, and is ranked fifth in the country. The only power conference team to never have won an NCAA tournament game — 0–8 in eight March Madness appearances — the Cornhuskers have been slated as a No. 1 seed come Selection Sunday by a CBS Sports bracketologist, and a No. 2 seed by ESPN. Indiana, erstwhile hoop mecca, is a gridiron powerhouse; more than halfway through the season, Nebraska, former football dynamo, has lost only once, to the No. 3 team, on the hardcourt. (RELATED: Indiana U’s Historic Season) As Walter Sobchak would put it: “Has the whole world gone crazy?” One college town out on the prairie certainly has. The good town of Lincoln and environs pour 15,000-plus into its Pinnacle Bank Arena (PBA) on a regular basis to give their Cornhuskers a crazy home-court advantage. But coach Fred Hoiberg’s team has shown pluck away from PBA as well, notching one of their two ranked wins, over Illinois, on the road. Hoiberg has been around success his whole sporting life, starring for his hometown Iowa State Cyclones after winning Iowa’s Mr. Basketball award as a standout at Ames High School. Possibly the most popular player in program history, “the Mayor” — a moniker derived from receiving write-in votes during the 1993 Ames mayoral race — parlayed his all-around talents into a 10-year NBA career before slinging a whistle around his neck and moving to the front end of the bench. After coaching his alma mater to four straight NCAA tournaments and leading the Chicago Bulls for three seasons and change — he was fired after a 5–19 start in his fourth — he took the Nebraska job for the 2019–2020 season. Success did not come immediately. His Cornhuskers went 7–25 and 7–20 in his first two seasons, then 10–22 and 16–16 in the next two. Coaches with those win-loss records usually find themselves on studio talking-head panels. But about that time, Nebraska was firing one football coach (Scott Frost), with a heavy buyout, and hiring another (Matt Rhule), and may not have wanted to incur two buyouts (Hoiberg’s was $18.5 million) and two expensive hires in the same cycle. Hoiberg lucked out. And it was lucky for Cornhusker basketball that he did. The past two Hoiberg teams have gone 23–11 and 21–14, before the current one-loss team. He did it with a different strategy. Instead of flipping a roster annually with transfer talent — a tactic employed to great success in Ames — he set about building a team with more discrimination for character and fit. And he strove to build a culture. This year’s team doesn’t possess the highest talent ceiling, but it features unselfish grit and savvy play. They spread the floor and jack up a lot of threes, true, but they also get their butts down and play tenacious defense. They play together, pass the ball around, and just plain play harder than their opponents. Transfers still play a heavy role for Nebraska. But many came dragging less-than-stellar résumés. Pryce Sandfort, the leading scorer, with the quickest release this side of Klay Thompson, was buried on the bench at Iowa. Berke Buyuktuncel came from UCLA, and Jamarques Lawrence from Rhode Island. Two of the top eight are walk-ons, including the coach’s son, Sam, the scrappiest of all. The leader, though, a big man Hoiberg has built the team around, is from the Netherlands. Rienk Mast, back after sitting out last year with an injury, is a big man who can hit from outside and key to Nebraska’s inordinate basketball success. Which still feels weird to type. In fact, even weirder is this: So routine has success been for this traditionally futile program that players are asking fans to stop storming the court after ranked opponents fall to the Big Red. Said Lawrence after the No. 13 (at the time) Huskers took down the No. 9 Michigan State Spartans earlier in the month, and students flooded onto the floor. “We’re supposed to win that game, guys,” Lawrence told the kids, via the AP. “No more court storms, please. I just got to say that.” Mast echoed the plea, albeit more politely: “I don’t blame the fans. They got excited for that win. From here on out, we’ve proven we belong in these games, and we’re supposed to win these types of games.” Ten years ago, Big Red Nation would have traded all this hardcourt success for a couple of five-star offensive linemen. Now, I’m not so sure. Nebrasketball might be here to stay. READ MORE from Tom Raabe: Southeastern Conference Football Woes The Timeless Power of Melody Desperately Seeking $20 Million Image licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

Industrial policy is failing, and not just in Washington. Across America, officials promise to engineer the right economic outcomes by intervening in the market in just the right ways. Most people know that under Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the idea has exploded. Less appreciated is how enthusiastically governors and state legislators are embracing their own versions. They repeat the same claims: With the right mix of subsidies, protection, and political direction, one government or another can revive strategic industries and deliver durable economic strength. The results tell a different story. Wherever it’s found, industrial policy is producing wasted resources, distorted incentives, and fragile outcomes that collapse the moment political support shifts or market realities intrude. Wherever it’s found, industrial policy is producing wasted resources, distorted incentives, and fragile outcomes that collapse the moment political support shifts or market realities intrude. Just look at the similarities between Georgia’s famous film-industry tax credits and a few of the federal government’s favorite projects. A recent Wall Street Journal investigation into Georgia’s experience reads like a textbook example of how the model fails. Film-tax credit schemes are sold as investments in business “ecosystems” and middle-class jobs. In reality, they are either a subsidy to production companies to do what they would have done anyway, or they are bribes to highly visible, highly mobile capital that can leave as quickly as it arrives. Georgia was the latter. For years, Georgia marketed itself as the “Hollywood of the South,” luring blockbuster franchises with lavish, refundable tax credits (about $5.2 billion between 2015 and 2022) that could be converted directly into cash. The result was a temporary, subsidy-fueled surge in production followed by a predictable collapse, which became visible in 2023. Labor costs rose. The boom empowered unions to extract concessions. Georgia’s competitiveness eroded. Other states, like New Jersey, and countries like the U.K., countered with richer offers or lower labor costs. Today, Georgia is left with millions of square feet of underused soundstages and other stranded infrastructure, relics of productions that have already moved on. The numbers are damning. Auditors estimate that the state lost 80 cents for every dollar in outlays. Rather than questioning the whole premise, legislators responded by doubling down and extending incentives to films shot elsewhere and merely edited in the state. Georgia is not an outlier. This same pattern has played out repeatedly in states and cities that have tried to buy a film industry. This includes California, where ever-larger tax credits have been justified as “retention” policies rather than genuine development, at rising fiscal cost and with weak evidence of durable, net economic gains. If film credits are the most transparently wasteful form of industrial policy, Intel is the most consequential. Under Biden and Trump, the already struggling semiconductor firm has been cast as a national champion meant to anchor semiconductor leadership. Billions in public support, preferential treatment, and public ownership were supposed to deliver a turnaround. For a time, the narrative worked. Starting in August 2025, when the Trump administration took shares in the company, investor enthusiasm surged, and demand exploded. Stocks went up by 120 percent in five months. But industrial policy cannot fix operational reality, and perception cannot fix performance. Intel struggled to adjust after cutting capacity on older production lines, lacked customers for key new products, and was unprepared to feed the AI data-center boom. So now Intel’s stock is crashing again. Then there are Trump’s tariffs, framed as industrial policy to reindustrialize the country, protect workers, and lower prices. Instead, tariffs have quietly consumed much of the manufacturing sector’s profits. This is unsurprising. Most U.S. imports are inputs used to make American goods. Tariffs, therefore, are taxes on American manufacturing. Empirical work by the Kiel Institute shows that foreign exporters absorb only a trivial share of the cost. Roughly 96 percent of the burden is passed to American buyers. U.S. households and businesses — not foreign firms — overwhelmingly covered the roughly $200 billion in customs revenue collected in 2025. Companies we import from responded not by cutting prices but by shipping fewer goods to the U.S. As Kiel economist Julian Hinz put it, the tariffs amounted to an “own goal” that raised costs, compressed profits, and weakened the very industries they were meant to protect. This helps explain why a promised auto-manufacturing renaissance hasn’t materialized. Automakers and suppliers have so far absorbed much of the tariff shock through smaller profit margins, restrained pricing, and selective job cuts. This is not sustainable. Investment decisions are now being reconsidered, and some manufacturers, like Volkswagen, warn that new U.S. plants no longer make sense. Tariffs did not restore competitiveness or pricing power. They jacked up costs and made American production less attractive at the margin. These cases all differ in detail but share a common logic: Industrial policy tries to engineer outcomes while ignoring processes. It assumes that political favor can substitute for market incentives. That innovation and customer demand won’t suffer. That shielding firms from competition will make them stronger. Instead, we get fragile industries that are dependent on even more political support. READ MORE from Veronique de Rugy: Is the Middle Class ‘Shrinking’ or ‘Struggling’? The Difference Is Important. Minnesota Welfare Scandal Is the Fraud Warning Americans Finally Noticed Should We Listen When Wealthy People Offer to Pay More in Taxes? Veronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM Image licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.