POLICE: Arson Suspect Admitted ‘Harboring Hatred’ Toward Gov. Shapiro.

[Cody] Balmer faces numerous charges including:

• Criminal Attempt – Criminal Homicide
• Aggravated Arson – Person Present Inside Property
• Terrorism – Affect the Conduct of a Government

6ABC reported that the police “have not ruled out Shapiro’s Jewish faith” as a possible motive.”

Duane Patterson adds:

What little is known about Balmer, the suspected Jew-hating arsonist, paints the picture that he isn’t a resident of either side of the political aisle. He seems to be A) a nut, and B) an anarchist, which if you look up the definition of an anarchist, it’ll say see A). He once proclaimed on social media that he was a socialist, but there’s not much other evidence out there to back up that claim. What is there is that he hated everybody on both sides.

I hope that Kash Patel at FBI gets to the bottom quickly of what made this person snap, and I hope that Attorney General Pam Bondi, if he did it out of religious bigotry, throws the book at him, despite whatever political affiliation, if any, he currently espouses.

I am grateful that Governor Shapiro and his family are safe. As for the Governor’s ‘both sidesism’, we all have eyes and ears, and functioning brainstems. It’s not hard to see where the bulk of the outbreaks of anti-Semitism are falling on the ideological spectrum recently. It’s not on the right. It’s on the left. Using moral equivalence to downplay the explosion of hate against Jews on the Democratic side isn’t going to make the problem go away. Putting political expediency over morality reduces the spotlight on the true offenders of evil instead of shining the light brightly on these cockroaches wherever they surface.

I want to help dig a giant pit and assist the rest of the country in dropping every anti-Semite into it, regardless of whom they voted for in the last few cycles. If this latest fire outbreak of hate is happening mostly on the left, however, perhaps that’s the direction where we should be applying the most water.

The day after Balmer’s arson attack on the PA governor, CNN was in a festive mood regarding political violence in general: CNN blasted for segment calling Luigi Mangione a ‘morally good man. “’CNN is a bad joke of a new org and Lorenz is a nut job. She said Mangione is a ‘morally good man’ which is absurd, as he killed a man in cold blood,’ another said. ‘The more I think about the Donie O’Sullivan interview with Taylor Lorenz the more astonished I am that they were laughing when talking about a guy who shot a man in the back in cold blood,’ a third person fumed.”

SPACE: Katy Perry, 4 other women, return safely from spaceflight. “But it was all over quickly: The New Shepard crew capsule touched down under parachutes about 10.5 minutes after launch today, sending a cloud of dust billowing into the West Texas sky.”

READER FAVORITE: First Aid Beauty – KP Bump Eraser Body Scrub. #CommissionEarned

HMM: Iran Has a Reason to Strike a Nuclear Deal: Its Economy Is in Trouble.

Iran’s currency is among the weakest in the world. Inflation remains well above 30%. Young people are struggling to find work, and a frustrated middle class can no longer afford to buy imported goods.

Those troubles look set to intensify under a second Trump administration, which resumed its campaign of “maximum pressure” to force Iran to rein in its nuclear program and prevent it from developing a bomb. Already severely strained by sanctions and endemic corruption, political observers and analysts say a further deterioration of Iran’s economy could push its people to the brink.

“This is a country that’s creaking under the pressure of economic sanctions, sustained mismanagement and corruption,” said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a think tank in London. “Ultimately, what they seek is durable sanctions relief, and they believe that Donald Trump could perhaps deliver that in a way that the Biden administration couldn’t.”

Officials from the U.S. and Iran convened in the Omani capital on Saturday for their highest-level talks in years, pledging to keep a conversation going. Washington wants a new deal to curb Tehran’s uranium enrichment in exchange for lifting sanctions, after abandoning an earlier one during President Trump’s first term.

Lifting the sanctions is a bad idea.

KRUISER: The Apex of Nonsensicality: Bernie Fights the Oligarchy at Coachella.

THE LEFT MADE THE NEW RULES:

This is going to be my face every time a Democrat asks me to “tone down the rhetoric” or “denounce political violence”. This right here.

We’re going to have a universal standard or we’re not going to have one at all. I’m done with one way streets. https://t.co/Hud7H7zgKy

— Oilfield Rando (@Oilfield_Rando) April 14, 2025

Related: So a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Normalizing Political Assassinations…

CHINA CENTURY THAT NEVER WAS: Over on Substack today, Rod Martin’s guest author is Yi Fuxian. Remember that name because this guy knows China like few others in the world. In “The End of the Chinese Dream,” Fuxian explains why two decades ago he described China as “A Big Country With an Empty Nest.” It’s even more relevant today.

CHANGE (IT BACK): US Military Academies End Racial Preferences in Admissions.

The policy changes that prompted the request for a pause, the academies said, stem from directives issued by President Donald Trump, whose administration is committed to dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives across all branches of the U.S. military as part of a broader effort to refocus the military.

To implement the president’s vision for the military, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered his department to eliminate DEI initiatives and offices, including ceasing the practice of considering race or sex when admitting cadets to military academies.

The U.S. Air Force Academy, based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, stated in its letter that it has already ended race-based admissions practices following a series of White House and Pentagon directives. These include, most recently, a Feb. 6 memorandum issued by acting Assistant Secretary of the Air Force Gwendolyn DeFilippi, who ordered the elimination of “quotas, objectives, and goals based on sex, race, or ethnicity for organizational composition, academic admission, career fields, or class composition.”

Well, good — assuming they don’t just take quotas underground.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Professor: Trump’s demands of universities ‘echo’ Hitler’s and Stalin’s. Heh. Sure they do, champ.

GOODER AND HARDER, LA: Why LA Knows That Karen Bass Can’t Get it Done. “This week we found out that the Los Angeles mayor’s office has only managed to get four building permits pushed through her city’s sausage making machine. Seventy-two are in the queue. The multimillionaire named to be the sherpa by which all things are rebuilt, has been allowed to fade into the sunset.”

SENTIMENT: Most Americans support Trump crackdown on anti-Semitism on campus, new poll shows.

CHANGE: Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy party moves to disband as freedoms dwindle.

Pro-democracy protests that paralyzed Hong Kong in 2019 led to a crackdown that has all but silenced dissent through restricted elections, media censorship and a China-imposed national security law that saw some of Yeung’s party members jailed. Dozens of civil society groups closed down.

Former chairperson Yeung said in an interview with The Associated Press that Chinese officials told him the party needed to disband. He urged his members to support the motion to give the leadership mandate to handle the process.

“I’m not very happy about it,” said Yeung. “But I can see if we refuse the call to disband, we may pay a very huge price for it.”

Others received similar messages.

“One country, two systems” lasted longer than I thought it might, honestly.

CLEANUP TIME: The Pentagon Must Go on the Offensive to Defeat Politicized Officers.

WHEN YOU MAKE UNIVERSITIES AN ARM OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, THEY BECOME AN ARM OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: How Obama and Biden Paved the Way for Trump’s Attacks on Universities: “Universities were bending over for federal funds long before Trump,” writes Laura Kipnis. Democrats just assumed that they would always control the federal government, even when it was nominally in Republican hands. Wrong!

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Butter, Meet Hot Knife — Trump Keeps Cutting Through Media’s TDS Noise. “The Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media have been loudly lamenting Trump’s loyalty demands for his second go-round in the Oval Office because the loyalty interferes with their plans. They aren’t having any luck picking off those closest to the president. As I’ve written a couple of times, Trump is now surrounded by people who aren’t eager to rush out and write backstabbing tell-all books.”

THE STRATEGY? LET THEM TALK: Now We Know Why Democrats Are Losing the Messaging War.

WELL, GOOD: Stephen Moore: Big, Beautiful Tax Cuts Should Offset Any Tariff Increases.

THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: First Constellation Frigate Only 10% Complete, Design Still Being Finalized.

The first Constellation class frigate for the U.S. Navy is just 10 percent complete more than two years after construction began and nearly five years after the award of the initial contract for the ship. The work is also continuing despite the continued absence of a firm functional design for the vessel, which is still weeks or even months away from being finalized and approved.

Major changes to the Constellation’s configuration compared to its parent Franco-Italian Fregata Europea Multi-Missione (FREMM) have already led to serious delays and cost increases, and there are growing questions about the program’s future. A key program goal had been to take an in-service design that would only need relatively minor modifications to make it ready for Navy use, which would help keep the work on schedule and budget. The opposite has now happened.

Mark Vandroff, senior vice president of Government Affairs at Fincantieri Marine Group, confirmed the state of progress on the construction of the USS Constellation and provided an update on the program to TWZ‘s Howard Altman on the floor of the Navy League’s Sea Air Space 2025 exhibition earlier this week. 19FortyFive had first reported that the lead ship in the Constellation class was only 10 percent complete last month, citing an anonymous source.

The whole idea of the Constellation was to take the proven FREMM class, customize it just a little for the US Navy’s needs, but otherwise leave the design alone and get it into service quickly.

But the Navy had to go and screw it up.

SCHEDULED FOR 9:30 AM ET TODAY: How to watch Blue Origin launch Katy Perry and crew to space on a historic all-female spaceflight today.

OF COURSE: Taylor Lorenz’s Horrible Take On Suspected Murderer Luigi Mangione Just Got Ten Times Worse.

“FIX THE DAMN RUST:” The SECNAV Received His Direction & Guidance.

NAKED LUNCH: San Francisco Humiliates Itself Further, Erects 45-Foot Tall Statue of Woman—but Leaves Out Key Feature.

San  Francisco was once a shining example of a great American city, but now it is mostly a punchline. The metropolis that gave us epic Mark Twain quotes, Levi’s, an iconic music scene, the Golden Gate Bridge, and so much more is now known more for excrement on the street, crime, mass drug addiction, and homeless people sprawled across the sidewalks. Given that, you’d think they’d figure out what to prioritize to improve the lives of their citizens.

Their answer, though, will make your head spin. They’ve decided to erect a 45-foot statue of a woman in Embarcadero Plaza to “jazz up” downtown.  They might certainly achieve their goal, because the sculptor decided that the woman didn’t need something most of us would want when standing in the center of a city square: clothes.

That’s right, this lady is buck nekkid.

“Quick, darling, pack the bags—let’s take the kids to San Francisco!”*

I’ve decided not to put a photo of this atrocity here because you get the idea, but if you’d like to take a look, here’s the link.

* I’d say “Or raise them there,” but “unexpectedly” that hasn’t been happening very much in SF for decades: In 2013, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Frisco had the lowest percentage of children of any major American city. In 2005, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal spotted an AP article that noted, “‘San Francisco has the smallest share of small-fry of any major U.S. city,’ the Associated Press reports. ‘Just 14.5 percent of the city’s population is 18 and under.’”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Best comment: “I mean- the biggest shock of all of this is that SF has acknowledged what a woman biologically should look like, and erected it into a 45-foot statue to celebrate.”

JOHN LUCAS: “Our hearts were touched with fire.” The best toast you’ll ever read.

ENJOY YOUR STAY: Bukele Arrives in the U.S. as More Gang Members Are Deported to El Salvador.

WAGES OF NASTINESS: Harvard, Columbia Plunge in Law School Rankings Amid Anti-Semitism Backlash.