Closing the pot-luck tabs ... 

Ed: Get ready for a never-ending list of nonsense spending. This is exactly what Trump and his team need to do every day: stand up and list these absurd expenditures. These are slam-dunk political winners, and a very good demonstration of why taxpayers need DOGE to protect their funds. 

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Stephen Miller gets fed up with CNN's Brianna Keilar:

"The federal government will find every illegal alien who is stealing American taxpayer dollars, and that's what Americans expect to happen! I don't even fathom the premise of your question." pic.twitter.com/3bsrM8j2U3

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 18, 2025

Ed: This needs to keep happening, too. Don't allow the mainstream media to set the context of the questions in this corrupt manner. 

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Over the past three decades, Republicans have generally given birth to more kids than Democrats have. But during those first years of the first Trump administration, the partisan birth gap widened by 17 percent. “You see a clear and undeniable shift in who’s having babies,” Dahl told me.

That isn’t to say 38,000 couples took one look at President Trump and decided, Nope, no baby for us! But the correlation that Dahl’s team found was clear and strong. The researchers also hypothesized that George W. Bush’s win in 2000, another close election, would have had a noticeable effect on fertility rates. And they found that after that election, too, the partisan fertility gap widened, although less dramatically than after the 2016 election. According to experts I spoke with, as the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans has grown, so has the influence of politics on fertility. In Trump’s second term, America may be staring down another Democratic baby bust.

Ed: Gee, maybe if Democrats didn't champion killing babies in the womb ... 

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Ed: Joe Biden refused to admit that prices went up for a full year! He didn't do anything about it for three-plus years, and yet we have the new DNC chair crabbing that Trump has gone four weeks without solving the crisis Democrats created. 

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The Border Patrol made roughly 29,000 arrests in January, according to newly released government data, down from about 47,000 in December.

Border Patrol officials have said that the administration’s new policy of completely ignoring asylum claims—the legality of which is being challenged in court—has meant that migrants, no matter their circumstance, can be quickly deported back to Mexico or loaded onto removal flights. The administration has opened several new deportation avenues, including striking a deal with the Venezuelan government to return some of its citizens and persuading countries including Panama and Costa Rica to at least temporarily take on migrants from third countries in the Middle East and Asia.

Ed: Trump is solving that crisis that Joe Biden created and ignored, just like inflation. 

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An update on Senate procedure—

~5:30pm ET, the Senate will vote on a motion to proceed to executive session for @Kash_Patel. Then we'll file cloture to put him on the clock. Procedure aside — he’s set to be confirmed by Thursday.

Let’s get it DONE!@howardlutnick is next. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/wuAghyXaL5

— Markwayne Mullin (@SenMullin) February 18, 2025

Ed: This one's already in the bag, almost certainly. At least we hope so.

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A black, queer woman will play the part of Jesus Christ in "Jesus Christ Superstar" at this summer at the Hollywood Bowl. Cynthia Erivo, 37, who played Elphaba in film production of "Wicked" identifies as queer and bisexual.

In an Instagram story from Erivo, the actress said, “Just a little busy this Summer, can’t wait," next to a post from Official Broadway World announcing the role with Erivo. The post from the page stated, "Cynthia Erivo will be playing Jesus in the upcoming Hollywood Bowl production of Jesus Christ Superstar!"

Ed: Forget it, Jake. It's Hollywoodtown. But keep this bookmarked when people ask, "What do you mean, progressives have lost touch with American voters?"

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Ed: This story looks a lot different from when it first started. Batya Ungar-Sargon is up next with a pretty good assessment of where it's likely to end up.

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The story that emerges from Baldoni and his legal team is that, in an attempt to rescue her reputation, Lively tried to cast herself as the ultimate victim: a #MeToo victim. But unfortunately for her, she miscast the role of her alleged oppressor, choosing a man-bun feminist who’s spent his life “believing all women,” anxiously validating every word that comes from the fairer sex. He was just the kind of man most likely to be vindicated by the evidence.

The entire episode reveals the flaws of the #MeToo movement. Believing all women are vulnerable to the predations of all men fails to account for the real-world messiness of how sexuality actually intersects with power. But it also reveals the flaws of the man-bun feminism Baldoni has personified for his entire career.

Ed: This is an excellent essay, which I believe may be paywalled at The Free Press. At first, Lively seemed like the wronged person in this conflict, but it's looking like everyone involved may be an ass instead, including Ryan Reynolds. It's a good lesson on why it's best to wait for the evidence before jumping to conclusions. 

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