So far, Trump has lived up to just about every promise he made during the campaign; that makes him unique among all other politicians in my lifetime, possibly since the founding of the country

Exhibit 210:

EPA chief Lee Zeldin to kill car feature ‘everyone hates’

WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin hinted Monday that he’s preparing to roll back one car feature that every driver “hates.”

“Start/stop technology: where your car dies at every red light so companies get a climate participation trophy,” Zeldin tweeted Monday in a post that has since racked up more than 8 million views.

“EPA approved it, and everyone hates it, so we’re fixing it.”

The feature kills internal combustion engines at red lights and has been touted by proponents for being able to conserve fuel and cut down on pollution.

Critics have questioned whether the feature can wear down the car’s battery or engine more quickly.

The “off-cycle CO2 reducing” tech has its origins in a federal rule proposed under former President Barack Obama in 2012 — but didn’t take effect until new fuel economy standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions five years later.

Between 2012 and 2021, the number of vehicles produced with a stop-start feature due to the carbon credits surged from 1% to 45%.

Up to 65% of vehicles had the technology included in new models by 2023.

The smart start tech can improve fuel economy by between 4% and 5%, according to past EPA estimates.

But it hasn’t shown clear reductions in emissions tests, an EPA spokesperson noted.

If finalized, automakers could no longer receive any credits to produce the stop-start tech in new models.

The move follows Zeldin targeting other tax incentives from a New York climate law and green grants from the Biden administration as part of a renewable energy push. 

Zeldin charged that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unwisely ended “safe extraction” of natural gas, gas hookups on new building construction, and gas stoves — but sought to cut sales of gas-powered vehicles and block the new Constitution Pipeline’s construction.

In January, the EPA head revealed that he found $20 billion in taxpayer money “parked” at Citibank in Manhattan after it was authorized for an array of “far-left activist groups” following the passage of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.

President Trump tapped Zeldin to “unleash prosperity through deregulation” with an executive order in January that designated the EPA and other agencies to eliminate at least 10 regulations for every new one proposed.

And there’s this:

Liker the Episcopal Church, who knew this old bag was still around?

sally’s seen better days

Ed Driscoll, via InstaPundit:

SCHADENFREUDE OVERLOAD: Silly Socialite and Aged Madame of the Deep State Whorehouse Sally Quinn Whines That Liberals Don’t Feel “Safe” or Social in Trump’s DC.

Watergate-Era Washington Was Less Toxic Than This

It’s spring in Washington, D.C., the most beautiful time of the year. Dogwood, forsythia, cherry trees, tulips and daffodils decorate every sidewalk, wisterias weep from porch overhangs, and redbuds pop up at every corner. The air is redolent of blossoms, a soft breeze sharing their scent through the streets. It’s the perfect backdrop for the columned monuments and buildings that remind us of the miracle of our democracy. Spring is normally the happiest time of year here.

But not this spring.

This spring Washington is a city in crisis. Physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. It’s as if the fragrant air were permeated with an invisible poison, as if we were silently choking on carbon monoxide. The emotion all around — palpable in the streets, the shops, the restaurants, in business offices, at dinner tables — is fear. People have gone from greeting each other with a grimace of anguish as they spout about the outrage of the day to a laugh to despair. It’s all so unbelievable that it’s hard to process, and it doesn’t stop.

Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels protected. This is a city where people seek and, if it all goes well for them, wield power. But today in Washington those who hold — or once held — the most power are often the most scared. It is not something they are used to feeling. I lived through the paranoia and vengefulness of Watergate. This time in Washington, it’s different. Nobody knows how this will end and what will happen to the country. What might happen to each of us.

 Ed Driscoll: “Quinn’s headline is amazing. We’ve endlessly pointed out that every incoming GOP president is Hitler, only to be rehabbed into the proverbial Wise Elder Statesman to attack the next incoming Hitler. Quinn is using that hoary old Democratic Party cliché to describe how much better past life in her one industry company town was when a previous Republican was in office. (See also, previous Democrat grandees finding newfound respect for the man they spent the mid-1970s hounding out of office.)”

Old Greenwich sale

3 Vista Avenue, $5.2 million, $5.8 asked.

“Exclusion: Dining Room Chandelier, Curtains and Roman shades in dining room and living room”

I’ve always enjoyed these curtain exclusions; back when I practiced residential real estate law, there were some fierce fights between sellers and owners over the damn things, and when, sometimes, my buyer/client won, I’d ask them a year or so later, “what you’d do with them?” “Oh, was the invariable reply, “it turned out they didn’t fit, so they’re in the attic.”

Tee hee.

Hunting Ridge Sale

65 Hunting Ridge Road, $7,075,000. Good looking house, 6 acres, and on the west (higher) side of Hunting Ridge, which has better views. Owners paid $5.695 million in October, 2021, but did put some money into improvements/updating between then and now.

the mandatory animal pelt, naturally

laundry’s a bit undersized for a six bedroom home, but buyers in this range usually send their wash out anyway.

Border games

That’s what we meant to say all along!

Southern border apprehensions plunge more than 90% from year ago in April, CBP says

Apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border have plummeted 93% under President Donald Trump's administration, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection released Monday.

The CBP says it averaged 279 apprehensions per day at the southern border in April, compared to 4,297 apprehensions in April 2024. The total apprehensions for April this year landed at 8,383, compared to last year's 129,000.

CBP officials also noted that just five illegal aliens were temporarily released into the U.S. during April, compared to 68,000 during the same month last year.

"For the first time in years, more agents are back in the field – patrolling territories that CBP didn’t have the bandwidth or manpower to oversee just six months ago," said Pete Flores, acting commissioner of CBP. "But thanks to this administration’s dramatic shift in security posture at our border, we are now seeing operational control becoming a reality – and it’s only just beginning."

The report shows the Trump administration's continued progress on controlling the border since March. The CBP recorded the lowest southwest border crossings in history in March, with fewer apprehensions in the entire month than there were in the first two days of the month in 2024 under the Biden administration.

Border Patrol apprehended a total of 7,181 illegal aliens attempting to cross the southern border between ports of entry in March. This constitutes a 14% decrease from February, when Border Patrol apprehended 8,346 aliens, and more dramatically, a 95% decrease from the 137,473 aliens apprehended under the Biden administration in the same period in 2024.

And the same story up north:

'Main hotspot' at northern border records 95% drop in illegal migrant apprehensions in March:

The number of illegal immigrants caught along one northern border sector that was once "overrun by illegal migrants" has dramatically declined under the Trump administration after it saw thousands of unlawful crossings last year, the White House said Tuesday.

Only 54 illegal immigrants were apprehended last month in the Swanton Sector, which stretches more than 300 miles, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters, citing U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

"This is a drastic 95% drop from the more than a thousand border crossings that were caught in March 2024," she said. "This is a main hotspot area that recorded more than 80% of all apprehensions along the northern border during the 2024 fiscal year."

In fiscal year 2024, 19,222 illegal immigrants were apprehended along the sector. The migrants hailed from 97 countries, sector Chief Patrol Agent Robert Garcia said at the time.

The apprehensions amounted to more than the past 17 years combined, authorities said. In FY 2020, the agents assigned to the sector apprehended 574 illegal immigrants, followed by 365 the next year.

Seems like an appropriate time to revisit CT’s reigning moron, Chris Murphy, and his fellow-stooges:

What's he gonna do, wave his hankie at us?

Royal defense: King Charles coming to Canada to send Trump message about 51st state

Britain has one aircraft carrier — unfortunately, the funds aren’t available to equip it with planes, but it looks pretty impressive even without them. Their submarine fleet, such as it is, is obsolete and sinking, and their army has shrunk to nothing. In fact, Britain has nothing to offer Canada should the US invade, as the hysterics up there seem to believe we will. In fact, fellas, we don’t want either of you, or your pathetic, failing countries.

Britain's shrinking military

The weaknesses in Britain's contribution to Nato became starkly apparent in February this year, when a group of British MPs visited a Nato military site in Tapa, Estonia, where British soldiers are deployed (alongside Danish and French troops). The point of the base is to deter or slow down an invasion from Russia - which is just 80 miles away over a land border.

Mike Martin, a Liberal Democrat MP and former British Army Officer, said the Estonia visit was like going back in time, seeing the same equipment as when he first joined the Army as a reservist in 2004: ageing Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior armoured vehicles. What one former General described to me as "legacy kit from the 1980's" - old and dwindling in numbers.

About 1,000 British troops are stationed at the site. At the time of the MPs' visit they were armed with some drones - though not many. Nor did they have much in the way of systems to block or jam enemy drones, either. They also have a handful of long-range artillery guns - important for land warfare. The British Army currently has a total of just 14. Even tiny Estonia has double that number.

Did we know there was still an Episcopalian Church? I thought they’d closed their social gathering halls when they decided that Christ was optional

Apparently the old dears are still going, at least a few of them, and now they’ve proclaimed that the Jesus in which they once believed calls them to be racists (“well, we always were, but now we’re on the right side — isn’t that cool?”

Meeting of the klavern, Christ Episcopal Church: “We’re symbolic blacks, now, and let that be sufficient unto tHe day”

In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church, the denomination announced on Monday (May 12) that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Donald Trump’s administration.

In a letter sent to members of the church, the Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe — the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church — said that two weeks ago the government “informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees.”

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe wrote. “Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.”