SKED FOR THIS AFTERNOON AT 1:37 PM ET: United Launch Alliance to launch final Delta Heavy IV rocket March 29. Here’s how to watch live. “In addition to the Delta IV Heavy, ULA plans on retiring another one of its rockets: The workhorse Atlas V. The idea is to make way for the company’s new Vulcan Centaur, which launched on its first mission on Jan. 8, 2024 when it sent Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander moonward. The Atlas V will keep flying through 2029, however, as it is already booked for missions to help develop Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation and send Boeing’s Starliner crew capsule to the International Space Station on its first launch, slated for no earlier than May 1.”

Deltas and Atlases have a great history, but both rockets are older than me. The future is elsewhere.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Will Dems’ Abandonment of Law Enforcement Finally Haunt Them in 2024? “As we’ve seen in recent years, it’s not just that the left is anti-law enforcement, but that they’re pro-criminal. Donald Trump and his supporters are the only people they want to see in jail, the real bad guys get sent right back out to return to their criminal ways.”

CHANGE: New Georgia Voting Rules Approved. “While there are plenty of people talking about improving election security, Georgia appears to be doing something about it. Just in time for this year’s elections, the Georgia legislature has passed reforms that will impact access to the presidential ballot. They have also altered the rules defining the criteria for being able to submit a ballot and how ballots can be challenged. Ballot challenges will be under strict scrutiny this year with more people expected to be monitoring the process from each party, particularly in swing states like Georgia. The measure has been sent to Republican Governor Brian Kemp, who is expected to sign it into law. Needless to say, many Georgia Democrats are not happy about this.” Of course they’re not. It makes cheating harder.

Also: Shocking Court Ruling Says Ballots Must Be Signed and Dated.

THE TIMES LOOKS BACK ON COVID: “The New York Times looks back on covid, four years down the road, and says ‘Here’s what we’ve learned.’ I would say we have learned some things that the Times doesn’t touch, like the idiocy of shutting down stores, businesses, churches and, especially, schools. But admitting that would be a bridge too far for the Times. Even on the lessons the Times acknowledges, you sometimes have to read between the lines.”

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: My chat (+transcript) with Spencer Weart on the history of nuclear energy fear.

Interesting, but missing here is that as the Vietnam War ended, activists turned to the anti-nuclear movement — in some sense created it — in order to preserve the infrastructure, and fundraising, that had been created for the Vietnam antiwar movement. The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution. And the grift. Always the grift.

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: The Department of Education’s FAFSA Fiasco.

If, like me, you have a college-bound high-school senior in your family, you’ve likely been on the receiving end of yet another colossal screw-up by our federal government: the overhaul of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, commonly known as the FAFSA. Every year, students (or more commonly their parents) need to fill out the FAFSA with information about their income, assets, and expenses in order to qualify for federal student aid. Many colleges require the FAFSA before awarding other forms of need-based aid, and some require it to be filed even by people without need before they can qualify for scholarship aid. There’s a more detailed and onerous form, the CSS, operated by the College Board and required by some schools. Filling these out is like doing your taxes, only more so. Typically, the forms are available in October, and schools may set filing deadlines in the fall so that they can deliver financial-aid awards at or near the time they send out acceptances.

Not this year. The FAFSA wasn’t even fully available until January 8, after the Department of Education briefly flicked on the lights on the form on December 30 just so it could claim that it launched in 2023. I was on two college visits over the weekend; one school said that it was just starting to receive the first batch of FAFSA need assessments for its accepted students, and the other had decided in the fall that this was going to be a disaster and pushed its date for students to commit to the school back from May 1 to June 1. For schools with rolling deadlines, that means that students who are ready to commit now will have a leg up on those whose decisions hinge on available aid. It also means that undecided students may end up wasting time visiting campuses they would otherwise have crossed off their lists by now. On Monday, Gavin Newsom signed an emergency law extending by a month the deadline for California students to apply for scholarships, and the state has already pushed back the commitment date to May 15.

From there, things get worse:

Even so, in late 2022, Republicans were willing to pony up more funding for the project, but with one condition: Not a penny of the money could be spent on Biden’s illegal student-loan-forgiveness program. Biden chose to turn down the money and let the FAFSA burn rather than accept that condition, and then the Supreme Court struck down his loan-forgiveness scheme anyway. Now, the bill for that brinksmanship is coming due, and college applicants and their parents are the ones who’ve been stuck with it.

Never underestimate Joe’s ability — or eagerness — to f*** things up.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The War at Stanford. “We’re only in our third week of college, and we’re afraid to be here.”