Hey, everyone …
It’s a FIREHOSE FRIDAY at the freedom movement’s daily newspaper — as in “drink from the firehose.” We’ve got more than 100 news stories, opinion pieces, and audio/video links on tap for you this morning. That’s far too many to fit in our normal email/social media format, so check them out at our web edition:
https://news.rationalreview.com/
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We keep the sob stories to a minimum here, but this one’s also a matter of safety: Yesterday my fellow editor, Steve Trinward, took his car to a shop and got told he needs more than $2,000 in brake work (sounds high to me, and sounded high to him too). A shade tree mechanic friend offered him an “interim solution,” but he’s clearly going to be spending money on repairs or on other transportation, and I’d rather he gets that done quickly and lives through the experience. If that tugs at your heartstrings, far be it from me to tell you not to help out … which you can do at:
Thanks in advance, and have a happy, healthy, and prosperous weekend!
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the US military had conducted another deadly strike on a boat suspected of carrying illegal narcotics, [murdering] four men in the eastern Pacific, as questions [sic] mount over the legality of the [illegal] attacks. Video of the new strike was posted on social media by the US southern command, based in Florida, with a statement saying that, at the direction of Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, ‘Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel in international waters operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization.’ … It is the 22nd strike the US military has carried out against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, bringing the [murder count] of the campaign to at least 87 people since September when the strikes began.” (12/04/25)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/04/pentagon-boat-strike-pacific
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“Americans, the Associated Press reports, spent a record $11.8 billion online on ‘Black Friday’ (the day after Thanksgiving) this year … and another record, $6.4 billion on Thanksgiving itself. Physical in-store traffic for Black Friday also ticked up versus the previous week, although shopping for deals has strongly moved online in recent years. What caught my eye about the story, though, was the headline, which suggests the record sales occurred ‘despite wider economic uncertainty.’ ‘Despite?’ More likely, in my opinion, ‘because.’ With inflation still running at about 3% annually, prices subject to Donald Trump’s seemingly random tariff policies, the job situation looking more uncertain and unpredictable than it has since the COVID-19 panic, etc., what have American consumers been up to? I can tell you what they’ve been up to, because I’ve been up to it myself. What we’ve all been up to is ‘waiting for the best deal if the purchase isn’t an emergency.'” (12/04/25)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20184
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“The U.S. versus Venezuela.” (12/04/25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-FUieKR3Ec
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“The Israeli military has carried out a new round of air strikes in southern Lebanon, less than a day after Israel and Lebanon held their first direct talks in decades. Residents of the towns of Mjadel, Baraachit, Jbaa and Mahrouna were told to evacuate areas around locations that the Israeli military alleged were weapons warehouses belonging to the Iranian-backed group. No casualties have been reported. An Israeli military spokesman said the sites constituted a ceasefire violation and warned that it would continue to operate ‘to remove any threat’ to Israel. Israel has carried out near-daily strikes on Lebanon since a ceasefire took effect in November 2024, following 13 months of conflict.” (12/04/25)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62n6y9yd70o
Source: CounterPunch
by John W Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
“Every military servicemember’s oath is a pledge to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is not an oath to a politician. It is not an oath to a party. And it is not an oath to the police state. Yet what happens when those same men and women are being told—by their own government—that obedience to power and loyalty to a political leader come before allegiance to the Constitution they swore to uphold? That question isn’t hypothetical. It is the moral line now being tested in real time, and it goes to the heart of what kind of country we are: do we live in a constitutional republic governed by the rule of law, or in a militarized police state where ‘legality’ is whatever the person with the most power and the biggest army say it is?” (12/04/25)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/04/the-constitution-vs-the-commander-in-chief-the-duty-to-disobey-unlawful-orders/
Source: NBC News
“The Justice Department on Thursday failed to secure an indictment against New York Attorney General Letitia James, a person familiar with the matter told NBC News. The presentation to the grand jury came less than two weeks after the original criminal case against her was dismissed. James, a frequent political target of President Donald Trump’s who had successfully brought a fraud lawsuit against him, had previously been indicted by a grand jury on one charge of bank fraud and another of making false statements to a financial institution. James has denied any wrongdoing. Lindsey Halligan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and a former personal attorney to Trump with no prior prosecutorial experience, presented the case to a grand jury on her own in the first go-round — and that case was declared void on Nov. 24 when a judge found Halligan’s appointment was unlawful.” (12/04/25)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/grand-jury-declines-indict-ny-attorney-general-letitia-james-less-two-rcna247310
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“Young people complain they’ve been permanently locked out of opportunity. They will never become homeowners, never be able to support a family, only keep treading water at precarious gig jobs forever. They got a 5.9 GPA and couldn’t get into college; they applied to 2,051 companies in the past week without so much as a politely-phrased rejection. Sometime in the 1990s, the Boomers ripped up the social contract where hard work leads to a pleasant middle-class life, replacing it with a hellworld where you will own nothing and numb the pain with algorithmic slop. The only live political question is whether to blame immigrants, blame billionaires, or just trade crypto in the hopes that some memecoin buys you a ticket out of the permanent underclass. Meanwhile, economists say things have never been better.” (12/04/25)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/vibecession-much-more-than-you-wanted
Source: USA Today
“Texas can use a congressional map drawn to give President Donald Trump and Republicans an advantage in the 2026 midterm elections, the Supreme Court said Dec. 4 in a decision that may help the GOP keep control of the U.S. House. An ideologically divided court paused a lower court’s ruling that the map likely discriminates against racial minorities by diluting the voting power of Hispanic and Black Texans. That opinion, which replaces a temporary freeze on the ruling issued by Justice Samuel Alito on Nov. 21, keeps the map in place for the midterm elections as litigation over the boundaries continues. The high court said the lower court’s ruling was improper because it came too close to the election.” (12/04/25)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/12/04/supreme-court-texas-congressional-map-gop-redistrict-trump/87452165007/
Source: Reason
by Veronique de Rugy
“The populist poles of the left and right are now linked in what political scientists call the ‘horseshoe.’ As each gets further from the center, it bends closer toward its counterpart on the other side. Both distrust markets, both want to micromanage industry, both are protectionist, both romanticize manufacturing work and resent the disruptions that come from open global competition. Both, in other words, are hostile to the core tenets of the liberal economic order that made America prosperous. Each side blames a different villain. For the left, it’s corporations and rich people; for the right, it’s immigrants and trade. But both sides insist that a brighter future is possible only through top-down political control, and neither wants to confront the real risk: a government already too large, spending money it doesn’t have and drifting toward fiscal crisis.” (12/04/25)
https://reason.com/2025/12/04/the-horseshoe-of-doom-populists-left-and-right-say-america-is-failing-the-facts-dont/
Source: Firstpost [India]
“Taiwan’s government has imposed a one-year ban on a popular Chinese-owned social media app after the company failed to cooperate with authorities investigating fraud cases. Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, has grown rapidly among young people in Taiwan, attracting 3 million users on the island of 23 million. But the Instagram-like platform has also raised alarms among officials who fear it could be exploited for pro-Beijing propaganda or disinformation, a threat Taiwan says it has contended with for years. … The ban has already triggered backlash from some users and opposition politicians, who argue it infringes on free speech.” (12/05/25)
https://www.firstpost.com/world/taiwan-bans-chinese-social-media-app-rednote-over-fraud-concerns-ws-e-13956891.html
