Source: Axios
“New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) sued the U.S. Department of Transportation on Wednesday after it rescinded federal approval for the city’s controversial congestion pricing program, which just went into effect in January. … [US Transportation Secretary Sean] Duffy argued in his letter that NYC’s program ‘exceeds the authority authorized by Congress’ under the Value Pricing Pilot Program.” (02/19/25)
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal
“The most dangerous thing about the Trump presidency is its risk of causing some people to regain faith in government. This would be a mistake. Of course, it’s making the opposition lose faith in government. They wanted to be the ones imposing their will for the next four years, and this caught them off guard. It derailed their ‘progress,’ progress that others experience as a descent into the Dark Ages. What I see as progress — dismantling some of the federal government — others call corruption. The case could be made that corruption is being rooted out and destroyed. This is also mistaken. It’s not corruption; it’s government working exactly as designed. The problem is in the design, not in the implementation and not in the details.” (02/19/25)
Source: United Press International
“President Donald Trump has signed a sweeping executive order to expand the president’s control over independent regulatory agencies and declaring that only the president and the attorney general can interpret the meanings of laws. Trump signed the executive order Tuesday at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort as he continues to try to consolidate the power of the federal government. According to the order, all executive departments and agencies must submit for review all proposed and final regulatory actions to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Office of the President for review to ensure they are consistent with ‘the President’s policies and priorities.’ … Independent agencies affected by the move include the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission.” (02/19/25)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2025/02/19/Trump-independent-agencies/4871739950466/
Source: The Daily Economy
by Barry Brownstein
“Liability waivers and government schedules undermine natural market incentives to prioritize vaccine safety.” (02/18/25)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/how-the-government-makes-vaccines-less-safe/
Source: CoinTelegraph
“The government of Nigeria has filed an $81.5 billion lawsuit against Binance, the world’s largest centralized exchange by trading volume, for $2 billion in back taxes and $79 billion in economic damages for allegedly crashing Nigeria’s local fiat currency. According to Reuters, Nigeria’s Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) said Binance has a ‘significant economic presence’ inside Nigeria and unpaid taxes from 2022 and 2023. FIRS is also reportedly demanding a 26.75% interest payment on the back taxes allegedly owed [sic] by the company and continues to claim that the exchange was instrumental in lowering the value of the Nigerian naira in foreign exchange markets.” (02/19/25)
https://cointelegraph.com/news/nigeria-files-81b-lawsuit-against-binance-exchange
Source: EconLog
by Pierre Lemieux
“College economics students know that a tariff is a tax charged to importers when a good enters the country and that this tax is generally transferred to domestic consumers by way of an equivalent price increase. So what Trump is really saying is, ‘very simple, a foreign state charges a tax on its residents, my own state will charge an equivalent tax to our own residents.’ Your tribe or collective harms its own, the tribe or collective I run will cause an equivalent harm to its members; it’s that simple. Not only does elementary economic theory demonstrate this conclusion, but it is continually confirmed by experience to the point where the mere announcement or expectation of domestic tariffs starts pushing up the price of the imported goods and of the substitute domestic goods.” (02/19/25)
https://www.econlib.org/the-basic-error-about-international-trade/
Source: BBC News [UK state media]
“President Trump has spent the day attacking Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, calling him a ‘dictator’ and deepening the rift between the two leaders [sic]. His attacks came after Zelensky, reacting to US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia from which Kyiv was excluded, said the US president was ‘living in a disinformation space’ governed by Moscow. … Zelensky’s five-year term of office was due to come to an end in May 2024. However, Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and elections are suspended.” (02/20/25)
Source: The UnPopulist
by Anne Lutz Fernandez
“News of Trump’s plans to gut the Department of Education has certainly made waves. But given that the federal government has a limited role in K-12 education and limited control over education spending, too few are focused on considering what public education under Trump’s second term might look like. If Uncle Sam is out of the K-12 business, at least President Trump won’t be using his power to interfere with local schools, right? If only! Trump, working with a GOP-controlled Congress, can inflict damage not just to American education but through it. The track record of MAGA-run states, the policy designs of Project 2025, and Trump’s own statements reveal a clear interest in using schools to sunder the separation of church and state.” (02/19/25)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-is-not-taking-the-state-out
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Tori Noble
“You shouldn’t need a permission slip to read a webpage–whether you do it with your own eyes, or use software to help. AI is a category of general-purpose tools with myriad beneficial uses. Requiring developers to license the materials needed to create this technology threatens the development of more innovative and inclusive AI models, as well as important uses of AI as a tool for expression and scientific research.” (02/19/25)
Source: US News & World Report
“Three oil tankers have been damaged by blasts in the last month in separate incidents around the Mediterranean, with the causes unknown, shipping and security sources said on Wednesday. … An explosion caused a one-metre inward breach below the waterline on the hull of Greek-operated crude oil tanker Seajewel at a port in northern Italy on Saturday, one of the shipping sources said. A second blast occurred 20 minutes later on the same vessel without causing further damage. … Another vessel operated by Thenamaris, the crude oil tanker Seacharm, was also damaged by a blast off the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in late January, two of the sources said. In a third incident, the Liberia-flagged chemical and products tanker Grace Ferrum was damaged off Libya in February, three sources said, with one adding that the vessel would require a salvage operation.” (02/19/25)