Hey, everyone …
It’s a “Firehose Friday” at the freedom movement’s daily newspaper — we’ve got more than 100 news stories, opinion pieces, and audio/video links lined up for you, available only here at the web edition.
THANK YOU to subscribing contributors TM aqnd CJTS! Their payments yesterday, totaling $12.50, bring our annual fundraiser total (as of 5am) to $1,302!
Our goal is $5,503 — but supporter GL’s generous “matching funds” pledge will cover the second half of that once we reach $2,751.50. With an estimated 5,000 daily readers across our email, social media, and web editions, that doesn’t feel like it should be a huge stretch.
I like to set “mini-goals,” so: Will you help us reach $1,500 by Monday? That URL again:
Side note: You may have noticed that I update our fundraiser totals “as of 5am” each morning. Am I getting up early to check on those totals? No. I’m up at 4:30am eastern US time EVERY weekday morning, all year long — and at my desk only a few minutes later — to get the day’s edition finalized and out to you.
If you’d like to tie your financial support to some metric of my dedication, might I suggest a $5.00 donation? After PayPal fees, that comes to $4.34 … which is right about the time of day I’m usually sitting down to work.
Or, if you’re superstitious, a $13 donation might take the edge off your Friday the 13th problems
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: AOL
“Iran’s Revolutionary Guards navy said a tanker carrying liquefied natural gas struck a naval mine and suffered an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz on Friday while using what they described was an “unauthorised and dangerous route”, state media reported. No details on the tanker were immediately available. Iranian media reported on Thursday that four oil tankers were hit by explosions in the waterway vital for global shipping, adding that the vessels had ignored warnings and entered what it considers restricted areas of the strategic waterway.” (11/13/26)
https://www.aol.com/articles/iran-says-tanker-carrying-lng-070047000.html
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“The number of POTENTIAL government students has been decreasing since 2007, when birth rates began falling. That was the beginning of the turning point, the ‘crisis.’ Private education and homeschooling are increasingly reducing the number of ACTUAL government students as well. Will some people experience negative effects from this ‘crisis?’ Yes. Parents may have to make some difficult choices about where, how, and from whom their kids will receive education. Fewer potential teachers and administrators will have jobs waiting for them if they choose to major in education in college. These are the kinds of problems that markets are very good at dealing with. Government monopolies, not so much.” (11/12/26)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/21025
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Senate Sets Sights On US/Israel Military Integration In NDAA Bill.” (11/12/26)
https://x.com/i/broadcasts/2KoOJznrbOmyaj
Source: The Dispatch
by Scott Lincicome
“Several concerns drove voters to reject Trump’s GOP in historic fashion: the economy (centered on prices and affordability), Iran, corruption, aggressive deportations, and Trump himself. We know this because voters told us—before and after the election. … the war was an accelerant, not what got voters’ economic fire roaring in the first place. As Phil Magness already detailed for The Dispatch, the administration’s weakness on the economy started with Trump’s tariffs, with voter disapproval evident in both last week’s exit polls and numerous surveys dating back to last spring …. They told us they’d vote on tariffs. Then they did.” (11/12/26)
https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/dispatch-markets/midterm-blue-wave-economic-populism-tariffs-corruption/
Source: Bitcoin.com
“Bitcoin’s sell-off, which began Wednesday, continued into Friday, with the world’s largest cryptocurrency plunging below $68,000 as fallout from former Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s ouster kept financial markets rattled. The latest decline also pushed cryptocurrency liquidations past $1 billion for the second time in recent days. … Altcoins were hit equally hard. Ethereum (ETH), which had slipped below $2,000 hours earlier, plunged to $1,910, bringing its daily losses to more than 6%. XRP, already nursing double-digit losses before the latest sell-off, briefly breached the psychologically important $1 threshold, extending its weekly decline to more than 15%.” (11/13/26)
https://news.bitcoin.com/market-updates/bitcoin-price-crashes-below-68k-as-crypto-liquidations-hit-1-6b/
Source: Independent Institute
by Craig Eyermann
“”The U.S. government paid just under $1.36 trillion of interest on the national debt during its 2026 fiscal year. That makes 2026 the third year in a row the federal government paid out more than a trillion dollars of gross interest to all its creditors. The government’s net interest payments came in a little over $1.05 trillion. That’s the first time Uncle Sam’s net interest payments have ever exceeded $1 trillion. … According to the Congressional Budget Office, most of the $308 billion difference between its gross and net interest payments represents money Uncle Sam ‘owes’ to itself. The net interest the government pays goes to people and institutions outside the U.S. government.” (11/12/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/11/12/government-owes-itself/
Source: The Hill
“Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said he would challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for the role of majority leader on Thursday, setting up a showdown in the upper chamber as Democrats prepare to retake the majority. … Schumer, who served as majority leader from 2021 to 2025, previously announced that he had the votes to return to the post, even as Democrats from both progressive and moderate sides of the party say they will not support him. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) appeared together at a news conference on Tuesday and said they would not back Schumer. Some incoming senators said the same, including Sens.-elect Adam Hamilton (D-Kan.), Annie Andrews (D-S.C.), Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.) and Troy Jackson (D-Maine). Sanders and El-Sayed both voiced their support for Van Hollen on Thursday night following his announcement.” (11/12/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/6217923-van-hollen-challenges-schumer
Source: Liberalism.org
by David L Leal
“After decades of contention, we seem to have given up on reforming our immigration system. That system has long had many irrational features. For years, Congress chased the mirage of ‘compromise immigration reform,’ and now the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have gone all in on mass deportation. Neither approach can resolve the fundamental tension between an economy that demands immigrant workers and federal laws that criminalize their hiring. When we tire of self-harming laws and policies and seek rational approaches designed to solve real problems, we will need to go back to basics and reevaluate the very language—and thereby the principles—we use to discuss the issue.” (11/12/26)
https://liberalism.org/essays/the-language-of-legal-immigration
Source: Anchorage Daily News
“The Alaska Department of Natural Resources on Tuesday approved a 50-year land lease for a proposed large-scale computing data center on the North Slope near the Dalton Highway, the trans-Alaska oil pipeline and the proposed trans-Alaska natural gas pipeline. … Initial site development for the proposed ‘STAK Energy Campus’ is estimated to cost $500 million. The buildings and other infrastructure would include a multi-gigawatt natural gas power plant fired with gas produced locally on the North Slope. … To date, Alaska has no large-scale commercial computing data centers. The data center complex, which is expected to cover about 715 acres, would be air-cooled and would not be tied into the electrical grid that covers Alaska’s Railbelt, though operators could sell power to customers in and around Prudhoe Bay.” (11/12/26)
https://www.adn.com/business-economy/2026/11/11/alaska-approves-50-year-land-lease-for-large-natural-gas-powered-data-center-in-the-arctic/
