Hey, everyone …
After a “zero-dollar day,” our annual fundraiser total remains stuck (as of 5am) at $1,093.50.
We’re $1,658 short of our goal — and I’m as tired of hectoring you about money as you are of hearing it. Once we’ve hit the target, I get to shut up about money entirely for the rest of 2026 and mostly for the first nine months of 2027. Have a great day — but first,
Yours in liberty,
Tom Knapp
Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: Times of Israel [Jerusalem]
“The US carried out strikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, an American official said late Monday on the eve of crucial midterm elections, which US President Donald Trump has signaled could mark the start of resumed war with Iran. The strikes, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, appeared to be limited and were not a resumption of major combat operations, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Another official said the strikes were defensive measures against Iranians ‘using surface-to-air missiles against US assets.'” (11/03/26)
https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-carries-out-defensive-strikes-on-irans-qeshm-island-in-strait-of-hormuz/
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
“Imagine a law called the Voter Accountability Act. Or call it the Max Tax, if you like. If a party wins control of government and runs a deficit, everyone who voted for it pays 10 percent more in income taxes during deficit years. If the budget balances, rates stay normal. Voters on the losing side get a 10 percent discount on their tax bills. Non-voters pay the ordinary rate. So described, the Max Tax sounds like justice ringing the doorbell. Whoever installs the government gets the invoice. In other words, if you really want things done your way, then you have to pay for it. I like the idea. But I also know it would probably create a clusterf—. Still, the ways it might fail tell us as much about the absurdity of our current system as they do about the proposal itself.” (11/02/26)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/tax-the-winners
Source: Reason
“What Do Libertarians Have To Gain From the Midterms?” (11/02/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/11/02/what-do-libertarians-have-to-gain-from-the-midterms/
Source: The Hill
“The Supreme Court on Monday quickly rejected the Trump administration’s effort to force California officials to set aside 20,000 ballots it claims belong to likely noncitizens and must be investigated. The court’s one-sentence order contained no explanation and had no noted dissents. California and immigration rights groups question the veracity of the administration’s list and say its lawsuit is an attempt to disenfranchise legal voters. The administration raced its claims to the Supreme Court earlier on Monday after California persuaded lower courts that the administration has no legal right to push the state to comply. The administration warned that the clock was running out. All sides agree that ballots can’t be separated once they’re processed, and election officials have already received hundreds of thousands of mail ballots ahead of polls opening on Tuesday.” (11/02/26)
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/6190525-supreme-court-trump-administration-california-ballots
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“Conservatives are well known for launching moral crusades. Because they think they have an ally in the White House, some of them are now openly calling for the federal government to ban pornography. But instead of advocating for new legislation to combat pornography, they maintain that obscenity laws still exist on the federal and state levels and should therefore be used against pornography. The question here is not whether viewing pornography is acceptable, good, useful, or beneficial, or whether viewing pornography is bad, immoral, harmful, or sinful. The question at issue is simply this: Should government at some level, for whatever reason, seek to ban some or all pornography?” (11/02/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/repugnant-markets/
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Russian forces have bombed an aid centre in Ukraine, killing at least 29 people, according to Ukrainian officials, as the United States announced plans for new peace talks on November 10 and 11. The aid centre, at a school in the village of Komyshuvakha in the Zaporizhzhia region, had been closed to students because the village sits too close to the front line, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday. Instead, it served as a shelter and as a weekly distribution point for aid packages, which residents who remain in the village collected every Monday. … Hours after the attack, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that delegations from Ukraine and Russia would meet in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, on November 10 and 11.” (11/02/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/2/russian-bombing-of-ukrainian-aid-centre-kills-24-people-zelenskyy
Source: The Daily Economy
by Per Bylund
“As machines take over routine tasks, work might actually become less robotic. When production is cheap, people can be much more entrepreneurial — and more personal.” (11/02/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/ai-empathy-and-entrepreneurship-could-robot-labor-make-the-economy-more-human/
Source: Yahoo! Finance
“The New York Times sued Brave, the 11-year-old, privacy-focused browser company, on Monday, alleging it scraped the outlet’s copyrighted content and unlawfully distributed it to customers the suit names as Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. Separately on Monday, the Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel filed a similar lawsuit. Both were brought in federal court in Manhattan. The New York Times, which has also sued OpenAI and Perplexity over similar claims, likens Brave to a ‘supplier, dealer, and distributor of stolen [sic] copyrighted content’ for AI companies.” (11/02/26)
https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/york-times-other-outlets-sue-191917731.html
Source: The UnPopulist
by Andy Craig
“In 2020, Trump tried to steal a presidential election. This year, he is trying to steal Congress. Once again, it won’t work. Despite his best efforts, he does not have a sufficiently consolidated authoritarian regime, centralized federal control, or enough practical political support to pull it off. But the ineptitude of the attempt should not excuse the gravity of the crime. The president of the United States is attempting, in plain public view and with every power at his disposal, to destroy our democratic republic. He has said as much all year. … When the danger passes, there will be a strong pull to file this away with everything else he tried that didn’t pan out. The courts held, the counties did their jobs, the voters showed up. The country moves on. But the law does not treat failure as an excuse.” (11/02/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-next-congress-must-punish-trumps
