Source: Yahoo! News
“Donald Trump has withdrawn his support for the handover of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius because the UK will not agree to the US military using British bases to attack Iran, it has been reported. The Times newspaper reports that the White House is drawing up detailed military plans for a strike against Iran. The plans are understood to involve the use of the Diego Garcia base, in the Chagos Islands, and RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire. The English base is home to America’s fleet of heavy bombers in Europe. These bases can only be used for military operations that have been agreed in advance with the UK Government, under long-standing agreements between the US and UK.” (02/19/26)
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uk-refuses-let-donald-trump-171737565.html
Source: The Dispatch
by Ilya Somin
“Sanctuary cities and states have been a major focus of political conflict in the second Trump administration, perhaps even more than in the first. These jurisdictions refuse or severely limit assistance to federal efforts to detain and deport suspected illegal immigrants. Most only provide such assistance in cases involving undocumented migrants who have committed serious crimes. Regardless of the politics, the 10th Amendment protects sanctuary jurisdictions from compulsion by the federal government. And their policies are also well justified on moral and pragmatic grounds. This is particularly true at a time when many federal immigration enforcement efforts are cruel and illegal.” (02/19/26)
https://archive.is/Ui3TQ
Source: The Fifth Column
“Ambiguity in the Age of Outrage (w/ Jon Meacham).” (02/19/26)
https://www.wethefifth.com/p/ambiguity-in-the-age-of-outrage-w
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“The US trade imbalance widened sharply in December 2025, highlighting continued challenges in America’s economic relationship with the world and with key economic competitor China, according to a release from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday. For the full year 2025, the US recorded a goods and services trade deficit of US$901.5 billion, a modest decline of 0.2 per cent from 2024, one of the largest since 1960. The total goods and services deficit in 2024 was US$903.5 billion, the report showed. According to the new data, the US goods and services deficit rose to US$70.3 billion in December, a sharp increase of 32.6 per cent from November’s revised US$53.0 billion. Exports fell slightly while imports increased, widening the gap as global demand shifted in the final months of the year.” (02/19/26)
https://archive.is/f0mga
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp
“The premise of socialism is ‘worker control of the means of production,’ and the gig economy is far and away the most successful experiment in human history when it comes to achieving that. Gig workers own their tools. Gig workers set their own hours. Gig workers choose who they work for, where they work, and what kind of work they do. Gig workers even set their own salaries by accepting the individual tasks that meet their pay requirements and rejecting those that don’t. Mamdani and friends hate that worker control with a passion. To them, worker happiness and welfare only matter to the extent that they can claim credit for, and gain power from, that happiness and welfare. … if anyone, anywhere, somehow manages to make a living without Mamdani’s permission, why, that’s ‘exploitation.'” (02/19/26)
https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20384
Source: Associated Press
“A federal judge has accused the Trump administration of terrorizing immigrants and recklessly violating the law in its efforts to deport millions of people living in the country illegally. Citing the [murders] of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, the judge said that the White House had also ‘extended its violence on its own citizens.’ … [U.S. District Judge Sunshine] Sykes said the administration had violated her December ruling that found it was illegally denying many detained immigrants a chance for release. She ordered the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to provide them with notice that they may be eligible for bond and then give them access to a phone to call an attorney within an hour. She also threw out a September ruling by an immigration court that the administration had cited for continuing its mandatory detention policy.” (02/19/26)
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-trump-detention-bond-judge-50a5da122aa51eed77cace0830548df3
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“[P]eople hate crime and think it’s going up. But actually, crime barely affects most people and is historically low. So what’s going on? In our discussion yesterday, many commenters proposed that the discussion about ‘crime’ was really about disorder. Disorder takes many forms, but its symptoms include litter, graffiti, shoplifting, tent cities, weird homeless people wandering about muttering to themselves, and people walking around with giant boom boxes shamelessly playing music at 200 decibels on a main street where people are trying to engage in normal activities. When people complain about these things, they risk getting called a racist or a ‘Karen.’ But when they complain about crime, there’s still a 50-50 chance that listeners will let them finish the sentence without accusing them of racism. … might this explain why people act like crime is rampant and increasing, even when it’s rare and going down?” (02/19/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/crime-as-proxy-for-disorder
Source: CoinTelegraph
“Monthly transaction volume on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a secondary layer for BTC that enables payment use cases, surpassed the $1 billion milestone in November 2025, according to a report from Bitcoin financial services company River. … The Bitcoin Lightning Network helps scale the Bitcoin network, enabling Bitcoin payments between parties that settle in seconds instead of minutes, encouraging Bitcoin’s use as a medium of exchange, instead of just a risk asset or store of value.” (02/19/26)
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-lightning-network-1b-monthly-volume
Source: EconLog
by Jon Murphy
“Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is upending professions as diverse as art, cinema, accounting, national defense, and education. Some even argue that AI will render almost all work obsolete. They say its ability to ‘think’ and accomplish tasks previously solely in the realm of human ability will mean that humans will not need to work; the machines will do everything for us. Whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing depends on the story one wants to tell.” (02/19/26)
https://www.econlib.org/econlog/ai-technology-and-work
Source: USA Today
“President Donald Trump accused Barack Obama of disclosing classified information in comments the former president made recently about aliens, then acknowledged hours later the ‘tremendous interest’ in the topic and said he was ordering the government to release more information. ‘He gave classified information, he’s not supposed to be doing that,’ Trump told reporters Feb. 19 aboard Air Force One, adding Obama’s comments were a ‘big mistake.’ Podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen asked Obama if aliens are real in an interview published Feb. 14 and the former president replied: ‘They’re real, but I haven’t seen them.'” (02/19/26)
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/02/19/donald-trump-barack-obama-aliens-real-classified-information/88762872007/
