Source: Independent Institute
by Christopher J Calton
“It is that time of year when the United States counts its homeless population. Every January, local governments conduct a point-in-time (PIT) count, which provides a snapshot of the homeless population on a given day. Since 2007, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has published this data to track changes in the homelessness population at the national level. The PIT count is useful. Because data is collected annually using a standard method, we can compare the effects of competing policies across time and place. Critics often complain that the PIT fails to capture everybody who briefly experiences homelessness throughout the year, but this does not undermine the data’s analytical value as long as the counts take place under uniform conditions. For the most part, this is the case.” (01/30/26)
“Donald Trump has often threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act as a tool for using the military against his domestic opponents. Many observers believe this became more likely after the Supreme Court ruled against his efforts to federalize state National Guard units and use them for domestic law enforcement under a different statute. The conventional wisdom on the Insurrection Act is that the president is entitled to broad judicial deference if he invokes it. In an important new article, Prof. Josh Braver (University of Wisconsin) argues that the conventional wisdom is wrong.” (01/30/26)
“A foundational element of our legal system is that our courts recognize, as Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in Marbury v. Madison, that ‘where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy … whenever that right is invaded.’ This legal principle was supposed to ensure, among other things, that individuals could fight back, receive compensation, and discourage government abuses whenever a government agent or agency had violated their rights. As profound as Marshall’s words sound on paper, today they ring hollow for victims of constitutional abuses and other wrongdoing by employees of the federal government.” (01/30/26)
“As the Supreme Court prepares a landmark ruling about the scope of presidential power, the current president is acting more unleashed than any predecessor. He is demonstrating that a president not self-restrained by his or her constitutional conscience is almost unrestrainable. The court case concerns whether presidents have the power to remove, for any reason, all principal officers of executive agencies exercising significant executive power. The ruling will emphatically bolster or substantially quarantine the ‘unitary executive theory.'” (01/30/26)
“An explosion tore through an apartment building Saturday in Iran ‘s port city of Bandar Abbas, killing a 4-year-old girl as local media footage purportedly showed a security force member being carried out by rescuers. The blast happened a day before a planned naval drill by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil traded passes. Already, the U.S. military had warned Iran not to threaten its warships or commercial traffic in the strait, on which Bandar Abbas sits. State television quoted a local fire official as blaming the blast on a gas leak. Another explosion blamed on a gas explosion Saturday in the southwestern city of Ahvaz killed five people, state media reported.” (01/31/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Patrick Frise
“The scale of fraud uncovered in recent years has exposed how government transfer programs function, even as meaningful public or legislative reckoning remains largely absent. What began as a series of pandemic-related scandals has revealed something broader and more troubling: large-scale fraud is not an anomaly within the modern welfare state. The federal government, taxpayers, lose between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, based on data from 2018 to 2022. It is a predictable outcome of systems that distribute vast sums of money without market discipline, rely on third-party payment structures, and diffuse responsibility across layers of bureaucracy.” (01/30/26)
“Local law enforcement sprang into action Saturday morning after a kangaroo was spotted on a major highway in central Virginia. The Nelson County Sheriff’s Office said deputies were dispatched to the intersection of Thomas Nelson Highway and Oak Ridge Road near the unincorporated community of Arrington after receiving a report of a kangaroo blocking traffic. … Officers safely steered the kangaroo off the roadway and onto nearby private property before tracking down the animal’s owner, according to authorities. ‘When the owner arrived, he shot the animal with a tranquilizer dart to subdue the animal,’ Nelson County Sheriff Mark Embrey told Fox News Digital.” (02/01/26)
