“A high-ranking counterterrorism official is insisting she ‘did nothing wrong’ after her ex-boyfriend reportedly triggered a watchdog probe over accusations she used him as a ‘sugar daddy’ and demanded he spend thousands to fund her lavish lifestyle. The Daily Mail reported that in December, a divorced business executive identified only as Robert B. matched with 29-year-old Deputy Assistant Homeland Security Secretary for Counterterrorism Julia Varvaro on Hinge, beginning a months-long dalliance that ended with him filing an official complaint with DHS. ‘This is just a mad ex-boyfriend putting crap together. And it’s just really weird,’ Varvaro insisted to the outlet. … Robert B., who appears to be decades older than Varvaro, told the outlet that he shelled out up to $40,000 on her — funding trips to destinations like Italy, San Diego, South Carolina, and Aruba during their three-month romantic entanglement.” (04/22/26)
“Much about our current political era feels unprecedented, especially the sense that the government is targeting people for their political beliefs. In December, President Trump’s Department of Justice ordered the FBI to drastically escalate surveillance of leftist groups. News has also broken that the Biden administration collected data, without a warrant, on Republican senators’ phone calls as part of Jack Smith’s criminal investigation of Jan. 6, taking advantage of inadequate legal protections for data privacy. Republicans and Democrats alike routinely express concern about ‘lawfare,’ the use of unjustified investigations and prosecutions to harass whichever party is out of power. Americans hoping for a deescalation of lawfare should seek to recover the forgotten legacy of the Constitution’s Framers: the safeguards those patriots who knew what it was to be hunted designed for times like these.” (04/22/26)
“U.S. health officials stopped the publication of a study on whether the COVID-19 vaccine was keeping adults from becoming sick enough to have to go to the hospital. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman on Wednesday confirmed the decision to halt publication, citing a dispute about the study’s methodology. The research paper was to appear in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s flagship publication. … the new study concluded that the vaccine cut ER visits and hospitalizations among otherwise healthy adults by about half this past winter, according to The Washington Post, which first reported the cancellation. HHS officials did not say exactly why that methodology was a problem in this instance but argued that prior infection, behavior and differences in who seeks care can affect results.” (04/22/26)
“Millions of Americans were willing to ignore Trump’s destructive personality and growing authoritarianism when they thought his policies would make them rich. In the end, those policies did little more than pick their pockets while enriching Trump’s inner circle of family and friends. The voters who elected him are left to pick up the pieces of their derailed lives as they come to terms with the fact that they were the rubes all along. It’s no wonder his biggest supporters feel duped. … MAGA voters have long believed in taking Trump ‘seriously but not literally.’ This is just another way of saying Trump might lie to other people to advance his own interests, but he would never lie to the supporters who power his political movement. At least some of those faithful Trump supporters are finally ready to admit that they’ve been conned, and there’s no way back to believing the fairy tale.” (04/22/26)
“The Trump administration is in advanced talks about a potential rescue of low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines, which is struggling to exit bankruptcy, people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The discussions underscore one of the unintended consequences of the Iran war launched by Washington: a surge in jet fuel prices that is rippling through the aviation industry, squeezing margins and pushing weaker airlines closer to the brink. Fuel costs have roughly doubled since the conflict began, forcing carriers to raise fares, cut flights and scramble to preserve cash. For Spirit, which was already struggling to turn a profit before the fuel shock, the spike has intensified doubts about whether it can survive on its own. The U.S. government is weighing a financing package that could include lending the airline up to $500 million in exchange for warrants, the Wall Street Journal reported.” (04/22/26)
“Robby Soave gives his radar on San Francisco cracking down on crime in its public transportation system, and how he thinks it can serve as a model for other cities.” (04/22/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“One way of choosing among different forms of punishment is by how much it costs to impose a given cost on the criminal. Consider first execution. The cost to the criminal is one life. That is also, if we ignore the salary of the hangman or the electric bill for the electric chair, both trivial in comparison, the total cost, so the ratio of total cost to amount of deterrence is about one. The same would be true for a corporal punishment such as a flogging. Next consider imprisonment, one of the two common forms of criminal punishment in modern societies.” (04/22/26)
“The one-year anniversary of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) has renewed attention to the financial stability of rural hospitals. The sweeping legislation made significant changes to Medicaid funding and eligibility, effects of which are still coming into focus for rural facilities. But the OBBBA is only the latest chapter in a longer story. The structural forces most responsible for rural hospitals’ financial precarity predate the law by decades.” (04/22/26)
“Two Iranian women remain in immigration detention, [abducted] earlier this month on accusations of being the niece and grandniece of Qasem Soleimani, despite no connection to the late Iranian military commander. Drop Site reviewed Iranian birth records, identification papers, a family will, and other personal documents and found no connection whatsoever to him or his extended family. One of the women is now seriously ill in a Texas facility, her chronic blood condition left effectively untreated. On March 8, right-wing activist Laura Loomer posted on X calling for the deportation of a woman she claimed was Soleimani’s niece. The commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Soleimani was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike, ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump, in Baghdad on January 3, 2020. … On April 3, Hamideh Soleimani Afshar and her daughter, Sarina Hosseiny, [abducted] by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at their home outside Los Angeles.” (04/22/26)
