“Trump and Miller understand that immigration is most valuable to them as a source of perpetual outrage and political mobilization. A humane, functional immigration system would be a liability, not an achievement, because it would deprive them of the issue. Trump literally instructed his party to back away from immigration legislation — legislation that included everything his side had been asking for — so that the issue would retain its political salience and he could continue to campaign on it. The Alligator Alcatraz cruelty thus satisfies the ideological commitment while simultaneously keeping the cameras on how Trump is steamrolling the undocumented, one merch push and viral image at a time.” (05/20/26)
“In a blow to the White House, Senate Republicans will remove a $1 billion Secret Service funding request that would help President Donald Trump’s ballroom project from their immigration enforcement funding bill amid internal objections. … The decision to omit the security funding came after twin blows: Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled over the weekend that the provision didn’t comply with the strict rules governing what Republicans can put in their filibuster-skirting bill because it funded activities outside of the Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction. And several GOP senators aired public concerns about including any ballroom funding in a bill otherwise dedicated to immigration enforcement.” (05/20/26)
“Before demanding more money from America’s wealthiest, lawmakers should account for the billions of dollars the federal government wastes each year.” (05/20/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Matthew Harwood
“By the time of his death and subsequent desecration, Paine had fallen out of the American pantheon of Founding Fathers, reviled as an alcoholic infidel. But as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of both Common Sense and the American independence his pen sparked, Paine deserves his due and our gratitude. Without the words of Paine, the most modern of the Founding Fathers, there may be no United States of America to even celebrate today.” (05/20/26)
“The US has charged former Cuban leader Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill US nationals and other crimes over the downing of two planes between Cuba and Florida in 1996. The case unveiled on Wednesday – a revival of charges originally from 2003 – accuses Castro and five others in the shooting down of an aircraft belonging to Cuban American group Brothers to the Rescue and killing four people, including three Americans. Castro, now 94, was the head of the country’s armed forces and faced international condemnation over the crash.” [editor’s note: There’s significant debate over whether the aircraft were in the Cuban regime’s claimed airspace, but no debate whatsoever about the fact that they weren’t in the US regime’s claimed airspace. Also, let’s talk about the recent US regime’s publicly confessed murders of boat crews, also outside areas of US jurisdiction – TLK] (05/20/26)
“The term ‘libertarian’ first emerged in the 1850s as a self-description for a French anarcho-communist who thought private property and the state were two sides of the same coin. By 1913, Charles Sprading was using it to describe a tent that included Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Single-Taxers, Anarchists, and Women’s Rights advocates. By the mid-twentieth century, under the influence of Leonard Read and the Foundation for Economic Education, it had narrowed to mean support for free markets and limited government. By the 1970s, the Nozick-Rand-Rothbard synthesis had narrowed it further still — to a particular form of rationalist, rights-based, free-market absolutism. Then, in the 1990s and 2000s, the label fragmented again. Bleeding-heart libertarians, left-libertarians, paleolibertarians, neoreactionaries — all under the same tent, none in agreement about what the tent contains. The current crackup isn’t an aberration. It’s what libertarianism has always done.” (05/20/26)
“Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Rosneft-owned Syzran oil refinery in Samara region overnight, Ukrainian military and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Thursday. ‘Another Ukrainian long-range sanction against Russian oil refining – and we are continuing this line of action,’ Zelenskiy said on the Telegram messaging app. … Two people were killed in a drone attack on the town of Syzran in Samara region, the local governor said, without mentioning whether any infrastructure was damaged in the attack. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces said the attack caused a large fire at the refinery, whose annual processing capacity ranges from 7 to 8.9 million tons of crude oil.” (05/21/26)
“For a long time, Representative Thomas Massie confidently defied an ironclad law of modern Republican politics — that to oppose President Trump was to start a ticking clock on your electoral career. ‘I’m not worried about losing,’ he told me last spring inside the Capitol, as he explained to a group of reporters the strength of his support within his Kentucky district. … last night Massie met the same fate as so many of Trump’s Republican critics: He lost his primary. … For months leading up to the primary, Massie had held up his race as an important test case for the Trump era: If he could criticize the president and win anyway, his victory would embolden other Republicans to speak out and vote against Trump when they felt compelled to, loosening his viselike grip on the party.” (05/20/26)
