“A Rose Garden announcement triggers panic on Wall Street; then a post on Truth Social sends stock prices soaring. A promise of upcoming news launches a market rally, which slumps when the actual news is delivered that evening. Anyone who follows the stock market is familiar with the phenomenon. In President Donald Trump’s second term — particularly its first few months — his abrupt announcements have driven the stock market in a way that past presidents’ moves have seldom done. And that’s troubling.” (05/18/26)
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Christine E Black
“Distract and minimize, confuse and deny, justify and excuse, become angry or enraged, and call crazy those who speak what others do not want to see or hear. In the throes of cognitive dissonance, people resort to all these ploys to relieve their internal discomfort. These horrible events could not possibly be true; the abuse could not possibly have been this widespread, some insist. Governments could not possibly have covered up this sex criminal’s harms, over decades, regardless of which political party was in power while people investigating are connected to those being investigated, as reported by Whitney Webb.” (05/18/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish
“The Trump administration is building a surveillance network to spy on its own workforce across multiple agencies. It has already given Palantir an initial $3.9 million to do so at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), federal spending disclosures show. The artificial intelligence war profiteer will ‘design, configure, deploy and manage a secure, user-friendly tool to track USDA employees’ return to the office,’ according to a disclosure. The contract started May 1 and has the potential to grow to $13.3 million over the next fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30.” [editor’s note: I have no problem with it … as long as all data collected are viewable by the public in real time – TLK] (05/18/26)
“When Trump ran for president of America, and swore his oath, he was telling the world he would preserve and defend ‘due process of law,’ against all enemies foreign and domestic. Due process of law was one critical principle the great American rebels died and bled and fought to establish as a foundation of America itself. Mr. Trump is engaged in a scheme to be ‘judge in his own case’ against the IRS and you (because you pay the IRS, any dollars awarded in the case are your dollars.) Because the IRS and the DOJ ‘representing’ the IRS in the case both work for the President, Mr. Trump ‘decides’ his own case.” (05/18/26)
Source: Law & Liberty
by Alex J Pollock & Edward J Pinto
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are huge, with $7.8 trillion in assets and $7.6 trillion in liabilities. They are an essential part of the finances of the US government. But we do not find them as part of the government’s consolidated financial statements. We should.” (05/18/26)
“Although Donald Trump has never been modest about his abilities or reluctant to exercise personal power, during his second term in office he has shown clear signs of megalomania.” (05/18/260
Source: ProSocial Libertarians
by Andrew Jason Cohen
“Many people are writing about why Americans have lost trust in universities. There are, of course, financial reasons, including — at least plausibly — the now higher unemployment rates of recent college grads and the ever-increasing cost of tuition. I leave these to the side. I’ve written about this before but here quickly lay out what I see as a major reason for the loss of trust. Start with the fact that many universities have stopped providing the service they were meant to — and historically did — provide. That service? Providing a system of education that creates well rounded individuals capable of independent critical thinking applicable to anything and which expands the intellectual abilities. Those universities have switched to providing career-specific education. Or what they think is career-specific education.” (05/17/26)
“As a psychotherapist, I increasingly see people interpreting political disagreement through a framework usually reserved for emotional threat and psychological harm. Opponents are no longer simply viewed as wrong. They’re experienced as toxic, dangerous, unsafe, narcissistic or morally beyond redemption. Once that shift happens, the emotional intensity rises quickly. People stop feeling like fellow citizens with different ideas and start feeling like threats. … Concepts like ‘trauma,’ ‘safety,’ ‘validation,’ ‘triggering’ and ‘boundaries’ can be useful in the right context. But when applied too broadly, they begin subtly transforming disagreement itself into something psychologically destabilizing. That shift has enormous consequences.” (05/17/26)
