“The reasons the Trump White House has given in the past for its attempts to pick and choose which journalists are allowed to cover it have varied, but all of them have one thing in common: they cannot be reconciled with the law. Jim Acosta’s press pass was revoked because he continued to ask questions and refused to yield his microphone to another journalist. Brian Karem’s press pass was revoked essentially because he made remarks that were understood as rude and confrontational. The Associated Press was excluded because it used the label ‘Gulf of Mexico,’ rather than ‘Gulf of America.’ But these justifications for exclusion—like the more recent White House complaints about negative news coverage—fail, because they are empty and unworkable under the law.” (09/22/26)
“In their words and deeds, American politicians of both parties have confirmed what the polls show: Trump’s ‘populist’ tariffs are historically unpopular. Several lessons emerge. First, after winning on an affordability message in 2024, Trump’s early-term decision to repeatedly embrace a policy that, in both design and result, raises domestic prices was an epic political blunder. Voters now widely distrust Republicans’ handling of the economy. And defending tariffs by deriding inflation-weary Americans’ desire to have cheap and abundant goods added literal insult to injury. Second, voters’ hostility toward tariffs today reflects an important policy reality: Things that might sound good in a theoretical vacuum are often rejected when their real and predictable trade-offs become apparent.” (09/22/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“Given the judiciary’s longstanding reluctance to second-guess presidential power grabs involving national security, the national-security state has repeatedly used that deference to expand both its own reach and the power of the presidency. Call something a matter of national security and the normal rules start disappearing: Courts defer. Congress retreats. Secrecy expands. Executive power grows. ‘National security’ has been used as the justification for surveillance, secret courts, classification, warrantless spying, military intervention, watchlists, detention, border searches, censorship claims and the concealment of government misconduct. That game is hardly new. Nixon played it. Bush played it. Obama played it. Biden played it. Trump may not have invented the national-security dodge, but he has taken it to increasingly absurd extremes.” (09/22/26)
“If Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz is a knife to international oil shipping’s throat, Houthi control of the Bab el-Mandeb is a firm grip on international oil shipping’s testicles. US president Donald Trump, it seems, would rather the Houthis didn’t squeeze. Or maybe he’s just trying to conserve limited military resources for continued war with Iran. Either way, when Saudi terror kingpin … er, Crown Prince … Mohammed bin Salman requested a new round of US airstrikes, the answer was ‘no, not this time.’ And either way, that’s the right answer.” (09/22/26)
“JD Vance’s admiration for Huey Long reveals how readily today’s populist right embraces the high spending and economic control it once condemned on the left.” (09/22/26)
“It is one of those bad ideas that seem compelling at first: If you’re running low on an essential item, why sell what little you have? And few items are more essential to a modern economy than diesel fuel. It powers trucks, trains, and boats, all of which are vital to moving goods from place to place. As diesel gets more expensive—it has never been more expensive than it is right now, in nominal terms—everything that must travel via truck, train, or boat gets more expensive too. This is no fun for anyone. Some Republicans think they have hit upon an easy solution: stop exporting diesel. … So far, the White House has not taken action. That’s good. Despite how it might seem, a ban on diesel exports would likely worsen an already bad situation by driving diesel prices higher.” (09/22/26)
“A bombshell interview with acclaimed Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza shows why you can’t trust almost any reporting on Hamas, Israel’s war in Gaza, or the basic facts of life under the terror group. Azaiza has been feted by topline news outlets from CNN to CBS to The Guardian, named GQ’s 2023 Middle East Man of the Year, and cheered by the likes of YouTube sensation Ms. Rachel, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). But in an hours-long taped interview, he’s now opted to tell truths he’d been hiding. He admits that he suppressed videos of Palestinian war crimes against Israeli hostages: During Hamas’ triumphal march of its kidnapees, ‘people got out, watched, beat them, hit them, and I followed them and filmed. But I did not publish those videos.’ He met with then-Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh but asked that all evidence of it be deleted.” (09/22/26)
“Open the financial pages and a strange creature stares back at you. The S&P 500 has climbed over 90 percent in three years. The top 10 percent of earners now account for nearly half of all consumer spending. Moody’s, Morgan Stanley, and the New York Fed agree on the shape of the thing: the economy has split in two. Asset-holders ride the upper arm of the ‘K’ upward while wage earners slide down the lower one, watching groceries, rent, and insurance devour paychecks that no longer stretch. The commentators have responded the way they respond to everything: with a label. Call it ‘K-shaped’ often enough in the news and the naming starts to feel like an explanation. It is not. … The label tells us what is happening. It tells us nothing about why.” (09/22/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“It’s tempting to convince oneself that America’s system of immigration controls adversely affects only foreigners. Not so. It also destroys the rights and freedoms of the American people, including economic liberty, freedom of association, liberty of contract, privacy, and private ownership of property. Moreover, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, a brutal nationwide police state, including massive surveillance, is the opposite of a free society.” (09/22/26)
“The United States, Denmark, and the semiautonomous Danish territory of Greenland are poised to sign a new deal on the Arctic island’s future. In an announcement on Friday, President Donald Trump lauded the step as ‘a dream come true for the United States of America’. The response from other leaders has been low-key, but positive, with an apparent consensus that it’s time to move on from the instability caused by U.S. threats of a forcible takeover of Greenland. In addition, this development shows that behind-the-scenes diplomacy can still be effective, even in an atmosphere of decreasing trust among allies. ‘A win for quiet professionalism’ that has also made the Arctic ‘a safer place for America and its allies’, is how The Economist describes this news.” (09/21/26)
