“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)
“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)
“Data center panic is fueled by concerns about electricity and water usage. Many Americans wrongly believe that data centers are driving up their electric bill, even though evidence suggests the exact opposite: Data centers may actually decrease electricity costs for their neighbors. Water use fears are even more unreasonable. Data centers don’t actually use all that much water. … California’s almond farms consume 4.2 billion gallons of waters per day, according to Reason‘s Christian Britschgi. Data centers consume just 46 million gallons per day. Those numbers will certainly rise over time, but compared to all the other things that use water — golf courses account for 1.4 billion gallons per day — it’s just a drop in the bucket.” (05/20/26)
“Qualified immunity, which we discussed in part one, is typically an issue only with state and local police. But that’s only because the protections afforded to federal police make them nearly untouchable. Those federal protections are getting more attention as state and federal police increasingly work together on issues like drug enforcement, gangs, and immigration. It used to be that federal agents were few, making their immunities less important. But as federal law enforcement has grown, the importance of these exceptional protections has grown along with it.” (05/20/26)
“The idea of ‘the general welfare’ was a cancer. It has metastasized to include anything the control freaks in government want power over. And, they want to be involved in absolutely everything; those few things they aren’t yet meddling with, they’ll point to and call ‘freedom.’ Until they also take that away. … As for those antiquated justifications for government? Now, government sends its military around the world, creating enemies out of thin air, ultimately threatening the safety of all Americans. They ignored Thomas Jefferson’s advice of trade with all nations; entangling alliances with none, and we’re paying the price. Here at home, you’re now more likely to have your life, liberty, or property violated by a government employee enforcing a rule or ‘law’ than by a freelance criminal.” (05/20/26)
“By every reasonable standard of governance, California’s elected politicians have made a mess of the Golden State. Reciting the litany of failures has become so common that it’s hardly worth the trouble. Chaotic, unsafe downtowns. Retail businesses giving up and relocating. Chronic government budget deficits, despite the nation’s highest taxes, set to go higher still. ‘Needle exchanges’ and ‘safe injection sites,’ funded by taxpayers. Kids encounter drug zombies on the way to school. Parents dodge psychopaths in grocery store parking lots. We’ve heard it all. We’ve seen it all. We’re desensitized. We just avoid certain parts of town the best we can and tell ourselves it can’t be helped. When we choose which candidates to support, we know nothing is going to change.” (05/20/26)
“What do the conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Lebanon have in common? They each demonstrate how technology permits a weak state or even a non-state actor to hold a powerful adversary at bay. They are asymmetric wars, conflicts in which one side fights for its survival while the other has a limited objective. ‘Asymmetric warfare’ is a new term for an old phenomenon. The U.S. gained its independence in an asymmetric war. The small Continental Army and state militias never faced the might of the British Empire …. The U.S. faced a similar dilemma in Vietnam. … The lessons of history did not stop Russia from getting bogged down in Ukraine, the U.S. from attacking Iran or Israel from invading Lebanon. Now, however, technology has enhanced the ability of the weaker adversary to counter the stronger.” (05/20/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jason Edmonds
“Tennessee taxpayers are about to spend millions on a Starbucks order they didn’t ask for. In April, the world’s largest coffee chain announced it would be opening a Southeast corporate office in Music City. The state has done well in attracting businesses, both large and small, through a low-tax, business-friendly environment. Yet those bigger businesses sometimes get a free upgrade, courtesy of state taxpayers, and the Starbucks move is brewing up to be a burn for Tennesseans. Despite the coffee chain’s public and vocal decision to open an office in Tennessee, state leaders act as if Starbucks needs more convincing or as if its profits aren’t ‘grande’ enough to cover office space.” (05/20/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Thomas Massie has lost his congressional seat against a primary opponent whose Israel lobby funding made the race the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history. Massie has been a rare Republican opponent of Israeli abuses on Capitol Hill. The spending on Massie’s ouster topped out at a staggering $32 million when all was said and done. The second- and third-most expensive House primary races were also heavily slanted by Israel lobby funding, with AIPAC pouring millions into toppling progressive Democrats Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. Americans just watched the Israel lobby openly manipulate yet another election, and then in like two weeks they’re going to hear their government tell them they need to regime change another foreign country to bring ‘democracy’ to its people. Americans themselves do not have democracy.” (05/20/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“The Department of Education (ED) is moving out of its headquarters at the Lyndon B. Johnson Building in Washington, D.C., this summer. The Department of Energy (DOE) will be the new tenant. Turns out that because of personnel cuts at the Department of Education, the building is roughly 70 percent vacant. … But in spite of Trump’s executive order and the elimination of half of its workforce, the Department of Education is alive and well.” (05/20/26)
