Category: Opinion

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Connor Echols

“Will he or won’t he? The president offered little insight, but built a case for potential Mideast escalation if he chose to do it.” (02/25/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/state-of-the-union-iran/

Source: Quillette
by Brian Stewart

“Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield’s 1978 book The Spirit of Liberalism is a penetrating defence of liberal principles by a conservative political philosopher, but it also reproaches liberals’ failure to resist an onslaught from the radical Left. ‘From having been the aggressive doctrine of vigorous, spirited men, liberalism has become hardly more than a trembling in the presence of illiberalism,’ Mansfield writes. ‘Who today is called a liberal for strength and confidence in defense of liberty?’ More than a half-century later [sic], New York Times columnist Ezra Klein furnishes a good example of the spineless tendency Mansfield identified.” (02/24/26)

https://quillette.com/2026/02/24/ezra-kleins-feeble-liberalism-charlie-kirk-mahmoud-khalil/

Source: The UnPopulist
by Joe Bishop-Henchman

“The administration’s rapid pivot to Section 122 reflects necessity, not legal strength. It rests on redefining a ‘balance-of-payments crisis’ beyond recognition, disregarding its own recent legal positions, and assuming that courts will decline to examine economic realities too closely. That is a fragile foundation for a policy affecting hundreds of billions of dollars in commerce and millions of consumers. And it’s possible he will get away with it. Ultimately, this episode underscores a constitutional reality that no statutory workaround can erase: trade policy belongs to Congress. And unless Congress takes it back, it will not be able to put a definitive end to his tariff mischief.” (02/24/26)

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/trump-has-other-means-to-make-tariff

Source: Town Hall
by Americans for Prosperity

“When the Founders wrote ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’ into the Declaration of Independence, they weren’t guaranteeing comfort, equality of outcome, or a government-managed society. They were making a bolder claim that became the foundation of the American Dream: that people could build meaningful lives if government protected liberty and then got out of the way. That idea still matters today. At its core, the phrase shows trust in the American people. The Founders believed individuals, given freedom and responsibility, could make better choices for their lives than distant officials ever could. Perhaps more important is the idea that, as adults who are created equal, we have inherent dignity that must be recognized by our government. When this dignity is recognized, we can truly thrive as humans and give our best to our families, communities, and workplaces.” (02/25/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/americans-for-prosperity/2026/02/25/what-does-life-liberty-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness-mean-n2671821

Source: Liberal Currents
by Ryan C Smith

“Free and democratic society is not possible when the kings of oil and gas can threaten our stability, pollute our information systems, and poison our politics.” (02/25/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/carbon-and-the-new-imperialism/

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Matthew Guariglia

“The Secretary of Defense has given an ultimatum to the artificial intelligence company Anthropic in an attempt to bully them into making their technology available to the U.S. military without any restrictions for their use. Anthropic should stick by their principles and refuse to allow their technology to be used in the two ways they have publicly stated they would not support: autonomous weapons systems and surveillance.” (02/24/26)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/tech-companies-shouldnt-be-bullied-doing-surveillance

Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness

“The Supreme Court dealt a serious blow to President Trump’s economic agenda by ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn’t allow him to rewrite the U.S. tariff schedule. Mr. Trump immediately invoked a different law to impose a 10% tariff on all countries, followed by threats to raise it to 15%. The White House’s tariff Plan B looks copied from President Biden’s playbook when the court overruled his student-loan forgiveness scheme in 2023 and Mr. Biden began statute shopping for anything to back it. That strategy hit a roadblock in federal court, as a succession of rulings invalidated his attempt to revive the policy under different laws.” (02/24/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/24/section-122-cant-carry-trumps-tariffs/

Source: spiked
by Sean Collins

“In response to his tariff defeat, Trump went on a rant. He called the judges ‘fools and lapdogs.’ Even worse, he questioned their patriotism, going as far as to say they had been ‘swayed by foreign interests.’ This insult was bad even by Trump’s standards, and his talk of ‘foreign Interests’ – without any evidence – can only fuel online conspiracy theorising. The Supreme Court justices were doing their job. On many occasions in the past, including when it came to the president’s personal immunity, the majority has ruled in Trump’s favour. The separation of powers, which places limits on the power of the presidency, is a key principle of the US Constitution. In this regard, the court has been consistent under both Joe Biden and Trump.” (02/24/26)

https://archive.is/yfUEc

Source: Desultory Scribblings
by Tyler Harris

“‘Why do Trump’s supporters keep trying to kill him?’ That’s the question I’ve most seen floating around in the wake of the killing of Austin Martin, a 21-year-old man who attempted to storm the cordon at Mar-a-Lago this past week while wielding a shotgun. It’s mostly rhetorical, but the glib and obvious answers – that Trump’s unique detestability and employment of violent rabble-rousing makes him an alluring target, even for his own acolytes, or that MAGA itself is a mental illness particularly prone even to internal violence – obscure a far more sweeping challenge. The online right has created an incredibly efficient and effective engine for breaking and radicalizing lonely young men.” (02/24/26)

https://tylerjohnharris.substack.com/p/the-online-right-is-radicalizing

Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by Thomas Savidge

“This explainer traces the evolving, mutually dependent relationship between the federal government and the states through four pivotal eras of fiscal transfers: the Antebellum Land Grants, the Civil War, the New Deal, and the Great Society.” (02/24/26)

https://aier.org/article/a-brief-history-of-federal-transfers-to-the-states/