Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“I can’t help but laugh every time I read an account in the mainstream press about how a big drug kingpin has just been killed or captured. Mainstream-press reporters and editorial writers get so excited over the death or capture that they become almost giddy. Their mindset is: ‘Finally — finally! — we are making progress in the drug war!’ Why do I laugh when I see that? Because it is so dumb — so idiotic. How can anyone really buy into this nonsense? I figure it’s a real testament to public schooling’s ability to adversely affect people’s minds. … No killing or capture of any drug lord ever means — or will ever mean — the end of the drug war. It will just keep going on and on.” (02/23/26)
“In dollar terms, the Tax Foundation’s Erica York and Alex Durante found ‘the Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase per US household of $1,000 in 2025.’ Even after Friday’s ruling, ‘the President’s remaining new tariffs under Section 232 amount to average tax increase per US household of $400 in 2026.’ So, any relief, even if only partial, from the Trump administration’s trade war should be welcome news to Americans and for the prosperity around the world encouraged by relatively free trade. But the Supreme Court’s decision also reinforced overall boundaries around presidential power – power that has grown for decades beyond constitutional limits.” (02/23/26)
“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Jesse Jackson, Jr., his father’s namesake and the last person to see his extremely frail dad in the quiet moments before he died. ‘I woke up at about 12:35 a.m., I heard a gasp, and that gasp was my father’s final breath,’ he said in a CBS interview. … ‘That pressure is the inability to live up exactly to who he is, and what he’s been able to accomplish, and I’ve also lived with that my entire life. … At a critical juncture in the centuries-old freedom saga, Jackson helped to write those chapters as heir apparent to Martin Luther King, Jr. Or was he? From the moment King died, there was a general sense that Jackson was pushing himself to be ‘king’ of a movement that never bestowed the crown.” (02/23/26)
“For the past six months or so, Obamacare subsidies for people who buy their own health insurance have been an issue that has loomed over a sharply divided Congress. One reason why the two parties can’t reach some sort of compromise is that neither party has been willing to tackle the three biggest problems that afflict the market the Affordable Care Act created. On the buyer side, we have been trying to force people to buy insurance they would never buy with their own money. On the seller side, we have been trying to force insurers to enroll people they do not want to enroll. And on both sides of the market, we have created perverse incentives that cause costs to be higher and quality lower than would otherwise have been the case.” (02/23/26)
“The Supreme Court has done the country a service by invalidating Trump’s use of IEEPA tariffs. The Section 122 authority he subsequently turned to mandates a uniform tariff, and not one that can be targeted against disfavored countries. Moreover, that authority expires after 150 days, undercutting its utility as a political weapon. Future tariffs under other authorities may be possible, but almost all of them reduce the president’s discretion in imposing them, requiring formal procedures to justify the imposition of the levy. So, Trump has not just lost the foundation of his economic policy; he has also been stripped of a political weapon that he was particularly fond of deploying against friendly countries.” (02/23/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They’re not even trying anymore. US middle east envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday that Iran is ‘probably a week away’ from having the materials necessary to make a nuclear bomb — a line that Iran hawks have been falsely repeating for over three decades. It’s such a transparently bogus claim that even The Jerusalem Post dunked on Witkoff for making it, quipping that ‘The US envoy left out that Iran currently has no access to its material, no machines to enrich it, and no weapons program to use it for any operational purpose.’ This is the guy supposedly assigned by the White House to the task of establishing peace in the middle east, churning out the most fuzzbrained justifications for war with Iran you could possibly imagine.” (02/24/26)
Source: Mother Jones
by Hannah Levintova & Dan Friedman
“In the wake of the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol, Donald Trump and his close associates found themselves mired in lawsuits that, among other things, sought to hold them accountable for inciting the violence that resulted in injuries to more than 140 police officers and likely contributed to the deaths of five. By 2023, the legal fees had ballooned into the millions, all while Trump also was mounting an expensive presidential campaign. At the same time, a charity run by construction heir, private equity mogul, and Trump donor Bill Pulte — who now runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) — made a mysterious, previously unreported donation that raises serious questions about whether it was an effort to quietly funnel money to the legal defense of Trump, other January 6 defendants, or another purpose entirely.” (02/23/26)
“Glenn Hughes’s posthumous book is a reminder of the philosophical sources for the conception of human dignity that ought to define our political tradition.” (02/23/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Harry Phibbs
“Poland was pivotal to the fall of Communism in Europe. The Solidarity protests in the 1980s gave hope that political change was possible, even among those who feared that totalitarian states might prove permanent with their grim monolithic structures. Poland’s subsequent success as a free nation serves as an exemplar to others. What a contrast with Russia, which has also overthrown Communism and remains beset by poverty, tyranny, and an aggressive foreign policy.” (02/23/26)
