“A largely ignored, but interesting, development has arisen in the upcoming California gubernatorial contest. It is a viable petition that has been filed with the California Secretary of State that could potentially see Rep. Eric Swalwell, contending for the Democratic nomination in the governor’s race, thrown off the 2026 ballot. The legal case has been brought by California resident, documentarian, and indefatigable investigative reporter Joel Gilbert. Gilbert has been doing yeoman’s work for Gateway Pundit in researching and reporting on Swalwell’s apparent gross misrepresentations in various official documents that are shocking in their brazenness. When considered in light of his aspirations for still higher office, you have to be impressed by Swalwell’s chutzpah, a defining characteristic of politicians on the left.” (01/13/25)
“Despite the widespread expectation that President Donald Trump would end Washington’s entanglement in NATO’s proxy war using Ukraine against Russia, it is increasingly evident that the fundamental features of U.S. policy remain unaltered. Trump personally has sent an array of mixed signals about his intentions. Although he has pressured Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to accept the reality that Kyiv must be willing to make territorial concessions to Moscow in any peace accord, he also has been receptive to Zelensky’s demand that Ukraine be given reliable ‘security guarantees’ in such a settlement. Indeed, during the recent summit meeting between the two leaders, the main point of disagreement appeared to be that Zelensky wanted a commitment lasting 50 years, whereas Trump was prepared to offer only 15 years.” (01/13/26)
Source: Macroeconomic Policy News
by David Beckworth
“The FOMC brought quantitative tightening (QT) to an end at its December 2025 meeting. In doing so, it reaffirmed something that has become increasingly clear over the past decade: the structural size of the Fed’s balance sheet keeps ratcheting higher after each round of QE. It all feels a bit like déjà vu. As Bill Nelson noted, the Fed now believes it needs roughly $3 trillion in reserve balances to operate its floor system, implying a minimum securities portfolio of about $6 1/2 trillion once currency in circulation and the Treasury General Account are taken into account. What stands out is not just the size of that number, but its direction.” (01/13/26)
“Isn’t ‘may you get exactly what you asked for’ one of those ancient Chinese curses? Since we last spoke, prediction markets have gone to the moon, rising from millions to billions in monthly volume. … Degenerate gambling is bad. Insofar as prediction markets have acted as a Trojan Horse to enable it, this is bad. Insofar as my advocacy helped make this possible, I am bad. I can only plead that it didn’t really seem plausible, back in 2021, that a presidential administration would keep all normal restrictions on sports gambling but also let prediction markets do it as much as they wanted. If only there had been some kind of decentralized forecasting tool that could have given me a canonical probability on this outcome! Still, it might seem that, whatever the degenerate gamblers are doing, we at least have some interesting data.” (01/13/26)
“Last month, former European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other officials with European nongovernmental organizations were barred from entering the U.S., in what was described as retaliation for ‘censorship’ of U.S. tech platforms in Europe. In reality, it was the latest in a campaign to force the EU to withdraw two regulatory laws, the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, that U.S. tech firms don’t like. The laws require tech companies to take down illegal content on their platforms, restrict the transfer of user data to multiple platforms run by the same companies, refrain from ‘steering’ users toward their own products, and allow for fair competition in app stores and interoperable social media sites. The travel ban was only the latest in the Trump administration’s special pleading for Big Tech, using threatened tariffs and leverage in trade deals to try to force changes to the EU’s sovereign laws.” (01/13/25)
“The relatively small Somali community in the U.S., estimated at 260,000, has lately been receiving national attention thanks to a massive fraud scandal in Minnesota and the resulting vitriol directed at them by President Trump. Trump’s targeting of Somalis long preceded the current allegations of fraud, going back to his first presidential campaign in 2016. A central theme of Trump’s anti-Somali rancor is that they come from a war-torn country without an effective centralized state, which in Trump’s reasoning speaks to their quality as a people, and therefore, their ability to contribute to American society. It is worth reminding ourselves, however, that Somalia’s state collapse and political instability is as much a result of imperial interventions, including from the U.S., as anything else.” (01/13/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“People across America are lamenting the killing of a nice woman in Minneapolis named Renee Nicole Good at the hands of an ICE agent named Jonathan E Ross. Ross was standing on the side of the car Good was driving when he fired three shots at her and killed her. After the killing, someone exclaimed, ‘Fucking bitch.’ Predictably, federal officials have labeled Good a “terrorist” and have immediately rallied to the defense of the ICE killer. Make no mistake about it: No matter the facts of the case, there will be no criminal prosecution of Ross. Under the immigration police state under which we live, ICE agents, Border Patrol agents, military personnel, and other immigration-enforcement goons wield omnipotent authority to kill anyone they want. That’s the type of country in which we all live. Everyone just needs to get used to it.” (01/13/26)
“In June 2025, Elon Musk helped protesters in Iran by providing free access to his Starlink satellite service. The service restored a means of communicating with each other and the rest of the world that had been blocked when the Iranian government shut down the country’s Internet. The mullahs tend to do that when the pressure on their regime reaches a certain pitch. As has certainly happened again over the last few weeks. Some 500 protesters have been killed so far, according to the group Human Rights Activists in Iran, as the unrest spreads. Again, the Iranian government has shut down the country’s Internet. Is Musk stepping in?” (01/13/26)
“A decade into his capture of our political attention spans, there is no longer anything new that can be said about Donald Trump in a big-picture way about his nature as a person or his larger meaning as a political phenomenon. His audacity, so bold at first, and so lubricated in his second go-round, can no longer shock or surprise; his crudeness, so initially colorful, just fades into the dark background of his actions; his bottomless sea of toddlerish willfulness and grievance, so curious and compelling in 2015–16, becomes as notable as water to a fish. We all swim in Trump now, surrounded by his turbulent, turbid murk, descending to fathomless depths, his surface marking the end of what we can know. Near the end of the first full year of his second administration, Donald Trump has demonstrated his core authoritarianism so completely and consistently that his personal character and comportment peculiarities lose significance.” (01/12/26)
