Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Cindy Cohn & Betty Gedlu
“For years, EFF has pushed technology companies to make real human rights commitments—and to live up to them. In response to growing evidence that Palantir’s tools help power abusive immigration enforcement by ICE, we sent the company a detailed letter asking how the promises in its own human rights framework extends to that work. This post explains what we asked, how Palantir responded, and why we believe those responses fall short.” (04/20/26)
“When we had shipping expert Sal Mercogliano on our Organized Money podcast, he said that for every day the Strait of Hormuz is shut down to traffic, it’ll take a week to untangle the problem afterward. Yesterday was day 52 of the crisis, so that’s a year on the back end, even if it ended imminently. So get used to more from us at Aftermath, as we detail the consequences before the fighting even stops. Tell your friends and scroll through previous editions at prospect.org/aftermath. We are [still at war]. My colleague Bob Kuttner ran down the latest as of yesterday afternoon. The fundamental problem is that this war turned the Strait of Hormuz into a bargaining chip, and both sides want to use that chip by closing the strait, which continues to punish the global economy with price spikes and shortages.” (04/21/26)
“In recent weeks, a growing number of Democrats and progressives have called on federal officials to invoke the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to remove President Donald Trump from office. Even some of Trump’s most stalwart onetime allies are joining in. While it may feel good to wishcast about booting Trump from the presidency, the 25th Amendment is perhaps the most unlikely strategy possible.” (04/20/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by James Bovard
“Presidents perennially claim that they possess their power thanks to ‘the consent of the governed.’ This phrase, a signature line of the Declaration of Independence, has echoed in official declarations ever since Jefferson’s time. President Harry Truman assured Congress in 1952, ‘No government can be invested with a higher dignity and greater worth than one based upon the principle of consent.’ But this has long since been a charade. As the federal government has become far larger and more heavy-handed, it is ever more important to persuade people that they consented to their oppression. But political consent is gauged very differently than consent in other areas of life.” (04/20/26)
“I might not win an argument explaining how San Jose’s public surveillance relates to the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. But. … That amendment insists that people have a right ‘to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,’ and that governments may not search and seize property without a warrant ‘upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.’ … I’m biased: mass surveillance is Orwellian. Do we want our government keeping track of us that much? Especially as in San Jose, where not only can over a thousand police department employees scour the data sans any legal warrant, but the department also shares this resource with over 300 agencies across the state. Creepy. That’s the word for it.” (04/20/26)
“Supporters of the income tax implicitly endorse the idea that our rights are gifts from government and, thus, can be revoked by government at the will of our rulers. Adoption of the income tax signified the abandonment of the belief that individuals have inalienable rights granted them by the Creator. Therefore, those who believe in natural rights must reject income taxation. It is also a violation of the people’s rights when the central bank reduces the value of the dollar, and thus the people’s purchasing power, via the hidden inflation tax.” (04/20/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Philippe Lemieux
“Modern economic policies increasingly give an impression of unreality. Governments announce reassuring indicators while individuals experience something entirely different: persistent inflation, housing shortages, stagnating purchasing power. This gap is not merely an analytical error. It reveals a deeper problem: the state no longer reacts to economic reality as it is lived, but to a reconstructed version built from models, indicators, and abstract categories. The market, by contrast, does not rely on representation. It emerges directly from human action.” 904/20/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“We all sense it deep in our marrow. We all know something has gone terribly wrong. If you lived in an alternate reality without wars or poverty, where everyone had enough and governments did what’s in the interests of the people and the ecosystem, it would never occur to you that there was anything odd about it. It would feel completely normal. Things would be more or less how you’d expect them to be. You can’t say the same about the present status quo. The whole thing instinctively scans as weird and counterintuitive. The more you learn about the way the world works, the more insane it all looks to you. Have you ever had to explain war to a young child? It’s terrible. If you’re actually honest with them about what war is and why it is waged, it completely shatters their understanding of the world.” (04/20/26)
“The unprovoked joint U.S.-Israeli war launched against Iran on 28 February 2026 will manifestly change West Asia. When it ends, Arab despots, who allowed their countries to be used as platforms for aggression against Iran, will confront a new reality. The safety and stability they thought was theirs based on fealty to the United States and its Israeli proxy was shattered as Iranian missiles and drones were en route to destroy the U.S. military and intelligence installations they had allowed on their soil; a subordination they falsely believed would protect them. The Arab world is learning the hard way what the late-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in his cold logic, implied decades ago about American foreign policy: ‘The word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.'” (04/20/26)
