“What does it mean to be ‘insubordinate?’ Put simply, insubordination entails a person who’s lower on some ladder of authority defying the orders of someone who’s higher on that ladder. Trump clearly believes in the existence of such a ladder, upon which he enjoys higher ranking than, and authority over, mere mortals. Especially journalists. And most especially female journalists. … In reality, Trump’s only subordinates (with respect to his position as president of the United States) are employees of the federal government’s executive branch. Literally everyone else in the country is either his equal or his superior.” (11/20/25)
“‘Big Brother is watching you.’ These chilling words from George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, 1984, no longer read as fiction but are becoming a bleak reality in the UK and Canada — where digital dystopian measures are unravelling the fabric of freedom in two of the West’s oldest democracies. Under the guise of safety and innovation, the UK and Canada are deploying invasive tools that undermine privacy, stifle free expression, and foster a culture of self-censorship. Both nations are exporting their digital control frameworks through the Five Eyes alliance, a covert intelligence-sharing network uniting the UK, Canada, US, Australia, and New Zealand, established during the Cold War.” (11/20/25)
“There were multiple times in history when men have attempted to create and sustain limited government. This is little more than tolerating something that is inherently intolerable. Many ways have been sought and tried to limit the power of government, to prevent the rise of the all-powerful state. However, humans are perversely ingenious and are inventive when it comes to enslaving their fellows. And in convincing the slaves that they are still free. … We propose that until and unless we change matters drastically, there is NO limited government in the future of the Fifty States. It is a myth that limited government exists now, and we will continue to see more and more power, more and more control, in the hands of monsters in human form.” (11/20/25)
“Roots of Progress Institute founder Jason Crawford recently hosted me at an Interintellect salon. Our topic was the relation between glamour and progress, inspired by my Works in Progress article. At one point Jason asked a provocative question: Why did the anti-Promethean backlash happen when it did? Earlier periods of technological and economic progress, he noted, had produced demands for more progress, not less. What was different about America circa 1970? In the WiP article, I point to a combination of complacency among those who’d grown up amid postwar plenty and dissatisfaction with technocratic overreach. But why the complacency? Why not a demand for even more? My article didn’t consider that question.” (11/20/25)
“What kind of goods and experiences comprise a ‘normal life?’ In 1900, Henry George thought millionaires lived abnormally because they had telephones in their bedrooms. Looking back, it’s remarkable how quickly the abnormal becomes ordinary. Today, even the poorest people — not only in rich countries but also in developing ones — carry a phone (which does much more than ring) in their pocket. That’s one of the miracles of the free market. French sociologist Gabriel Tarde noticed that forks and spoons were once luxuries reserved for the elite, but by his time had become universal. Ludwig von Mises drew inspiration from Tarde’s insight, calling it one of capitalism’s greatest virtues: the transformation of luxuries into necessities.” (11/20/25)
“Rooting out terrorism and antisemitism was the supposed reason that plainclothed ICE agents arrested doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, after she coauthored an op-ed calling on Tufts University to divest from companies with ties to Israel due to the killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians. There is an international movement to boycott, sanction, and divest from Israel, but in the United States, President Donald Trump is imperiling the freedom even to publicly discuss such ideas, which should, in effect, be considered a test case for his larger attack on free speech. So far, the test is going well for Trump. In what seems a long time ago, in 2024, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, released a blueprint for what it called ‘a national strategy to combat antisemitism’ by addressing what it described as ‘America’s virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American pro-Palestinian movement’.” (11/20/25)
“American industry has been getting a lot of hands-on direction from Democrats and Republicans for quite some time now. Every few years, someone looks at the underwhelming results of this economic maneuvering and insists that real ‘industrial policy’ has never been tried. The truth is that the left’s call for a ‘mission-oriented’ state and the right’s yearning for a nationalist industrial revival may sound different, but they share the same conceit: that their own intentions can finally succeed where decades of intervention have failed.” (11/20/25)
Source: Semafor
by Burgess Everett & Eleanor Mueller
“The rifts between Trump and the rest of the GOP are piling up. Indiana Republicans are declining to rewrite their congressional maps at the behest of the president, sparking a wave of redistricting regret on Capitol Hill. Trump’s pitch to eliminate Affordable Care Act subsidies is also drawing skepticism within the party, as is his bid to jam a moratorium on state AI regulations into a must-pass defense bill. Republicans spurned Trump’s plans to import Argentine beef and shunned suggestions like a 50-year mortgage. Then there’s the nearly unanimous bicameral vote to compel the Trump administration to release Jeffrey Epstein files and the Senate’s rejection of Trump’s personal appeal to gut the filibuster. … the fresh GOP resistance marks a new phase for a party that muscled through much of Trump’s agenda this summer with zero Democratic votes and quickly confirmed his Cabinet.” (11/20/25)
“Ecuador, once one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America, is now one of its most dangerous. The murder rate in 2020 was 7.7 homicides per 100,000 people. That was roughly comparable to the United States where it was 6.4 that year. In nearby Brazil, on the other hand, it was 22.3. By 2023, Ecuador’s homicide rate had leapfrogged over its neighbors to an astounding 46 per 100,000. In a mere three years, the number of murders had increased six-fold. The reason: narco-traffickers. Ecuador had become a convenient transshipment hub, and various gangs were warring over territory, particularly in coastal cities. In 2023, in a presidential election that featured the assassination of one of the candidates, Ecuadorians voted in Daniel Noboa, an undistinguished but telegenic conservative politician who promised an iron-fist approach to fighting drug kingpins. His tactics boiled down to unleashing the military to attack specific gangs.” (11/20/25)
“After years of deliberation, a bipartisan consensus is coalescing on the need for Congress to help states protect their Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs against improper payments and outright fraud, which cost the federal government, states, and taxpayers an estimated $135 billion during the COVID-19 pandemic alone. … An effective reform package would focus on fixing how UI administration is funded and establish new program guardrails. Congress can ensure that state UI agencies make use of more federal revenue raised specifically for program administration while offsetting past administrative funding lost to inflation.” (11/20/25)
