“In recent weeks, the Trump administration has ordered members of the military and the National Guard onto the streets of American cities, including Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago. The purported reasons for these decisions have been to protect federal agents and federal property, but the threat of using the troops for general domestic law enforcement looms large, with President Trump repeatedly threatening to do just that. … Under American law, when members of the military violate citizens’ rights in law enforcement, it is much harder, if not impossible, for those victims to receive monetary compensation for the harms they suffer than it is when they suffer wrongs by state or local police — though it’s already hard enough in those cases. Indeed, using the military in domestic law is entirely incompatible with our nation’s current remedial legal architecture.” (11/18/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Diyar Kasymov
“Is building more homes not enough? Recently, there have been more and more Gen-Z memes about boomers selling their overvalued houses to Blackrock instead of to young couples, and then the corporation rents the house to the couple for 2x the price. The housing crisis is not a false alarm. The median rent price went up 25 percent in just 6 years. This is a serious economic problem for America. Many young people are already being radicalized by this, as they are willing to elect socialist Zohran Mamdani — who called for abolition of private property once — as the mayor of New York City. But what can we do? Are rent controls now relevant, as globalization and financialization changed the rules of the game? Can European-style social-democrats like Mamdani, Bernie, and AOC control the markets elegantly enough to maximize supply?” (11/18/25)
“For at least a century, American businesses have been using charm pricing to fool us into thinking that a $9.99 meal is much cheaper than $10. One study says the practice increases sales by 24%.” (11/18/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Many years ago, when I was practicing law in Texas, I learned that there were, generally speaking, two types of lawyers …. The first type of lawyer would carefully research the issue and give his honest, independent-minded opinion as to the legality of the proposed action, even if it wasn’t what the client wanted to hear. … The second type of lawyer would instead come up with whatever legal reasoning was necessary to please the client …. When it comes to President Trump’s and the Pentagon’s extra-judicial drug-war killings in the Caribbean, there is little or no doubt that the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice falls into the second category.” (11/18/25)
“Last spring, as I was ending my time at the U.S. Treasury as an oversight official monitoring the IRS’s IT modernization efforts, one initiative by the Trump administration gave me hope that progress would be made after I left: trimming federal contracts with large consulting firms. … after decades of dependence on outside firms to do their work for them, many government agencies can no longer even function without them. They are suffering from something called ‘vendor capture,’ and it’s one of the most underexamined barriers to meaningful change in federal operations.” (11/18/25)
“When I began TomDispatch in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, believe me, the world did not look good. But I guarantee you one thing: if you had told me then that, almost a quarter of a century later, the president of the United States would be Donald J. Trump (and had explained to me just who he was), I would have thought you an idiot first class or totally mad! Donald J. Trump as president of the United States, not just once, but twice? In what century? On what planet? You must be kidding! (And what a dreadful joke at that!) Now, of course, I would have to put all of that in the past tense (and probably add yet more exclamation points)!!” (11/18/25)
“Cooperation is both the most fragile and the most necessary condition of political life. It is fragile because individuals and groups often pursue short-term gains at others’ expense, yet it is essential because no political community endures without mutual accommodation and understanding. Politics, as Aristotle taught, is the art of living together — not the sum of private interests but the shared effort to sustain a common life. The enduring question is how cooperation survives amid constant temptations to betray, deceive, or act unilaterally. One answer lies in reciprocity.” (11/18/25)
“The Democrats’ lurch to the left is accelerating at warp speed — and Connecticut is the latest victim. The state legislature’s Democratic supermajority last week rammed through a bill that’s a thinly disguised socialist wishlist. Cynically couched as a remedy for the affordable housing crisis, its real purpose is ideological: forcing Connecticut’s 169 towns to achieve what the bill calls ‘economic diversity.’ Translation: If you’ve worked hard to own a home in a leafy suburb with quiet streets, you can’t live there unless everybody can — including those with low incomes and even the homeless. The state, through regional councils, will dictate how many people at each income level a town must house. The councils are mere middlemen, a cosmetic addition to paper over a fundamental loss of local control.” (11/17/25)
“On a cloudy Wednesday in mid-April, Jared and Laurie Berezin, a couple in their 40s from Maynard, Massachusetts, pulled their car into the Macy’s parking lot at the Burlington Mall. Carrying a sign that said, ‘Just Say No To Harassing Immigrants, the two stood by themselves outside Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s New England Regional Headquarters. One week later, there were five people. Six weeks after that, there were 60. Earlier this month, at the 29th consecutive Wednesday protest, there were more than 700. Singing and chanting, the crowd of grandmothers, ministers, war veterans, nuclear physicists, retirees, and many others offered hope and support as a handful of immigrants arrived for their deportation hearings. Using bullhorns, they decried injustices happening inside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where hundreds of immigrants, many with no criminal records, have been detained for multiple days since January.” (11/18/25)
