“Is it too much to ask for immigrants who love America and its system of government? That’s a question that President Trump has been asking, with an especially high level of vitriol, in the wake of the horrific shooting of members of the National Guard in Washington, DC, the day before Thanksgiving. In a corker of a Truth Social post announcing ‘a permanent pause’ in immigration from Third World countries, Trump went after Minneapolis-area Rep. Ilhan Omar, and for good reason. Omar stands for everything we shouldn’t want an immigrant to be — ungrateful, hostile to the American system as such, and perhaps not above perpetrating immigration fraud. Maybe the next time that Omar is a refugee from a war-torn, desperately poor African country looking for a safe haven in the West, she should try Canada or Australia.” (12/02/25)
“Americans have been paying property taxes since the colonial era — and complaining about them for just as long. It’s about as American as you can get. (The paying and the complaining.) These days, the complaints are getting louder, with calls for abolition. The objections are understandable: far too often, local government officials have failed to reduce rates as assessed values have skyrocketed, yielding large unlegislated tax increases. Reforms are warranted. But repeal? It may be asking too much for most people to like property taxes, but all policy choices involve trade-offs, and for those who care about economic efficiency, neutrality, decentralization, and government accountability, the property tax deserves to be rated highly, if not in absolute terms, at least relative to the alternatives.” (12/01/25)
“One of the questions I get asked the most goes like this: When are Republican elected officials finally going to start standing up to Donald Trump? And my answer is always the same: As soon as Republican base voters start to turn on him. Well, we may be there — or heading in that direction. … In Gallup’s poll last month, Trump was at 91% among Republicans. Now he’s at 84%. Look, this isn’t the end of the world. If Trump stays in the mid to high 80s among Republican base voters, it is very unlikely there will be a stampede of elected GOP officials breaking with him publicly. But that trend line is not encouraging for Trump.” (12/01/25)
“The United States is the world leader in regime change, toppling 35 foreign heads over the past 120 years, by one reckoning. It’s a record built on a dangerous combination of unparalleled military might, a large group of perceived enemies — and a sunny self-confidence that has repeatedly proven mistaken. … Regime change and other strong-arm interventions rarely go as planned, but some of those that Trump is threatening, such as going ‘guns-a-blazing’ into Nigeria, with its armed extremists and ethnic and sectarian divides, seem like obvious disasters. But past failures should remind Americans of how catastrophic the consequences of hubris can be — both on an individual human scale and a national one.” (12/01/25)
“The cryptocurrency tumbled 7% in less than 24 hours. Explanations for the drop remain murky, leading many to speculate that something fishy is going on..” (12/01/25)
“Between August 8 and October 21, 2025, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding increased by more than $1 trillion, reaching a total of $38 trillion. One month later, the national debt had risen to $38.3 trillion. … Divided equally, that works out to be $284,125 for each of the country’s 134,800,000 households. That amount is about what the typical house for sale costs in Kentucky, which the government is borrowing to pay for the equivalent of over 47,500 such houses per day. If you’re like most American households, you probably can’t afford the cost of borrowing to own an extra home in Kentucky. In truth, neither can Uncle Sam. And yet, the national debt continues to grow as if the U.S. government can afford to buy a town’s worth of houses every day. Elected officials and bureaucrats need to do more to get the government’s fiscal house in order.” (12/01/25)
“We have a storytelling problem on the Left, and right now there is an easy story to parrot about the Democratic Party leadership’s profound failure to meet the moment. It’s an old and familiar story that has been written again and again throughout my life. It’s a story where the only updates are changes to names and dates. The MAGA Right has shown its inability to cohere its vision of American authoritarianism and win majorities to it. At the same time, Democratic leaders have shown their inability to lead a political coalition that can defeat the Right. There is no tactical maneuver that will change these fundamental truths. So we should be wary of easy stories that misdirect us, no matter how satisfying it might be to dunk on Chuck Schumer, no matter how crass the Democrats’ latest capitulations feel.” (12/02/25)
“Although Trump hated being on the road, the travel took him out of the Manhattan skyscraper emblazoned with his name in gold and into many struggling, disgruntled communities. … The people Trump met clued him in to the issues his supporters cared about …. But it has been many months since Trump hosted a full-on campaign-style rally. He has opted instead to travel abroad, golf at his private clubs, and dine with wealthy friends, business leaders, and major donors. Beyond the rallies, Trump has dramatically scaled back speeches, public events, and domestic travel compared with the first year of his initial term. And that lack of regular voter contact has contributed to a growing fear among Republicans and White House allies: that Trump is too isolated, and has become out of touch with what the public wants from its president.” (12/01/25)
“As I write, European Union (E.U.) officials are debating the details of a proposal to either require or pressure tech companies to scan all private messages for child sexual abuse material. Dubbed ‘chat control,’ the scheme inevitably entails mass surveillance of private communications — targeting one sort of content for the moment, though it’s difficult to see how that would long remain limited in any way. It’s an illustration of the continuing decline in online liberty documented in a new report from Freedom House. … It’s unsurprising that countries already recognized as authoritarian are continuing repressive practices. Nobody expects China or Iran to suddenly develop a taste for protecting online dissent and respecting privacy of communications. More disturbingly though, as seen in the European debate over chat control, nominally free countries are becoming increasingly intrusive when it comes to the digital world.” (12/01/25)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Samuel J Abrams
“The recent controversies surrounding Charlie Kirk — and the extraordinary reaction that followed his campus appearances and commentary — offer a revealing window into the fragile state of free expression in contemporary America. Two recent New York Times opinion pieces examining the backlash were right to highlight how quickly public discourse has hardened into a zero-sum contest in which speech itself becomes grounds for professional punishment, social ostracism, and institutional retaliation. But the deeper lesson is even more unsettling: Free speech is increasingly treated not as a constitutional principle, but as a conditional privilege — one that applies only when speech is politically comfortable.” (12/01/25)
