“Getting silenced on X is, and I realize how absurd it sounds, the worst professional fate a Trump official can face. It signals that [Greg] Bovino is no longer a player in an administration that has, from top to bottom, merged a social-media-first worldview with authoritarian tendencies. I like to call it the clicktatorship. Political appointees in the clicktatorship are not just using online platforms as a mode of communication. Their judgment and decision making is hyperresponsive to what’s happening on the far-right internet. They view everything as content. No one better exemplifies the clicktatorship than the president himself.” (02/03/26)
“A large outbreak of hysteria occurred in the media over the past week, regarding a small Nipah virus outbreak in eastern India. ‘Hysteria’ is the correct word in terms of proportionality. It is not, unfortunately, the right word in terms of intent. Ten years ago this episode of Nipah virus disease would barely have rated a mention internationally, and certainly not stimulated airport screening and travel warnings – there have been many larger outbreaks of Nipah virus than this one, which did not. The change over recent years is not that people have lost their minds. It relates to the adoption of the fear-panic-profit model that has entrenched itself in international public health.” (02/03/26)
“‘This is time for a revolution … They can’t take us all down.’ Those words from ‘Breaking Bad’ actor Giancarlo Esposito are being echoed by a growing number of armchair revolutionaries today. Revolution is again in the air as we approach the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence. On Tuesday, Simon & Schuster is releasing my book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, an exploration of the founding and the future of our unique republic. It is a book about revolutions and how they can consume those who start them. Both the American and French revolutions arose during the same period, but one became the world’s oldest democracy while the other became a blood-soaked tyranny known as the Reign of Terror.” [editor’s note: The American revolution created … Iceland? – TLK] (02/03/25)
“I recently ate a pig that’s alive and well at a sanctuary in upstate New York. Her name is Dawn, and she donated a bit of fat, which a company called Mission Barns grows in bioreactors, then blends with plant-based ingredients to create pork products (like the meatballs above) that taste darn near like the real thing. … In his new book Meat: How the Next Agricultural Revolution Will Transform Humanity’s Favorite Food — and Our Future, Bruce Friedrich, founder and president of the Good Food Institute, catalogs the extraordinary costs of conventional meat production and the vast potential for alternative culinary technologies. Grist sat down with Friedrich to talk about the progress, challenges, and potential of the fledgling industry. This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.” (02/03/26)
“It’s like Lenin said, ‘When it is not immediately apparent which political or social groups, forces or alignments advocate certain proposals, measures, etc., one should always ask: ‘Who stands to gain?” So who stands to gain from ICE’s immigration crackdown? As Adam Tooze points out in his newsletter Chartbook this morning, ‘The MAGA immigration crackdown in the US is a bonanza for politically connected, small and mid-caps.’ … While there are several publicly traded and venture capital-funded firms, the biggest recipients show a striking pattern: they are all regional, dynastic family businesses and major GOP donors. In addition, they have engaged in legally questionable practices.” (02/03/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Alejandro A Tagliavini
“[T]he US Army — specifically the Army Corps of Engineers — built and maintained the canals and walls protecting New Orleans. Unfortunately, they knew that they would fail to withstand storms of the magnitude of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, leaving the city devastated. Insurance and reinsurance companies could easily have erected adequate defense infrastructure if state regulations had allowed it. Swiss Re estimated global insurers’ contributions for natural disasters in 2024 at over $135 billion, but total economic losses from disasters were higher, exceeding $318 billion, leaving a significant protection gap because states interfere by discouraging — if not outright prohibiting — coverage in many cases.” (02/03/26)
“Among the critical issues facing our country today, nuclear arms control is seldom top of mind for most people, understandably, given our myriad political, social and economic crises. Recent books and films such as Annie Jacobsen’s 2004 non-fiction tome Nuclear War: A Scenario and last fall’s A House of Dynamite, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, garnered needed attention for the still-existential threat of nuclear weapons, yet the problem remains mostly absent from our political discourse. Part of the fault for that lies with President Donald Trump, who while constantly touting his ability to ‘make deals,’ is missing in action on a simple agreement that would make the US and the world safer. New START, the arms control treaty negotiated by President Barack Obama and extended by President Joe Biden, will expire on February 5.” (02/03/25)
“It is a standard observation that a politician’s time horizon is the next election. This is why long term thinking is not a great feature of political decision making. This does not change — sadly – when the politician changes. We do not think we are being unduly cynical when we say that — we prefer realist anyway as a description. Of course politics is necessary because some amount of state is itself necessary — we are not anarcho-capitalists around here. Politics and elections are how we change which politicians without riots and bloodshed. But if those politicians are always motivated by their own interests — public choice theory certainly insists they are — then we need the best compromise we can get.” (02/03/26)
“According to President Donald Trump, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey endorsed ‘a very serious violation of the Law’ last week when Frey said that ‘Minneapolis does not, and will not, enforce federal immigration law.’ But it is Trump whose understanding of the law is seriously impaired. Under both constitutional principle and judicial precedent, state and local authorities may decline to participate in the enforcement of a federal regulatory scheme. So-called sanctuary city policies that either limit or prohibit local enforcement of federal immigration law are themselves lawful. Why? Just ask the conservative legal hero Justice Antonin Scalia.” (02/03/26)
“In Minneapolis, what began as local organizing against an aggressive federal immigration crackdown has quickly grown into widespread protests against the federal government’s perceived disregard for basic constitutional rights and impunity for state violence. But will the demonstrations actually change anything?” (02/03/26)
