Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Michael Hurley
“Recently, FIRE learned that Texas State University is taking its own stab at institutional reform. It is conducting a ‘curricular review’ built around a guide titled ‘Value Neutral Instruction and the Curriculum,’ which encourages faculty to frame their teaching around inquiry and intellectual exploration, rather than beginning from predetermined conclusions. This is a sound pedagogical goal. Professors should present competing arguments and perspectives to students, teach them to evaluate the evidence and think critically, and arrive at their own conclusions. And the guidance does much more than most to protect the core of academic freedom and stay within constitutional bounds. However, like many other efforts at curricular reform, it nevertheless risks chilling protected expression and infringing upon academic freedom. The Devil, as they say, is in the details.” (11/12/25)
“The Trump administration’s claims that illegal migration and drug smuggling qualify as an ‘invasion’ or a ‘predatory incursion’ under the Alien Enemies Act go against the major questions doctrine.” (11/12/25)
“Zohran Mamdani’s recent victory in New York City’s mayoral race has sparked a debate about whether the city’s billionaire class will abandon Gotham once and for all. … Since Mamdani’s big win, some of those billionaires have already walked back their threats, and several commentators have gleefully noted that the rest of the city’s elites need — or simply love — NYC too much to abandon it for greener, cheaper pastures. Yet this focus on the city’s billionaire class mostly misses the point. Aside from the most extreme and unrealistic of Mamdani’s wealth-confiscating plans, the flight risk arising from his proposals was never about billionaires; it was about their employees — the higher-earning New Yorkers who can’t easily absorb the higher costs and greater inconveniences that Mamdani’s plans will produce but can move to places, near and far, where life is a little easier.” (11/12/25)
“The party that cries wolf is at it again. Democrats are back in Congress after their shutdown to launch another anti-Trump hoax. This time, it’s not a fictional ‘pee tape’ but the old Epstein horse they keep flogging. On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Democrats selectively released three emails among 23,000 handed over by the estate of the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein to try to implicate Donald Trump, yet again, in Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls. Of course, the Oversight Dems, who include such adornments to Congress as Jasmine Crockett, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, left out crucial information that exonerated the president, instead claiming that the emails ‘raise serious questions about Donald Trump and his knowledge of Epstein’s horrific crimes.'” [editor’s note: Devine’s picture should be in the DSM next to “Trump Devotion Syndrome” – TLK] (11/12/25)
“During the recent government shutdown, the temporary interruption of benefits to 42 million food stamp recipients was hyped as practically the greatest human rights violation of our time. A Nation magazine headline howled: ‘The United States Is Letting Its People Starve.’ But the delayed payments had scant impact in part because many states offered supplemental benefits, many recipients had leftover benefits on their Electronic Benefit Cards (EBTs), and because vast numbers of food pantries and other private charities provided relief. Democrats accused Trump of ‘weaponizing hunger.’ But the real problem is that politicians going back more than half a century have weaponized dependency to destroy limits on government power.” (11/12/25)
Source: Macroeconomic Policy News
by David Beckworth
“What if Macroeconomists Could Finally Run Experiments? That is the startling implication of a new paper by Tara Sinclair and Sophia Kazinnik, titled ‘FOMC in Silico: A Multi-Agent System for Monetary Policy Decision Modeling.’ Using large language models (LLMs), they built a synthetic FOMC — an ensemble of AI-generated versions of Jerome Powell, Michelle Bowman, Chris Waller, and others — capable of debating, dissenting, engaging in water-cooler talk, and ultimately voting on monetary policy. To be clear, we already have DSGEs and VARs for simulating macroeconomic outcomes under different shocks or policy rules. What Sinclair and Kazinnik are experimenting with is the policymaking process: how a committee of imperfect humans, armed with noisy data and facing political pressure, reaches decisions.” (11/12/25)
“As in his first term, Donald Trump now presides over a visibly sinking ship as his approval ratings slide. MAGA, a movement built around the personality of one man, never amounted to a coherent political force or even a workable coalition. Claims that Trump and his lieutenants won a mandate in 2024 and then ‘saved’ the country were always delusional. After all, his margin was thin, as was that of his party in Congress. Three forces are killing MAGA, perhaps even pushing the US in a distinctly socialist direction. The first are the internal divisions, which are growing ever-more pronounced and will only intensify as an aging Trump becomes an ever-lamer duck, particularly if Democrats romp to victory again in the 2026 midterms.” (11/12/25)
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Charles Eisenstein
“ve been rereading John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. This passage from Chapter 5 is shockingly relevant to the farm crisis today. It describes the early stages of the consolidation and corporatization of farms that continue to accelerate. Even more relevantly, it illuminates the systemic nature of that process, which defies any attempt to locate blame.” (11/12/25)
