Category: Opinion

Source: The Watch
by Radley Balko

“The government is cracking down. The people are standing up.” (02/03/26)

https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-roundup-too-much-ice

Source: Niskanen Center
by Jia-Shen Tsai

“One year into the second Trump administration, carbon management policy is no longer advancing through climate-focused priorities at the executive level. Although the administration has been explicit that climate is not a central objective, its policy choices continue to carry significant emissions implications. Congress, meanwhile, continues to consider legislation that affects emissions outcomes, both directly and indirectly. As a result, the most consequential developments for U.S. emissions in 2026 are likely to emerge from decisions on trade dynamics and emissions data governance.” (02/03/26)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/where-u-s-carbon-policy-is-being-decided-in-2026

Source: Town Hall
by EJ Antoni, Ph.D.

“President Trump has been clamoring for the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates on the grounds that inflation is much lower than what’s being officially reported. It turns out Trump is spot on, with today’s real inflation rate being only one-third of the official metrics. These numbers come from the real-time price aggregator Truflation, which monitors millions of prices daily. That is orders of magnitude higher than the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which observes only a few thousand prices three times per month. According to Truflation, prices have risen an average of just 0.9 percent over the last 12 months. That’s about as good as it gets outside of a recession, especially when the Fed is engaged in money printing, euphemistically called ‘quantitative easing’. Truflation’s annual inflation rate is now much lower than the official inflation rate of 2.7 percent reported by the consumer price index (CPI).” (02/04/25)

https://townhall.com/columnists/ej-antoni/2026/02/04/less-than-1-percent-inflation-yes-n2670615

Source: Orange County Register
by Connor O’Keeffe

“[T]he causes and cures of the so-called affordability crisis are not a mystery. To truly fix this problem, the inflationist monetary regime that is deliberately destroying the value of our money needs to be abolished and replaced by some form of market-determined sound money. And the myriad laws and regulations that artificially constrain supply in important sectors like housing and healthcare need to be repealed—along with the many price-amplifying, demand-side subsidies that have been building up in the wake of the artificial shortages. The Trump administration has shown no real interest in pursuing either of these solutions, which is bad enough. But Trump is also actively pursuing policies that, from an affordability standpoint, are worse than doing nothing.” (02/03/26)

https://archive.is/0wvgw

Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman

“Fifty or sixty years ago, when the risks of overpopulation played the same role in public discourse that the risks of global warming play today, a future of declining populations would have been considered good news. The predicted crisis did not happen; the populations of poor countries continued to grow but instead of getting poorer and hungrier as predicted they got richer and less hungry. The orthodoxy has reversed, declining population is now widely regarded as bad news, a threat to, among other things, there being enough young people to support an aging population.” (02/03/26)

https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/how-to-increase-the-total-fertility

Source: Foreign Policy
by Casey Michael

“The days of laughing off Trump’s threats of turning Canada into the 51st U.S. state are long past. A new reality has suddenly rippled across Canada: that the United States under Trump is, as strange as it may be to stomach, suddenly Canada’s largest national security threat. It is a reality that Canadians are finally beginning to adapt to. But it is also a reality that taps into a far longer, far deeper vein of U.S. peril facing Canada. Indeed, the past 80 or so years of U.S.-Canada comity — in which the world’s longest border was largely peaceable and in which Washington and Ottawa became perhaps the closest allies in the entire world — may increasingly seem like an anachronism, an anomaly in which the United States simply paused on its far broader history of expansion in North America.” (02/03/26)

https://archive.is/GL27X

Source: In These Times
by Sonia Chajet Wides

“A small crowd of abortion rights advocates gathered at a public comment session of the Gwinnett County Department of Planning and Development in July 2025. The most diverse and second-most populous county in Georgia, Gwinnett County distributed millions of dollars in U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grants to local nonprofits in 2025, with most recipients receiving something in the tens of thousands. One organization, Georgia Wellness Group, was set to receive a much bigger prize: $450,000. According to its website, Georgia Wellness is a clinic that provides ​’compassionate holistic care’ for women and families. But this is a rebrand from its longstanding religious, explicitly anti-abortion identity. The group arguably fits into a category known as ‘crisis pregnancy centers,’ or CPCs, part of a project from the Christian Right dedicated to replacing public reproductive healthcare with anti-abortion ‘clinics.'” (02/03/25)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/fake-clinics-crisis-pregnancy-abortion-reproductive-healthcare

Source: Mother Jones
by Dan Friedman & Amanda Moore

“As America’s 250th anniversary approaches, the president wants to control the country’s future by bulldozing its past.” (02/03/26)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/02/america-freedom-task-force-250-trump-anniversary-history-smithsonian-kennedy-center/

Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Mark Thornton

“Labor divided into the production of different goods or even into various tasks involved in the production of a single good is one of the earliest observations on the nature of human civilization. From a scientific point of view, civilization or society is the division of labor. Unfortunately, opinion down through time mistakenly considers it a mixed blessing, indicating that it is a great force for both good and evil. This common opinion falters largely on the basis of observation, measurement, and personal bias, absent economic law. The prevailing fallacies can only be eradicated with the theoretical perspective provided by the Austrian School of economics and its predecessors. Unfortunately, Adam Smith’s central importance on this topic and his basic mistakes continue to have an unhealthy impact on the economics profession and social ideology more generally.” (02/03/26)

https://mises.org/mises-wire/adam-smith-misunderstood-origins-division-labor

Source: JimBovard.com
by James Bovard

“Trump has already lost the support of hordes of folks who voted for him in November 2024. Consumer confidence last month plunged to the lowest level since 2014, according to a Conference Board survey. More than half of voters say Trump has ‘made life less affordable’ for them and their families, and only 34% approved of his handling of ‘the cost of living.’ Trump’s economic victory proclamations are starting to resemble a bad magician whose tricks are so lame that his audience starts to heckle him. But in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Trump taunted his critics by telling them to wear ‘one of my favorite red hats — the one that reads, ‘TRUMP WAS RIGHT ABOUT EVERYTHING!’'” (02/03/26)

https://jimbovard.com/blog/2026/02/03/will-trumps-right-about-everything-b-s-wreck-republicans/