“As news broke that the United States and Israel had launched war on Iran, two posts kept showing up over and over on my social media feeds. One was from the Israeli military’s official account, which stated an oft-repeated phrase: ’Israel has the right to defend itself’. The other was a video from the Iranian city of Minab, where the first reports of casualties were emerging. The joint U.S.-Israeli attack had hit a girls’ elementary school; the death toll kept ticking higher and higher. At the time of publication, Iranian authorities said 165 people, mostly schoolchildren, had been killed in the strike, with many more injured. Plenty has been written, in Truthout and elsewhere, about the totally incoherent justifications for this war, the illegality of it, the potential for regional disaster, the joke it has made of the very idea of diplomacy.” (03/03/26)
“Today is the first primary of the 2026 midterm elections. Voters in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas are kicking off the selection of Republican and Democratic candidates who will be facing off up and down the ballot in November. Polls indicate that Americans are motivated to voice their concerns, particularly surrounding rising costs (especially in healthcare and housing), threats to our democracy, political corruption, and unemployment. So, naturally, the Republican candidates running for Senate in Texas are competing to prove who is more anti-Muslim. The irony is that nearly every accusation they level at Islam mirrors the political agenda I embraced as an Evangelical Christian.” (03/03/26)
“MAGA Hardliners are mostly evangelical Trump supporters who believe a ‘deep state’ runs politics and that ‘the Left’ hates America. About 25% hold college degrees. Anti-woke Conservatives say American identity is fading and ‘woke’ ideology has ruined American education, news, and entertainment. They are the least religious group (31% atheist, agnostic, or unaffiliated) and about 40% hold college degrees. Mainline Republicans are the most optimistic about the American dream and least likely to say the country is in decline. About 25% have some college experience but no degree, and 38% hold only a high school diploma. Reluctant Right voted for Trump because he seemed ‘less bad’ than Kamala Harris. They are the least likely to identify as Republican, the least hopeful about the next four years, and the most likely to say they vote across party lines. Those distinctions aren’t just academic. They predict meaningful differences in how Trump voters weigh rights, institutions, and presidential power.” (03/03/26)
“No president has ever been held to account by, and punished by, Congress for exceeding his powers and exercising its, not his, prerogative of declaring war or not. Why would Trump consider himself an exception? And why wouldn’t he try to stretch past administrations’ ridiculous ‘unitary executive’ claims even further? We’d live in a much different world today if Harry Truman had been impeached and removed from office over his surprise Korean ‘police action’ instead of receiving a retroactive congressional rubber stamp. … If we lived in anything like a ‘constitutional’ polity, the House would have already delivered Articles of Impeachment and the Senate would be trying the matter of Trump’s removal from office right now.” (03/03/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Even though President Trump will get away with committing the high crime of waging a war on Iran that has not been declared by Congress, it is nonetheless imperative that we libertarians never cease to point out this lawlessness. Otherwise, if we join our fellow Americans in passively permitting Trump or any other federal officials, including those in the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, to violate the law, lawlessness at the federal level will then become permanently normalized and acceptable without having to secure a constitutional amendment.” (03/03/26)
“A new report from the St. Louis Fed shows that economic output is trending higher, even though employee head-count has barely moved. A few years ago, you might have blamed pent-up demand or a lucky sales run. In late 2025, the more honest explanation is that a growing share of your team has a chatbot open in the background. The St. Louis Fed’s national U.S. adoption tracker, built on its Real-Time Population Survey, shows generative AI use jumping ten percentage points in a single year. Their new analysis of adoption and productivity argues those extra minutes are starting to show up in macro data. Generative AI use is already a majority behavior for working-age Americans.” (03/03/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness & Marc Wheat
“On February 19, the Supreme Court ruled in Learning Resources v. Trump that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) does not confer upon the president the power to impose tariffs. Obviously prepared for the loss, in the same news cycle, the president announced a 10 percent tariff under Section 122, which he increased to 15 percent only hours later. The problem? Section 122 does not empower the president to impose these tariffs either.” (03/03/26)
“Can you imagine how long it took for ignorant men and women to learn metallurgy? Or crop rotation? Or a hundred other things we can barely imagine being without? Our lives are advanced only because they created new ways of living and passed them down to us. Hundreds of generations of people just like us lived through dark times, fighting toward whatever bits of light they could find, opposed by others most of the way, to bring us where we are now. Someday our generation will also be gone, and we will have played – whether we’ve understood it or not – the crucial role of transmitting civilization to following generations. What do we want them to be like? How do we want them to live?” (03/03/26)
“This is no way for a constitutional republic to go to war. The ever-changing rationales, the failure to consult Congress, and Congress’ refusal to demand consultation and authorization, is an outrage no matter how this war ends. If the war and its aftermath are deemed successful, there will still be a price to pay as our system of checks and balances will seem to future presidents as even more of a dead letter. Conversely, if this ends in disaster, one could see a renewed effort to restore that system to prevent such calamities in the future. Everything unfolding in and above Iran depends on the consequences, intended and unintended, of one man’s unilateral decision to launch a war. In short, we’re all on blowback watch.” (03/03/26)
“Physicians are not interchangeable technicians. They are moral agents. In a free society, the government should not force a doctor to participate in a non-emergency procedure that violates deeply held beliefs.” (03/03/26)
