Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“There are, of course, consequences of the U.S. war on Iran that are easy to see. The deaths and injuries of thousands of Iranians. The deaths and injuries of dozens of U.S. soldiers. The massive destruction of homes, businesses, ships, and infrastructure in Iran and nearby countries. Gasoline prices and the prices of other things soaring. All easy to see. But there are also unseen consequences of the war and, more generally, of the U.S. government’s overall foreign policy of interventionism.” (04/22/26)
Source: Understanding AI
by Kai Williams & Timothy B Lee
“For this story, one of us (Kai) looked through dozens of crash reports Waymo submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration between August 15, 2025 and March 16, 2026. He focused on 78 crashes involving driverless Waymos serious enough to cause an injury or an airbag deployment. Waymo likely drove more than 100 million miles during this time period, so it’s not surprising that Waymo was involved in dozens of crashes. But it’s striking how many of the crashes involved serious mistakes by other drivers. When Waymo’s vehicles did make mistakes, they were almost always mistakes of excessive caution.” (04/22/26)
“It is hard to believe that ‘once upon a time’ labor unions were enemies of government. Fedgov and State governments both. 150 years ago, and much more recently, the FedGov and States used the Army and National Guard (Organized Militia) to suppress labor union activities. Especially strikes. … Today, to some degree, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. In Colorado, for example, we find the Regressive-controlled General Assembly (the Legislature, both upper and lower houses) pushing for government to treat labor unions like the senior house of the General Assembly. In some really stupid ways! Especially since what the unions want means government agencies snatching more power to micro-manage everyday life, and create opportunities for new government jobs (more government parasites) and fees and fines, and at the same time increase the incentives to shove campaign contributions into the pockets of politicians.” (04/22/26)
Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by Drew Bennett, Travis Brammer, Jerod Merkle, Kurt Smith, Shawn Regan, Temple Stoellinger, Arthur Middleton, Kristin Barker, Jacob Hochard, Patrick Lendrum, Erin Welty, Craig Benjamin, & Brian Yablonski
“Virtual fencing technology holds the potential to modernize and transform livestock management, with significant but still underexplored biodiversity conservation applications. The technology uses Global Positioning System-enabled collars on livestock and software-defined boundaries to provide a virtual alternative to traditional physical fencing, creating opportunities to remove or reduce physical fences.” (04/22/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Carolyn Iodice
“A new bill under consideration in California is facing criticism for censoring speech about immigration. Elon Musk has claimed the bill would ‘make investigating fraud illegal.’ One opponent has dubbed it the ‘Stop Nick Shirley Act,’ named after the YouTuber known for filming alleged fraud at child care centers in Somali immigrant communities in Minnesota. But its sponsor says the bill simply protects immigrant organizations from threats of violence. So which is it? The bill, AB 2624, does two things. First, it allows people who’ve faced threats or violence for providing or receiving immigration services to join California’s ‘Safe at Home’ program, which allows people to keep their residential address out of state records. Second — and this is the part we’re focusing on — it limits what regular people are allowed to post online about immigrants and the people who help them.” (04/22/26)
“Are We Still at War? I’m going to say no, not really, although the ultimate resolution is still to be determined. Donald Trump blinked again on Tuesday, announcing an indefinite extension of the cease-fire until the Iranians ‘can come up with a unified proposal’. Unnamed advisers came out later and told go-to regurgitator Barak Ravid that the open-ended cease-fire isn’t open-ended, but I don’t know who they think they’re convincing. Trump is not going to risk further damage to his rapidly deteriorating political position by greenlighting a full-scale attack. He’s had several opportunities to do so and demurred. That’s of course better than the alternative. But instead, we have an ‘end’ to the indiscriminate bombing part of the war that keeps all the economic consequences intact.” (04/23/26)
“We’ve written a lot at the Show-Me Institute lately about A–F letter grades for public schools. The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) will soon begin assigning these grades to all schools and districts under an executive order from Governor Kehoe. Legislation to codify the order may follow, depending on how the 2026 session unfolds. A central component of these letter grades is student growth. Growth measures how much students learn over the course of a year, based on state assessments. … I’ve studied academic growth extensively and believe it is the most accurate indicator of school effectiveness we have. No other measure comes close.” (04/22/26)
“In policy debates, some see state action as the obvious solution; others say the same about civil society and/or markets. But listen closely, and you’ll often find that everyone’s gone negative: They have lots of bad things to say about the other side, and not much in favor of their own. That’s the ‘pretty pig’ problem: We can all see the downsides — many of them quite real — with one system, and so we conclude, a bit too quickly, that the other one must be better. As I’ve noted before, that approach leads to disagreement without engagement, as the advocates on both sides ignore the problems of their own preferred system: The state I can imagine is clearly a good solution to the real world commercial system I’m immersed in, but that state doesn’t exist, and its powers are not stable or reliable.” [editor’s note: Nietzsche offered a neat, concise, and true “theory of the state” … “Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.” – TLK] (04/22/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“The Trump administration has spent months demonizing immigrants — detaining them, deporting them, tearing apart families, and casting them as threats to national security. And yet, when it comes time to fill the ranks of its endless wars, those same individuals—green card holders, refugees, asylum seekers, even undocumented men—suddenly become expendable assets. Too dangerous to belong. Not too dangerous to die. Increasingly, the same could be said of all of us. We are all being viewed as potential threats by the government. … While the government is making it easier for Americans to be conscripted and killed in war, it is simultaneously working to make it harder for us to have any say in the decisions that send our young men and women to war in the first place.” (04/22/26)
“Taxation is theft. People are free to disagree because everyone is free to be wrong. You might debate what kind of theft it is; whether extortion, a ransom, or an armed robbery, but it’s theft. We used to know it. The story of Robin Hood has morphed into a socialist fairy tale of someone who ‘robbed from the rich and gave to the poor,’ but originally, he was a hero who recovered stolen property from tax collectors and returned it to their victims. Government and other socialists don’t want this story told, for obvious reasons. If you are taking someone’s property — their money — under threat, when they’d rather keep it to use as they see fit, you are a thief.” (04/22/26)
