“After the president of peace, a man who felt deserving of the Nobel Prize, authorized a massive aerial bombardment of Iran last summer, the task of explaining away the contradiction fell to J. D. Vance. … The difference was simple: Other wars were bad because they were led by dumb presidents, but a Trump war would be good because Donald Trump is smart. Yet after the administration’s second wave of air attacks on Iran, the president’s strategy seems more sundown than Sun Tzu.” (03/03/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Matthew Guariglia
“The U.S. military has officially ended its $200 million contract with AI company Anthropic and has ordered all other military contractors to cease use of their products. Why? … Anthropic had made it clear since it first signed the contract with the Pentagon in 2025 that it did not want its technology to be used for mass surveillance of people in the United States or for fully autonomous weapons systems. Starting in January, that became a problem for the Department of Defense, which ordered Anthropic to give them unrestricted use of the technology. Anthropic refused, and the DoD retaliated. There is a lot we could learn from this conflict, but the biggest take away is this: the state of your privacy is being decided by contract negotiations between giant tech companies and the U.S. government—two entities with spotty track records for caring about your civil liberties.” (03/03/26)
“Gaining knowledge is critical. Not just about the presence and use of cameras, but what is done with the images and other data as well. (Examples: who it is provided to (first- and second-hand), how it can be used to track purchases and movements, and whom we have contact with.) Knowing how they work and how to avoid and disable them is also important. For example, the QR code or magnetic strip on many cards (such as driver’s licenses) allows linking to online databases, both for getting information about us and for providing info about us to others. Opting out, whenever that opportunity is available, is also an important action.” (03/03/26)
“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)
