Source: Cato Institute
by Colin Grabow & Clark Packard
“This is not a dividend at all. It’s a deficit-financed giveaway, arriving at a moment when the federal government is already projected to run a $1.8 trillion deficit. Worse still, the money is already spoken for. Congress counted tariff revenue as an offset when passing the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill tax reform package earlier this year. Revenue cannot fund both tax cuts and rebate checks. The administration is trying to spend the same dollar twice. But suppose, for the sake of argument, the money actually existed and the deficit didn’t matter. The proposal would still be misguided. For one thing, it’s economically pointless. Tariffs are taxes paid by Americans, not foreigners, and the government’s plan amounts to collecting that money in Washington, skimming off administrative costs, and then mailing a smaller amount back to the public.” (11/24/25)
“Today’s Ukraine is not 1938 Czechoslovakia. Yet the 28-point ‘peace plan’ negotiated between the United States and Russia and leaked to the media late last week suggests that U.S. President Donald Trump considers the Munich deal a precedent. Like Chamberlain, he seems to believe that he can make a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Ukraine’s land and future over the latter’s head. But this calculation is flawed. It betrays Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding of European geopolitics — both Russia’s unbroken designs to control Ukraine and the Ukrainians’ continued willingness to fight for their land and independence.” (11/24/25)
“President Trump often portrays himself as a mythical, hyper-masculine character. On his digital trading cards, for example, he is depicted as an astronaut, a cowboy, a race-driver, a boxer and of course, a costumed superhero. Although he hasn’t yet appeared as a secret agent, Trump does have one thing in common with the fictional James Bond: They have both been licensed to kill. … In Trump’s case, the authorization is all too real, backed up by exponentially more firepower than Bond’s tricked-out Aston Martin. Enabled by a Supreme Court decision granting presidents immunity for official acts, Trump has deployed planes, missiles and drones to sink 21 small, unarmed boats suspected of drug smuggling in international waters in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific. As of last week, at least 83 crew members or passengers had been killed. Neither the evidence nor the purported legal basis for the strikes has been made public.” (11/24/25)
Source: Karl Dickey’s Freedom Vanguard
by Karl Dickey
“Do you know Jack Mallers? Have you heard of the company Strike that he runs? Perhaps you’ve heard of JP Morgan Chase? Well, let me tell a quick story of how the world is a-changin’. Yesterday, on X, Mallers posted the September 2, 2025, letter he framed from Chase, noting the closure of all his accounts. … The letter informed Mallers that Chase had flagged ‘concerning activity’ during routine monitoring. The result? His accounts were being closed immediately, and he was permanently barred from opening new ones. No specifics were offered. No recourse was suggested. He was simply ejected from the financial system by one of its most powerful gatekeepers. Of note, Strike is somewhat of a competitor to JP Morgan Chase, and if not a direct threat today, certainly is for the future. For many, this would be a crisis. For Mallers, it was a milestone.” (11/24/25)
“In Tennessee, another test of the ongoing fragmentation of the Trump coalition is playing out in a December 2 special election for the U.S. House. After bad losses for Republicans across the country over the last month, a seat that Donald Trump won last year by 22 points is at enough risk that conservative groups have thrown $3.3 million at the race in the final stretch. The seat was vacated in July by Rep. Mark Green, who opted to take a private-sector job. Republican Mark Van Epps, a member of Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, is facing Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn. It was designed as a gerrymandered red seat …. But the possibility of a monumental upset has brought DNC chair Ken Martin and 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris to the district, earned Behn cable news appearances, and raised a ton of anticipation.” [editor’s note: This is my district. I am choosing neither the Trumper nor the Mamdani in a dress – SAT] (11/24/25)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by John Coleman
“Recent news reports describe a wave of lawsuits alleging that OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, caused adult users psychological distress. The filings reportedly seek monetary damages for people who conversed at length with a chatbot’s simulated persona and reported experiencing delusions and emotional trauma. In one reported case, a man became convinced that ChatGPT was sentient and later took his own life. These situations are tragic and call for genuine compassion. Unfortunately, if these lawsuits succeed, they’ll effectively impose an unworkable expectation on anyone creating a chatbot to scrub anything that could trigger its most vulnerable users. Everyone, even fully capable adults, would be effectively treated as if they are on suicide watch. That’s a standard that would chill open discourse.” (11/24/25)
“To house people more affordably, we need to make homebuilding more efficient. But a deeply entrenched overregulation of land use and the building trades keeps homebuilding firms small and backward. Other industries — aviation, computing, agriculture, containerized shipping, manufacturing, retail, telecommunications, and so on — have raised productivity through deregulation, big business, innovation, automation, standardization, and scalability. Homebuilding needs to follow suit.” (11/24/25)
“This week, top leaders of Africa and Europe gathered in Angola in an attempt to answer this question: Can ethical business practices win out in the global race to extract Africa’s vast mineral resources? The moral tone for the summit was set last month by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. In a speech, she said Europe seeks critical materials for its China-challenged industries but ‘not just for Europe’s needs – but with local processing and added value [in Africa].’ In other words, can European mining companies help Africa process its raw minerals into consumer and industrial goods while also boosting local jobs and local skills? For some countries in Europe, that would mean a shift away from how it often treats former colonies. As President Faustin-Archange Touadéra of the Central African Republic put it in September, ‘The era of Africa’s dependence is over.'” (11/24/25)
“Many organizations and federal agencies involved in censoring Americans under the guise of mis/disinformation have shut down in the last couple years. Racket’s Twitter Files exposed the level of censorship slime oozing from organizations such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Election Integrity Project, and the Virality Project. On the government side of things, there was the Global Engagement Center, the Foreign Influence Task Force, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which still exists but is no longer involved in mis/disnfo work. That’s not to say America is perfect when it comes to free speech, but as Sen. Rand Paul said in September, ‘throughout government, the censorship apparatus that Biden had put in place is gone.’ However, if you look to Germany, the strongest economic power in the European Union, it’s easy to see where America was going.” (11/24/25)
“Recent movements in short-term loan markets are a timely reminder of a forgotten truth: The Federal Reserve is not the master of credit conditions. It can influence interest rates, but it cannot dictate them. Interest rates ultimately reflect supply and demand conditions in the broader financial system. When those conditions shift, the Fed’s administered rates give way to market realities. That’s precisely what we’re seeing in the repo market now.” (11/24/25)
