“In his recent address to Congress, President Donald Trump lauded Elon Musk’s efforts to cut ‘appalling waste’ in the federal government. Musk heads the president’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is laying off federal workers and ending grants for research, foreign aid and other activities. Trump and Musk are cutting spending that conservatives oppose, but there’s one type of wasteful spending that nearly all taxpayers oppose — subsidies to big businesses. Why not cut there? In his address, Trump listed wasteful federal grants costing millions of dollars as being emblematic of government excess. But there are billions of dollars a year lying in wait that Trump could push Congress to cut in subsidies to agriculture, broadband, semiconductors, energy, airports, automobiles and many other industries.” (03/19/25)
“We increasingly live in a society that is unable to make distinctions. And there is a difference between having political criteria on the front end of the visa-application process and using a foreign-policy pretext to expel a legal permanent resident because he has been engaged in political activity that is, however nasty, entirely legal as far as the government is concerned. If the Trump administration believes that [Mahmoud] Khalil has broken the law, then let it charge him and prove its case in court; if the Trump administration believes that Khalil has committed some immigration violation, then there is a process for that, too — and the process isn’t arresting him without charges as a public-relations stunt. Because this is the fact: Donald Trump’s lawlessness is a far greater threat to the peace and security of these United States than is the champagne radicalism of some campus dope at Columbia.” (03/19/25)
“Last December, I wrote about Senators Hawley and Sanders’[s] call to cap credit card interest rates at 10 percent. This cause was recently taken up by Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Anna Paulina Luna in the House of Representatives, reminding Americans that even President Trump pitched this idea on the 2024 campaign trail. Their stated goal is to help the growing population of Americans struggling to make credit card payments. No matter which party or branch of government pitches this idea, the result will be the same: hard-working Americans will lose access to credit. Good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes.” (03/19/25)
“Even Will Rogers might be hard pressed to come up with an appropriately harsh jibe about the current state of the Democrats. ‘I am not a member of any organized political party,’ the 20th-century humorist famously said. ‘I am a Democrat.’ Now, the problem isn’t a lack of organization per se, but the hangover of their dogged, dishonest support for a comprehensively failed presidency, joined to an irrational commitment to outlandish positions on cultural issues. The Democrats shouldn’t be shocked that after insisting that Joe Biden was hale and hearty and fit to serve as commander-in-chief until January, 2029, the public has a dim view of their party. The Democrats attempted to perpetrate one of the worst frauds on the American public in recent history, and then followed it up with another lie — that Biden’s overmatched emergency replacement, Kamala Harris, was joyful and impressive.” (03/18/25)
“There’s a saying about God: ‘It doesn’t matter if you believe in God. What matters is if God believes in you.’ The same can be said about UFOs (also known as unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP) and their impact on the current political landscape. It doesn’t matter whether you personally believe in these objects. What matters is that some of the nation’s most influential people do. These people are in the halls of government. They’re writing legislation. Some of them are architects of the current regime; some are opposed to it. As in every battle, there are multiple sides. The stakes in this battle are, potentially, as consequential as any in history.” (03/19/25)
“On March 8, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student and a prominent leader of pro-Palestinian protests on the university’s campus. They claimed that Khalil’s student visa had been revoked and, when told that he had a green card, said that too had been revoked. While the full facts of the case are yet to emerge, there seems little doubt that Khalil was detained in retaliation for his activism. U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently and explicitly threatened to go after university protestors, including in his Executive Order on ‘Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats,’ which I analyzed in an earlier post. Trump celebrated Khalil’s arrest on social media, warning that it was the first ‘of many to come.'” (03/19/25)
“If the remaining 46 months of Donald Trump’s resurrection resemble the first two, this administration will have a remarkably high ratio of theatrical action to substantial achievement. And it will exacerbate the fiscal incontinence that is the nation’s foremost domestic crisis. Trump is the taunter of Canada, coveter of Greenland, threatener of Panama, re-namer of the Gulf of Mexico, scourge of paper straws and demander that Major League Baseball ‘get off its fat, lazy ass’ and enshrine Pete Rose in Cooperstown. He fulminates about everything. (Does he even know for what he promises to pardon Rose? Tax evasion, not betting on baseball.) The in-your-face-all-the-time trophy goes, however, to Trump’s apprentice. The black-clad, chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk is a master of the angry adolescent’s dress and of the now-presidential penchant for vulgarity.” (03/19/25)
“The president has less de facto control of the executive regulatory agencies than he ought to have as the head of the Executive Branch. But he himself also has too much power. One example now conspicuously in the public eye is the de facto powers the president now enjoys to unilaterally tax imported goods — that is, to levy tariffs. According to the Constitution, the power to levy taxes lies with Congress.” (03/19/25)
“Generally, Americans prefer single-family homes. All explanations for why urban populations across the country are collapsing as suburbs swell centering on public safety concerns, lack of schooling options, and rising costs aside, most people genuinely like living in a house with a yard more than they do in an apartment complex. If they can afford it. Trump campaigned on a vision of building ten new Freedom Cities. Details are scant on Trump’s plan, but directionally, the Trump administration announced plans yesterday to repurpose underutilized federal lands for the construction of affordable housing. … The desire to transform open public spaces into housing units is not new. In New York City, one mayoral candidate proposes building affordable housing on four of the city’s twelve municipal golf courses.” (03/19/25)
“On Saturday night, James Boasberg, a federal judge in the District of Columbia, issued a pair of emergency orders. The government, he had just been told at a hastily convened hearing, was removing from the country, without due process, more than a hundred alleged gang members. The planes, he learned, were already in the air. To justify this stunning move, President Trump had issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. At around 6:45 p.m., Boasberg orally ordered the planes turned around. … The government ignored both orders. … THIS IS NOT A SET OF PROCEDURAL MISSTEPS. It is not simple incompetence. It is malice toward our constitutional structure. Simply put, the Trump administration has begun its defiance of the courts in earnest.” (03/19/25)
