“Every Democrat agrees that the next election will hinge on which party is better at lowering the cost of living. They’re starting to disagree about how to make their case. For Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., it means a new tax cut that would double the standard deduction and push millions of people off the income tax rolls. Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., is preparing to outdo Booker and propose an even larger income tax cut, nearly doubling the number of people who could ignore the IRS. … Critics of Booker and Van Hollen’s plans, including older-line progressives at the Center for American Progress and newer post-Biden players on the left, argue that the party’s mission depends on doing good things with public funds — not pitching taxes as a pox that people need ‘relief’ from.” (03/11/26)
“Few constitutional rights generate more debate in American politics than the right to free speech. The First Amendment protects both freedom of speech and freedom of the press, principles often described as absolute pillars of a democratic society. In reality, the Supreme Court has consistently recognized that these freedoms have limits. Courts have long permitted restrictions based on time, place, and manner, and American law has also recognized boundaries when speech collides with competing interests such as national security, defamation, or public safety. The same principle applies to freedom of the press. Newspapers and journalists enjoy broad constitutional protections, but those protections were never intended to create a system in which the press operates without legal accountability. From the earliest days of the republic, American law recognized that publishers could be held responsible for false statements that damage a person’s reputation.” (03/11/26)
“President Donald Trump’s original plan for addressing the purported threat posed by the longstanding U.S. trade deficit, which the Supreme Court rejected in February, involved declaring an imaginary emergency to justify tariffs under a statute that does not authorize them. His backup plan, which he revealed immediately after that decision, avoids the second difficulty but not the first one.” (03/11/26)
“All the way back in 2023, the surgeon general diagnosed Americans as suffering from an epidemic of loneliness. More recently, amid the rise of American fascism, I started to notice that people were not only lonely but had also begun referring to the world as simply ‘the news.’ Perceived that way — as a phenomenon pre-packaged via our devices — our bond with the world was distilled into just two options: consume the news or don’t. A sense of powerlessness is baked into such a perception. By contrast, I remembered once reading an interview with billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, who described the world as atoms constantly shifting and moving. With intention and focus, she pointed out, you can move those atoms yourself, and so move the world. Baked into that worldview was a sense of interconnectedness, not to mention power. Was such a perspective a luxury of the billionaire class? In fact, no.” (03/10/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness
“In his latest bid to salvage his protectionist trade agenda, President Donald Trump imposed a new 10% tariff on all imports to the United States. To justify this move, Trump cited the existence of a trade deficit and invoked an obscure clause of the Trade Act of 1974, called Section 122. This clause allows the president to impose tariffs for up to 150 days; however, its provisions only apply in the presence of a ‘large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits.’ Trump’s use of Section 122 is illegal because the United States does not currently have a balance-of-payments deficit. … He is the first president to attempt to use this clause for a reason. Previous administrations have examined its text in detail and come to the conclusion that Section 122 simply does not apply to common trade deficits.” (03/11/26)
“Contemporary debates over U.S. immigration policy are framed almost entirely in the language of pathology: cruelty, incompetence, authoritarian drift, constitutional erosion. These diagnoses are not wrong, but they describe merely surface phenomena while neglecting to account for the scope and intent of the policies, thus obscuring the form of power that generates them. What was sold to voters as a program of robust law enforcement intended to restore order has become something wholly different: a campaign of ethnic cleansing.” (03/11/26)
“On Monday, while visiting Australia to compete in a tournament, five members of the Iranian women’s soccer team were struggling in a hotel room over whether to defect and escape suppression back home. Their struggle ended when Naghmeh Danai, an Iranian-Australian and a migration agent, told them, ‘You will have more respect [here].’ … This minor tale of Iranians seeking to be honored on their merits reflects a major theme during the many years of protests in Iran: An authoritarian theocracy purposely set up in 1979 to replace a dynastic monarchy has come to rely on nepotism and crony networks to keep itself in power, denying opportunities for many Iranians and leading to corrupt, ineffective governance.” (03/10/26)
“Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurring opinion in the tariff case of Learning Resources v. Trump rightfully has garnered favorable attention. This is largely due to its clear explanation of the Supreme Court’s ‘major questions doctrine.’ As recited by Justice Gorsuch, the major questions doctrine is that, ‘to sustain a claim that Congress has granted them an extraordinary power, executive officials must identify clear authority for that power.’ Not all the members of the court agree with that formulation, but it does seem to command a majority of the justices. Justice Gorsuch’s statement of the doctrine, however, leaves a circle open that I would like to close. My thesis is that the major questions doctrine is simply the logical obverse of the doctrine of incidental (or implied) authority.” (03/11/26)
“This war is notable not for its use of Artificial Intelligence, but for the fact that it is the first war that feels like it’s been launched by A.I: It’s all been done on a level less than thought. Trump’s remarks, Hegseth’s speeches; they all sound like autocompletes or snippets of half-remembered things. When Trump bellows, ‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,’ he knows not what it means; he just heard it somewhere, probably on TV. … In the past, propaganda served the purposes of war; now war serves the purposes of propaganda. But the blood remains real. A.I. will supposedly give us fully automated wars in the future, but it’s here, right now. There’s a blind automatism to this war; It’s a war without thought or deliberation, public or private. It’s war as autocomplete.” (03/11/26)
“You remember how the American filibuster works, right? Quick version: The Senate’s rules require not a simple majority of 51 votes but a supermajority of 60 votes to approve most legislation. However, it only takes a simple majority of 51 votes to change this rule — the so-called ‘nuclear option.’ Why, you may ask, does the filibuster endure? The usual story is “What comes around, goes around.” The other party will eventually get control of House, Senate, and presidency. Ending the filibuster helps your party fulfill its fondest dreams in the short run, but realizes your worst nightmare in the long run. Since both parties know this, the filibuster survives.” (03/11/26)
