“Trump’s incoherent State of the Union address on Tuesday featured his usual stroke-victim diction and his patented blend of stupidity and dishonesty. Fact-checking his claims is laborious, because he speaks almost exclusively in simpleton’s superlatives, and it also is pointless, inasmuch as the people who most need to know the facts are not much inclined to listen to them, being, as they are, members of an especially tawdry and shameful cult. … but it may be that the dumbest and most dishonest claim of the night was that J.D. Vance’s newly announced fraud commission will, if it does its job, produce a ‘balanced budget overnight.'” (02/27/26)
“With the launch of attacks on Iran, some have already declared the strikes unconstitutional. That includes the immediate condemnation of Rep. Thomas Massie. The precedent, however, favors the president in this action, though the attack triggers obligations of notice and consultation with Congress. I am highly sympathetic to those who criticize the failure to seek declarations of war from Congress before carrying out such operations. Indeed, I have represented members of Congress in opposing such wars. We lost. The courts have allowed presidents to order such attacks unilaterally.” (02/28/26)
“For decades, France has been urging Europe to become more independent of the United States in the security arena. But most Europeans paid no heed to this useful proposal. They grew fat and happy under the U.S. security umbrella during the Cold War, and especially after the Soviet threat receded. Most European nations spent too little on their own defense, instead using the savings to compete with U.S. companies and run expansive social welfare programs. The European Union added another layer to Europe’s already overregulated economies. Although the Biden and Trump administrations have successfully pressured those countries to increase defense spending incrementally, they need even greater funding increases if they want to achieve greater independence from the now clearly unreliable United States.” (02/27/26)
“The Trump administration is embracing an intimidation strategy to silence critical media coverage. Here’s how it works: A federal agency launches a pretextual investigation into a perceived enemy, keeps the investigation open to coerce compliance, and resists any effort to have a court review the lawfulness of the agency’s actions. There’s no better example than the Federal Trade Commission’s retaliatory investigation of Media Matters for America for its critical coverage of one of the Trump administration’s most powerful allies. Such investigations aim stifle speech and chill the questioning of those in power. They’re an acute danger to nonprofit organizations that Americans rely on for critical information. That’s why 17 nonprofit organizations, led by The Intercept’s Press Freedom Defense Fund, filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.” (02/27/26)
Source: Orange County Register
by Veronique de Rugy
“Within hours of the Supreme Court ruling that the White House’s widespread “emergency” tariffs were illegal, President Donald Trump moved to install 10% across-the-board tariffs under a different alleged authority. He later said he would raise that rate to 15% and delivered a combative response in the State of the Union. The trade war isn’t ending. It’s just changing ZIP codes. What won’t change is the propaganda coming from the White House, which insists that Americans don’t pay the costs. Consider what follows as a guide to the fallacy-filled arguments that you’ll soon hear more of.” (02/27/26)
“What started as a bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery became an unconditional surrender Thursday. Netflix had a deal in place for a couple of months, but Paramount, under the direction of MAGA heir David Ellison, made a hostile takeover bid, and this week upped its offer from $30 to $31 a share for all of WBD, including its cable channels. The total purchase comes to $111 billion, and on Thursday the WBD board pronounced the offer superior to Netflix’s, giving the streamer four days to match it. Netflix, whose CEO was at the White House on Thursday (what was he told?), barely needed an hour, dropping its effort. So what many see as a worst-case scenario is realized: the Ellison family wresting control of two major movie studios, CBS, HBO, CNN, and secondarily TikTok. There are certainly echoes of media-political consolidation as we see in dictatorships the world over.” (02/27/26)
“There is a question that has haunted me since the moment I watched institutions fail children during the pandemic: Who will ask the hard questions if the agencies charged with asking them refuse to? I have spent the past six years trying to answer that question through film, through advocacy, through lawsuits, through grassroots organizing. Now, Restore Childhood is trying to answer it through science.” (02/27/26)
“Minor adjustments cannot fix a pay-as-you-go system strained by demographic reality. Restoring solvency demands structural changes that emphasize ownership.” (02/27/26)
