“President Donald Trump’s determination to get back at his perceived enemies has somehow incorporated my entire family. What did we ever do to him? I’m a journalist. My wife is a recreation therapist. My daughter is a lawyer. Sisters: social worker, psychologist. Brothers-in-law: psychiatrist, psychologist. Nieces, nephews: mostly educators. And my son is autistic, though he, too, works and pays taxes. That we – through our chosen professions – have made the president’s ‘enemies list’ is indicative of why a majority of Americans say he’s gone too far.” (05/06/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Wanjiru Njoya
“To many economists, questions of justice are not relevant to the study of free markets. In most situations where people try to invoke arguments about ‘justice,’ they are concerned with distributive justice. Their aim is to address questions of wealth distribution and income inequality. They argue that ‘social justice’ requires the state to redistribute wealth. In this context, Friedrich A. Hayek depicted ‘social justice’ as a meaningless slogan — a mantra wielded by political activists to avoid having to give reasons or justifications for their policies.” (05/06/25)
“U.S. President Donald Trump, casting a covetous eye on Greenland, has my attention. I have a history in that place, so little known to Americans in general, having spent the entire year of 1964 at Thule Air Force Base, now Pitufik Space Station, 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The road I’ve traveled since has me deeply concerned about Trump in every respect—believing that everything he represents and wants is contrary to the best interests of our country, the world, and mankind altogether, excepting perhaps oligarchs. At Thule I was responsible for overseeing the maintenance of our air-to-air missiles and for supervising the loading of those missiles on board our F-102 fighter jets in the event of declared hostilities with our great ‘bugaboo’, the Soviet Union.” (05/06/25)
Source: Persuasion
by Melanie Jennings & Elizabeth Kaye Cook
“In December, we wrote an essay about how small presses still fight the good fight for risky literary fiction, even as the conglomerated Big Five publishers abandon it. In a time when companies like Meta steal books to build generative AI, then claim that individual books ‘are no different from noise’ in terms of their contribution to AI, defending wild fiction matters more than ever. Many readers reached out to us: after too-often plunking down $30 for a well-reviewed but ultimately disappointing new release, they were clamoring for better options. If small and independent presses offered fresher, more challenging books, how could they find and read them? It’s a more difficult question to answer than you might expect.” (05/06/25)
“ICE hit the town early Sunday morning, making over 150 traffic stops and detaining anywhere from 20 to 100 persons deemed illegally [sic] present in the country. The details are scant at the moment, but an official statement from the Tennessee Highway Patrol on the operation revealed that state law enforcement coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on ‘a public safety operation in Davidson County’ focusing in particular on ‘areas with a history of serious traffic crashes and suspected gang activity.’ As you might expect, there has been a big response from local elected officials.” [editor’s note: The “law” — in this case the US Constitution — says that there’s no such thing as being “illegally present” in the United States – TLK] (05/06/25)
“One of the world’s, oldest and most dangerous conflicts went critical this past week as nuclear armed India and Pakistan traded threats of war. The Kashmir conflict is the oldest one before the UN. In my book `War at the Top of the World’ I warned that the confrontation over Kashmir, the beautiful mountain state claimed by both Islamabad and Delhi, could unleash a nuclear war that could kill millions and pollute the planet. After three wars and many clashes, it seemed the two bad neighbors had allowed the Kashmir dispute to fade into the background as their relations slightly improved. Then came the murder last week of 26 Indian tourists at Pahalgam, a Kashmir beauty spot, by Muslim insurgents.” (05/06/25)
“Next week President Trump will take his first international state trip as president and, just as in his first term, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be his first stop. Trump hasn’t minced words about why he’s heading there: money. ‘I said I’ll go if you pay $1 trillion to American companies — meaning the purchase over a four-year period of $1 trillion — and they’ve agreed to do that,’ Trump told reporters on March 7 …. there’s reason to be skeptical of the amount given Trump’s penchant for exaggeration and the fact that $1 trillion is more than the value of the entire Saudi sovereign wealth fund. While it’s unclear how much money is actually at stake and who will get it, there’s one person that is certain to cash in on Saudi Arabia’s financial largesse: Donald Trump.” (05/06/25)
“Fifty years ago this week, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies. In clumsily attempting to declare a new official holiday, ‘Victory Day,’ President Trump got his history wrong, forgetting that World War II continued until Japan surrendered on September 2. The German surrender of May 7, 1945, began an 80-year period in which the United States was the global hegemonic power with Europe as junior partner. Trump has now brought that partnership to an abrupt end. At its best, the Atlantic Alliance was the centerpiece of a rules-based global system that prized democracy and the rule of law. At its worst, the system was a vehicle for American overreach that sometimes gave priority to corporate interests at the expense of democracy.” (05/06/25)
