Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Hayley Tsukayama
“Widespread news reports indicate that President Donald Trump’s administration has prepared an executive order to punish states that have passed laws attempting to address harms from artificial intelligence (AI) systems. According to a draft published by news outlets, this order would direct federal agencies to bring legal challenges to state AI regulations that the administration deems ‘onerous,’ to restrict funding to those states that have these laws, and to adopt new federal law that overrides state AI laws. This approach is deeply misguided.” (11/20/25)
“Fifty-seven years ago, I authored an article in the New York Times Magazine provocatively titled: ‘Nine Men in Black Who Think White’. It argued that the Supreme Court had long been one of the major roadblocks to progress on racial justice in this country. Today, the nine black-robed Supreme Court justices include two Black justices, one Latina, and four women. Yet, all the evidence suggests that given the balance of forces on the court, they continue to ‘rule white’, undermining the dreams of a more racially just nation. Yes, three of the justices care deeply about racial justice, but they are only three of nine. Next year, this Court is poised to further gut the signature piece of racial justice legislation of the last century, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Movements across the nation need to make it clear to the world that this is unacceptable.” (11/20/25)
“I’ll admit it: I’ve held President Donald Trump to a different standard than former President Joe Biden when it comes to financial entanglements. Why? For all their ‘Middle Class Joe’ values, Biden and his family — notably, grabby son Hunter — apparently set out to cash in on Biden’s time in public office and after he served as vice president. Hence Hunter Biden’s $2 million pay during 2013 and 2014 as he worked for Ukraine energy concern Burisma. Trump’s money situation was different during his first term. Trump entered the White House a billionaire. The newly elected commander-in-chief lost loads of money during his first four years in the White House …. Trump seems unconcerned about the appearance of conflicts of interest the second time around. Could crypto, then, become his ‘cryptonite?'” (11/20/25)
Source: Libertarian institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“For more than two decades, the United States has waged a quiet, little-noticed air and special operations war across the Horn of Africa. If most Americans are unaware of this fact, that is no accident. The campaign in Somalia has been conducted so far from public view, and with so little meaningful debate in Washington, that its continuation today is treated almost as a bureaucratic inevitability—a policy in search of a justification, defended out of habit rather than necessity. For there is no rational reason for the United States to be bombing Somalia at all. The entire enterprise stands as a textbook example of how inertia, institutional self-interest, and the perverse incentives of the national security bureaucracy combine to produce destructive policies that accomplish nothing for the American people.” (11/20/25)
“The quantitative perspective used the mathematical precision expected in the natural sciences like physics and chemistry to model and predict the economy. The qualitative perspective viewed economics as no less rigorous, but restrained economic thought to a study of human behavior and markets. The quantitative shift has continued well into the 20th century with Keynesianism, neoclassical economics, and monetarism, and has spurred the development of a host of new economic statistics. One such statistic is the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and is an example of this methodological error that abandoned the qualitative methodology in favor of a quantitative approach.” (11/20/25)
“When it comes to the reported draft framework agreement between the US and Russia, and its place in the Ukraine peace process, a quote by Winston Churchill (on the British victory at El Alamein) may be appropriate: ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’ This is because at long last, this document engages with the concrete, detailed issues that will have to be resolved if peace is to be achieved.” (11/20/25)
“During a visit to the United States this week, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman achieved much of what he sought, mainly access to advanced American fighter jets and microchips and ‘major ally’ status with the U.S. He also received a reputational redemption of sorts, when President Donald Trump dismissed questions about the prince’s suspected involvement in the murder of a Saudi journalist. And thanks to diplomacy by Saudi Arabia, along with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Trump also got something he wanted (and needed): approval from the U.N. Security Council for his Gaza peace plan. Soft-power persuasion by these Arab states helped avert potential vetoes by China and Russia. It underscored the value of keeping doors open to even potential foes – and to the institutions that maintain multilateral relationships. The Gulf States are playing a growing role in many global standoffs and bring unique perspectives to international mediation.” (11/19/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Mark Nayler
“Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Spain has been celebrating all year, with a calendar of educational and cultural events intended ‘to highlight the great transformation achieved in this half-century of democracy.’ Inaugurating the ‘Spain in Liberty’ program in January, Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez said: ‘You don’t need to have a particular ideology, to be on the left, in the center, or on the right, to regard with enormous sadness and terror the dark years of Francoism.’ You don’t, but it certainly helps. ‘Liberty in Spain’ deserves praise for innovatively addressing a complicated issue; but it has also highlighted deep-set disagreement over how Spain should confront its past—and even whether doing so is necessary.” (11/20/25)
“An increasing amount of public attention has been drawn to an obscure ideological movement called ‘postliberalism,’ which argues that free markets, individual liberty, and limited government handicap a societal commitment to what they call the ‘common good.’ Until just a few years ago, postliberalism hovered around the extreme periphery of the political right. That is no longer the case. The most obvious reason is that Vice President J.D. Vance self-identifies as a postliberal. And more recently, the postliberal movement has found itself at the center of a string of controversies.” (11/20/25)
Source: The Peaceful Revolutionist
by David S D’Amato
“Rather than continuing to pretend that we’re in an agreement or mutually beneficial relationship with a predatory ruling class, we could start to put facts ahead of abstractions and thought experiments. We could reimagine the social contract in Proudhonian terms, as working from the bottom-up, first relationships of equality and solidarity between individuals, then between their cooperative bodies, and outward from there in federations and agreements as may be needed for specific times and purposes. This is precisely the reverse of Rawlsian social contract philosophy in that it does not take the state as a given: it begins with contract where it can be found as a social fact and insists that any social arrangement must harmonize with genuine contract. But I don’t want to suggest that this reversal of Rawls is in method only.” (11/20/25)
