“You could be forgiven for not realizing there’s a government shutdown going on, the second-longest one in U.S. history in fact. Between ICE terror campaigns, revenge prosecutions, summary executions of Caribbean (and now Pacific) fishing boat crews, and the literal destruction of the East Wing of the White House, there isn’t a lot of bandwidth for the void of federal appropriations and the furlough of over 750,000 employees. Republicans are very much trying to conceal the shutdown from the general public. President Trump dubiously got the troops paid, and he’s trying to figure out how to pay air traffic controllers to prevent flight delays. There have been vindictive cuts to spending projects in blue states and attempted layoffs of federal workers, but the layoffs have been blocked, and stopping infrastructure projects that have yearslong timelines isn’t immediately felt.” (10/23/25)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Kit Walsh
“Creating and sharing knowledge are defining traits of humankind, yet copyright law has grown so restrictive that it can require acts of civil disobedience to ensure that students and scholars have the books they need and to preserve swaths of culture from being lost forever.” (10/23/25)
“I don’t like making comparisons (they encourage envy, status and other stupidities), but with Western civilization having been maligned over decades, I think this one is necessary. The contributions of Western civilization are not just prodigious, but shocking. Compare them to what was produced by any other civilization …” (10/23/25)
“As of the time of this writing, eight American warships, manned by more than 4,500 Marines and sailors, have been placed just outside of Venezuelan waters. The New York Times has identified guided-missile cruisers moving close to Venezuelan shores, as well as Reaper drones stationed nearby in Puerto Rico, alongside a number of stealth fighter jets. On Wednesday, War Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed on X that the military escalated this campaign by conducting a lethal airstrike on a vessel in the Pacific Ocean for the first time, off of Colombia’s waters, just days after Trump accused its president, Gustavo Petro, of being an ‘illegal drug dealer’ after he criticized the American campaign in the Caribbean. … The target is clear: Nicolás Maduro, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. But the United States government is not saying that, at least outright.” (10/22/25)
“A firestorm erupted last week when the British professor and commentator Eric Kaufmann made a bold claim: Identifying as transgender is ‘in free fall among the young.’ … last week I analyzed data from the nationally representative Household Pulse survey, which asked directly about transgender identity. … The Household Pulse data showed a decline in trans identification among 18- to 22-year-olds in 2024, but I was cautious about drawing conclusions from it as the decline appeared only in a limited time period …. Then, over the weekend, I found it—a nationally representative survey that asked the same question about transgender identification from 2021 to 2024. It also asked separately about identifying as nonbinary. The data are from the Cooperative Election Study (CES), fielded each year by YouGov and administered by Tufts University. They show that identifying as transgender really is in free fall among the young in the United States.” (10/22/25)
“Nicotine pouches — small, smokeless packets tucked under the lip — deliver nicotine without burning tobacco. They eliminate the tar, carbon monoxide, and carcinogens that make cigarettes so deadly. The logic of harm reduction couldn’t be clearer: if smokers can get nicotine without smoke, millions of lives could be saved. Sweden has already proven the point. Through widespread use of snus and nicotine pouches, the country has cut daily smoking to about 5 percent, the lowest rate in Europe. Lung-cancer deaths are less than half the continental average. This ‘Swedish Experience’ shows that when adults are given safer options, they switch voluntarily — no prohibition required. In the United States, however, the FDA’s tobacco division has turned this logic on its head.” (10/23/25)
“U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently talked about taking over Greenland and Canada, but it’s unclear if he was actually serious about it. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Greg Grandin, U.S. leaders from the Founding Fathers onward cultivated a myth of a limitless frontier—the idea that constant expansion could solve internal problems. But limitlessness feels less possible today than it did two centuries ago. What does that then mean for Trump’s ‘America First’ model?” (10/22/25)
“The president says the sound of bulldozers at the East Wing is ‘music to my ears.’ ‘You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction to the back,’ Donald Trump told reporters Tuesday from a podium overlooking his newly paved ‘Rose Garden Club’ terrace, alongside the new ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ featuring gold-framed portraits of his predecessors (and an ‘autopen’ for Joe Biden). ‘You hear that sound?’ he said, raising his hand to his ear as if to savor the clamor from construction of the new $300 million White House ballroom that began Monday. ‘Ahhh, that’s music to my ears. I love that sound. Other people don’t like it, I love it.’ It was a wry jab at Trump-deranged critics of his big, beautiful ballroom, who are losing their minds over his beautification of the White House.” (10/22/25)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“According to an article on the leftist website commondreams.org, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a self-labeled socialist, is being applauded for his defense of a $30 minimum wage. The Big Apple’s minimum wage is currently at $16.50. What? How in the world can anyone be applauding someone who wants a minimum wage of only $30 per hour? Why isn’t Mamdani instead proposing a minimum wage of $100 per hour? As a member of the New York State Assembly, he himself receives $142,000 year. Why does he settle for $30 for workers?” (10/23/25)
