“The very quiet shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security got louder in the past week as lines outside TSA airport security checkpoints grew to tremendous lengths. … Congress seemed to get really interested once Delta suspended its special service that allowed members of the House and Senate to skip security lines. Funny how that works. The framework of the emerging deal was on the table before the shutdown even began. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) introduced a bill in February to fund other parts of DHS, but not ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP), while negotiations continued. What’s being discussed in the Senate would go further: Every agency in DHS, including CBP, would get funding except for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the entity that finds and detains people. Republicans would then seek to fund ERO as part of a broader budget reconciliation bill on a party-line vote.” (03/25/26)
“Most people have little understanding of what is big or small in the federal budget, in large part because the media have made a conscious decision to not inform people. Rather than taking ten seconds to indicate what share of the budget a particular item is, they just write huge numbers in the millions or billions, knowing they are completely meaningless to almost everyone who sees them. With this in mind, I thought it would be useful to write a piece pointing out that the $200 billion (2.9% of the budget) Trump plans to ask to cover the cost of his war in Iran is, in fact, a big deal. While this is still less than what we spend on huge social programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, it is far larger than most of the items that are subject of major political debates.” (03/25/26)
“The TSA has a long history of failing to such a degree that it could never survive had it not been run by and within the government. Costing taxpayers and travelers $10 billion annually, not counting the inconvenience and time lost, the agency fails even on its own terms. The failure rate in 2015 was over 90 percent. The same in 2017. If these data seem dated, it is because they are. Instead of fixing the problems, the results of the agency’s internal testing were classified. In the absence of data, the only reasonable interpretation is that the agency remains a catastrophic failure to this day. The recent airport chaos stresses how the security theater has become an unbearable bottleneck. It also stresses how dysfunctional government services become problematic beyond the waste of resources and the inconveniences they cause.” (03/25/26)
“We expect increasing costs in government ‘charity,’ in part because governments centralize and standardize methods, discouraging innovation and adaptation. It’s not a market. Government bureaucrats and operatives try to coordinate increasing staffs (along with market costs in housing, etc.) while necessarily dealing with clients as objects of pity and bother rather than, as in markets (where people exchange valuable goods), subjects whose responses immediately affect the ‘business’ at hand.” (03/24/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Zoe Armbruster
“Across the United States, teenagers freely express themselves online. But that freedom is rapidly being restricted, and make no mistake: this doesn’t just end with teens. What is often portrayed as a youth mental health issue is really a battle for everyone’s online speech rights.” (03/24/26)
“When the term ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ was coined, the words carried a hint of gallows humor. But as time passed and insane behavior by the president’s opponents became widely embedded in key people and institutions, any whiff of humor faded into history. Especially during a time of war with a deadly, fanatical enemy, an irrational hatred of our commander-in-chief by powerful Americans is not a laughing matter. All the more so when the infected include the top Democrat in Washington and the editors of America’s largest newspaper. Revealing scenarios in recent days that involve Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and the New York Times illustrate how hatred of the president has distorted their judgments and undercut their patriotism.” (03/24/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullin
“Every year around the anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations (1776), economists and commentators repeat a familiar story: Adam Smith — the Scottish moral philosopher — is celebrated as the father, or even the inventor, of economics. In this telling, Smith stands at the beginning of a scientific tradition, single-handedly discovering the principles of the market economy and the virtues of free trade. But this story is less history than myth.” (03/24/26)
Source: International Guild of Professional Anarchists
by Alexander Snitker
“Donald Trump’s latest outbursts, taunts, and diplomatic clown shows don’t just prove he’s unfit for the office. They prove the office itself is too dangerous to exist.” (03/24/26)
