Source: Washington Monthly
by Mike Lofgren
“We’re depleting our big, expensive, Cold War-inspired defensive weapons on Iran’s cheap drones, and if Tehran expands its underwater drone program, look out.” (03/19/26)
Source: The UnPopulist
by Jay Michaelson
“They distrust the right but are pained by the left.” (03/19/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/progressive-jews-are-deeply-distressed
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“In 2008, a book appeared called Deleting the State: An Argument About Government. It was a trim volume, barely a hundred pages of actual text, but it hit me with the force of a hundred pounds from the very first page. As an undergraduate political science student, I had by that point read Robert Nozick, but I had yet to encounter Murray Rothbard or the broader Austrian and anarcho-capitalist tradition. Aeon Skoble’s book was therefore the first work I encountered that seriously challenged the legitimacy of the state itself. Now the Independent Institute has done a new generation of readers a service by issuing a second edition of this compact but provocative anarcho-capitalist work.” (03/19/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/arguing-against-the-state-without-hesitation
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“We’re in the midst of the quietest government shutdown in American history. For 34 days, funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been blocked in a standoff over the Trump administration’s deeply unpopular immigration enforcement, something the White House has finally realized is such a public opinion disaster that they’ve stopped calling it mass deportation. The biggest public-facing side of this shutdown is Transportation Security Administration workers, who have now worked without a paycheck for a month. But aside from frustration about longer airport security lines, there’s been little pressure on Washington to end the impasse. On Wednesday, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) had his confirmation hearing to run the department that currently has no funding. While his rhetoric was softer, he didn’t really offer many thoughts about the issues in the dispute.” (03/19/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/03/19/government-shutdown-trump-dhs-ice-cbp-funding-congress/
Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman
“Inflation was rising and job growth stalled even before the Iran War.” (03/19/26)
Source: Foreign Policy
by Agathe Demarais
“All eyes are set on U.S. President Donald Trump’s escalating war against Iran, but on the home front, things are not going well. Nearly one year after he launched a barrage of steep tariffs on what he called ‘Liberation Day,’ economists have crunched the numbers for 2025 — and they are not looking good for the White House. By Trump’s own yardstick — his three goals of making foreigners pay for doing business with the United States, narrowing the U.S. trade deficit, and punishing China — tariffs have clearly failed.” (03/19/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Nikolai G Wenzel
“Capital loaned out can’t be invested or consumed. Interest compensating the lender is merely ‘the price of time.'” (03/19/26)
Source: Understanding AI
by Timothy B Lee
“OpenAI and Anthropic are using the standard tech startup playbook.” (03/19/26)
https://www.understandingai.org/p/how-to-think-about-the-ai-company
Source: The American Conservative
by Jack Hunter
“Many consider J.D. Vance the heir apparent to Donald Trump’s MAGA legacy and the man to beat in the 2028 Republican presidential primaries — a state of affairs the Republican foreign policy establishment has never liked. Hawks have long worried that the vice president is too much of a foreign policy restrainer for their tastes (though Vance has often sounded more like neoconservatives in Trump’s second term). Still, neocons were giddy last week when polling showed that Marco Rubio’s numbers had improved against Vance, with the secretary of state being hawks’ main man in the 2016 GOP primaries and a figure who could repurpose ‘MAGA’ as the neoconservatism of old (though Trump seems to be doing this already, making Vance’s supposed 2028 inevitability less clear). But there could be more than one neocon champion in 2028.” (03/19/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/ted-cruz-is-the-republican-kamala-harris/
Source: Independent Institute
by Phillip W Magness
“Politicians quickly saw how much revenue the income tax could produce, so they abandoned its original purpose.” (03/18/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/03/18/how-a-tariff-fight-created-the-federal-income-tax/