“Joseph Rivers was a 22-year-old from Romulus, Michigan, who boarded an Amtrak train in 2015 with about $16,000 in cash — his life savings — to start a new life in Los Angeles as a music video producer. His dream was cut short when federal agents decided the government was more entitled to that cash than he was. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, DEA agents boarded the train, questioned passengers, and asked to search his bags; Rivers agreed, and agents found the cash in a bank envelope, even calling his mother to confirm his story before stealing the money anyway under civil asset forfeiture, leaving him with no charges and no way to continue his trip or get home.” (11/19/25)
“At this very second, Washington is pouring billions into escalations toward a potential invasion of Venezuela that would set Latin America on fire, escalate tensions with neighbors, and trap US troops in another undefined quagmire. It has already conducted about a dozen strikes on unproven ‘drug boats’ in the Caribbean, without congressional approval, a trial, or even demonstrated intelligence, killing innumerable Venezuelan and foreign civilians, while it has moved Naval strike groups and carriers near Venezuela’s shores. This is one of the disastrous and preventable results of American militarism, exceptionalism, and the military-industrial complex that fuels them. Such is the context in which The Trillion Dollar War Machine lands on bookshelves.” (11/19/25)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Oliver Dean
“The latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) statistics paint a bleak picture for Britain’s economic outlook. Growth over the last three months is even slower than expected, with the UK’s GDP rising just 0.1% from July to September, half as much as forecast. That comes hard on the heels of the news on Tuesday that unemployment has hit 5%, the highest it has been in four years. With more young people not in education, employment or training and businesses repeatedly voicing concerns over tax hikes, it is clear that Britain is no longer the welcome home to businesses it once was. With the Budget just two weeks away, the Chancellor still has the power to turn the British economy around. But only if she signals to businesses that she has their interests at heart.” (11/19/25)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by William Harris
“Amazon’s movie poster edits and quiet takedowns sanitize art and ideas. Legal? Often. Good cultural stewardship? Not without transparency and viewpoint-neutral processes.” (11/19/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Matthew Hisrich
“A refrain in the television series Foundation is that, in the grand scheme of history, individuals and individual actions do not matter. Amusingly, the focus of the series is on individuals and individual actions. As it turns out, the lives of individuals make for more compelling storytelling than long arcs of history. Show creators David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman were wise in this regard to deviate from Isaac Asimov’s source material. But the tactic simultaneously undermines the central premise of Foundation as a concept while also revealing two fundamental truths about human existence: individuals matter and we cannot predict the future.” (11/19/25)
“The Constitution’s nondelegation principle limits Congress’s ability to delegate congressional powers to other entities. The principle is a crucial and inherent feature of our Constitution, which vests only specific powers in specific federal branches. Article I of the Constitution vests ‘all legislative powers herein granted’ in Congress, Article II vests ‘the executive power’ in the president, and Article III vests ‘the judicial power of the United States’ in the federal judiciary. By limiting Congress’s ability to delegate its legislative powers to other entities, the nondelegation principle helps courts maintain the constitutional separation of powers. Unfortunately, the federal judiciary has not done a great job at enforcing the nondelegation principle.” (11/19/25)
“In democracies all across the world, the party system appears unhealthy: Trust in parties is low, partisan antagonism is high, and elections feel existential instead of routine. Many countries’ equivalents of the Democrats and Republicans — parties that have been dominant at least since World War II — are suffering similar decline. Some are on the precipice of extinction. Populist parties are ascending seemingly everywhere. The synchronized collapse of mainstream parties around the world shows that what is happening in America is unexceptional — and, as a result, that many prominent theories for the American electorate’s malaise and discontent are incomplete.” (11/19/25)
“Gerrymandering has been a staple of the Republic since its beginning. The practice has such a storied tradition that it is named after Elbridge Gerry, one of our founding fathers who served as vice president under President James Madison. For decades, leftists attempted to outlaw partisan gerrymandering. Justice Anthony Kennedy could not make up his mind on the issue, so it languished until he retired. Fortunately for the Constitution, President Trump replaced Justice Kennedy — the Court’s swing vote for over a dozen years — with solid constitutionalist Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In 2019, thanks to Kavanaugh’s addition, the Court upheld partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause. Legislatures cannot gerrymander based on race, but they can do so based on partisanship.” (11/19/25)
“When U.S. Magistrate Judge William E. Fitzpatrick blasted the Justice Department’s handling of the James Comey case on Monday, he did not address the merits of the perjury and obstruction charges against the former FBI director. But the government misconduct that Fitzpatrick described was largely a product of the reckless rush to deliver the grudge-driven indictment that President Donald Trump demanded. … These missteps, which Fitzpatrick said might prove serious enough to require dismissal of the indictment, did not happen in a vacuum. They were the consequences of Trump’s determination to get Comey, regardless of the facts or the law.” (11/19/25)
“One answer to why Reinventing Government failed is that its authors misunderstood the problem, or preferred not to understand it. In this view, the problem is not that good civil servants are trapped in bad systems. It is that civil servants constitute a ‘deep state’ that undermines elected officials and does the bidding of an unaccountable elite. Whatever the merits of this position, the second Trump administration has advanced a breathtakingly extreme version of it.” (11/19/25)
