“According to Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, there are currently 3,000 ICE officers swarming the city. That’s five times the total number of sworn officers who work on the city’s entire police force. They know they can act with impunity in inflicting violence on anyone they wish — undocumented immigrants, permanent residents, and American citizens. I remain deeply uncertain about what we can and should do about this dawning reality. But there is value in simply documenting it in its appalling details. We need to have our eyes wide open about this as we prepare for more — and worse.” (01/17/26)
“Once a week, the Trump administration does something that would get an ordinary president impeached in sane times: cooking up a ridiculously pretextual criminal investigation to try to bully the Fed chairman into cutting interest rates leaps to mind, as does murdering scores of seafaring South Americans on similarly thin pretexts. Consider the fact — which would be unbelievable in normal times — that NATO countries are sending troops to Greenland because NATO — a U.S.-led alliance — is worried that the United States is about to carry out an act of war against Denmark. … Trump’s amorality and ruthlessness, and those of his underlings, are constrained by one thing and one thing alone, and it is not the noodly spines of such specimens as Mike Pence: It is their incompetence — their horrifying, hilarious incompetence.” (01/16/26)
“Donald Trump may, of course, be the Republican candidate for president in 2028, the US Constitution notwithstanding. Although it is clearly written in the 22nd Amendment that ‘no person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,’ it may well be a majority vote of the Supreme Court that determines whether that applies to Trump. In the past, that court has gotten around the Constitution without a single word of it being changed. Rather, its judges have let an innovative interpretation prevail. In 1896, for instance, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the court ignored the unambiguous language of the 14th Amendment that demanded ‘equal protection’ and so upheld racial segregation by creating the fiction of ‘separate but equal.’ It would take 58 years before that lie would be overturned.” (01/18/25)
“The 19th-century cartoonist Thomas Nast made the elephant the Republican Party’s symbol, but today the hamster would be more suitable for congressional Republicans. The phrase ‘hamster wheel’ is an American idiom for energy expended pointlessly. Now, however, some of those Republicans might have managed to reach a destination: exasperation with their role as ratifiers of presidential whims. Perhaps Donald Trump has at last gone too far for those legislators weary of going nowhere. He wants to prosecute Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, his pretext being cost overruns on the remodeling of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters. This is one of Trump’s especially pointless tantrums, given that Powell’s term as chair ends May 15. Trump has, however, clarified the debate about the Fed’s ‘independence.’ And he has perhaps finally provoked a Republican recoil against his ambitions to control everything, including interest rates.” (01/16/26)
“Just as I was reading the final chapters of William Easterly’s book, Violent Saviours: The West, the Rest, and Capitalism Without Consent, the United States government abducted the president of Venezuela to stand trial on drug charges in New York. I was pleased to see Nicolás Maduro facing justice, even if for the wrong reasons, but at the time of writing it remains to be seen whether the U.S. actions will advance the economic and personal freedom of Venezuelans. In the light of recent developments, Easterly’s conclusion seem to me to be excessively optimistic.” (01/17/26)
“Economists extol the importance of competition in markets for driving prices down and quality up. But what is ‘competition’ and how does it actually work? To non-economists, the word conjures the idea of something like a sporting contest, where there can be one winner while everyone else loses. But this comparison fails on at least two dimensions.” (01/16/26)
“Someone alert the Norwegian Nobel Committee: Against the odds, Donald Trump has succeeded in peacefully uniting the world. Unfortunately, the world has been united against us. This Pax (Ex) Americana era was illustrated Friday, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney wrapped up a trip to China. This wasn’t just any old visit, either: It marked the first time a Canadian PM had been to the world’s second-largest economy since 2017 — and based on the glamorous video Carney’s team released, it was a smashing success for Beijing.” (01/17/26)
“In a chilling series of social media posts on Saturday night, Minnesota state senator and former Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh pledged to make the Cedar Riverside neighborhood of his city a ‘no-go zone for white supremacists.’ ‘No-go zone’ is a term popularized in Europe that refers to Muslim-majority neighborhoods where it is not safe for White people to go. The X posts began with Fateh and two other men standing before the iconic Cedar Riverside towers with the message, ‘Cedar Strong. White Supremacists aren’t welcome here. We protect our own.'” (01/18/25)
“Adults siphon off taxpayer money earmarked for kids, and no one is held accountable. Teachers’ unions share the same dysfunctional incentives as headline-grabbing fraudsters in Minnesota.” (01/16/26)
