“On the 2023 campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris’s first major economic speech included proposing a ban on so-called ‘price gouging.’ Jason Furman, a top economist in the Obama administration, said it was ‘not sensible policy.’ As economists across the political spectrum will tell you, capping prices would discourage new companies from ramping up supply, invariably creating shortages. Donald Trump called the plan ‘SOVIET Style price controls.’ He was right, if overly dramatic. Harris’s proposal ended with her campaign. President Trump’s flirtation with controlling markets is just getting started.” (01/19/26)
“When I sat down to interview Sir Niall Ferguson about his 2006 book The War of the World, I had twenty years’ worth of questions. I discovered the book just after graduating from college and before I joined the Marine Corps. The book did three things for me: it rectified four years’ worth of an undergraduate education woefully devoid of history; it prepared me for the complex interplay of ethnic hatred and economic impoverishment I would encounter as an intelligence officer in the Middle East; and it solidified my view of human nature’s tragic propensity for conflict under even the most abundant of material conditions. I’ve re-read the book multiple times since that first encounter, and twenty years after its initial publication, I continue to gain a deeper appreciation of its historical insight and contemporary relevance.” (01/19/26)
“For the past year, it felt like we were a long way from the moment in Congress when Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) lamented that big banks ‘own the place’. As the Trump administration took power, a pitched battle emerged between the financial industry and Silicon Valley on a range of issues, and the tech oligarchs, with better connections to MAGA-world and more ability to enrich the Trump organization directly, seemed well positioned to win. The power center seemed to be shifting away from its traditional roots. But Wall Street didn’t become Wall Street by losing its ability to capture the government. A scuttled markup on a bill with major implications for cryptocurrencies shows that reports of the demise of big banks are greatly exaggerated.” (01/19/25)
“Ismail Selim Elbarasse, an accountant by training, seemed to be living a quiet life in Annandale, Virginia. But in 2004, when police officers noticed him driving with his wife across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and filming its critical structural elements, they decided to act, then detained him and notified federal agents. He was already a suspect in a scheme to provide funding to Islamist terrorist groups, and now agents were searching through his home for further evidence of his possible involvement. They discovered far more than a terrorism funding scheme. Buried among the stacks of paperwork in his home was a document written in Arabic titled ‘An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Brotherhood in North America’, written by a US-based Islamist leader from the Muslim Brotherhood. The strategic goals memo specifically addressed the ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ for using migration as a weapon of subversion.” (01/19/25)
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Whitney Eulich
“It’s a phone call no editor wants to receive: a late night jolt from a reporter facing trouble. I have worked with journalists in challenging environments – writing on gang violence and public protests, or from rural, hard-to-reach areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. But it took 15 years before I got my first call from a colleague facing an arrest warrant for his work. Nelson Rauda Zablah, our freelance correspondent in El Salvador, has documented his country’s democratic backsliding since President Nayib Bukele took office in 2019. … When I learned that he was facing the risk of arrest, I felt concerned. I informed Monitor management, offered an advance on his next story payment, and urged him to stay in close touch.” (01/16/25)
“On January 16, 2026, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood beside Chinese President Xi Jinping to announce what he called a landmark agreement that fundamentally restructured trade relations between the two nations. The deal slashed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100% to 6.1% while China reduced levies on Canadian canola from 84% to approximately 15%. But the numbers themselves tell only part of the story. This agreement represents something far more consequential: the first major fracture in North American solidarity since World War II, driven not by ideological sympathy for Beijing, but by Washington’s increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior on the world stage.” (01/19/26)
“Democrats are bullish about retaking the House of Representatives and making Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) the next Speaker after the midterm elections. Part of that optimism is the cushion of five seats created through further gerrymandering of California’s U.S. House districts. According to one respected Ninth Circuit judge, however, California may have a slight problem: Its new congressional map may be based on racial discrimination. Judge Kenneth Lee this week dissented from a decision upholding the districts, and his detailed dissent could lay the foundation for a serious challenge that goes all the way to the Supreme Court.” (01/19/25)
