“After more than four years of war in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin might be discovering that adherence to truth and open communications can be essential to ensuring a motivated military. A Kremlin attempt to steadily shut down Russia’s most popular and effective messaging platform, Telegram, has stirred dissent among civilian volunteers who assist the war online. They are the patriotic digital influencers who arrange money and supplies – the resources the military does not reliably provide – for soldiers on the front lines. Without free access to an independent app like Telegram, which has already been slowly throttled for months, this civil society of auxiliary supporters could turn on the government. Morale in the army ranks might fall fast. Spotty access to Telegram has also begun to reduce the ability of soldiers to message their families.” (04/01/26)
“On February 12, the EPA finalized the rescission of the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding that had allowed the federal government to regulate emissions as threats to public health, and repealed all vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards based on it. President Trump called it ‘the single largest deregulatory action in American history.’ This ostensible deregulatory act does not free the market, though. It removes the legal infrastructure that has shielded businesses from litigation and could expand states’ ability to regulate and sue independently, creating exactly the kind of regulatory chaos that industries have spent decades trying to prevent.” (04/01/26)
“After neglecting the notification of and consultation with U.S. allies about his pending attack on Iran, Trump was then angered when they balked at helping the United States undertake the dangerous and expensive mission of using their warships to convoy oil tankers and other commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz. And because the Iranians have effectively thumbed their nose at Trump’s threats against Iran’s oil and civilian infrastructure (a war crime if carried out) if they didn’t open the strait, somebody is going to need to undertake opening and keeping open the strait. Yet, Trump has now said that the allies need to do so to take their oil, because much of the oil imported into the United States does not transit the Strait. That statement exhibits the president’s profound ignorance of the oil market.” (04/01/26)
“What will the costs of the latest round of illegal, ill-fated U.S. military adventurism in the Middle East amount to? Some of the toll is already clear. Washington has squandered billions of dollars on a reckless war of aggression against Iran. A merciless campaign of aerial bombardment has driven millions from their homes. American and Israeli airstrikes have rained destruction on 10,000 civilian sites and already killed more than 3,000 people in Iran and Lebanon. Among the dead are more than 200 children, many killed in a U.S. strike on a girls’ school, a war crime that evokes the grim precedent of such past American atrocities as the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam or the 1991 Amiriyah shelter bombing in Iraq. The latest war has also dealt a potentially fatal blow to our already battered democratic institutions. It’s a war neither authorized by Congress nor supported by the public.” (04/02/26)
“Missouri operated a film tax credit program before ending it more than a decade ago. In 2010, the state’s Tax Credit Review Commission examined the program and concluded it served too narrow an industry to justify its cost to taxpayers. Lawmakers shut it down soon after. The idea never fully disappeared, though, and in 2023 the subsidy returned, this time with the promise of better results. The current program allows up to $16 million per year in credits for film and television productions. So far, there is little evidence that anything has changed.” (04/01/26)
“Americans don’t have a ton of experience with ‘totally aware’ society, but I’ve seen where it leads. In the Soviet Union everyone was conscious of being watched all the time, by the old lady sitting on the bench outside your apartment to taxi drivers and phone operators. It was dangerous to be quiet, spurring the organic appearance of a citizen type referred to as a Sovok. The Sovok never stopped talking. … At first it annoyed, then you realized constant displays of orthodox stupidity were a rational defense against political surveillance. A nation full of people saying dumb things round the clock is a natural consequence of mass monitoring. Which brings us to modern America.” (04/01/26)
“The threat of a city government shutdown loomed large in Chicago in December 2025 as the city faced an end-of-year deadline to close a projected $1.2 billion deficit. To counteract the impact of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax law, Mayor Brandon Johnson had pitched a budget in October that would require some of the law’s biggest beneficiaries to pay more. His proposed payroll tax — on corporations with more than 1,000 employees — would, according to his administration, amount to less than 0.01% of the Trump tax cuts bestowed on companies like Google and Walmart. But a standoff ensued after a group of Chicago City Council alderpersons — led by Nicole Lee, a former United Airlines executive — announced they would refuse to cross a ’red line’: a new tax on the city’s largest corporations, including United.” (03/31/26)
“Almost 750 U.S. troops have been wounded or killed in the Middle East since October 2023, an analysis by The Intercept has found. But the Pentagon won’t acknowledge it. U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, appears to be engaged in what a defense official called a ‘casualty cover-up,’ offering The Intercept low-ball and outdated figures and failing to provide clarifications on military deaths and injuries.” (04/01/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Capitalist countries such as Japan were much more productive than China. To learn why, special economic zones were created, areas within which Hong Kong businessmen and other foreign investors would be permitted to start businesses. The plan was to use such zones to experiment with capitalist principles that might be useful to a socialist economy …. They were intended as a way of quarantining dangerous ideas to prevent them from infecting the greater society while at the same time extracting whatever in them was of value. Over the next thirty years the first, Shenzhen, expanded from a village of 30,000 inhabitants to a city of fourteen million, pulling in ambitious Chinese from all over the country. In 1984, the authorities responded to the success of the first four zones by authorizing fourteen more. Still more followed. The exception ate the rule.” (04/01/26)
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Caleb O Brown & Patrick Jaicomo
“The federal government’s dramatic expansion of immigration-focused cooperative policing agreements with state and local authorities (about 1,500 agreements across 40 states) comes against the backdrop of the historic unpopularity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Worse, recent reporting indicates that American citizens are increasingly facing federal assault charges in cities with large immigration crackdowns despite video evidence that regularly contradicts the claims of federal agents. It’s time for states to step back and reconsider their cooperation with the feds in this arena and all others when it comes to policing. The state-federal collaboration campaign undermines some of federalism’s most basic aspects and reduces state control over state police officers.” (04/01/26)
