“American kids’ ability to focus is under a full-frontal assault, and it should be taken seriously as a national threat. Attacks come from all sides: dopamine triggers and flashy apps, streaming services and immersive games, TikTok reels and endless doomscrolling. Everybody’s talking about falling test scores and America’s ability to keep up with the rest of the world (especially the East) in its academic performance. But no amount of reform is worth a lick if kids can’t focus long enough to read a book.” (10/22/25)
“The U.S. economy is in a weird place right now on multiple fronts. One immediate problem is that policymakers are flying somewhat blind because the government shutdown has delayed the September employment report. According to the last report available (which was for August), unemployment is relatively low by historical standards. But another source of weirdness is that many people feel very bad about the economy: Consumer sentiment is much weaker than it was pre-Covid, in fact comparable to its level at the depths of the 2008-2009 financial crisis.” (10/222/25)
Source: The American Conservative
by James P Pinkerton
“Four years from now comes the hundredth anniversary of one of the most momentous events in American history: the stock market crash that began on ‘Black Thursday,’ October 24, 1929, and was followed, of course, by the Great Depression. Historians and other scribblers will help us to recall those events. As always, they will spin them in keeping with their own mental maps. Yet now there’s a new motive force, with its own motives: artificial intelligence (AI). … By common agreement, AI is going to affect everything. And because AI is so all-encompassing, it’s already proving to be a subtle but steady advocate for liberalism. This can be illustrated through a single case study, presented here: how Google AI answers questions about the Crash and the Depression, aiding the related causes of Democratic victory, federal aggrandizement, and lefty [sic] teleology.” (10/22/25)
“When President Donald Trump announced that the CIA had been authorized to conduct operations inside Venezuela, just as US drones struck another small boat off Venezuela’s coast, few people in the United States realized that much of this militarization begins on the soil of a land denied its own sovereignty: Puerto Rico. The island that has lived under US rule since 1898 is once again being used as a staging ground for US militarism, this time for Washington’s latest ‘war on drugs’ narrative, masking a campaign of coercion against Latin America’s independent governments. After invading Puerto Rico in 1898, the United States quickly turned the island into a strategic military outpost: the ‘Gibraltar of the Caribbean,’ with naval bases in Ceiba, Roosevelt Roads, and Vieques designed to dominate the eastern Caribbean and protect the new artery of empire: the Panama Canal.” (10/22/25)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“Even when the pandemic is brought up and re-examined, the focus is usually on the necessity and nature of the government measures put in place to control the spread of the virus or the public’s level of compliance. That is, to be sure, a worthwhile debate. But the government’s economic response is often left out, which can give the impression that — as controversial as the lockdowns or vaccine mandates might have been — the quick and extensive mobilization of the government’s considerable fiscal and monetary powers was one uncontroversial success story of the covid years. It wasn’t, and the lack of controversy surrounding it is disturbing.” (10/22/25)
“Minnesota’s permit to harass has been interrupted — not halted, because a federal court has granted only a preliminary injunction. Nancy Brasel, the district judge, has for now blocked Minnesota’s law requiring grassroots advocacy groups to publicly disclose the names and addresses of their vendors because she expects that this requirement will indeed be ultimately thrown out. Violating, as it does, freedom of speech.” (10/22/25)
“On Friday, after months of internal discussions, federal agencies began posting on the left-friendly social network. Within days, they dominated a list of the most-blocked accounts.” (10/21/25)
“State policymakers have powerful tools at their disposal to support families with the cost of raising children and caring for disabled or elderly relatives. The key is knowing how to maximize their impact through fiscally responsible reforms that expand the scope, generosity, and simplicity of family tax benefits in their states. As we noted in a previous report, there is broad interest among policymakers in rethinking their approaches to supporting families through state tax codes. Here, we focus on the use of refundable child tax credits (CTCs).” (10/21/25)
“The Trump administration has slashed federal spending for democracy promotion efforts around the globe. That rollback of U.S. meddling is perhaps the most positive foreign-policy reform of the Trump presidency. Since 1946, the U.S. government has intervened in more than a hundred foreign elections to assist its preferred candidate or party. Democracy is so important that the U.S. government refuses to stand idly by when foreign voters go astray.” (10/21/25)
