Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff
“Nations prone to split over ethnic or religious divides often find ways to bond by embracing a higher civic identity. Ethiopia just set a small example of that. Two top leaders – from different ethnic groups – found a way to avert a renewal of a vicious war that ended two years ago. Peace prevails for now in Ethiopia’s restive state of Tigray, as does a desire for unity around national ideals. Less than a month ago, most observers of East African politics widely expected that simmering tensions in Tigray would boil over into conflict again. Their concerns were heightened when disgruntled members of Tigray’s security forces seized key government buildings in an intra-Tigrayan dispute over jobs. Three officers had been suspended by the state’s interim administration. The then-head of Tigray called for direct federal intervention after he fled in March to the nation’s capital.” (04/23/25)
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2025/0423/In-postwar-Ethiopia-a-stand-on-higher-ground
Source: Gothamist
“Lawyers for the federal government briefly published internal correspondence on Wednesday evening detailing a laundry list of flaws in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s legal strategy to shut down the MTA’s congestion pricing tolls. The document appears to have been mistakenly posted on the docket of the MTA’s federal lawsuit challenging U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s effort to kill the tolls by revoking federal approval. … The three assistant U.S. attorneys in Manhattan wrote that Duffy’s current argument to shut down the tolls isn’t likely to hold up in court. … The letter advises U.S. DOT officials to instead argue they’re revoking approval for the tolls through Office of Management and Budget regulations, which could allow for such a move ‘as a matter of changed agency priorities.’ Still, the letter notes that argument isn’t airtight because the DOT did not give the MTA any money to launch congestion pricing.” (04/24/25)
https://gothamist.com/news/feds-accidentally-publish-secret-plan-to-kill-nyc-congestion-pricing
Source: Reason
“The Founders made due process central to the Constitution not because they loved criminals, but because they understood that any system of justice will give people a chance to publicly challenge the government before it deprives them of their liberty indefinitely, as the government has done here. That should be important to anyone who cares about the Constitution and the rule of law.” (04/24/25)
https://reason.com/video/2025/04/24/is-this-constitutional-heres-how-due-process-works/
Source: Yascha Mounk
by Yascha Mounk
“Imagine this scenario. The interior minister of a country that considers itself a democracy reports scores of citizens to the police for making critical statements about her while she is in office. Many of them are given hefty monetary fines or even prison sentences. In protest, a journalist publishes a satirical meme. It features a real photograph of the interior minister holding a sign that is digitally altered so that, apocryphally, it reads: ‘I hate freedom of speech.’ As if to prove the point, the interior minister reports the journalist to the police. He is duly prosecuted and, after a brief trial, given a seven-month suspended prison sentence. Would you say that this nation has a problem with free speech? If you do, then you should be very concerned about what has happened in Europe over the last few years.” (04/24/25)
https://yaschamounk.substack.com/p/europe-really-does-have-a-free-speech
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Ever since the 1960s, when conservatives became convinced that the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights were nothing more than constitutional “technicalities” designed to let guilty people go free, conservatives have shown a deep hatred for civil liberties. The conservative antipathy toward civil liberties is now manifesting itself in President Trump’s war on illegal immigration. One of the best examples of this phenomenon involve the Venezuelan immigrants that Trump officials have renditioned to El Salvador pursuant to an agreement that Trump entered into with Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele.” (04/24/25)
https://www.fff.org/2025/04/24/conservative-hatred-of-civil-liberties/
Source: Law & Liberty
by John O McGinnis
“It seems remarkable that seemingly antisemitic protests by undergraduates, such as those at my own university of Northwestern, could threaten the biomedical research funding of its medical school. But the structure of civil rights laws as applied to universities has long allowed the federal government to cut off funding to the entire university based on the wrongful actions of particular units or departments. Ironically, the left, now alarmed by the federal government’s intrusive reach, bears direct responsibility for crafting the very legal weapons wielded against the universities it dominates. ” (04/24/25)
https://lawliberty.org/the-road-to-campus-serfdom/
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine
“It was typical of Joe Biden’s presidency that, when faced with a difficult problem, he would take the cynical approach of finding a scapegoat to blame while making a promise he never intended to keep. His response to the housing affordability crisis last year was a textbook case: Blame ‘rent-gouging’ landlords and greedy realtors, make the false promise that his administration would build 2 million new homes via more deficit spending, and hope nobody asks questions — a safe bet, considering the incurious media that surrounded him. ‘Folks are tired of being played for suckers and I’m tired of letting them be played for suckers,’ Biden said in a campaign speech hammering his scapegoats last year. Having promised to lower housing costs during his State of the Union address earlier in the spring, Biden’s fiery rhetoric showed he had not the faintest idea of how to solve the problem.” (04/23/25)
https://nypost.com/2025/04/23/opinion/miranda-devine-leftists-to-blame-for-much-of-the-us-housing-crisis-as-almost-a-third-of-americans-are-housing-poor/
Source: NBC News
“China on Thursday directly contradicted President Donald Trump’s claims that Beijing and Washington are actively discussing resolutions to a trade war that threatens to upend the global economy. While Trump said Wednesday that the world’s two largest economies are ‘actively’ talking, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson responded that ‘China and the U.S. have not engaged in any consultations or negotiations regarding tariffs, let alone reached an agreement.’ The spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, made the comments at a briefing in Beijing, saying that reports of ongoing talks were false. He added that while China is open to negotiations, ‘if it’s a fight, we will fight to the end.'” (04/24/25)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/tariff-trade-war-china-beijing-trump-washington-us-economy-markets-rcna202535
Source: National Review
“Two Ways to Hurt the Working Class.” (04/24/25)
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/capital-record/two-ways-to-hurt-the-working-class/
Source: Gideon’s Substack
by Noah Millman
“Recently, I took a trip down memory lane, to examine some columns I wrote about the U.S.-China relationship at the beginning of the first Trump administration. Two in particular stuck out for me: one on how the United States should not spend significant financial or military resources to compete with China for influence in the developing world, but should focus on our own capacities, and a second one about how Trump’s laziness and incompetence might make it possible for America to avoid war with China, because we’d wind up surrendering supremacy without fighting. … The second Trump administration has vastly exceeded the first in its incompetence and also, despite the blizzard of executive actions, on the laziness front …. Does that mean my 2017 take is also even more true than ever?” (04/24/25)
https://gideons.substack.com/p/could-a-us-china-war-break-out-post
