Source: The Intercept
by Mathew Rodriguez

“Shortly after Trump deployed ICE agents to airports, his former chief strategist Steve Bannon may have tipped the administration’s hand. Bannon speculated on his ‘War Room’ podcast that the immigration force’s presence at TSA security checkpoints was a ‘test run’ ahead of the November midterms. Maybe, Bannon seemed to suggest, it was a rehearsal, meant to test how far the administration can stretch our tolerance for agents as part of the landscape of our daily lives without pushback. … If we can accept the reality that Trump’s personal army is requiring more documentation from us just to board an Airbus, how long until we are forced to tolerate them in our voting booths and beyond?” (03/28/26)

https://theintercept.com/2026/03/28/ice-airports-tsa-fear/

Source: The Dispatch
by Jonah Goldberg

“One of the funniest things about the Trump era is how people have realized how to appeal to Trump’s conception of self-interest. That’s why everyone is giving him awards and gold statues: He’s a sucker for flattery and praise, and he’s incapable of grasping how small it makes him look. Donald Trump has a similar challenge understanding the Iranians because he thinks everyone eventually just wants a ‘deal.’ That assumption worked out for him pretty well — so far — in Venezuela, because the Maduro regime was basically just a bunch of mobsters pretending to be socialists. But the Iranians want different things because they believe different things. And they are willing to watch a lot of the world burn to get them. In fact, they’re willing to light the matches.” (03/27/26)

https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/gfile/trump-iran-war-partisanship/

Source: Bitcoin.com
by Kevin Helms

“Growing barriers to homeownership are prompting financial firms to redefine how wealth is evaluated, with Coinbase partnering with Better Home & Finance Holding Company to enable crypto-backed mortgages supported by Fannie Mae that allow borrowers to use bitcoin or USDC instead of cash for down payments. … Forced liquidation introduces tradeoffs, including forfeiting potential price appreciation and triggering tax liabilities, which can discourage participation in the housing market. Crypto-backed structures alter that dynamic by converting digital holdings into usable collateral, allowing borrowers to secure financing without selling assets.” (03/28/26)

https://news.bitcoin.com/why-crypto-backed-mortgages-matter-for-expanding-access-to-homeownership/

Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman

“Donald Trump’s impulsive decision to deploy large numbers of ICE agents to hang out at America’s airport Cinnabons — there’s no indication that they are actually helping demoralized, unpaid TSA employees deal with long lines at airport security — may have unintended political consequences: it will remind Americans about how much they dislike ICE and the great harm that it’s doing. Nonetheless, recent data show that the administration’s crackdown on immigration is working. Immigration to the United States is plunging and may be about to go into reverse. And that plunge is making America poorer and weaker – now and in the long-run.” (03/27/26)

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-end-of-immigration

Source: Persuasion
by Seva Gunitsky

“Time has a way of compressing history. The Hundred Years’ War was a series of three separate wars that must have felt as distinct to its contemporaries as the World Wars feel to us now. But those three wars were a long time ago, so we lump them together into one conflict. Besides, we are wise. We have seen the direction of History and know they were all fought over the unresolved question of England’s rivalry with France. I suspect future historians will apply the same compression to the three Gulf Wars of the unipolar era. While 1991, 2003, and 2026 are distinct in many ways, they all revolve around repeated attempts by the hegemon to impose its order on a region that it appears to understand less and less each time.” (03/27/26)

https://www.persuasion.community/p/americas-long-war-in-the-middle-east

Source: Foreign Policy
by Michael Hirsh

“No one has done more than Donald Trump to assert the ‘primacy of nations’ in today’s world, to quote his National Security Strategy. And the U.S. president has many nationalist fellow travelers in high places who also preach a fierce, almost religious, devotion to the nation-state — including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and insurgent right-wing parties around the globe. The problem, however, is that the nation-state is badly broken and no longer working for average people around the world.” (03/27/26)

https://archive.is/zKCb4