Source: The Bleeding Heart Libertarian
by Matt Zwolinski
“If you had asked me in 2015 to describe the core commitments of American libertarianism, I could have done it in about a minute. Free markets, limited government, individual rights, skepticism of state power, free trade, open or liberal immigration, some version of non-interventionism abroad, a strong preference for constitutional constraints on executive authority. There would have been edge cases and internal disputes, sure, but the center of gravity was clear enough that you could gesture at it. Try to do the same today, ten years later, and you run into trouble almost immediately. In the public-facing, movement-adjacent side of libertarianism — the one that reaches audiences through podcasts, YouTube, X, and the tech-intellectual networks of the last few years — the center of gravity has shifted in ways that would have seemed inconceivable a decade ago.” (04/20/26)
https://bleedingheartlibertarian.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-libertarianism
Source: Show-Me Institute
by Avery Frank
“Private electricity grids could be key to opening the energy sector up to testing and innovation—something that is difficult on a ratepayer-supported grid. Due to mountains of regulation, public fear, and high costs, there has been little recent experience in constructing nuclear power plants, as only seven of the 94 operating reactors in the United States were built after 1990. While continued regulatory reforms are absolutely imperative, opening the sector to specialists to gain expertise would be significant.” (04/20/26)
https://showmeinstitute.org/article/economy/opening-the-nuclear-sector-up-to-innovation-in-missouri/
Source: France 24 [French state media]
“A senior Cuban diplomat on Monday confirmed recent talks in Havana with US officials, as the communist-led island faces a deep crisis over President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign. ‘I can confirm that a meeting between delegations from Cuba and the United States was recently held here in Cuba,’ Alejandro Garcia, the foreign ministry’s under-director of Cuba-US affairs, told the Communist Party newspaper Granma. Garcia said that the negotiators included assistant secretaries from the US State Department and Cuba’s deputy foreign minister.” (04/21/26)
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260421-cuba-us-talks-trump-energy-blockade
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Colin Grabow on the Jones Act and other regulations on ships.” (04/20/26)
https://rumble.com/v78rsga-ff-438-colin-grabow-on-the-jones-act-and-other-regulations-on-ships.html
Source: The UnPopulist
by Andy Craig
“This president’s vulgar self-glorification is revolting to a self-governing people and must not stand.” (04/20/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/from-res-publica-to-the-united-states
Source: The Atlantic
by Eliot A Cohen
“A reasonable rule is that once you begin making an argument ad Hitlerum — comparing some malevolent politician to Hitler or some malignant movement to the Nazis, or declaring a brutal (but non-eliminationist) war a genocide comparable to the Holocaust — you have lost the plot. The facile but extreme analogy is the first resort of the unimaginative alarmist. To this we should now add the argument ad Orbánum, namely, the view that the Trump administration is just like that of the creeping, well-nigh unstoppable, and irreversible corrupt authoritarian ruler Viktor Orbán.” (04/20/26)
https://archive.is/ds2kM
Source: SFGate
“Ukraine has completed repairs on a damaged oil pipeline and is preparing to resume flows, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday, while warning that there is no guarantee Russia will not target the infrastructure again. Repairs to the Druzhba pipeline became a contentious issue, delaying approval of a major 90 billion euro ($106 billion) EU loan intended to support Ukraine’s military and economic needs over the next two years. Zelenskyy said repairing the pipeline was linked to freeing the funds, which had been blocked by Hungary and Slovakia. But top EU officials are now cautiously optimistic that the massive loan scheme might be approved as soon as Wednesday, ending months of political deadlock.” (04/21/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/ukraine-completes-druzhba-pipeline-repairs-22218240.php
Source: The Chris Hedges Report
“Is There a Way out of the Iran War? (w/ John Mearsheimer).” (04/20/26)
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/is-there-a-way-out-of-the-iran-war
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Cindy Cohn & Betty Gedlu
“For years, EFF has pushed technology companies to make real human rights commitments—and to live up to them. In response to growing evidence that Palantir’s tools help power abusive immigration enforcement by ICE, we sent the company a detailed letter asking how the promises in its own human rights framework extends to that work. This post explains what we asked, how Palantir responded, and why we believe those responses fall short.” (04/20/26)
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/04/palantir-has-human-rights-policy-its-ice-work-tells-different-story
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“When we had shipping expert Sal Mercogliano on our Organized Money podcast, he said that for every day the Strait of Hormuz is shut down to traffic, it’ll take a week to untangle the problem afterward. Yesterday was day 52 of the crisis, so that’s a year on the back end, even if it ended imminently. So get used to more from us at Aftermath, as we detail the consequences before the fighting even stops. Tell your friends and scroll through previous editions at prospect.org/aftermath. We are [still at war]. My colleague Bob Kuttner ran down the latest as of yesterday afternoon. The fundamental problem is that this war turned the Strait of Hormuz into a bargaining chip, and both sides want to use that chip by closing the strait, which continues to punish the global economy with price spikes and shortages.” (04/21/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/04/21/aftermath-hormuz-farm-crisis-gulf-states-fertilizer-aluminum/
