Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Wenjing Wang

“While China tends to act assertively in what it regards as core sovereignty and security issues, including Taiwan and the South China Sea, it has reasons to be more reserved on issues beyond Asia. On the one hand, China’s reservation could be attributed to the simple fact that it has few benefits to gain from intervening, despite having signed strategic partnerships with countries like Venezuela and Iran. … And, besides its economic strength and so-called grey zone tactics, China does not possess military parity with the United States, ruling out the option of military operations to police the world. China neither wants to, nor can, take a greater responsibility for issues beyond its interests.” (01/27/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-china-restraint/

Source: Common Dreams
by Les Leopold

“There’s a fable about how Bear Bryant, the legendary coach of the University of Alabama, found the toughest players. He would, supposedly, drive through dusty Alabama towns with a dead dog tied behind his car. He’d then stop his car where the high school boys hung out and wait. The kid who came over and kicked that dead dog would get a scholarship. JD Vance aspires to be the captain of the MAGA team when Trump moves on. The way to get there, he seems to believe, is to kick the dog, whichever one is most helpless (and not being eaten by Haitians), and show that he’s even meaner than Trump.” (01/26/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/cruella-de-vance-dog-kicker

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Cindy Kohn

“Dangerously unchecked surveillance and rights violations have been a throughline of the Department of Homeland Security since the agency’s creation in the wake of the September 11th attacks. In particular, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been responsible for countless civil liberties and digital rights violations since that time. In the past year, however, ICE and CBP have descended into utter lawlessness, repeatedly refusing to exercise or submit to the democratic accountability required by the Constitution and our system of laws.” (01/26/26)

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/eff-statement-lawless-actions-ice-and-cbp

Source: EconLog
by Christopher Freiman

“You probably didn’t compete with anyone when you bought coffee at Starbucks this morning. You didn’t enter a zero-sum struggle when you paid your phone bill, purchased groceries and gas, or caught a movie. Instead, you took part in a series of mutually beneficial, voluntary transactions. You gave someone money and they gave you something you wanted more than the money. Everyone walked away better off. In the words of Adam Smith, ‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.’ Competition, by contrast, rarely pops up in your day-to-day economic life.” (01/27/26)

https://www.econlib.org/econlog/the-warmth-of-cooperation

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Richard M Ebeling

“Tariffs and other trade barriers hampered the free flow of goods and services and investments across political boundary lines around the world after 1945. However, they almost seem mild and ‘enlightened’ compared to the current crop of protectionist weeds and their policy effects, particularly over the past year during Donald Trump’s second presidency.” (01/26/26)

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-delusions-and-dangers-of-the-new-mercantilism/