Source: Reason
“Andrew Heaton talks with Reason‘s Katherine Mangu-Ward, Billy Binion, Robby Soave, Christian Britschgi, Eric Boehm, and Reem Ibrahim to get their instant reactions to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.” (02/25/26)
https://reason.com/video/2026/02/25/reason-reacts-to-the-state-of-the-union/
Source: Foreign Policy
by Ali Wyne
“At his January 2025 confirmation hearing to become the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio assessed that ‘unless something dramatic changes’ in Asia’s military balance, China would attempt to invade Taiwan before the end of the decade. This view is widely shared. … The good news is that the short-term likelihood of a Chinese attack on Taiwan has diminished, even as it remains too high. The cause of this development, however, is not exactly reassuring. The events of the past year give Chinese leader Xi Jinping good reason to believe that his U.S. counterpart, President Donald Trump, will facilitate his attempt to extend China’s influence over the island without having to gamble on an invasion.” (02/25/26)
Source: The Bulwark
“Tariffs Blocked. ICE Held in Contempt. Courts Are Fighting Back. (w/ Elliot Williams.” (02/25/26)
Source: USA Today
by Patrick Childress
“When will tariff refunds be available? We don’t know. The Supreme Court’s decision was silent on the issue of refunds. While the administration has not revealed how it will approach this issue, President Donald Trump’s comments during his Feb. 20 news conference were telling. Referring to refunds, the president mused: ‘I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.’ This suggests that the administration is girding for a years-long judicial fight against the issuance of IEEPA-based tariff refunds. Who will receive tariff refunds? Probably not consumers. If and when the government cuts tariff refund checks, those funds will not be going to everyday citizens. Instead, the businesses that directly imported the affected goods will receive the money.” (02/25/26)
Source: Fox News
by Lee Hartley Carter
“If you tuned in last night hoping for a softer, more conciliatory Donald Trump, a president shaped by polls, eager to reach across the aisle, you were watching the wrong show. The 2026 State of the Union wasn’t a pivot. It was a power move. A flex. A signal that the old rules: measured rhetoric, polite bipartisanship — are dead. Trump continues to write new rules in real time, as audaciously as he’s writing everything else. From the opening line, ‘a speech to set the record straight,’ Trump made it clear: he wasn’t there to negotiate facts. He was there to define them. He understands something that confounds his opponents: in contemporary American politics, a good story doesn’t just compete with statistics, it obliterates them. While critics were fact-checking, Trump was storytelling. And in today’s politics, a story like his can outweigh nuance or evidence.” (02/25/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/lee-carter-trumps-state-union-wasnt-pivot-power-play
Source: Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
“Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers will resign from teaching at Harvard University amid a campus review of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, the university announced Wednesday. Summers, who has been on leave since November and whose name appeared hundreds of times in newly released Epstein files, will leave at the end of the school year, according to a statement from Harvard spokesperson Jason Newton. … Summers served as treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton and went on to lead Harvard as president for five years starting in 2001. It’s the latest fallout from the Justice Department’s recent release of millions of pages of records pertaining to Epstein and his longtime confidant and former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. Resignations have rippled across the academic, legal and business communities.” (02/25/26)
Source: The Intercept
“Rambling Man: Trump’s State of the Union.” (02/25/26)
https://theintercept.com/2026/02/25/podcast-trump-state-of-the-union/
Source: New York Times
“Rosy Predictions, Angry Attacks: Trump’s State of the Union.” (02/25/26)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
“Can the Presidency Be Tamed? (with David Frum).” (02/25/26)
Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall
“This is at least the start of the correct way to deal with bias in Artifical Intelligence: ‘A police chief has admitted artificial intelligence used to boost crime fighting will contain bias but pledged to combat the risks.’ At the heart of the point is the question, well, is reality biased? There are certainly those myriads who insist it is, yes. OK, so we want to use AI to aid us in managing reality. Therefore the AI has to start from the point that reality is biased. And those shrieking loudest about reality’s bias are the very people who should be insisting the AI recognises that bias. Because we need the results from the AI to reflect reality.” (02/25/26)
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/to-remind-ai-should-be-biased-because-the-world-is-biased