Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider

“The U.S. blockade on Venezuela’s sanctioned oil tankers is illegal. It is an act of war that is based on false charges. Though it is hoped to bring about a coup that will usher in a pro-American government that opens Venezuela’s resources to the United States, the more likely outcome is mayhem and instability. Trump’s order of a blockade caught senior officials at the Pentagon by surprise, and they are unsure of what role the U.S. military is expected to play. But on the day after the order, three ships left Venezuela carrying oil-based products. This time, they were escorted by Venezuelan naval ships.” (12/22/25)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/three-big-problems-with-trumps-venezuela-oil-blockade/

Source: The Dispatch
by Timothy Sandefur

“New York poet David Lehman has overseen publication of Scribner’s annual Best American Poetry anthology for almost four decades now. But this summer, the 77-year-old Lehman announced that the series’[s] 2025 installment will be the last. Although he says his decision was sparked only by a desire for ‘new adventures,’ it’s hard to see it as anything but the falling of another tree in the artistic forest. True, the purported ‘best’ often included lousy work … but it also included samples from some of America’s best living poets, including A.E. Stallings, Amit Majmudar, and Stephen Kampa, and offered curious readers a chance to dip their toes into an art form that, more than any other, has been torn by the competing forces of our divided and divisive culture. Where can they look now?” (12/22/25)

https://thedispatch.com/article/best-american-poetry-shutter-art-form/

Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by staff

“A half-century after the ESA’s enactment, regulations have generated endless conflict but little species recovery, precisely because they infringe property rights, ignore the role of states, and prioritize red tape over voluntary recovery efforts. To date, the Service has recovered only 3 percent of listed species (and far fewer species than it expected). A new approach is necessary to change that.” (12/22/25)

https://www.perc.org/2025/12/22/the-endangered-species-act-should-prioritize-species-recovery-not-red-tape/

Source: The Daily Economy
by Walter Donway

“State regulation of AI is not, by itself, an ideal situation. We are indeed seeing 50 variations of concern, from the merely paternalistic to the openly fearful. Some states worry about algorithmic bias, others about deepfakes, still others about data privacy or labor displacement. Several are experimenting with rules requiring disclosure of training data, transparency of model decision-making, or permission requirements for models above certain compute thresholds. This is confusing. It is also federalism working as intended. The states are laboratories of democracy, not subordinate offices waiting for federal consolidation. The administration’s answer — federal preemption followed by federal regulation — is not a remedy. It is a cure worse than the disease.” (12/22/25)

https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-nationalization-of-ai-threatens-innovation-and-the-american-mind/

Source: Paul Krugman
by Paul Krugman

“[W]hile Trump’s gaslighting on prices is a natural and appropriate target for critics, we shouldn’t forget that the main goal of his policy agenda wasn’t lower prices, it was job creation. Specifically, Trump and his economic advisers claimed — and may even have believed — that they would create lots of manly jobs for manly men. They would revive American manufacturing, they claimed, by unilaterally imposing huge tariffs and thereby breaking all our international agreements (and, whatever the Supreme Court may say, U.S. law). They would create mining and construction jobs, they claimed, by killing renewable energy and gutting environmental protection in order to promote fossil fuels. They would deport millions of undocumented workers which would result, they claimed, in a job boom for native-born workers. … even on its own absurd terms, the MAGA jobs strategy has been an abject failure — as abject as Trump’s failure to bring down prices.” (12/22/25)

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/magas-manly-manufacturing-misfire