“It’s highly unusual for federal judges to issue such direct accusations and contempt threats against the government. However, an increasing number of judges have become exasperated by the Trump administration’s noncompliance with their orders in immigration cases.
…
The Trump administration insists that it can arrest anyone present in the country unlawfully without a warrant and hold them in mandatory detention without a bond hearing. This interpretation of the law abandons a precedent that has been in place for nearly 30 years.
…
judges find themselves batting down the same specious arguments from the Justice Department over and over.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/29/federal-judge-slams-ice-for-violating-nearly-100-court-orders-ice-is-not-a-law-unto-itself/
‘Many disinformation posts on social media originated from a small town in central Macedonia called Veles. The epicenter of the viral phenomenon was Mirko Ceselkoski, who posts fake news and mentors others in it. The creators were mostly young people in their 20s with little English fluency. They said they were too poor to do anything and had no future, so work hard creating fake news to make money. They did this by exploiting conservative Americans’ hunger for negative stories about Hillary Clinton’
https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/79F67A4F23148D230F120A3BD7E3384F/S1049096520000992a.pdf/macedonian_fake_news_industry_and_the_2016_us_election.pdf
“In the executive order, Trump directs the Department of War to enter into agreements to purchase electricity from coal plants to power military operations.”
Bad for the environment, bad for the economy, bad for the military.
Coal is not just bad for global warming, but adds to regular air pollution that kills.
We should use energy that is most efficient to use, not that the president forces people to use, with the exception of protecting the environment.
The military should use whichever energy source best serves its purpose, not the energy source that Trump likes for confused/incompetent purposes, or political purposes.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-orders-pentagon-invest-beautiful-233907955.html
Trying to maximize their profits by limiting taxes and regulation, big corporations have funded Christian movements that preach capitalism and market fundamentalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRG1N_JFVnY
“The United States has fallen to its worst-ever position in a leading global index that measures perception of corruption in the public sector among independent experts and businesspeople.
The world’s most powerful democracy last year slipped one notch to 29th place, out of 182, in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). That’s the lowest rank since 2012, when the index, established in 1995, was relaunched using new methodology.
In its new position, the United States tied with the Bahamas and was beaten by Lithuania (28), Barbados (24) and Uruguay (17).
The US ranking has been on a downward trend for the past decade. It took another hit last year, when the Trump administration gutted the federal government’s ability to fight public corruption by pausing investigations into corporate foreign bribery and curtailing enforcement of a foreign agent registration law, among other measures.
Since returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has also actively weakened institutions and deployed the tools of government against his perceived foes.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/us-slips-lowest-ever-rank-140535315.html
“new data has emerged from Canada showing the near-catastrophic consequences to American alcohol manufacturers from President Donald Trump’s tariff wars. Yet despite clear signs that his tariff policies are backfiring, the president keeps doubling down.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/31/trumps-tariff-war-is-crushing-american-alcohol-makers/
“the trade deficit increased—not decreased—by nearly 37 percent in November, the most recent month for which data are available. Through the first 11 months of 2025, the trade deficit was 4 percent higher than it had been in 2024. That is literally the opposite of what Trump is claiming.
…
“tariffs led to both rapid and gradual retail price increases.” The study found that “prices began rising within days of the March announcements and continued to increase steadily over subsequent months,” and also that “imported goods rose roughly twice as much as domestic goods relative to pre-tariff trends.”
There is no getting away from this fact: tariffs are pushing prices higher. The Harvard Business School, Trump’s favorite source on the matter, recently noted that prices for imported goods are up 9.7 percent from their pre-tariff trends, while domestic prices are up 4.4 percent. Those increases have added an estimated 1 percentage point to inflation as measured by the consumer price index.
…
Trump repeatedly backed down and eased tariff threats in the face of negative shocks from both the stock market and the bond market. The “Liberation Day” tariffs announced on April 2 were postponed a week later after a huge stock market sell-off, and those that were later imposed were at lower rates. A threatened 130 percent tariff on Chinese goods never materialized. No wonder “TACO”—”Trump Always Chickens Out”—entered the political and financial lexicon last year.
As the Yale Budget Lab’s data show, Trump raised the average U.S. tariff rate from less than 3 percent to more than 25 percent with his Liberation Day tariffs and other moves in the first half of 2025. But those rates declined in the second half of the year and settled around 17 percent. That’s still very high, but not as high as it could have been—so it makes sense that the consequences were less severe.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/02/trump-claims-his-tariffs-have-brought-america-back-here-are-3-things-he-got-wrong/
“The social impact of the housing affordability crisis is huge: fewer marriages, less household formation, lower birth rates, lower economic growth. The prices of stocks and bonds can go up indefinitely with few consequences. But housing is something people need, in addition to being an asset. It is an asset you also consume.”
https://reason.com/2026/02/02/trump-i-want-to-drive-housing-prices-up/
The job growth was good compared to recent months, but not actually good. The job growth was heavily concentrated in healthcare and social assistance. These are jobs caused by our aging society, but not good underlying economic growth.
The jobs numbers for 2025 were revised, and job growth was very low for 2025.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSNZGWfitjM
“USCIS currently has 11.3 million pending
applications, “the largest immigration backlog in its history,” reported Newsweek in November. While officials say green card and visa processing are getting faster, “agency data from January through March shows that processing times for several key immigration forms have continued to rise, leaving applicants waiting months or even years longer than expected.” The “closure of consulates abroad” and “planned firing of State Department staff,” the MPI noted in April, were also “expected to lengthen visa wait times.””
https://reason.com/2026/02/03/trumps-bureaucratic-war-on-immigrants/