“When federal judges told the Trump administration that it was necessary to provide due process to suspected undocumented immigrants before deporting them, Homan said the administration was “not stopping,” and added: “I don’t care what the judges think.”
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The FBI reportedly recorded Homan accepting a $50,000 bribe from undercover agents posing as potential government contractors. Homan has denied taking the money or doing anything wrong, and the White House has dismissed the case as politically motivated, but lots of questions remain unanswered”
https://reason.com/2026/01/27/tom-homan-isnt-the-solution/
“They batter bodies with rubber bullets and sear eyes with pepper spray. They lob tear gas and explosive flash-bangs at chanting crowds. They smash car windows. They shove people to the ground. They ram vehicles and point their guns.
Federal officers carrying out President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in cities across the country have shot 13 people with guns. But far more often, they have used harsh tactics to scare or repel those they see as getting in their way. The officers, masked and kitted out with military-grade armor and rifles, have faced down peaceful protesters and people who have threatened, obstructed or attacked them, with methods that are less deadly than guns but still inflict grievous injuries. Hundreds have been hurt, and courts in at least four states have found that officers used force inappropriately and indiscriminately.
NBC News reviewed dozens of incidents since the spring and found that Department of Homeland Security officers have repeatedly deployed “less lethal” weapons in ways that appear to violate their own policies or general policing guidelines, unless they believed their lives were in danger. The review was based on interviews with lawyers, experts and protesters who were injured as well as witness statements, documents from criminal and civil cases and videos taken at protests.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/broken-bones-burning-eyes-trumps-110000513.html
It’s not clear how many layoffs are caused by AI. Companies may want to have layoffs or not hire for business reasons, and just blame it on AI so they don’t look bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KChsk1JMuKA
“It’s not corporate greed that’s driving up the price of beef at the grocery store; it’s the fact that it’s now much more expensive for meat-packers to buy beef from farms. This isn’t due to cattle farmers colluding to raise prices. There are simply fewer cows.
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This decrease is attributable to a combination of weather, disease, and reduced imports. Some factors include persistent drought on American pasture lands and the U.S. halting Mexican cattle imports in July 2025 to stave off the New World screwworm”
https://reason.com/2026/01/28/the-real-reason-beef-costs-more-fewer-cows-not-corporate-greed/
“The federal government’s data do not show this “burst” in construction jobs. In fact, quite the opposite: Construction jobs declined by 11,000 in December, the most recent month for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data are available, and grew by just 0.2 percent during 2025 as a whole. Like most other blue-collar professions, jobs in the construction industry have been underwater since last April.
The president’s tariffs aren’t the only factor shaping that job market, but they surely aren’t helping. The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) reports that overall construction input prices climbed 3.4 percent during 2025.
“Many tariff-affected materials, like derivative metal products and switchgear equipment, have experienced considerable price escalation in 2025,” Anirban Basu, chief economist for the ABC, said in a statement earlier this month. He pointed out that the price of aluminum, which is subject to huge new tariffs imposed by Trump in early 2025, climbed by more than 25 percent last year.
…
Why are gas prices falling when other products are getting more expensive?
For one, we are enjoying a period of low oil prices globally. That’s a good thing, though it is also largely beyond the president’s control.
It also seems important to note that gasoline and other oil products are exempt from the Trump administration’s tariffs.
In other words, when a barrel of crude oil crosses the border from Canada, it doesn’t suddenly have an extra 25 percent tax tacked onto it. But when a roll of aluminum or a pallet of lumber crosses the same border, it suddenly becomes significantly more expensive for Americans to buy. As a result, it has become more expensive to build things but gasoline has remained more affordable.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/29/scott-bessent-says-construction-jobs-are-booming-under-trumps-tariffs-government-data-show-the-opposite/
“Trump’s second-term raids are not merely designed to sweep up immigrants for deportation; they are designed to act as shows of force, a dangerous and occasionally deadly form of political theater. And while Trump bears ultimate responsibility for the immigration sweeps and their consequences, it is Miller who has most clearly shaped their operational character. The masks, the menace, the militarism—these are all direct manifestations of a cruel and apocalyptic worldview, in which force is the only real governing power, illegal immigration represents a form of “invasion,” legal immigration mechanisms like birthright citizenship are “destructive and ruinous policies aimed at the heart of the Republic,” and public protest of deportation raids that turn violent is tantamount to “insurrection.”
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Some of this can be understood as an outgrowth of Trump’s own worldview. The president notoriously launched his first campaign by declaring that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best…They’re bringing crime. They’re bringing drugs. They’re rapists.” But Trump’s personal ability to implement policy and execute on his impulses is limited without competent staff to follow through. Miller is the White House aide who turns Trump’s immigration ideas into reality. As the Atlantic profile put it, he’s “the man who turns President Trump’s most incendiary impulses into policy.””
https://reason.com/2026/01/29/stephen-millers-hardline-immigration-tactics-are-backfiring/
“Trump’s tariffs, framed as industrial policy to reindustrialize the country, protect workers, and lower prices. Instead, tariffs have quietly consumed much of the manufacturing sector’s profits. This is unsurprising. Most U.S. imports are inputs used to make American goods. Tariffs, therefore, are taxes on American manufacturing.
Empirical work by the Kiel Institute shows that foreign exporters absorb only a trivial share of the cost. Roughly 96 percent of the burden is passed to American buyers. U.S. households and businesses—not foreign firms—overwhelmingly covered the roughly $200 billion in customs revenue collected in 2025. Companies we import from responded not by cutting prices but by shipping fewer goods to the U.S. As Kiel economist Julian Hinz put it, the tariffs amounted to an “own goal” that raised costs, compressed profits, and weakened the very industries they were meant to protect.
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Tariffs did not restore competitiveness or pricing power. They jacked up costs and made American production less attractive at the margin.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/29/from-georgias-film-subsidies-to-intels-collapse-industrial-policy-keeps-failing/
“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.
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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.
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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