Trump cites Colorado’s mail-in voting in moving military space HQ to Alabama

“U.S. military operations in space will soon be led from Huntsville, Alabama. President Donald Trump announced he is moving U.S. Space Command headquarters out of Colorado Springs, Colorado, citing the state’s use of mail-in voting as a “big factor” in the decision.

“The problem I had with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting,” Trump said. “When a state is for mail-in voting, that means they want dishonest elections … so that played a big factor also.”

Trump also touted his support in conservative Alabama and slammed Colorado’s Democratic governor as he announced the relocation, the latest move in a years-long partisan tussle over the military’s space program.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-moving-military-space-hq-161244515.html

The Supreme Court Is Backing Trump’s Power Grab | The Ezra Klein Show

So far, the Supreme Court is allowing Trump to use powers that appear to be unconstitutional. The Court has largely done this using the shadow docket, where the court doesn’t need to explain its reasoning.

By allowing the president to create real-world and not fully reversible impacts while acting with clearly unconstitutional powers, the Supreme Court is derelict of its duty as a check on presidential power.

It makes sense to limit injunctions that stop the president when his actions may not even be found unconstitutional in the first place, but if the president can act in any way, and not be stopped until the damage is done, then the Supreme Court is derelict in its duty.

The Supreme Court can act very quickly when it wants to, and it can slow-walk when it wants. Seems like it will do this in favor of Trump and Republicans.

Trump and his associates say clearly why they are doing what they are doing, and then tell the Court that they did it for different reasons. The Court has naively accepted the administration’s legal justifications that conflict with the administration’s clearly spoken motives.

The Constitution does not take into account political parties. The founders did not expect parties when they wrote it. Parties ruin the separation of powers and cause officials to not restrain a president acting illegally, even though it is those officials’ (Congress and the Supreme Court) duty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhZBLpzcYx4

Trump’s Tariffs and Immigration Policies Are Why Your Amazon Packages Are So Expensive and Will Take Forever

“President Donald Trump’s tariff regime is making everything from American-made steel weights, imported yarn, and Amazon’s “everyday essentials” more expensive while his immigration crackdown is causing worker shortages in key industries. These policies will work in tandem to slow down already expensive deliveries of your favorite goods.

https://reason.com/2025/08/29/trumps-tariffs-and-immigration-policies-are-why-your-amazon-packages-are-so-expensive-and-will-take-forever/

Federal Appeals Court Says Trump’s Tariffs Are Unlawful, Allows Them To Remain in Place

“President Donald Trump overstepped the limits of executive authority when he used emergency powers to levy tariffs, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

the tariffs in a chaotic state of limbo. Three courts have now ruled that they were unlawfully imposed, and yet they will remain in place (at least for now).

That’s an outcome that seems to create even more uncertainty for American businesses that are bearing the brunt of the tariffs. Rather than providing relief in the form of a new or renewed injuction, the appeals court has effectively said that Trump is illegally taxing nearly all imports into the country and that Americans will have to continue paying those taxes while the rest of the legal process plays out.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/29/federal-appeals-court-says-trumps-tariffs-are-unlawful-allows-them-to-remain-in-place/

The Federal Circuit’s Tariff Ruling Highlights the Audacity of Trump’s Power Grab

https://reason.com/2025/09/01/the-federal-circuits-tariff-ruling-highlights-the-audacity-of-trumps-power-grab/

‘Botched’ Drug Raids Show How Prohibition Invites Senseless Violence

“As is often the case with drug raids, the initial, self-serving police account proved to be inaccurate in several crucial ways. Although Thonetheva supposedly was armed and dangerous, he proved to be neither: He was unarmed when he was arrested later that night at his girlfriend’s apartment without incident (and without the deployment of a “distraction device”). Although Terrell claimed police had no reason to believe they were endangering children, even cursory surveillance could easily have discovered that fact: There were children’s toys, including a plastic wading pool, in the yard, where Bounkham frequently played with his kids. In the driveway was a minivan containing four child seats that was decorated with decals depicting a mother, a father, three little girls, and a baby boy.
Four months after the raid, a local grand jury faulted the task force that executed it for a “hurried” and “sloppy” investigation that was “not in accordance with the best practices and procedures.” Ten months after that, a federal grand jury charged Nikki Autry, the deputy who obtained the no-knock warrant for the raid, with lying in her affidavit. “Without her false statements, there was no probable cause to search the premises for drugs or to make the arrest,” said John Horn, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. “And in this case, the consequences of the unlawful search were tragic.”

The negligence and misconduct discovered after the paramilitary operation that burned and mutilated Bou Bou Phonesavanh are common features of “botched” drug raids that injure or kill people, including nationally notorious incidents such as the 2019 deaths of Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas in Houston and the 2020 death of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. But beyond the specific failures detailed in the wake of such outrages is the question of what these operations are supposed to accomplish even when they go as planned. In the vain hope of preventing substance abuse, drug prohibition authorizes police conduct that otherwise would be readily recognized as criminal, including violent home invasions that endanger innocent bystanders as well as suspects and police officers.

what are police trying to achieve when they mount an operation like this one? As the grand jury implicitly conceded, busting one dealer has no measurable impact on the availability of drugs: If police nab someone like Thonetheva, someone else will surely take his place. But from 1995 through 2023, police in the United States arrested people for producing or selling illegal drugs millions of times. Did that massive undertaking make a dent in the drug supply big enough to reduce consumption?

Survey data suggest it did not. The federal government estimated that 25 percent of Americans 12 or older used illegal drugs in 2023, up from 11 percent in 1995. Meanwhile, the age-adjusted overdose death rate rose more than tenfold.

SWAT teams, originally intended for special situations involving hostages, active shooters, or riots, today are routinely used to execute drug searches.

Even when drug raids do not technically involve SWAT teams, they frequently feature “dynamic entry” in the middle of the night. Although that approach is supposed to reduce the potential for violence through surprise and a show of overwhelming force, it often has the opposite effect. As the Habersham County grand jury noted, these operations are inherently dangerous, especially since armed men breaking into a home after the residents have gone to bed can easily be mistaken for criminals, with potentially deadly consequences.

How often does this sort of thing happen? There is no way to know. Prosecutors, judges, and jurors tend to discount the protestations of drug defendants, especially if they have prior convictions, and automatically accept the testimony of cops

The underlying problem, of course, is the decision to treat that exchange of drugs for money as a crime in the first place. By authorizing the use of force in response to peaceful transactions among consenting adults, prohibition sets the stage for the senseless violence that periodically shocks Americans who are otherwise inclined to support the war on drugs. But like the grand jurors in Habersham County, they typically do not question the basic morality of an enterprise that predictably leads to such outrages.”

https://reason.com/2025/09/02/botched-drug-raids-show-how-prohibition-invites-senseless-violence/

Trump’s Fed Coup

“”Does ‘for cause’ require something more substantial than a mere allegation of wrongdoing, such as a formal charge, or a conviction, or even something else?” asks Reason’s Damon Root in a great piece on the precedent the Supreme Court might lean on (Namely Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935) and Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (2020)). “Here’s another question to ask: Is the mortgage fraud allegation that’s been leveled against Cook merely a pretext designed to cover the fact that Trump is actually firing Cook for illegal political reasons?””

https://reason.com/2025/08/29/trumps-fed-coup/

Not So Fast, ICE

“People who enter the country illegally may still “have a weighty liberty interest in remaining here and therefore must be afforded due process under the Fifth Amendment,” a new federal court ruling says.

The judge suggests that “prioritizing speed over all else will inevitably lead the Government to erroneously remove people via this truncated process,” since “most noncitizens living in the interior have been here longer than two years, rendering them ineligible for expedited removal, and many are seeking asylum or another form of immigration relief, entitling them to further process before they can be removed.””

https://reason.com/2025/09/02/not-so-fast-ice/