“When asked why Harris has not distinguished herself by opposing these measures, Lincicome notes that supporting tariffs is just part of the “conventional wisdom in Washington today” even if polls may not completely support this assertion. “The view among the political experts is that elections are won or lost in a few places with a few votes,” and those critical “voters like tariffs.”
Given the IMF’s projections, bipartisan support for tariffs could lead to increased costs and slower economic growth for Americans regardless of who wins in November. ”
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“former President Donald Trump floated a specific 60 percent tariff on Chinese goods alongside a 10 percent across-the-board tariff, which he recently increased to 20 percent. “It’s just what he thinks galvanized an audience,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of general economics and Stiefel Trade Policy Center at the Cato Institute, tells Reason. “Let’s face it, none of this has any rigorous econometric modeling behind it, so it could be as simple as he thinks 20 percent sounds better.”
“Taking the candidates at their word, you would have to say that Trump’s tariffs would be orders of magnitude worse than what Kamala Harris might do, or say she will do,” Lincicome adds.”
“The US Navy has been battling the Houthis and some of Iran’s best weaponry in the Red Sea and changing some of the ways it fights to defeat them, America’s top naval officer said this week.
Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of naval operations, said this week that the Navy is taking away many lessons from its almost yearlong fight against the Houthis, including the fact that drones are fundamentally changing warfare.
The Houthis, a Yemen-based rebel group that Iran has armed and supported for years, have used aerial and surface drones to attack key merchant shipping lanes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and threaten US Navy ships since last fall. The militants have also fired anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles at vessels.
US warships and aircraft, in partnership with allies, have been intercepting these threats. Just last week, American forces engaged a number of Houthi drones and missiles.
“We’re continuing to learn,” Franchetti responded to questions at a Wednesday Defense Writers Group event. “And again, I’ll just go back to the changing tactics, techniques and procedures based on adversaries.”
“The Houthis are using the best Iranian technology, and we know that we need to be able to defeat that,” she added. “And again, our ships are doing an amazing job. And our aircraft.””
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“In this fight, the Navy has fired well over $1.1 billion worth of munitions fighting the Houthis, a figure that covers hundreds of air-launched weapons and ship-fired missiles that have been used to take out rebel weaponry, both missiles and drones.
The increasing use of unmanned systems, such as aerial strike platforms and naval drones, has been seen in other conflicts, most notably the war in Ukraine.
Ukraine, for instance, has built up a formidable arsenal of domestically produced naval drones and has used these systems to target Russian warships and ports around the Black Sea. Even though Kyiv lacks a proper navy, it has demonstrated it can still cause problems through this asymmetrical style of warfare.
“I think Ukraine has shown us that you can innovate on the battlefield,” Franchetti said. “I want to innovate before the battlefield so we can stay ahead of any adversary any time.””
“The law, Assembly Bill 2839 makes it illegal for an individual to produce “knowingly distributing an advertisement or other election communication, as defined, that contains certain materially deceptive content,” within 120 days of an election and up to 60 days after. Affected candidates can file for a civil action enjoining distribution of the media, and seek damages from its creator.”
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“content creator Christopher Kohls filed a lawsuit arguing the law was overbroad, violating his First Amendment rights to make parody content. Kohls has a YouTube channel with more than 300,000 subscribers, and his videos often consist of political parodies featuring political candidates seemingly mocking themselves.”
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“Judge John A. Mendes, a judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, sided with Kohls, ruling that the law doesn’t pass constitutional muster because it does not use “the least restrictive means available for advancing the State’s interest.”
“Counter speech is a less restrictive alternative to prohibiting videos such as those posted by Plaintiff, no matter how offensive or inappropriate someone may find them,” Mendez’s opinion reads. “AB 2839 is unconstitutional because it lacks the narrow tailoring and least restrictive alternative that a content based law requires under strict scrutiny.”
Mendez’s ruling argues that the law, which is aimed at cracking down on “deepfakes” and other forms of false speech intended at misrepresenting an opponent’s views and actions, ends up making illegal a much wider range of speech than these specific statements.
“While Defendants attempt to analogize AB 2839 to a restriction on defamatory statements, the statute itself does not use the word ‘defamation’ and by its own definition, extends beyond the legal standard for defamation to include any false or materially deceptive content that is ‘reasonably likely’ to harm the ‘reputation or electoral prospects of a candidate.'”
While the law did contain a provision exempting parody content that contains a disclosure, the requirement was onerous, mandating that it be “no smaller than the largest font size of other text appearing in the visual media.”
Just one part of the law was found to pass constitutional muster—a requirement audio-only media be disclosed at the beginning at the message, and every two minutes during the duration of the content.
“While the Court gives substantial weight to the fact that the California Legislature has a ‘compelling interest in protecting free and fair elections,’ this interest must be served by narrowly tailored ends.” Mendez writes. “Supreme Court precedent illuminates that while a wellfounded fear of a digitally manipulated media landscape may be justified, this fear does not give legislators unbridled license to bulldoze over the longstanding tradition of critique, parody, and satire protected by the First Amendment.””
“According to the study, reservations today are 46 percent less likely to host wind farms and 110 percent less likely to host solar projects compared to neighboring non-reservation lands. Although the lands provided to Native Americans have historically been less agriculturally productive, those lands are now seen as perfectly conditioned for solar and wind energy, according to research from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
Federal policy, however, continues to pigeonhole Native Americans into farming because of how difficult it can be to use the land for anything else. Since the Dawes Act of 1887, which broke up communal land into parcels among Natives in an attempt to assimilate them into American society, and its subsequent reversal through the Wheeler-Howard Act, Native land policy has been overwhelmingly bureaucratized.
Despite its reversal, the Dawes Act has had long-lasting consequences. Inheritance rules imposed by the law spurred a phenomenon called fractionation, in which parcels of land had to be divided up between all heirs after the owners passed away. As a result, some parcels have hundreds of owners, increasing the cost of development exponentially as the number of owners who needed to be contacted for approval ballooned.
A green light from the Bureau of Indian Affairs is also required for most energy projects on Native lands. “Typically, you have to work with different agencies, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” said Sarah Johnston, one of the study’s co-authors, “which, anecdotally, can be quite slow in terms of getting the necessary approvals.” Additionally, ownership records from the Bureau are often incomplete, making cases involving fractionated land even more fraught.
Were reservation lands to host more energy facilities, this would help lower the rate of unelectrified tribal communities. In just Navajo Nation homes, the largest federally recognized tribe in the United States, 21 percent lack electricity.
Altogether, removing regulatory barriers would give Native American tribes the ability to move past the raw deals they’ve gotten throughout history, allowing them to generate electricity, wealth, and prosperity for their communities.”