Jon Stewart Reacts to Colbert’s Cancellation & Trump’s “Bawdy” Epstein Doodles | The Daily Show
Jon Stewart Reacts to Colbert’s Cancellation & Trump’s “Bawdy” Epstein Doodles | The Daily Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwOLo_U6bTw
Month: July 2025
Cindy McCain tells CNN Israeli troops fired on crowds approaching Gaza aid convoy
Cindy McCain tells CNN Israeli troops fired on crowds approaching Gaza aid convoy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlyyXUAyQr0
Superman Is About the Anti-War Vibe Shift
“Superman has always been about politics. The superhero’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, originally wrote the character as a rebuke to Nazi racial ideology. The Kryptonian boy emigrated from his homeland in a way that paralleled the Jewish experience and became the greatest defender of “truth, justice, and the American way.”
So it’s no surprise that audiences have been trying to figure out the political message in the latest Superman movie. After all, the backdrop of the film is a war between the fictional nations of Boravia and Jarhanpur that Superman is trying to stop.
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Supervillains used to be foreign enemies. Now the villain is a defense contractor who wants to start a regime change war.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/18/superman-is-about-the-anti-war-vibe-shift/
How Trump’s Travel Crackdown Is Hurting Americans at Home and Abroad
“domestic hoteliers are heavily reliant on imports for furniture, especially from high-tariffed China and Vietnam. Trump’s own hotels are filled with foreign-made dishware, chandeliers, and even American flags.
Making goods more expensive immediately reduces Americans’ discretionary spending, which is the bucket from which travel budgets are drawn. Recessions decrease vacations, sometimes sharply; after Trump’s tariffs, most of the major economic forecasting agencies (Moody’s, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morningstar) jacked up their expectations for an economic downturn. Consumer confidence also tracks closely with travel planning; the former was at a four-year low even before “Liberation Day” tariffs. Further losses in the stock market—as of press time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 3 percent since Inauguration Day—would also depress demand.
It gets worse for the American traveler. Over the decades, the dollar has been propped up by Washington’s leadership role in global tariff reduction; now that those tables have been turned, the greenback will be less desirable as the world’s backstop currency, placing downward pressure on its value (particularly if America’s heretofore world-beating economy begins to sputter). The dollar in Trump’s first four months slid 7 percent against the euro.
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A mid-March Travel Weekly survey of 400 agents found that 59 percent had heard customer concern about anti-American sentiment abroad, with 22 percent reporting resultant cancellations. A YouGov poll in early March showed that not a single European country surveyed had a net positive view of the U.S., with favorability plummeting between 6 and 28 percentage points over the previous quarter. “In Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Italy, these are the lowest figures…since we began tracking this question,” the pollster wrote.
So Americans will be traveling domestically, right? Not so fast. Starting on May 7, a whole 17 years after it was originally supposed to happen, Americans are no longer allowed to board a commercial flight unless using a REAL ID. Except Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said, “If it’s not compliant, they may be diverted to a different line, have an extra step, but people will be allowed to fly.” As of April, the Transportation Security Administration was reporting that 19 percent of current travelers were passing through checkpoints without Real ID–compliant documents.
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What we do to foreigners, foreigners are eventually going to do to us. Right now, U.S. passport holders can visit most of the world’s countries without a visa or with a visa on arrival for up to 90 days. If the DHS gets into the habit of detaining and fingerprinting Europeans after their 30th day of vacation, you can expect that liberalism to constrict.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/19/the-u-s-border/
How Portuguese Culture Makes It Easier To Parent
“Portuguese culture grants special privileges to children and families, and those privileges really do make a big difference. We’ve been to Lisbon, surf towns to the west, the Azores, and even Cabo Verde, the African island nation and former colony, where many of the same norms apply. Pregnant women, the elderly, and people traveling with young kids get special lines for airport security and customs, ushered through as fast as possible. Native Portuguese will get offended if they see you in the normal line, instructing you to go to the priority line and sometimes getting the attention of the customs officer to make sure the system is adhered to—the only time Southern Europeans have ever been rule-abiding!
Though their Northern European neighbors are strict about taxi cab car seat rules and paranoid about child safety on buses (in Norway they made me use a car seat), the Portuguese are relaxed about it, allowing parents to make whatever choices they deem best. This is helpful for those of us who don’t travel with car seats, preferring to use public transit wherever possible.
Their playgrounds allow lots of risky play. We availed ourselves of Lisbon’s Jardim da Estrela, which had plenty of climbing structures, including one extending more than 15 feet in the air, full of kids as young as 5 jousting for the top spot.
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In Lisbon, the public park facilities even had a miniature bathroom for potty-training kids, but you could also freely change a diaper on a park bench. The nearby day cares dressed kids for rain or shine, and they seemed to make outdoor time a habit. The moms did not hover—a refreshing contrast to Manhattan and Brooklyn—and there was a healthy mix of moms and dads handling the kids.
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At home in New York, I keep a list of fancy restaurants that tend to be welcoming toward babies and toddlers (Bonnie’s in Williamsburg, Cafe Gitane in Lower Manhattan), precisely because it feels like a rarity: Several restaurants have adopted policies disallowing children (Jean-Georges, Bungalow). In Portugal, it’s standard to see families out to dinner, and out quite late. Though the families don’t tend to be huge—Portugal has not been immune to the sinking-birthrate issues that have plagued the rest of the developed world—they are rebounding a bit from a 2013 low of 1.21 births per woman.
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But the Portuguese in particular grasp something I fear American parents miss: You don’t have to recede from society once you have children, relegated only to explicitly kid-friendly spaces. The way to get children to learn how to fly and dine in restaurants and act civilized in public is to include them, and to let them practice again and again. Of course, those reps are easier gotten when you have a surrounding culture that acts like children are a gift, not a burden. The grace with which Portuguese culture treats families makes it easier to bear when your kid inevitably messes up in public; everyone who witnesses the tantrum or the spilled glass seems to realize that this is a normal part of living alongside kids—a little cost worth bearing to have a society that’s warm and friendly and growing.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/20/portugal/
Trump, Who Wants To ‘Straighten Out the Press,’ Sues The Wall Street Journal Over ‘Fake’ Epstein Letter
“President Donald Trump sued The Wall Street Journal for reporting that he contributed to a 2003 collection of letters marking the 50th birthday of financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was later charged with sex trafficking involving underage girls. Although it is well established that Trump was friendly with Epstein when that leather-bound set of birthday wishes was produced, Trump insists he did not write the “bawdy” letter described by the Journal, which he calls a “scam” and a “fake story.”
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Whatever the merits of this particular defamation claim, the president has a long history of abusing the legal system to punish constitutionally protected speech.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/21/trump-who-wants-to-straighten-out-the-press-sues-the-wall-street-journal-over-fake-epstein-letter/
‘Subway Surfing’ Death Suit Against TikTok, Meta Further Chips Away at Section 230
“”This case illustrates how the Section 230 precedent is fading, as courts keep chipping away at its edges to reach counterintuitive conclusions that should be clearly covered by Section 230,” writes law professor and First Amendment expert Eric Goldman on his Technology and Marketing Law Blog.
The case in question—Nazario v. Bytedance Ltd.—involves a tragedy turned into a cudgel against tech companies and free speech.
It was brought by Norma Nazario, a woman whose son died while “subway surfing”—that is, climbing on top of a moving subway train. She argues that her son, 15-year-old Zackery, and his girlfriend only did such a reckless thing because the boy “had
become addicted to” TikTok and Instagram and these apps had encouraged him to hop atop a subway car by showing him subway surfing videos.
Nazario is suing TikTok, its parent company (Bytedance), Instagram parent-company Meta, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, and the New York City Transit Authority, in a New York state court, with claims ranging from product liability and negligence to intentional infliction of emotional distress, unjust enrichment, and wrongful death.
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teenagers doing dangerous, reckless things is not some new and internet-created phenomenon. And the fact that a particular dangerous or reckless thing might be showcased on social media platforms doesn’t mean social media platforms caused or should be held liable for their death.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/21/subway-surfing-death-suit-against-tiktok-meta-further-chips-away-at-section-230/
Trump Should Kill Commanders Stadium Deal, but Not Because of the Team’s Name
“stadium subsidies are a bad deal for the cities and states that make them. “Studies conclusively show subsidies create little to no new jobs and open gaping wounds to public finances,” Americans for Prosperity wrote last year. “The fancy new stadiums might be a good deal for the teams and politicians who voted for the funding, but they are a terrible deal for taxpayers.”
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Trump is not opposing subsidies for the Commanders’ new stadium because he has wised up to the economic case against public funding for private projects.
No, Trump opposes the project—in his telling—because the Commanders dared defy his wishes by switching the team’s name to one he doesn’t like as much.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/21/trump-should-kill-commanders-stadium-deal-but-not-because-of-the-teams-name/
Hunter Biden Walks Free While This Iowa Man Serves 4 Years for the Same ‘Crime’
“Alexander Ledvina was convicted of violating a federal law that bars illegal drug users from owning guns. Exactly a year later, President Joe Biden, whose administration had zealously defended that law in court, pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, for committing the same crime.
Ledvina, a marijuana user who was 26 when he was arrested, was sentenced to four years and three months in federal prison. Hunter Biden, a middle-aged former crack user, faced up to 25 years in prison after he was convicted of illegal gun possession and two related firearm offenses. But thanks to his father’s intervention, he did not suffer any criminal punishment at all.
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Under 18 USC 922(g)(3), “an unlawful user” of “any controlled substance” who receives or possesses a firearm is committing a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/21/hunter-biden-walks-free-while-this-iowa-man-serves-4-years-for-the-same-crime/
US Navy and Coast Guard Shipbuilding in Disarray and No US Commercial Shipbuilding
U.S. having a lot of trouble building and maintaining ships.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOHKog66DaA