Month: August 2025

The Sprawling Government Effort to Prosecute Barack Obama

Posted on by Lone Candle

Trump and his supporters had spread falsehoods and exaggerated that Democrats were using the justice system against Trump, then Trump gets into power and straightforwardly uses the justice system to prosecute Democrats. This hypocrisy is one of the many reasons Trump is damaging U.S. democracy and basic justice in the USA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlh7j8GeWB8

Trump’s War on Chocolate: ‘There’s No Way for Us To Source This Domestically’

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The world’s supply of chocolate depends on the global trade of cocoa beans, which are grown exclusively in equatorial climates across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. The United States produces more chocolate than any other country in the world, but there would be no American chocolate-making businesses, large or small, without imports.

A lot of American manufacturing is like that too: U.S.-based businesses rely on imported raw materials when making everything from candy bars to new cars. Policies that make those inputs more expensive or difficult to obtain—policies such as the Trump administration’s tariffs—are leaving a bitter taste.

Chocolatiers, in particular, say trade barriers are a recipe for higher prices, lower quality, less innovation, and smaller profits. Doesn’t sound very sweet, does it?”

https://reason.com/2025/08/01/trumps-war-on-chocolate-theres-no-way-for-us-to-source-this-domestically/

Why Munich 1938 concessions to Nazi Germany haunt Washington 2025 talks

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Vladimir Putin’s desire to grab Ukraine’s key defensive lines echoes how Adolf Hitler secured Czechoslovakia’s fortifications.

…

“Ukraine has spent the last 11 years pouring time, money and effort into reinforcing the fortress belt and establishing significant defense industrial and defensive infrastructure in and around these cities,” the institute said.

If that happens, Russia would move its frontline roughly 80 kilometers further west, while Ukraine would be forced to build new defenses on flat and open terrain in neighboring Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk — far harder to hold than the fortified cities it controls now.

…

In September 1938, Adolf Hitler argued that handing over the ethnic-German majority Sudetenland region to the Reich would satisfy his ambitions and end the threat of war in Europe. France and Britain agreed, and browbeat Prague into accepting. Hitler — whose word was as reliable as Putin’s — said he had no further territorial ambitions.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-russia-war-in-ukraine-adolf-hitler-czechoslovakia/

Hiking Tariffs on Canada, Trump Demands ‘Adequate Steps’ To Achieve an Impossible Drug War Goal

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Trump’s contention that Mexico and Canada could “easily solve” the drug trafficking problem was equally dubious. For more than a century, politicians have been promising to “stop the flow” of illegal drugs, and they have never come close to achieving that goal—not for lack of trying, but because the economics of prohibition doom all such efforts.

Prohibition allows traffickers to earn a hefty risk premium that provides a strong incentive to find ways around any barriers that governments manage to erect. Drugs can be produced in many different places, and they can be smuggled into the country in a wide variety of ways. Any serious effort to prevent drugs from entering the United States would entail intolerable disruption of travel and trade, and it still would not succeed. That challenge is magnified in the case of a highly potent drug like fentanyl because large numbers of doses can be transported in small packages that are hard to detect.

…

Since Canada accounts for only a tiny percentage of fentanyl entering the United States, “flood” seems like an exaggeration. In any case, it is not clear what would qualify as “adequate steps” or “satisfactory resources” as far as Trump is concerned. Taking Trump at his word, there is no such thing, because there is nothing that Canada or Mexico can do that will be sufficient to achieve the impossible goal of stopping illegal drugs from entering the United States.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/01/hiking-tariffs-on-canada-trump-demands-adequate-steps-to-achieve-an-impossible-drug-war-goal/

Shattering Norms: Federal Immigration Agents Aren’t Afraid to Smash Your Car Window

Posted on by Lone Candle

“An investigation by ProPublica has revealed nearly 50 instances of officers shattering windows while conducting immigration-related arrests in the last six months. Although not comprehensive and hard to verify without government statistics, only eight occurrences were found in the decade preceding Trump’s return to office. The uptick in window destruction coincides with growing uneasiness around how federal agents conduct themselves—and how aggressive behavior may even be rewarded within the Trump administration.

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American citizens have also been implicated during these forceful arrests. In a since-deleted Facebook Live video, agents pulled over Jennifer Gribben, a U.S. citizen, and her boyfriend Martin Rivera (ProPublica did not note his citizenship status), and told them they were looking for a fugitive named Garcia. Officers then smashed the car’s window to arrest them. Gribben said in a Facebook post that she was hit in the head by officers and that Rivera suffered a broken arm. She was later charged with resisting arrest and third-degree assault, to which she pleaded not guilty.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/01/shattering-norms-federal-immigration-agents-arent-afraid-to-smash-your-car-window/

A Cop Lied, Fabricated a Sex-Trafficking Case, and Jailed a Teen on False Charges—and Still Can’t Be Sued

Posted on by Lone Candle

“A police officer who had a woman jailed for over two years on false charges in connection with a bogus sex-trafficking ring cannot be sued, a court confirmed.., because she was acting under color of federal law—a puzzling reminder of the inverse relationship between power and accountability in government.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/01/a-cop-lied-fabricated-a-sex-trafficking-case-and-jailed-a-teen-on-false-charges-and-still-cant-be-sued/

Safe Spaces Are Coming Back to Brown University—All Thanks to Trump

Posted on by Lone Candle

“It’s true that institutions of higher education are not entitled to federal funding, which, after all, is paid by taxpayers. The Trump administration, or any administration, could decide, in a moment of unusual frugality, that the U.S. is too indebted to continue sending billions of dollars to wealthy private organizations that have their own massive endowments. But the government shouldn’t use the threat of a funding cut as a form of coercion.

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a provision of the settlement that permits the feds to collect and read Brown faculty course evaluations, and that’s legitimately concerning. In fact, it speaks to the most troubling aspect of the settlement: It lends itself toward the creation of a campus antisemitism police that will be laser-focused on identifying, cataloguing, and eliminating uncomfortable and offensive speech that is nevertheless clearly protected by the First Amendment. In other words, the Trump administration is directly encouraging the formation of campus safe spaces.

The settlement instructs Brown to survey students on their feelings of emotional safety. The survey questions are really something, and include: “whether they feel welcome at Brown; whether they feel safe reporting anti-Semitism at Brown; whether they have experienced harassment on social media.” These are vague questions that will prompt subjective answers. Social media harassment is a particularly fraught topic; what constitutes harassment? If one student is being unkind to another student on Instagram or TikTok, is it really the university’s job to intervene?”

https://reason.com/2025/07/31/safe-spaces-are-coming-back-to-brown-university-all-thanks-to-trump/