The Formula for Making Immigration Popular With American Voters
The Formula for Making Immigration Popular With American Voters
https://reason.com/2025/10/01/the-formula-for-making-immigration-popular-with-american-voters/
The White House Just Defunded a Federal Watchdog
“Before being shut down, the Council of Inspectors General was a shared resource for the dozens of inspectors general’s offices located in various government agencies across the executive branch. It provided training for investigatory staff and ran a tip line to collect reports of waste, fraud, and abuse.
By shutting down the council, the White House may have also shuttered the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), which was created as part of the CARES Act and operated as a subcommittee of the council. (However, its website was still active on Wednesday morning.)
The PRAC was tasked with overseeing pandemic relief spending—which was absolutely rife with fraud—and was recently reauthorized by Congress until 2034 as part of the 2025 tax bill.
The White House’s decision to close the two federal watchdog agencies has drawn criticism from at least two Republican senators. “We urgently request an explanation for these actions and ask that you to promptly reverse course so that CIGIE and PRAC can continue their important oversight work uninterrupted,” wrote Sens. Susan Collins (R–Maine) and Chuck Grassley (R–Iowa) in a letter to OMB Director Russell Vought this week.
…
Like with the earlier attempt at firing dozens of inspectors general from their posts, this latest effort at undermining the viability of the government’s watchdogs suggests the Trump administration is less interested in draining the swamp than in pushing aside people who might sound the alarm about corruption.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/01/the-white-house-just-defunded-a-federal-watchdog/
Reagan-Appointed Judge Slams Trump’s Crackdown on Pro-Palestinian Students
“Young’s ruling came in response to one of the Trump administration’s signature policies, its attempts to shut down Palestinian solidarity protests by deporting Palestinian students and their supporters. The American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association sued a few days after the arrest of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, arguing that the policy violates freedom of speech, both by intimidating foreign academics in America and preventing American academics “from hearing from, and associating with, their noncitizen students and colleagues.”
Ruling that administration officials indeed “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target non-citizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech,” Young promised to hold a hearing on the specific measures he will order. He wrote that “it will not do simply to order the Public Officials to cease and desist in the future,” given the current political environment.
…
The ruling itself meticulously outlined how several different activists—Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chung, and Badar Khan Suri—were targeted for deportation and how the administration justified it, both internally and publicly. Although Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly claimed in the media that the deportations were meant to target “riots” on campus, Young shows that the students were often targeted based on their opinions alone, with vague chains of association linking them to violent protests.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/01/reagan-appointed-judge-slams-trumps-crackdown-on-pro-palestinian-students/
Autism Research Doesn’t Need Washington’s Help
“Set aside the fact that the so-called epidemic of autism does not result from a surge in actual cases but from a broadening of the diagnosis over the past 50 years—from what psychiatrists in the 1970s called a form of childhood schizophrenia, marked by early social withdrawal, impaired language, and rigid, repetitive behaviors, to today’s ASD. This new understanding includes highly capable, sometimes gifted individuals who simply interact with others in unusual or atypical ways. Additionally, because social, educational, and health care services are now more accessible to children with ASD, increased parental awareness and more screening by pediatricians, school psychologists, and educators have led to greater detection.
That nuance seems lost on Kennedy, who treats autism as if it were an infection or a tumor.
…
What we know so far about the link between prenatal acetaminophen and autism—that it remains inconclusive—is based on independent clinical studies not influenced by a government agenda. Without government interference, these studies might find definitive proof that prenatal acetaminophen causes ASD, or they could lead to dead ends, encouraging scientists to explore other possibilities.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/02/autism-research-doesnt-need-washingtons-help/
Trump To Cancel Biden-Era Green Energy Grants, but Only for Blue States
“”Nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda is being cancelled,” OMB Director Russell Vought wrote Wednesday in a post on X. While there is not yet an official announcement, he added that there would be “more info to come” from the Department of Energy. Vought said the newly rescinded funds would come from terminating projects in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
If it feels like those 16 states have something in common, it’s true: All voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent, in the 2024 election. In fact, other than Maine, Rhode Island, and Virginia, Vought’s list includes every single state that didn’t go for Trump.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/02/trump-to-cancel-biden-era-green-energy-grants-but-only-for-blue-states/
TrumpRx Is Obamacare in Trump’s Handwriting
“Trump announced the next in a long line of vanity projects: TrumpRX, a forthcoming, federally branded website where Pfizer sells steeply discounted drugs in exchange for a three-year exemption from his proposed 100 percent tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Imagine a strip mall furniture store with a permanent, flashy 70-percent-off sale, masking the fact that prices were inflated in the first place. TrumpRx, slated to launch in early 2026, is no different—a government-run platform that promises savings while hiding costs.
…
TrumpRx isn’t healthcare reform or even a program in any real sense. It’s a carve-out for one company. Under the agreement, Pfizer will list a large share of its primary care and select specialty drugs at deep discounts on a federal site that redirects patients to Pfizer’s direct-to-consumer checkout.
…
The savings are shaky because that money has to come from somewhere. Part of it, certainly, is just the market advantage of being exempted from a 100 percent tax that all your competitors are forced to pay. Any savings beyond that will be carved out of something else—less research, higher prices on other drugs, or hidden costs buried elsewhere in the system.
And for most people, the ‘discounts’ aren’t really discounts. Roughly 90 percent of Americans are insured, and their co-pays are almost always cheaper than TrumpRx’s cash prices. Medicaid patients already get the steepest rebates—more than 60 percent off by law—so TrumpRx adds little there. That leaves the approximately 27 million uninsured Americans.
But even for the uninsured, the math falls apart: A $6,000 arthritis drug at “half price” is still $3,000 in cash, a stretch on any budget. Eucrisa at $162 on TrumpRx beats few insurance copays. And $499/month for Wegovy (semaglutide) on TrumpRx compares poorly to the $25 many insured patients now pay. And all of this bypasses the way Americans actually get prescriptions. CVS, Walgreens, and the rest are cut out entirely, replaced by a federally branded coupon pop-up that punts you to a manufacturer’s checkout page. TrumpRx looks like a deal, but in practice, it helps almost no one.”
https://reason.com/2025/10/02/trumprx-is-obamacare-in-trumps-handwriting/
The Rise of Technofascists, with Sam Harris | The David Frum Show
Over the 20th century, the U.S. developed norms that separated the justice system from the whims of the president. Trump is breaking that down and weakening the United States as a strong democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUw20SsfosQ
Hundreds of Iranians held on US immigration charges will be deported to Iran, Tehran official says
It sounds like Trump is helping Iran’s theocracy round up its dissidents.
“In the lead up to and after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, a large number of Iranians fled to the U.S. In the decades since, the U.S. had been sensitive in allowing those fleeing from Iran over religious, sexual or political persecution to seek residency.
In the 2024 fiscal year, for instance, the U.S. deported only 20 Iranians, according to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Iran has criticized Washington for hosting dissidents and others in the past. U.S. federal prosecutors have accused Iran of hiring hitmen to target dissidents as well in America.
It’s unclear exactly what has changed now in American policy. However, since returning to the White House, Trump has cracked down on those living in the U.S. illegally.
Noushabadi said that American authorities unilaterally made the decision without consultations with Iran.
But The New York Times said Tuesday, citing anonymous Iranian officials, that the deportations were “the culmination of months of discussions between the two countries.””
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/30/iran-deported-us-immigration-00586374
Judge pauses cuts to US Agency for Global Media
“A federal judge has paused the Trump administration’s plan to lay off more than 500 employees of the U.S. Agency for Global Media — most from Voice of America — while warning that senior officials there had repeatedly failed to comply with his orders to preserve the international broadcaster’s key operations.”
The Trump administration is defying the courts.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/29/judge-pauses-cuts-to-us-agency-for-global-media-00586081
How a major DOE report hides the whole truth on climate change
“a detailed examination by POLITICO’s E&E News found that the report obscures key facts about climate change. It relies on outdated studies and cites analyses that were not peer reviewed. It cherry-picks mainstream research and omits context. It revives debunked arguments in an attempt to cast doubt on long-term warming trends.
The result is a report that promotes ideas starkly at odds with the vast majority of scientific evidence. That prompted a remarkable response from the National Academies last week that stated, “Human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases and resulting climate change harm the health of people in the United States.””
https://www.politico.com/interactives/2025/chris-wright-doe-climate-change-report/