“Day by day, meter by meter, the Russian front rolls ever westward. More than a million casualties in, Russia’s general staff shows no sign of slackening; indeed, it is currently increasing pressure across the eastern front. Far-away analysts talk of “frozen” frontlines and “static” positions, but the truth is that the frontlines are a cauldron of combat activity, with Ukrainians fighting frantically to slow the creeping red tide. And yet, demoralizing as all this might seem, this steady loss holds the key to a potential triumph.
Losing as slowly as possible—husbanding one’s manpower and resources during a careful strategic retreat—is a time-tested strategy against an ostensibly superior force.
…
the slow retreat strategy only works if the enemy eventually breaks—either militarily, economically, or politically.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/11/for-ukraine-losing-slowly-might-be-a-winning-strategy/
“Nvidia, which makes up 92 percent of the global GPU market, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which has the remaining 8 percent, have reached a deal with the Trump administration. They’ll get export licenses for the sale of certain chips to China in exchange for 15 percent of the revenues generated by the sales, reports the Financial Times.
“No US company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their revenues to obtain export licences,” the paper notes.
…
The new agreement is not only unusual—it could be illegal, too. The Constitution states in no uncertain terms, “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” Yet this is what the Trump administration is effectively doing by conditioning permission to export these products on the forfeiture of 15 percent of sales revenue. Padilla appears to agree, telling the Post that “this arrangement seems like bribery or blackmail, or both.
Even if the deal brokered between the chipmakers and the federal government were legal, it would still be uneconomical. The revenue—hundreds of millions of dollars—will be directed to a Treasury Department slush fund that will allocate it arbitrarily. Nvidia and AMD have a stronger incentive, more information, and a better track record with investing dollars in a manner that yields a high return on investment.
U.S. export controls have not stopped China from developing AI, but they have denied American GPU firms access to much-needed revenue. Imposing this constitutionally dubious 15 percent tax is yet another example of unnecessary interference with the private sector.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/11/u-s-revenue-grab-on-chip-exports-raises-legal-economic-alarms/
“Canadian travel to the United States by car has declined for seven consecutive months.
Canadians have said they are boycotting travel to the United States in response to Trump’s policies.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/data-many-canadians-still-avoiding-003056944.html
“The poorest 10% of households will lose an average of about $1,200 in resources per year, amounting to a 3.1% cut in their income, according to the analysis released Monday of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Households in the highest 10% of incomes will see about a $13,600 boost in resources on average, amounting to a 2.7% increase in their incomes.
Earners in the middle of the distribution will see their annual resources grow by about $800 to $1,200 on average, according to the analysis.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-tax-law-squeezes-poor-185207334.html
“The Republican Party’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts that Trump signed into law July 4 included what’s arguably the biggest boost of funds yet to the Department of Homeland Security — nearly $170 billion, almost double its annual budget.
The staggering sum is powering the nation’s sweeping new Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, delivering gripping scenes of people being pulled off city streets and from job sites across the nation — the cornerstone of Trump’s promise for the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. Homeland Security confirmed over the weekend ICE is working to set up detention sites at certain military bases.
…
The crush of new money is setting off alarms in Congress and beyond, raising questions from lawmakers in both major political parties who are expected to provide oversight. The bill text provided general funding categories — almost $30 billion for ICE officers, $45 billion for detention facilities, $10 billion for the office of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — but few policy details or directives. Homeland Security recently announced $50,000 ICE hiring bonuses.
…
In the months since Trump took office, his administration has been shifting as much as $1 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other accounts to pay for immigration enforcement and deportation operations, lawmakers said.
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Polling showed 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a “good thing” for the country, having jumped substantially from 64% a year ago, according to Gallup. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults say immigration is a bad thing right now.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trumps-big-bill-powering-mass-111514464.html
“Noem v. Perdomo is not a normal case. Instead of disavowing the apparently unconstitutional behavior at its core, the Trump administration is openly embracing that behavior and urging the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to do the same. It is the rare case in which both the government and its opponents agree that federal agents behaved in a specific way; the two sides only disagree about whether the specific behavior should count as good or bad.
…
according to the emergency application to SCOTUS signed by Solicitor General John Sauer, “apparent ethnicity can be a factor supporting reasonable suspicion in appropriate circumstances.” Translation: If a federal agent thinks that someone “looks illegal,” the agent should be free to seize that person based only on his “apparent ethnicity” without setting off any sort of Fourth Amendment alarm bells.
Furthermore, in response to the argument that the federal government’s alleged racial profiling has resulted in an overly broad dragnet that inevitably ensnares innocent U.S. citizens, the Trump administration told the Supreme Court that “the high prevalence of illegal aliens should enable agents to stop a relatively broad range of individuals.”
Take a moment to let that sink in. The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to give its blessing to a kind of systematic racial profiling that involves federal agents stopping a “broad range of individuals” based exclusively on factors such as the individuals’ “apparent ethnicity.” And if the rights of U.S. citizens—such as the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures regardless of your skin color—happen to get trampled along the way, the Trump administration’s message to those victimized citizens is this: tough luck.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/12/trump-asks-supreme-court-to-bless-racial-profiling-by-immigration-agents/
“Throughout the early 2020s, there was a wave of disturbing crimes related to the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Harp demonstrates that government officials turned a blind eye as JSOC operators stole, killed, raped, and smuggled, shielding them from both military and civilian justice.
At first, it may be hard to understand where the word cartel in Fort Bragg Cartel comes from. The first half of the book is a history of JSOC—an organization that includes Delta Force and SEAL Team Six—and a collection of seemingly unconnected stories about JSOC veterans behaving badly. But the conspiracy comes into focus in part four. Former U.S. Army quartermaster Timothy Dumas and former policeman Freddie Wayne Huff were leading a criminal enterprise that brought together JSOC operators, the local redneck mafia, Puerto Rican smugglers, Los Zetas of Mexico, and even a former Islamic State fighter.
…
From late 2020 through early 2023, 12 Fort Bragg soldiers were murdered or accused of murder, and some of these cases remain unsolved. Violent crime in the area is so bad that the nearby town of Fayetteville is nicknamed “Fatalville.” The most infamous case might be the murder of Spc. Enrique Roman-Martinez. Suspected of selling LSD, he disappeared in May 2020 during a camping trip. A few days later, Roman-Martinez’s decapitated head washed up on a beach. The case is still completely cold.
In a 2021 interview with military police, obtained by Harp, the commander of Delta Force’s administrative headquarters complained that JSOC was sending problem soldiers and accused criminals to serve desk duty in his unit rather than discharging them from the military. “Having some of the most tactically skilled, physically fit, and intelligent operators in the military coming in on bad terms is dangerous,” the commander said. “We intentionally limit their physical presence as it is a hindrance to the good order and discipline of the company.”
…
“They were buying dope from the cartel,” local pawnbroker Sharon Shivley told Harp. “Somebody that’s associated with Mexicans. Who will kill you if you don’t pay for your shit.” As it turns out, Huff’s supplier was Los Zetas, a gang founded by a renegade Mexican special forces unit—trained, ironically, at Fort Bragg.
…
Lavigne and Huff escaped so many close brushes with the law that other gangsters wondered whether they might be police informants. But the Fort Bragg cartel appears to have been protected instead by North Carolina’s good old boys’ culture. Veterans can “show up in their Class A uniforms looking great” to court and expect to have any charges thrown out with a “thank you for your service,” said Det. Diane Ballard, a former tenant of Dumas’. Although Huff was a civilian, he had his own network of law enforcement friends to lean on. According to Harp, court documents also imply that Huff had gay sexual blackmail material on at least one law enforcement officer.
The murder of Dumas and Lavigne finally forced the government’s hand, bringing the full force of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security down on Huff’s network. Still, Harp suggests that the authorities haven’t really followed up on every possible lead.
…
It’s common now, almost to the point of cliche, to speak of “the war coming home.” And to a large degree, the Fort Bragg cartel was a case of war-on-terror blowback. But exposure to combat doesn’t automatically turn soldiers into criminals. Nor do hard drugs. What all the characters involved in this bizarre saga had in common was a total lack of accountability. As long as America treats JSOC as a warrior caste above the law, some of these warriors will abuse their privileges.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/12/how-elite-special-operations-troops-created-a-drug-cartel/
“To place huge new tariffs on imports from China, President Donald Trump claimed that those transactions are “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States.
It’s a threat that the White House now says it can put off addressing for another 90 days.
…
This is not just a rhetorical point but a question that’s central to the legality of the tariffs. In front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last month, the Trump administration’s lawyer told skeptical judges that the president’s tariff powers rested upon the existence of an “unusual threat” that the president was taking action to “deal with.”
The latest delay in the China tariffs, then, seems to directly undermine that claim. If Trump wants to use the threat of tariffs to negotiate a new trade deal with China, fine, but then that’s not an emergency—and, as a result, those tariffs cannot be implemented with the emergency powers the president is currently claiming.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/12/after-another-delay-trumps-china-tariffs-look-even-less-like-a-legitimate-emergency/
“This no-risk approach is also undermining America’s ability to combat money laundering and illicit finance. Last year, American financial institutions collected about 4.7 million Suspicious Activity Reports and more than 20 million currency transaction reports, the MIT Technology Review noted. This imposes considerable costs on the private sector and creates a framework where law enforcement agents are flooded with low-value information, and as a result, cannot focus on the big issues.”
https://reason.com/2025/08/12/to-truly-fix-debanking-we-need-structural-reforms/
“Trump’s comments came in response to questions about the assault of Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old man known as “big balls” who played a prominent role in the administration’s efforts to slash government under the leadership of Elon Musk.
Coristine, who now works for the Social Security Administration though Musk has left the government and DOGE has been scaled back, told police he was attacked by a group of juveniles as part of an apparent attempted carjacking about 3 a.m Sunday in Northwest D.C.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/06/trump-weighing-sending-the-national-guard-to-dc-00496882