“It would appear that Kavanaugh has finally come to recognize what has been apparent to some of us all along. Namely, that Trump’s immigration crackdown actively imperils the rights of many U.S. citizens.
Good for Kavanaugh, right? Better late than never? Well, maybe. Because it is also worth noting that Kavanaugh’s December opinion makes no reference to his September opinion. How should we make sense of this mysterious and rather glaring absence or omission?
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It seems impossible that these two Kavanaugh opinions are unrelated to each other. So what are we left to conclude about their connection? What is Kavanaugh not saying about the link?
One conceivable conclusion is that Kavanaugh now seeks to walk back his unfortunate past statement without explicitly acknowledging his past misjudgment.
Another conceivable conclusion is that Kavanaugh now hopes to apologize for butchering the Fourth Amendment without doing any actual apologizing. Call it a mea culpa minus the mea.
Needless to say, none of this reflects well on Kavanaugh and his possible motivations. Perhaps we’ll get a more forthright account from him in a future case.”
“First, the men at the center of the 60 Minutes segment were in fact shipped off to CECOT without any sort of judicial review. Second, even after the Supreme Court ruled that alleged “alien enemies” have a due process right to challenge their removal via habeas corpus petitions, the administration made that option nearly impossible to pursue in practice, as the Court subsequently recognized. Third, the government maintains that federal courts have, at most, a highly circumscribed role in these cases, saying they have no authority to question Trump’s historically unprecedented invocation of the AEA against alleged gang members.
Trump’s assertion of unreviewable power under the AEA is part of a broader pattern that became clear during his first year in office. He has made similar claims regarding his tariffs and National Guard deployments. In these and other cases, Trump’s position undermines civil liberties, the rule of law, and the separation of powers by attacking the crucial role that the judicial branch plays in making sure that presidents respect statutory and constitutional limits on their authority.”
The Minneapolis police chief said that ICE’s irresponsible behavior is creating great strain on the city’s police force. So is people’s aggressive antagonization and anger at ICE.
Viewing the incident where the ICE officer killed a woman, the chief said ICE officers appeared to create a situation that was dangerous and acted against good policing.
He made tough progress to rebuild the Minneapolis police department after the George Floyd protests, and he fears that ICE tactics are going to create a huge setback.
“For locals, the guard members’ effect on crime remains debatable, but the accompanying checkpoints and stops have been uncontroversially disruptive. The oddest part of the spectacle is captured in the photos that follow. Uniformed and armed men and women from across the country can be seen all over the city wielding leaf blowers, hoses, and brooms as they do municipal chores—tasks for which they are surely overqualified.
The deployment is costing taxpayers between $1 million and $1.5 million per day. But over Thanksgiving weekend, the cost rose sharply: A close-range ambush near Farragut Square killed 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom and left 24-year-old Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe in critical condition. The Trump administration immediately pledged to send in 500 more guard members. This act will further scramble the already confused logic about the necessity and utility of National Guard presence in American cities.”
“The National Park Service (NPS) owns five golf courses across three properties in the nation’s capital: East Potomac Park Golf Course (home to three courses), Langston Golf Course, and Rock Creek Park Golf Course. If that seems like a weird thing for the federal government to do, you’re right—but it’s common in the D.C. area, where the NPS might also own your favorite concert venue or theater, parkways on your commute, your marina, or the park in the traffic circle a block from your office.
All that federal control means the president might suddenly take an interest in, and mess with, your favorite hobby.
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“National Links Trust has done everything it promised, and the Trump administration isn’t retaking control of D.C.’s public golf courses to make them nicer and more affordable for taxpayers,” according to sports business writer Joe Pompliano, who reviewed the lease. “They are doing it to create an upscale venue that can host a Ryder Cup, replacing the promise of affordable golf with prices most taxpayers cannot afford.”
In short, the government said it needed help fixing the golf courses. National Links Trust got a 50-year lease to do so. Government red tape made it hard to do the work quickly. Then the Trump administration had a shiny (possibly far-fetched) idea, blamed National Links Trust for not going fast enough, and cut off the lease. That’s not exactly going to encourage more nonprofits or private contractors to work with the administration, or possibly with the government in general.”
“In an economy, prices are signals. Interest rates are the price of money, and they give the authorities a clue about how to manage the federal budget. If interest rates are too high, the market is telling the government it is spending too much. If interest rates are too low (like they were a few years ago), the markets are telling the government that it is spending too little (if such a thing is possible).
Right now, the government is spending too much. If the central bank were to cap the interest rate, its usefulness as a price signal would disappear. The government can borrow an unlimited amount of money with no immediate consequences but with one big long-term consequence: inflation.”
“Regulation isn’t just an annoyance—it’s a prosperity killer. At the end of 2024, the MetLife & U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Index found that “51% of small businesses say navigating regulatory compliance requirements is negatively impacting their growth” and that “almost as many (47%) say their business spends too much time fulfilling regulatory compliance requirements.”
With the affordability of housing a major concern, the National Association of Home Builders warns that “regulations account for nearly 25% of the cost of a single-family home.”
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“The real test ahead is whether deregulation will be made durable by Congress or be left to the whims of the executive officeholder,” Crews emphasizes. “Unfortunately for the Trump project, meaningful reform requires more than freezes and ratios. Congress needs to make the ‘Unrules project’ permanent, and to end the laundering of regulation by means other than the conventional rules featured in this roundup.””
“Observing U.S. and European operations in the far north, he finds that Nordic troops are much more agile and well-prepared for high latitudes than their American counterparts.
In fact, Rosen gets to compare these forces side-by-side when he follows a Norwegian ship on the way to a planned rendezvous with the USCGS Healy, the U.S. Coast Guard’s only Arctic-specific icebreaker. When the two ships meet, they are suddenly buzzed by a Russian helicopter. The Americans are “visibly unnerved,” Rosen notes. The Norwegians, on the other hand, dryly comment about how they do the same to Russians all the time.
An important lesson is that experience, rather than flashy equipment, makes or breaks a polar army. The cold quickly kills people and destroys machines. Snow does not behave like sand when building fortifications. Cross-country skis are faster than snowshoes. Sunburn is a surprisingly common problem despite the cold. Hooks and ropes have to be carefully maintained. Wind and weather at sea can change unpredictably. Even routine, peacetime shipboardings can be deadly.
The book argues that Europe’s comparative advantage in the Arctic can make NATO worthwhile for the U.S., by reducing the need for an American military buildup up there.
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Most people in Greenland are Inuit, members of the same culture that much of northern Canada and coastal Alaska belong to. For centuries, they chafed under Danish colonial rule. Now they enjoy considerable self-rule within Denmark and are deciding whether to pursue independence.
Polls show that most Greenlanders support independence in theory but don’t necessarily want to break away at the moment. The fact that Danish taxpayers pay for half of the Greenlandic government budget is an obvious, widely known barrier to independence. So is the potential loss of the mobility and export markets that European Union membership provides.”
The attack on Venezuela seems to have used a cyber attack to take out the city’s electricity and over 150 aircraft. The US suppressed Venezuelan anti-air capability by suppressing and destroying them. Many military targets were struck, most by relatively small and targeted weapons, and most anti-air assets. There wasn’t an attempt to more broadly destroy Venezuela’s military capabilities. The US may have used new one-way attack drones that are cheaper than missiles.
This US operation represents what is possible, but also required luck. Shoulder fired anti-air rockets were launched, and one helicopter was hit in the leg three time and still managed to land the helicopter on the attack. If those hits hit the helicopter or person a little differently, the operation may have gone differently. The US may have had to send more waves, giving Venezuela more time to respond. Success was not inevitable.
The Maduro regime is not gone. The US took the leader, but the rest of the regime stayed in place.
The attack was not authorized by Congress, and therefore unconstitutional.