“In one recent raid in Montebello, Border Patrol agents—masked and driving an unmarked SUV—descended on a parking lot and detained a local man.
“One agent soon twisted Jason Brian Gavidia’s arm and pressed him against a black metal fence outside the lot where he runs an auto body shop,” according to The New York Times. “Another officer then asked him an unusual question…’What hospital were you born at?’…He did not know the hospital’s name. ‘I was born here,’ he shouted at the agent, adding, ‘I’m an American, bro!'” I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t instantly tell you the name of the hospital where I was born.
The agents ultimately released him, but confiscated his driver’s license. There’s a lot wrong with this picture. In a constitutional republic, armed officers should not be wearing face masks as if they are members of some third-world paramilitary organization. There’s no reason for that unless they are behaving in a manner that skirts the boundaries of the law.
Civilian policing is the norm in free countries for obvious reasons. If you’re walking down the street and a gang of masked, armed men jumps out of an unmarked vehicle and abducts you, how do you know they’re legitimate officers and not bandits or kidnappers?”
…
“A number of Trump-voting business owners and farmers who have had ICE agents whisk away part of their work force have made similar points. Same with people who have had family members deported—sometimes after they were “disappeared” in broad daylight, with no notification to loved ones. They didn’t expect their workers and loved ones to get nabbed. Frankly, they are among the least sympathetic opponents of the raids. They voted for these policies—and only seem upset now that it’s affecting them and not just other people.
The end result of these sweeps: All Americans—and especially those with darker skin—need to always carry our papers. The Fourth Amendment is clear: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” Then again, the administration isn’t keen on the due-process concept either, which simply requires the government to prove its case before it sends you to a gulag in El Salvador.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/27/immigration-raids-are-ensnaring-innocent-legal-bystanders/
“The case against government grocery stores is straightforward. Government providers have no incentive to spend money wisely or respond to customers’ needs. Unlike private businesses, which must compete for customers by offering quality goods at reasonable prices, government entities get paid regardless of performance. Tax dollars flow into the system whether the shelves are stocked or empty, whether the service is stellar or abysmal.”
https://reason.com/2025/06/30/the-absurdity-of-government-grocery-stores-exposes-the-flaws-of-public-schools/
Many big pop songs are written by a team and not by the headliner artist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l93JOUJZEoA
The U.S., being the more innovative and intellectual property driven country, gets more value in trade from many countries even when we have a trade deficit. Trump trying to mess with such relationships is foolish. China really was/is a bad actor and needs to be dealt with strategically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHL7Kqz9tSM
Work requirements on Medicaid will rob many people of health insurance because many will fail to do the burdensome paperwork to prove they are working.
Doctor has seen people die from preventable ailments because the people couldn’t afford to get care.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYGTbKOWu88
Trump’s threatened tariffs on Brazil for them prosecuting a former president for crimes he appears to have committed have appeared to backfire as the current president is getting a polling bump from Trump’s unjustified threats.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bowcbk9W50A
How to Propel the Fight Against Poverty in America
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJpjAwxAciA
“President Donald Trump recently banned travel and immigration to the United States for nationals of a dozen countries, insisting that this would protect the U.S. from terrorists and criminals.
The ban applies to Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. (It allows minor exceptions for immediate family members of U.S. citizens and adoptions, as well as a few other limited categories.)
Trump’s proclamation states that the restriction is intended to “protect [Americans] from terrorist attacks and other national security or public-safety threats.” Those countries’ “vetting and screening information is so deficient,” the administration insists, that such procedures can’t help U.S. officials identify and deny entry to terrorists and criminals.
But we already know that people from those countries do not pose a substantial risk to the United States.
The president is probably correct that many of those countries’ regimes either can’t or won’t properly identify terrorists and criminals, or are unwilling to share that information with the United States. That still doesn’t make his travel ban necessary.
If the lack of information sharing by those countries posed a significant terrorism risk, we should have seen evidence already. Considering all immigrants or visitors from those dozen banned countries over the past 50 years, one terrorist attack occurred on U.S. soil, killing one U.S. citizen. It was committed by a single individual, Emanuel Kidega Samson from Sudan. (He committed a shooting at a Tennessee church in 2017, killing one victim and wounding seven others.)”
…
“Travelers and immigrants from the named countries don’t pose a disproportionate criminal risk of any sort. The 2023 national incarceration rate for travelers and immigrants, aged 18 to 54, from those countries is 37 per 10,000. That’s approximately 70 percent below the incarceration rate of native-born Americans.
While the risks to Americans from letting in people from those countries are minimal, the travel and migration benefits to the targeted people are massive. Those countries have autocratic, socialist, totalitarian, theocratic, or otherwise dysfunctional governments. Allowing people to escape them, even temporarily, can and does increase prosperity and help spread ideas for reform.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/01/trumps-travel-ban-will-not-make-americans-safer/
“As the U.S. wraps up the congressionally mandated Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts (CARE) program, uncertainty for allies overseas is on the rise. Some allies who relied on CARE housing for safety while waiting on a yearslong processing queue now face an uncertain future, while multiple endangered U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) applicants have reportedly been deported from Pakistan, where they once sought refuge during case processing.”‘
https://reason.com/2025/07/01/the-u-s-is-closing-every-door-on-afghan-allies/
“A divided Supreme Court has cleared the way for the Education Department to fire almost 40 percent of its workforce four months after President Donald Trump ordered his administration to begin closing down the department.
The justices, by an apparent 6-3 vote announced Monday, lifted an injunction a federal judge in Boston granted in May against the firings. That judge found that the staff cuts were so drastic they would prevent the department from carrying out duties mandated by Congress. He also said the mass firings appeared to be part of Trump’s plan to eliminate the Education Department entirely, despite a lack of congressional authorization to do so.
…
The high court’s majority offered no explanation for its decision, but all three liberal justices joined a 19-page dissent that accused the court’s conservative majority of favoring the Trump administration when considering emergency appeals.
“When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
…
The majority stressed in that decision that the high court was not giving its legal blessing to any specific plan to downsize any particular agency. But now it appears to have done just that with the Education Department.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/14/supreme-court-education-department-ruling-00452134