Champion of Truth
The F-22 could have been far more capable, but the U.S., thinking threats to its air superiority were over, canceled the upgrades to save money. Now, U.S. air superiority is threatened by China.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRIooaaPlOA
Is Elon Musk Buying Today’s Election in Wisconsin?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR2_HpN_0tw
“The Trump administration conceded in a court filing Monday that it mistakenly deported a Maryland father to El Salvador “because of an administrative error” and argued it could not return him because he’s now in Salvadoran custody.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-administration-concedes-maryland-father-044632677.html
“”I have never felt more uncertainty about our business in my entire 40-plus-year career,” said one survey respondent. Another respondent called “uncertainty” the “key word to describe 2025,” adding, “There cannot be ‘U.S. energy dominance’ and $50 per barrel oil,” a stated goal of the Trump administration. (The current cost of oil is about $70 per barrel.) At that price, “We will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly (1 million barrels per day plus within a couple quarters). This is not ‘energy dominance.'”
“The administration’s chaos is a disaster for the commodity markets. ‘Drill, baby, drill’ is nothing short of a myth and populist rallying cry,” one comment succinctly said.
It’s not just Trump’s rhetoric that has the energy industry on edge; it’s his trade policies, too. One respondent noted that tariffs “immediately increased the cost of our casing and tubing by 25 percent.” Another said, “Washington’s tariff policy is injecting uncertainty into the supply chain.””
https://reason.com/2025/03/28/trump-is-sabotaging-his-drill-baby-drill-agenda/
“For the first time in more than 80 years, the U.S. has denied Mexico’s request for water from the Colorado River, escalating tensions over a water-sharing agreement between the two nations.
The State Department says it denied the request because Mexico hasn’t complied with the 1944 treaty that established the water-sharing system. That agreement requires Mexico to send 1.75 million acre-feet of water from the Rio Grande to the U.S. every five years. In turn, the U.S. must send 1.5 million acre-feet of water to Mexico from the Colorado River each year.
By the end of 2024, Mexico had delivered only a quarter of what it owed for the current five-year period, which ends in October. Mexico has been struggling with severe droughts for several years. In the first quarter of 2024, the country’s agricultural production fell by 6.1 percent, according to a report from the Bank of Mexico. Activity in the north-central regions, which includes the border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo León, fell by 3.3 percent. The country has sought emergency water deliveries to alleviate the strain on its water systems.”
https://reason.com/2025/03/31/for-the-first-time-in-80-years-the-u-s-denies-mexicos-request-for-water/
“President Donald Trump says he is determined to deport “terrorist sympathizers,” including legal permanent residents as well as foreigners with student visas. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the targets have a history of “tearing things up” on “our university campuses” by starting riots, taking over buildings, and harassing people.
While those descriptions seem accurate as applied to at least some of the foreign students whom Rubio wants to expel, they are less apt in other cases. Contrary to the way Trump and Rubio portray this initiative, neither rhetorical support for terrorism nor disruptive conduct is necessary to invoke the sweeping legal authority on which they are relying, which applies to any noncitizen whose “presence or activities” Rubio thinks could have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
…
That gloss rings true as applied to an activist like Taal, who went beyond praising Hamas (which on its own would be constitutionally protected speech) by engaging in conduct that interfered with other people’s use of Cornell facilities, to the point that he was banned from campus. But Rubio’s description is more than a little misleading as applied to a student like Ozturk, who seems to have done nothing more than express views that offend Rubio.”
https://reason.com/2025/03/31/defending-student-deportations-marco-rubio-equates-writing-an-anti-israel-op-ed-piece-with-starting-a-riot/
Trump’s War on the Press
https://reason.com/2025/04/01/trumps-war-on-the-press/
“It’s easy to decry cheap goods, or stuff. Stuff conjures up images of pointless consumption, materialism with no purpose, in service of nothing good, throwaway crap from Shein and Temu and Amazon. But that’s not what it really is, right? Stuff is important for a good life: The vitamins I take to stay healthy and the kettlebell that transforms my home into a gym so I can work out without securing child care. It’s the extra plates I bought to throw a huge dinner party over the summer. It’s the swaddles I got for my son when he was a baby so he could sleep soundly. It’s the phone I use to call my parents, since they live 2,000 miles away.
People express what they value through their stuff. Stuff is not the essence of the American dream, or the thing that makes life worthwhile, or what we’ll be thinking of on our deathbeds, but it is an elemental building block that allows us to pursue all the other things that do give us meaning: That dinner party you hosted at which you were able to fete a friend or get to know a neighbor really did need plates.
This isn’t a coastal elite value. The ability to take our stuff for granted, because it’s long been so cheap and easy to access, binds together Americans of all classes and creeds. It’s not the whole American dream, but it sure is a big part of it. Not because the stuff is inherently valuable, but because it allows us the ability to do all the other things we seek—some of which is noble, some of which is pointless. We Americans are blessed to have mostly moved up Maslow’s hierarchy; our basic needs have mostly been met. Now we can use stuff to reach a higher plane.”
…
“Does medicine count as stuff? What about food? What about building materials for houses? Because these things will all be made more expensive by Trump’s tariffs too.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/01/cheap-stuff-is-a-huge-part-of-the-american-dream/
“President Donald Trump claims that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 grants him the power to deport certain Venezuelan-born aliens without due process based on the mere allegation of membership in a criminal street gang.
But the text of the Alien Enemies Act does not allow the president to do anything of the sort. “Whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government,” the act states, the president may direct the “removal” of “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized.”
The alleged crimes of the alleged members of the street gang Tren de Aragua do not meet this legal standard. There is no “declared war” between the United States and Venezuela, and there is no “invasion or predatory incursion” of the U.S. by “any foreign nation or government.” The gang is not a foreign state, and the gang’s alleged crimes, as heinous as they may be, do not qualify as acts of war by a foreign state. Trump’s frequent talk about a rhetorical “invasion” of the U.S. by undocumented immigrants utterly fails to satisfy the law’s requirements.
The fatal defects of Trump’s position are further illuminated when you compare Trump’s stance with James Madison’s 1800 “Report on the Alien and Sedition Acts.” (The Alien Enemies Act was one of the three laws that comprised the Alien and Sedition Acts.)
As Madison explained, there are two categories of “offences for which aliens within the jurisdiction” of the United States “are punishable.” The first category involves “offences committed by the nation of which they make a part, and in whose offences they are involved.” In this case, “the offending nation can no otherwise be punished than by war.” In other words, the offending nation in this case has committed an act of war against the United States. The aliens who fall within this category are “alien enemies.”
The second category involves offenses committed by aliens “themselves alone, without any charge against the nation to which they belong.” In this case, “the offence being committed by the individual, not by his nation, and against the municipal law, not against the law of nations; the individual only, and not the nation is punishable; and the punishment must be conducted according to the municipal law, not according to the law of nations.” The aliens who fall within this second category are “alien friends.”
Notice that “alien friends” may certainly be punished by the normal U.S. legal system for whatever crimes they commit while on U.S. soil. They may be deprived of their life, their liberty, and their property. But—and this is a big but—they may only be deprived of life, liberty, or property after they have received due process of law, which is what the Constitution guarantees to all persons, not just to all citizens.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/01/trumps-use-of-the-alien-enemies-act-violates-madisons-view-of-presidential-power/
Trump administration officials appear to have lied and bullshitted in response to accidentally leaking sensitive military information.
The Trump administration is hiring leaders more based on loyalty to Trump than competency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N07elp4g8jw