Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Mike Johnson used to push for limiting the president’s power over tariffs. Now, he is Trump’s little bitch and actively prevents such bills from even reaching the floor.
https://reason.com/2025/11/21/mike-johnson-wanted-congress-to-reclaim-power-over-tariffs-in-2019/
“military personnel not only “can refuse illegal orders”; they have an obligation to do so. Lederman also cited The Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, which similarly recognizes an exception to the general rule that “an order requiring the performance of a military duty to act may be inferred to be lawful, and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate.” The handbook says that inference “does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.” The first example it offers—”an order directing the murder of a civilian [or] a noncombatant”—is clearly relevant to Trump’s bloodthirsty anti-drug strategy.
Trump has tried to justify that strategy in various ways: by conflating drug smuggling with violent aggression, by describing the men whose deaths he has ordered as members of “foreign terrorist organizations,” by asserting a “noninternational armed conflict,” and by preposterously claiming that “we save 25,000 lives” with each boat that is destroyed (which would add up to more than half a million deaths supposedly prevented so far). These arguments have been widely rejected by experts on the law of war.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/21/trump-says-legislators-committed-treason-by-noting-that-soldiers-are-not-obligated-to-obey-unlawful-orders/
“What about his promise to maintain the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes? Nope. RFK Jr. fired all of the vaccine experts and loaded up the committee with anti-vaccination appointees.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/22/rfk-jr-breaks-his-promises-about-the-cdc-on-vaccines-and-autism/
“Thanks to a bill approved as part of the package that ended the federal shutdown, intoxicating hemp products will be federally prohibited as of November 13, 2026, a year after President Donald Trump signed the legislation. Unless Congress intervenes, that ban will put an end to a $28 billion industry that offers psychoactive beverages, edibles, flower, and vape cartridges to consumers in dozens of states.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/24/psychoactive-hemp-products-will-be-federally-prohibited-in-a-year-unless-congress-intervenes/
“The lawmakers note that “no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.” Although “we know this is hard,” they say, “your vigilance is critical,” and “we have your back.”
That stance is legally uncontroversial. According to the Judge Advocate General’s Operational Law Handbook, “soldiers have a duty to disobey” orders that are “manifestly illegal.” Examples include intentional targeting of civilians, torture of prisoners, looting of property, and suppression of constitutionally protected protests.
Trump nevertheless claims reiterating this well-established principle amounts to “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS,” which he says is “punishable by DEATH!” Yet the video plainly does not qualify as sedition or treason.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/26/trumps-habitual-charges-of-treason-reflect-his-authoritarian-impulses/
“”Walmart just announced that the cost of their standard Thanksgiving meal is reduced by 25 percent this year from last year,” Trump said recently, failing to account for the fact that the price change is due to Walmart…changing the goods offered via their Thanksgiving meal bundle (and drastically shrinking its size) to get prices lower for cost-burdened consumers.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/26/is-the-poverty-line-really-100000/
“Elon Musk finally rolled out a long-requested feature on X, the site formerly known as Twitter: It is now possible to see the geographic location where a given user likely resides. (Yes, it’s possible to fool the system with a VPN.) And what this has revealed is that some—by no means all, but some—highly visible accounts associated with rightwing politics, support for President Trump, extremely anti-interventionist America First foreign policy views, and more sinisterly, racist and antisemitic comments, are not American at all. They reside in foreign countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria, and Bangladesh.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/26/elon-musks-account-based-in-feature-has-already-improved-x/
“”The U.S. is our least trustworthy trading partner right now—and I say that as an American,” Price Johnson, COO of Cephalofair Games, told Reason last month. “I can’t trust what the policy is going to be tomorrow, let alone next week.”
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The Yale Budget Lab estimates that Trump’s tariffs will cost the average American household around $1,700 this year.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/28/trumps-1-1-billion-tax-hike-on-toys-and-games/
“In theory, the CHIPS Act provided a mechanism for the federal government to retract the grant and get all or part of its money back should Intel fail to meet its obligations. It’s not clear whether the federal government would have exercised its option to take the money back, but it was an option—until Trump stepped in.
As the company flailed, Trump met with its CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. Trump first called for him to resign. Then in August, the Trump administration announced that the federal government would just take partial ownership of Intel. Essentially, the U.S. government would purchase a roughly 10 percent stake in the chipmaker, partially nationalizing the company. And funds from CHIPS would be used to do it.
Trump bragged about the deal, saying he planned to “do more of them.” The company’s stock price rose on the news, suggesting that investors liked it. But that’s probably because it was a good deal for the company, at taxpayer expense.
According to public financial filings, the federal government would disburse the remaining funds, about $6 billion, while clearing any obligations for the company to actually complete work on new domestic semiconductor fabs.
In exchange, the federal government would gain partial ownership—as well as all the financial risks stockholders usually have when they invest in companies. Those risks will now be borne by taxpayers.
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Trump gave Intel a federal bailout, removing the company’s public obligations and accountability while loading more financial risk onto the public.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/29/chipping-away-at-chips/
“From knitting needles to garment fabric to bottles of paint, American crafters work with many materials produced abroad. That has left them particularly vulnerable to Trump’s trade war. Imports from Europe currently face tariffs of 15 percent, and while sky-high tariffs on China are currently subject to a 90-day pause, they still stand at 57.6 percent, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Worse still, Trump has done away with the de minimis exemption, which allowed goods valued at under $800 to enter the U.S. tariff-free.
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Exclusively stocking U.S.-produced materials isn’t an option for most craft stores. “Tariffs impact American-made yarns as well,” pointed out Fibre Space, a yarn store in Alexandria, Virginia. That’s because “American-made goods still rely on materials made in other countries.” Yarn “is an agricultural product,” observes Chadwell, “so certain crops and certain livestock produce the best fiber in very specific climates that aren’t necessarily” found in the United States. Meanwhile, “needles, notions, doodads, [and] bags…can only be produced at much higher prices” here.
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Tariffs prevent all sorts of voluntary transactions that shape lives and culture in big—and often inconspicuous—ways. That means shops that won’t be started, gifts that won’t be made by hand, and hobbies that won’t be taken up. And more immediately, tariffs are punishing business owners who want to help Americans fill their lives with more creativity.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/30/knitters-need-free-trade/