“For portions of the MAGA right, the stakes in politics seem unbearably high. They imagine their elections stolen without consequences, their children menaced by transsexuals in the schools, their fathers’ manufacturing jobs shipped away by globalist corporations that mock their values. People whose worldviews sicken them seem to control every citadel of political and cultural power and to brook no opposition.
Even President Donald Trump seemed powerless to shift America back to the country they wanted. And so several institutions and thinkers of the intellectual right have declared that it’s time to take the gloves off in a way even Trump would not. It’s time, they argue, to fight against “liberalism”—not just the attitudes associated with the Democratic Party, but the historical idea of a social order based on people’s ability to make their own choices about what to do with their lives and property, to live and travel where they wish, to choose meanings, family structures, attitudes, and lifeways freed of any obligation to national or ethnic traditions. They want the American right to get tough and to crush progressivism at its root.
Thus, there has been a small intellectual revival of mostly forgotten or despised thinkers often dubbed “reactionary.” In A World After Liberalism, Matthew Rose of the Morningside Institute assesses five of them”
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“These reactionary writers see, in Rose’s words, “humans as naturally tribal, not autonomous; individuals as inherently unequal, not equal; politics as grounded in authority, not consent; societies as properly closed, not open.””
“consider the public debt—especially the federal debt, which ballooned as a result of large budget deficits in recent years. (In 2020, the federal government raised $3.4 trillion in revenue and spent $6.6 trillion.) The interest cost of the national debt was $253 billion in 2008, equivalent to $325 billion in 2021 dollars; it remained around that level through 2015. Even though the debt doubled in those years, sharply falling interest rates and low inflation helped contain costs.
But that was yesterday. With today’s higher inflation and rising interest rates (perhaps with more to come), the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the interest cost of public debt is $413 billion in 2021, stated in current dollars. Obviously, any dollar spent on interest cannot be spent on government benefits or services.
Looking ahead, the CBO expects more of the same. For 2026, it projects that the interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds, currently 1.5 percent, will be 2.6 percent, and that the interest cost of the federal debt will rise to $524 billion. For 2030, the projections are 2.8 percent and $829 billion, respectively, all stated in current dollars for the noted years.
Now we are talking about real money. To put $829 billion into perspective, in 2020 the United States spent $714 billion on the military, $769 billion on Medicare, and $914 billion on all nondefense discretionary spending, all stated in 2020 dollars. Back-of-the-envelope calculations strongly suggest that some spending categories will have to give.”
“there is a big difference between reckless rhetoric, which is protected by the First Amendment, and the criminal conspiracy described in lawsuits filed by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D‒Calif.), other House Democrats, and two Capitol Police officers. All three complaints allege that Trump violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 by conspiring to use threats, force, and intimidation to stop government officials from carrying out their duties.
To prove that claim, the plaintiffs must do more than show that Trump ginned up his supporters’ outrage with false election fraud claims, or even that he did so in circumstances where he should have known violence was likely. They have to show that the Capitol riot was the culmination of a plan to violently disrupt the ratification of Joe Biden’s victory, a scheme in which Trump himself intentionally participated.
Capitol Police officers James Blassingame and Sidney Hemby also claim that Trump violated a provision of the D.C. Code that “makes it a criminal offense to willfully incite or urge other persons to engage in a riot.” In addition to the requirement that the offense be committed “willfully,” prosecution for incitement is constrained by the First Amendment.”
“”Social media has become a significant source of information for U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law noted in a report released last week. “The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the State Department are among the many federal agencies that routinely monitor social platforms, for purposes ranging from conducting investigations to identifying threats to screening travelers and immigrants.””
“In a truly rare turn of events, California’s successful approach to legalizing more types of housing is serving as inspiration for reforms elsewhere in the country.
Over the past several years, lawmakers in the Golden State have passed a suite of bills that make it much easier for homeowners to build accessory dwelling units (ADUs), sometimes called granny flats or in-law suites, on their property, while also making it harder for local governments to stop such construction.
It’s proven to be one of the few YIMBY (yes, in my backyard)-inspired zoning reforms that has actually led to more housing being built. Now other states and cities with their own affordability crunches are passing or considering their own ADU deregulations.
Last week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, released her 200-page State of the State legislative agenda. Among other things, it took a swipe at local rules that prevent homeowners from turning their garage or attic into a new housing unit.
ADUs “can provide an affordable multi-generational housing option that helps families live closer together,” reads the State of the State book. “Current land use restrictions prevent homeowners in some communities from building ADUs.”
The governor’s agenda says she’ll propose legislation that would require localities to allow at least one ADU on owner-occupied residential lots. This legislation, per the agenda, would also prevent localities from adopting rules that legalize ADUs on paper, but prevent their construction in practice.
That reflects a lesson learned from California’s ADU experience, where state laws allowing homeowners to build a backyard apartment have technically been on the books since the 1980s.
For decades, however, cities were able to stop them from being built by imposing infeasible requirements that they come with off-street parking, be a minimum size, or receive special, discretionary permits in order to be built.
It took the passage of several additional bills between 2016 and 2019 limiting what localities could require of ADUs, and then several lawsuits to actually enforce those new rules, to really kick off new ADU construction.
The results have been pretty amazing so far.”
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“To be sure, neither California’s nor New York’s high housing costs are going to be completely solved by more granny flats. But these reforms are an important piece of the puzzle.”
“Warren could hardly have picked a worse industry to use as an example: Grocery stores consistently have among the lowest profit margins of any economic sector. According to data compiled this month by New York University finance professor Aswath Damodaran, the entire retail grocery industry currently averages barely more than 1 percent in net profit. In its most recent quarter, Kroger reported a profit margin of 0.75 percent, during a time in which Warren claims that the chain was “expanding profits” due to its “market dominance.”
In actuality, for much of the last year, grocery stores have seen enormous boosts in revenue, but not increased profitability, for the simple reason that everything has been costing more: not just products, but transportation, employee compensation, and all the extra logistical steps needed to adapt to shopping during a pandemic. Couple that with persistent inflation—which Warren also recently blamed on “price gouging”—and it is no wonder that things seem a bit out of balance.”
“The world has known for years now that Uyghurs, members of a Turkic ethnic group who number about 13.5 million and mostly live in China, are experiencing persecution by the Chinese government. A number of international observers and human rights advocates argue the Chinese government is attempting genocide, but Uyghurs looking for an escape from China’s brutality have had a difficult time securing relief through America’s refugee and asylum pathways, and their immigration struggles are shared by far too many vulnerable people seeking an escape to the United States.
Under U.S. immigration law, asylum seekers are people who are already present on American soil or at a port of entry and apply for the right to remain in the country. Refugees, on the other hand, apply for resettlement in the U.S. from abroad. Approval to stay in the U.S. under either category requires that applicants prove they have been “persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.” The two pathways are intended to help the world’s most vulnerable people escape danger.
In the past two fiscal years, however, the U.S. has admitted zero Uyghur refugees. Many Uyghurs who have been lucky enough to reach the U.S. through other pathways, like student and travel visas, also face an uncertain future—as Caroline Simon reported for Roll Call yesterday, there are “roughly 800 Uyghurs caught in the backlog of hundreds of thousands seeking asylum in the U.S.” Until they receive asylum, they can’t apply to sponsor stranded family members.
It’s undeniable that Uyghurs broadly fall into the categories outlined for refugees and asylum seekers. In the name of cultural erasure, they’ve been subject to mass sterilization, kept from speaking the Uyghur language, and forced to pledge loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Adrian Zenz, senior fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, told NPR that China’s treatment of Uyghurs is “probably the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust.””
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“The plight of the Uyghurs waiting on immigration answers points to broader issues in America’s refugee and asylum infrastructure. For one, the U.S. has been taking in astonishingly low numbers of refugees lately, hitting a record low of 11,411 in fiscal year 2021. Over 667,000 asylum seekers are waiting for their cases to be resolved, and they face an average wait time of around 1,600 days, or 54 months. There’s also the issue of the “last-in, first-out” policy, under which asylum applicants who have arrived in the U.S. more recently are processed first. This means many people who have been present in the U.S. for years cannot petition for visas for family members, which propagates what the Center for Migration Studies of New York calls “the ‘other family separation’ crisis.””
“Border Patrol apprehended more than 45,000 Haitians at the U.S.-Mexico border during the fiscal year that ended on September 30—an increase of more than 530 percent from the 4,395 Haitians apprehended in fiscal 2020. More than 17,000 arrests occurred in that final month alone, after the July assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in August. But as camps of Haitians at the southern border continued to grow and the humanitarian crisis in gang-infested Haiti worsened, U.S. immigration policy stayed the same.
Although Biden presented himself as the immigration antithesis of former President Donald Trump, his administration has invoked Title 42, a public health provision that allows the government to expel migrants upon arrival instead of allowing them to claim asylum, as U.S. immigration law ordinarily allows them to do at any port of entry. Trump invoked Title 42 in March 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden has not reversed that policy, despite the advent of COVID-19 vaccines.
“Our borders are not open,” U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas warned in September. “People should not make the dangerous journey.””