Trump Promised ‘Reciprocal’ Tariffs. The Numbers Tell a Different Story.

“In most cases, Trump’s tariffs are significantly higher than the tariffs charged by other countries on American goods.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/18/trump-promised-reciprocal-tariffs-the-numbers-tell-a-different-story/

MAHA Is a Bad Answer to a Good Question | The Ezra Klein Show

The clearest success that worked against Covid was the vaccines, and it is the main thing Trump, RFK, MAGA, and MAHA are attacking. These substantial attacks will result in deaths.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCaD4vh4XhI

Trump’s Ineffective D.C. Crackdown: Nearly 2,000 Officers Made Fewer Than 400 Arrests in 10 Days

“The president deployed nearly 2,000 law enforcement officers into a city supposedly teeming with criminals. And yet the effort netted some 380 arrests in 10 days, and many of the charges the administration has bragged about are for low-level nonviolent offenses, such as possession of narcotics or carrying a pistol without a license.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/19/trumps-ineffective-d-c-crackdown-nearly-2000-officers-made-fewer-than-400-arrests-in-10-days/

Trump’s Plans for Intel Take a Page From Bernie Sanders’ Playbook

“The Trump administration is seeking a 10 percent stake in Intel, Bloomberg reported this week, which would involve converting some or all of the company’s CHIPS Act grants into equity in the company. The exact terms of the deal remain unclear”

https://reason.com/2025/08/19/trumps-plans-for-intel-take-a-page-from-bernie-sanders-playbook/

National Guard troops in D.C. begin carrying firearms

“More than 2,200 National Guard soldiers and airmen, a majority from out of state, have been deployed to D.C. to support what Trump has framed as a concerted effort to tackle crime and homelessness in the nation’s capital.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/national-guard-troops-d-c-225235010.html

President Trump threatens Chris Christie with new ‘Bridgegate’ investigation

Trump and Republicans for years lied and exaggerated about Democrats using the justice system against them. Now, in full honesty, Trump repeatedly uses the justice system against people who criticize him. U.S. democracy is on shaky grounds.

“President Donald Trump threatened to open an investigation targeting Chris Christie over the former New Jersey governor’s decade-old “Bridgegate” scandal after Christie criticized Trump on television earlier in the day.

The threat came just days after the FBI searched the home and office of another Trump critic, former National Security Adviser John Bolton, as part of an open criminal investigation. Trump lashed out at the former friend-turned-foe Christie in an evening Aug. 24 post on Truth Social, remarking that he just watched “Sloppy Chris Christie” on ABC’s This Week.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/president-trump-threatens-chris-christie-024621347.html

Trump’s Steel Tariffs Now Apply to Milk and Hundreds of Other Products That Aren’t Steel

“The Trump administration’s 50 percent tariffs on imported steel and aluminum were expanded this week to cover hundreds of imports that plainly are not steel or aluminum. Among the items targeted by the new tariffs: dairy products like milk and cream, as well as gasoline and other fuels, fire extinguishers, baby strollers, furniture, engines, and motorcycles. In short, anything that contains steel or aluminum or that is (as with dairy products) transported or stored in steel or aluminum containers could now be subject to those massive import taxes.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/20/trumps-steel-tariffs-now-apply-to-milk-and-hundreds-of-other-products-that-arent-steel/

Trump’s D.C. Goon Squads Are Un-American

“The initial images of bored Drug Enforcement Administration agents strolling past perplexed joggers on the National Mall were more clownish than carceral. Local street resistance to the occupation was limited to a drunk guy throwing a sandwich at a federal agent.

But inevitably, as this operation has dragged on, things have taken a darker turn. The sandwich-thrower was overcharged and rearrested in a needless, publicized show of force.

Masked federal agents have set up an unconstitutional checkpoint, violently arrested at least one delivery driver, and filmed themselves tearing down a banner protesting their presence in the city. Each day, more and more National Guard members pour into the capital.

The conversation about Trump’s declared crime emergency has understandably, albeit unhelpfully, provoked a lot of discourse about how safe D.C. is, whether a federalized local police department will make it safer, whether federal agents are being deployed in the right places and going after the right crimes, and on and on.

This incessant crime conversation has distracted from just how un-American Trump’s show of force in the nation’s capital is.

Uniformed troops and masked federal agents doing routine law enforcement at the command of the president is just not how we do things in the United States.

The entire point of the U.S. Constitution is to prevent the federal government from becoming a despotism, and one of the primary ways it does this is by limiting how many men with guns it has at its disposal.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/20/trumps-d-c-goon-squads-are-un-american/

How the U.S. Just Handed the Renewable Future to China

Trump’s big beautiful bill takes away money from growing renewable energy that employs more jobs than coal and toward dying coal. It’s not just bad for the environment, it’s bad business. The bill makes it difficult to use components from China, even though China is one of our key suppliers. This will limit U.S. production.

The bill expands fossil fuel subsidies. Subsidies are essentially giving money to companies. This should be done when certain industries are important to emphasize above and beyond the incentive for profit-making, like environmental benefits. Considering fossil fuels cause deadly air pollution as well as contribute to global warming, subsidizing them makes no sense.

Fossil fuel industries are already built out, so subsidies pay such companies for doing stuff that they were doing anyways. Renewable industries are still developing and growing, so subsidies actually create new business. Once you consider the environmental impacts, fossil fuel subsidies net a negative return.

Trump’s bill has led to a lot of fired scientists. Foreign countries are offering bonuses to hire these scientists. These nonsense policies are producing American brain drain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tNp2vsxEzk