Tag: Donald Trump

Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Imperils the Fourth Amendment Rights of U.S. Citizens

Posted on by Lone Candle

“the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit largely affirmed a lower court ruling that found that the Trump administration was likely guilty of conducting illegal immigration raids in the greater Los Angeles area that violated the Fourth Amendment rights of multiple U.S. citizens.

Generally speaking, Fourth Amendment caselaw requires that an officer must have reasonable suspicion of criminal activity in order to stop someone. In the immigration context, a federal officer must have reasonable suspicion that a person is in violation of immigration law in order to detain them.

In this case, Perdomo v. Noem, the lower court held, and the appellate court agreed, that the Trump administration was apparently carrying out immigration raids and arrests without any semblance of reasonable suspicion, which invariably meant that U.S. citizens were also getting caught up in the federal dragnet.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/05/trumps-immigration-crackdown-imperils-the-fourth-amendment-rights-of-u-s-citizens/

Boss Time: Summits, Cold Wars, and Universities, with Condoleezza Rice | GoodFellows

Posted on by Lone Candle

Companies are worried about quarterly earnings. The U.S. does not have a plan B for long-term research. We need to maintain the funding and focus on research in universities. Many technologies that are changing the world today are based on university research from decades ago.

Trump’s trade agreements are not trade agreements. They are not even trade deals. They are more press releases. It’s likely that many of Trump’s tariffs won’t even be legal under U.S. law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-HvpdbtJSA

Why Ghislaine Maxwell’s Transfer to a Minimum-Security Prison Camp Stinks

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Sex offenders are supposed to be ineligible for minimum-security federal prison camps, but the rule was waived for Maxwell.

…

“Maxwell’s transfer raised eyebrows not only because it appeared to be part of an obvious quid pro quo between a rather infamous public figure and a president trying to downplay his connections to Epstein, but because it’s practically unheard of for a federal inmate with Maxwell’s record to get transferred to a minimum-security camp after serving only a fraction of their sentence.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/06/why-ghislaine-maxwells-transfer-to-a-minimum-security-prison-camp-stinks/

The Art of the Empty Trade Deal

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The Trump administration claims its tariffs are drawing countries to the table for tough negotiations. Yet in 2016, TPP partners were already there, ready to sign an agreement that closely reflected U.S. trade standards and practices, having overcome significant domestic hurdles. The TPP’s multilateral negotiating framework actually provided an efficient mechanism for participating countries to modernize their existing bilateral free trade agreements, and it augmented less comprehensive pacts like NAFTA and the Korea-U.S. agreement (KORUS).

The White House claims its new trade deal with Japan pushed “breakthrough openings” in agriculture and food, but the real groundwork was laid a decade earlier, when Shinzo Abe took on Japan’s powerful farm lobby in 2015, clearing the path for the TPP and softening resistance to liberalized agricultural trade. The TPP would have covered virtually all goods, including politically sensitive products like Japanese rice.

The 2025 deal also hardly qualifies as a “free trade deal,” with imports from Japan into the U.S. still subject to a 15 percent reciprocal tariff rate. Those tariffs are a tax on American businesses and consumers.

The TPP, by contrast, was slated to roll back 18,000 individual tariffs, making it “the largest tax cut on American exports in a generation.”

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Building trade policy on headline‑driven, ad hoc bargains is an unstable strategy—made more precarious when the very tariffs they hinge on rest on contested executive authority. These arrangements may create the illusion of momentum, but without enforceable commitments or structural durability, they offer little of the stability that comprehensive trade agreements provide. The TPP demonstrated how a well‑designed pact could lock in reforms, deepen alliances, and shape the rules of global commerce for decades. Washington’s drift toward improvisation risks ceding that ground to others who are willing to play the long game—and win it.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/07/the-art-of-the-empty-trade-deal/

Apple CEO Tim Cook Has Learned the Rules for Getting Ahead in Trump’s America

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Trump takes a further step. To him, not only is the private public, but the public is also very personal. He sees himself as the CEO of the department store that is the United States of America—a metaphor that, notably, does not make any distinction between the government and the rest of the country. He’ll decide what deals are in everyone’s best interest, no matter what consenting individuals engaged in peaceful, private commerce might want to do. If he’s unhappy about something in Brazil, it will be your problem. And if he’s pleased with gifts and tributes, then all is well.

Do you run a foreign company trying to make a huge investment in American steel manufacturing? You’d better be prepared to cut Trump a piece of the action. Are you unhappy about Medicaid cuts that reduce the reimbursements your company receives from the government? That’s nothing a $5 million donation and dinner at Mar-a-Lago can’t fix. There’s a good reason why lobbying firms with direct access to the White House are reportedly keeping very, very busy these days.”

I thought the Tea Party was motivated by deficits and sweet deals by special interests. Where’s the Tea Party!?

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“Those who can afford to make a direct appeal to the president might get a tariff exemption. Everyone else is screwed. In effect, Trump has turned the administrative state into his private machine.

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there seem to be three basic explanations for why Republicans have ignored Trump’s open grift and self-dealing: “Either they just don’t see the problem, or it’s the price for participating in a two-party system where this particular politician is enduringly potent, or they never really meant that stuff about virtue anyway,” he wrote.

…

Special treatment is available to anyone willing and able to pay the price, and the White House is open for business.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/08/apple-ceo-tim-cook-has-learned-the-rules-for-getting-ahead-in-trumps-america/

They Fled Socialism and Came to the U.S. Legally. Now the Trump Administration Is Trying To Deport Them.

Posted on by Lone Candle

“M.A.R. is just one of “hundreds of thousands of noncitizens…paroled into the United States in recent years after inspection at a port of entry and who now face the threat of removal under highly truncated procedures that have rarely, if ever, been applied at any scale to parolees””

https://reason.com/2025/08/08/they-fled-socialism-and-came-to-the-u-s-legally-now-the-trump-administration-is-trying-to-deport-them/

U.S. Revenue Grab on Chip Exports Raises Legal, Economic Alarms

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Nvidia, which makes up 92 percent of the global GPU market, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which has the remaining 8 percent, have reached a deal with the Trump administration. They’ll get export licenses for the sale of certain chips to China in exchange for 15 percent of the revenues generated by the sales, reports the Financial Times.

“No US company has ever agreed to pay a portion of their revenues to obtain export licences,” the paper notes.

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The new agreement is not only unusual—it could be illegal, too. The Constitution states in no uncertain terms, “No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.” Yet this is what the Trump administration is effectively doing by conditioning permission to export these products on the forfeiture of 15 percent of sales revenue. Padilla appears to agree, telling the Post that “this arrangement seems like bribery or blackmail, or both.

Even if the deal brokered between the chipmakers and the federal government were legal, it would still be uneconomical. The revenue—hundreds of millions of dollars—will be directed to a Treasury Department slush fund that will allocate it arbitrarily. Nvidia and AMD have a stronger incentive, more information, and a better track record with investing dollars in a manner that yields a high return on investment.

U.S. export controls have not stopped China from developing AI, but they have denied American GPU firms access to much-needed revenue. Imposing this constitutionally dubious 15 percent tax is yet another example of unnecessary interference with the private sector.”

https://reason.com/2025/08/11/u-s-revenue-grab-on-chip-exports-raises-legal-economic-alarms/

The data is in: Many Canadians are still avoiding travel to the US

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Canadian travel to the United States by car has declined for seven consecutive months.

Canadians have said they are boycotting travel to the United States in response to Trump’s policies.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/data-many-canadians-still-avoiding-003056944.html