Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Trump’s EU trade deal is only a win if a 15% tax on imports from Europe is a win. Things from Europe being more expensive, and importing companies making less money, are bad for the economy and the people in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6htfcWxknU
Pete Buttigieg says Democrats can’t go back to status quo after Trump | Morning Edition
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaIP0BvF1TU
“According to the Journal, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Trump during a White House meeting in May that his name appeared multiple times in the Epstein files. The fallout continues as we speak, with the White House and Republicans in Congress facing that age-old Washington question: What did they know, and when did they know it?”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/25/trump-epstein-files-timeline-column-00475334
The Supreme Court used to use the shadow docket, where it gives a quick and binding decision without explanation, mostly for death penalty cases. For Trump, the court has done these more often, often giving Trump powers that seem unconstitutional, allowing him to take actions difficult to reverse even if he loses later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXFj-_HCq0Y
“Hundreds of detainees at a newly opened detention center in the Florida Everglades don’t have underlying criminal records, according to a Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times investigation published Sunday.
Despite the Trump administration and Florida officials’ claims that the detention center, which they’ve gleefully dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” is holding hardened criminals and violent gang members, the Herald and Times obtained a list of roughly 700 detainees being held there. The news outlets found more than 250 people who were listed as having only immigration violations, but no criminal convictions or pending charges in the U.S.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/14/hundreds-of-alligator-alcatraz-detainees-dont-have-criminal-records/
Trump administration lying in court and defying court orders. The U.S. is not a healthy democracy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9dZk9YwguE
Trump is destroying the Department of Education and making it so they cannot fulfill their law-mandated duties. The Constitution states that Congress makes the laws, and the executive faithfully executes them. This is not faithfully executing them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=and1R4YBDfc
Under Biden, Nvidia couldn’t sell China their best chips. Trump came and banned the fourth best chip, which Biden allowed. Trump later reversed and allowed those chips thanks to: lobbying, China blocking the U.S. from rare earths, and accepting a strategy that getting China to use U.S. chips is better than forcing China to potentially be really innovative and make their own.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-_bykJa0Fc
Jon Stewart Reacts to Colbert’s Cancellation & Trump’s “Bawdy” Epstein Doodles | The Daily Show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwOLo_U6bTw
“domestic hoteliers are heavily reliant on imports for furniture, especially from high-tariffed China and Vietnam. Trump’s own hotels are filled with foreign-made dishware, chandeliers, and even American flags.
Making goods more expensive immediately reduces Americans’ discretionary spending, which is the bucket from which travel budgets are drawn. Recessions decrease vacations, sometimes sharply; after Trump’s tariffs, most of the major economic forecasting agencies (Moody’s, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morningstar) jacked up their expectations for an economic downturn. Consumer confidence also tracks closely with travel planning; the former was at a four-year low even before “Liberation Day” tariffs. Further losses in the stock market—as of press time, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 3 percent since Inauguration Day—would also depress demand.
It gets worse for the American traveler. Over the decades, the dollar has been propped up by Washington’s leadership role in global tariff reduction; now that those tables have been turned, the greenback will be less desirable as the world’s backstop currency, placing downward pressure on its value (particularly if America’s heretofore world-beating economy begins to sputter). The dollar in Trump’s first four months slid 7 percent against the euro.
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A mid-March Travel Weekly survey of 400 agents found that 59 percent had heard customer concern about anti-American sentiment abroad, with 22 percent reporting resultant cancellations. A YouGov poll in early March showed that not a single European country surveyed had a net positive view of the U.S., with favorability plummeting between 6 and 28 percentage points over the previous quarter. “In Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Spain and Italy, these are the lowest figures…since we began tracking this question,” the pollster wrote.
So Americans will be traveling domestically, right? Not so fast. Starting on May 7, a whole 17 years after it was originally supposed to happen, Americans are no longer allowed to board a commercial flight unless using a REAL ID. Except Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said, “If it’s not compliant, they may be diverted to a different line, have an extra step, but people will be allowed to fly.” As of April, the Transportation Security Administration was reporting that 19 percent of current travelers were passing through checkpoints without Real ID–compliant documents.
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What we do to foreigners, foreigners are eventually going to do to us. Right now, U.S. passport holders can visit most of the world’s countries without a visa or with a visa on arrival for up to 90 days. If the DHS gets into the habit of detaining and fingerprinting Europeans after their 30th day of vacation, you can expect that liberalism to constrict.”
https://reason.com/2025/07/19/the-u-s-border/