Trump’s Big Ukraine Deal

Trump getting fed up with good calls with Putin where Putin says he is working toward peace and then turns around and attacks civilians. Trump is selling weapons to NATO who will give them to Ukraine, and says Putin has 50 days to end the war or 100% tariffs will go on countries buying from Russia, like India and China.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR554Exl1eY

The Tax Bill Rewards States for Higher Rates of Food Stamp Fraud

“Forcing states to cover some of the cost of food stamps would be a big change for how the program operates, and one that is long overdue. “The federal government pays for 100 percent of the benefits, so state administrators have little incentive to crack down on theft,” Chris Edwards, chair of fiscal policy for the Cato Institute, and a longtime advocate of food stamp reform, tells Reason. While most states are not swindling federal taxpayers as often as Alaska does, more than $1 in every $10 spent through the food stamp program last year was paid out in error.

to get Murkowski and Sullivan on board with the bill, the Senate added a sweetener: Any state with a food stamp error rate of more than 13.3 percent will be exempt from the federal-state cost-sharing measure for two years.

Imagine that you’re administering the food stamp program in a state like Delaware, which last year had an error rate of 12.37 percent. If the Senate version of the tax bill becomes law, you’d have a pretty strong incentive to simply let that error rate rise a bit for the rest of this year, thus buying you two more years of a fully federally funded SNAP program with no mandatory state spending.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/02/the-tax-bill-rewards-states-for-higher-rates-of-food-stamp-fraud/

Iran’s attack on Qatar air base hit geodesic dome used for US communications, satellite photos show

Iran’s attack on Qatar air base hit geodesic dome used for US communications, satellite photos show

https://www.yahoo.com/news/satellite-photos-suggest-iran-attack-080943268.html

Trump’s New Trade Deal Has a Clear Winner: Vietnam

“in fairness, tariff-free trade into Vietnam is good news for American farmers and manufacturers that export goods to that country, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has argued. And the reduction in tariffs may marginally increase our exports to Vietnam.

For the vast majority of Americans, however, trade with Vietnam matters on the buying side, not the selling side. For them, this deal accomplishes very little.

The deal also sends a clear signal to other countries that Trump’s promise of reciprocity was bullshit.

Free trade between the U.S. and Vietnam would be a win-win for both countries. That’s not what Trump has delivered with this deal. Vietnamese businesses and consumers got free trade. Americans got more taxes.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/03/trumps-new-trade-deal-has-a-clear-winner-vietnam/

Either Repeal or Enforce—but Ideally Repeal—the TikTok Ban

“In 2024, Congress passed the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which prohibited operating or hosting “a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)” within the United States. The law required TikTok to find a buyer by January 19, 2025, or else shut down operations within the United States.

Ultimately, neither happened…Trump issued the executive order on his first day, “instructing the Attorney General not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days from today.” He has since issued two additional orders further extending the deadline

“But no president has the authority to simply postpone the enforcement of a law passed by Congress. The fact that Congress seems content to let Trump decline to enforce it does not obviate the law itself. And for that reason, if Congress will not repeal the law, then it should insist Trump enforce it.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/07/either-repeal-or-enforce-but-ideally-repeal-the-tiktok-ban/

The Republican-Appointed Judge Decrying Trump’s ‘Deeply Disturbing’ Attacks on the Rule of Law

“”Due process is the most foundational legal principle protecting individual liberty in Western civilization. It dates back to the Magna Carta,” Bolick observed. Yet “we have seen the words due process appear in quotes repeatedly, as if this concept was created by rogue liberal judges to help illegal immigrants stay in the country.””

“Bolick is a principled legal thinker and one of the genuine good guys in American law. If he is worried about the health of our constitutional order, we should all pay heed.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/08/the-republican-appointed-judge-decrying-trumps-deeply-disturbing-attacks-on-the-rule-of-law/

Trump Reiterates His Promise To Protect Farm and Hospitality Workers From ‘Pretty Vicious’ Deportation

“As Trump has acknowledged, he is torn between the economic concerns of business owners, including many of his own supporters, and the demands of hardliners like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. That tension is apparent in the contrast between the administration’s immigration rhetoric, which emphasizes the removal of dangerous criminals, and workplace raids that target peaceful, productive people with strong, longstanding ties to the United States. And it reflects the general public’s mixed attitude toward immigration enforcement, which includes an openness to legal pathways that would allow people in the latter category to remain in the country.

“In 2020–22,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture reports, “32 percent of crop farmworkers were U.S. born, 7 percent were immigrants who had obtained U.S. citizenship, 19 percent were other authorized immigrants (primarily permanent residents or green-card holders), and the remaining 42 percent held no work authorization.” But as Trump tells it, he was not aware of how his deportation campaign might affect U.S. farmers until Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, who attended the Des Moines rally, brought the issue to his attention. “You were the one that brought this whole situation up,” he said to her at the rally. “Brooke Rollins brought it up, and she said, ‘So we have a little problem. The farmers are losing a lot of people.'”

Trump has repeatedly promised to execute “the largest deportation program in American history”—a goal that he reiterated in Des Moines. Yet he sounded surprisingly sympathetic toward at least some of the people affected by that crackdown. “These people…work so hard,” he said. “They bend over all day. We don’t have too many people [who] can do that.” He added that “some of the farmers…cry when they see [immigration raids] happen.” He alluded to “cases where…people have worked for a farmer on a farm for 14, 15 years” and “then they get thrown out, pretty viciously.” His conclusion: “We can’t do it. We’ve got to work with the farmers and people that have hotels and leisure properties.”

If the agricultural sector’s reliance on undocumented workers somehow was news to Trump even after he served as president for four years, he should have been intimately familiar from his own businesses with the potential impact of immigration enforcement on the hospitality industry. In 2023, the American Immigration Council estimated, U.S. hotels and restaurants employed 1.1 million unauthorized workers, 7.6 percent of the total work force.

Trump did not mention construction. But last September, the National Immigration Forum estimated that undocumented workers accounted for “almost a quarter” of employees in that industry.

It was completely predictable, in other words, that a broad crackdown on unauthorized U.S. residents that included workplace raids would have an outsized impact on several kinds of businesses”

“a Pew Research Center survey conducted in early June, 54 percent of respondents opposed “more raids where people in the U.S. illegally may be working,” and 65 percent thought “there should be a way for undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally, if requirements are met.” Despite Trump’s rhetorical emphasis on deporting criminals, 57 percent of respondents anticipated that his immigration policies would have “no impact” on crime or lead to “more crime.” A plurality (46 percent) thought those policies would make the U.S. economy “weaker,” while just 34 percent said they would make it “stronger.””

https://reason.com/2025/07/08/trump-reiterates-his-promise-to-protect-farm-and-hospitality-workers-from-pretty-vicious-deportation/

The Trump Administration Says Its Speech-Based Deportation Policy ‘Does Not Exist’

“Trump administration argues that its policy of arresting, detaining, and deporting international students for expressing anti-Israel opinions “does not exist.” The government’s lawyers also maintain that the supposedly nonexistent policy is perfectly consistent with the First Amendment—a less laughable argument that nevertheless is hard to reconcile with Supreme Court precedent, especially as applied by several lower courts.

President Donald Trump and his underlings, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of Homeland Security officials, have made it clear that they are determined to expel students, including legal permanent residents as well as visa holders, who have engaged in protests or other forms of advocacy that the government views as “pro-Hamas” or “anti-Semitic.” Rubio says those activities, even when “otherwise lawful,” justify removal from the United States because they threaten to undermine U.S. foreign policy interests.

The Trump administration claims it is targeting “aid or support” for “designated terrorist groups” and “unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence,” neither of which is constitutionally protected. That defense is hard to take seriously, since the government avers that even writing an anti-Israel op-ed piece or peacefully participating in pro-Palestinian protests falls into those categories.”

https://reason.com/2025/07/09/the-trump-administration-says-its-speech-based-deportation-policy-does-not-exist/

The G.O.P. Fought for This Bill. When Trump’s Cuts Came? Silence.

A common Republican response to a school shooting is mental health is the problem. A few years ago, members of both parties passed a mental health bill and school therapists were paid for. The Trump administration cut that funding because of a line about diversity hiring; Republicans who voted for this funding are silent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyW2WuuK0G4

‘Americans to Iranians: Go Ahead, Make a Nuclear Bomb’ – Ex-Iranian Diplomat

Former Iranian diplomat says Iran was not deeply enriching before Trump unilaterally left the Iran nuclear deal. They enriched to 60% recently as a bargaining chip with Trump.

Also says their nuclear program was damaged, but they can rebuild.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkp6j7eeXVI