Left wing activists did a July fourth noise protest outside an ICE detention center where they shot off fireworks. One of them went rogue and left the main group and vandalized the facility with spray paint. Police were called, and this man and the officer had a shootout. The officer was shot, but not killed.
The Trump administration successfully charged the activist group with terrorism and gave them lengthy prison sentences.
The group’s ideology was used to claim that they were all terrorists, even though it looks like one guy got into a shootout and there wasn’t an actual plan to shoot anyone.
Most of the group is guilty of trespassing and illegally shooting off fireworks. Some harbored the shooter on the run. One guy was convicted of terrorism charges and he wasn’t even there; he was convicted of terrorism because he had left wing material in his vehicle. Lengthy terrorism convictions in response to these actions are acts of tyranny. I’ve advocated prosecuting protestors who regularly cross the line into illegal activity, but, they should be prosecuted for what they have actually done, not Trumped up terrorism charges.
The prosecutors overcharged under directives from the Trump administration.
Some of the left break the world into oppressors and the oppressed, and when they see a group as a member of the oppressed, members of that group can rape, burn, steal, and kill…and neither punishment nor concern is warranted.
According to interviews with people who have been in the room with Trump as president, Trump isn’t playing 4D chess or putting on a front. Trump actually has nonsensical economic and foreign policy views. He thinks trade deficits are what determine whether he should be friendly or mean to a foreign country. He believes the US would be strong if not for the huge impact of political correctness holding us back. Trump has limited moral values in foreign policy and just wants to make what he views as good one-on-one deals. Trump seems to be a legitimate Iran hawk. Trump formed his views during his formative years based on what was happening at the time and based on his gut, and he just sticks to that, even if his gut intuitions are nonsense.
When it came to the war with Iran, Trump was convinced that the regime would fall. He was less convinced by Israel’s persuasion and more by Iran’s lack of response after the 12-day war and Israel’s success in that war.
The CIA told Trump that Iranian regime change was not likely, but Trump believed in his gut that it was.
Risks, like the Strait of Hormuz, were presented to Trump, but super softly. Trump was advised by a small group of scared yes men. Only Vance seriously tried to dissuade him.
Liberalism should be for the freedom and opportunity of the individual, and focus on harmful concentrations of power in government, business, institutions, and culture.
When companies got rid of an old CEO and for the first time got a new one that had an MBA, wages fell. It looks like the ideology of the CEO matters. If the CEO believes in standard business school teachings that suggest businesses should lower wages if they can, then they do it, and people get paid less.
Republican Supreme Court justices use the shadow docket to stop policies they don’t like, and to allow policies they do like. They are more partisan ideological actors than judges focused on the law.
The conservatives on the Supreme Court advanced the shadow docket as a prominent way to make impactful decisions while fighting with the Obama administration.They wanted to stop major Obama actions so that a final ruling wouldn’t come after the actions have already had a major impact. Yet, during the Trump administration, the shadow docket has often been used to allow Trump to go ahead with actions. The conservatives of the Supreme Court appear to be using the shadow docket to implement their political ideology, not execute sound and considered legal decisions.
“In just the past few weeks, Trump has floated—and senior members of his administration have defended—four policy proposals that would have been loudly denounced as socialist overreach had they come from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. And for good reason. Progressives champion similar big-government policies.
Start with the proposal to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes. This is not conservative policy; it’s the federal government deciding who should be allowed to buy property based on identity rather than on behavior. It substitutes political discretion for voluntary market exchange and treats ownership itself as suspect.
The proposal rests on the false premise that allowing corporate investors to own and subsequently rent out homes is a major driver of high home prices. The practice is supposedly diverting capital away from construction, limiting the number of homes changing hands and crowding out owner-occupiers.
The data say something much different. Depending on the source, institutional investors own only about 1–2 percent of U.S. single-family homes. Estimates from the American Enterprise Institute and HousingWire show that even at the upper bound, this share is far too small to plausibly explain the 50 percent nationwide increase in home prices since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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the idea of ordering Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities, a kind of housing-specific version of the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, in an effort to lower mortgage rates. Conservatives spent the last election cycle correctly explaining that subsidizing demand in a supply-constrained housing market only pushes prices higher.
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the proposed 10 percent cap on credit card interest rates. Price controls on unsecured credit don’t make borrowing cheaper; they make it disappear for anyone deemed risky. When banks cannot price risk to certain borrowers, they stop lending to them. But borrowers don’t stop needing credit; they just get pushed into far worse alternatives.”