02/26 -- Dow drops 800 points on AI disruption, Trump trade idiocy; Bad cop
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Thomas L. Knapp
Feb 24, 2026, 6:20:00 AM (8 days ago) Feb 24
to Freedom News Daily
Freedom News Daily, 02/24/26
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Dow drops 800 points on AI disruption, Trump trade idiocy
2) Palestine: Israeli regime designates five media outlets as “terrorist”
3) US regime publicly confesses to three more murders in Caribbean
4) EU Parliament puts US trade deal on ice after latest Trump tariff hit
5) MD: Regime Sues DHS to Stop “Massive” ICE Gang Abduction Hub
6) Senile reality TV star tantrums at Netflix to fire board member
7) US FDA proposes new system for approving customized drugs and therapies for rare diseases
8) SCOTUS Won’t Revive NRA Free Speech Suit Against NY Ex-Official
9) Palestine: Israeli squatters torch and deface mosque
10) France: Regime Summons US Ambassador Over Comments on Activist’s Killing
11) SCOTUS takes up oil companies’ plea to end climate change lawsuits
12) Chad: Regime shuts border with Sudan after cross-border incursion kills its troops
13) Citing logistics, US women’s hockey team declines Trump’s SOTU invitation
14) Judge who let Trump skate in classified documents theft case blocks release of special counsel’s report
15) NH: Feds investigate gang violence at Canada border crossing; suspected gang opponent hospitalized
16) Netherlands: King swears in new coalition regime led by youngest premier Rob Jetten
17) US partially evacuates Beirut embassy amid rising Iran tensions
18) Monster blizzard “bomb” paralyzes northeast US in extreme snow, soaring power outages
19) Trump threatens countries to abide by tariff deals despite Supreme Court decision
20) North Korea: Kim reelected to top post of ruling party
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Bad cop
22) The End of Artificial Employment
23) The Supreme Court Spurns a Presidential Power Grab
24) Another Drug Lord Killed. Is the Drug War Now Over?
25) The Supreme Court Didn’t Fully End the Trade War, but It Reinforced Limits on the Presidency
26) Jesse Jackson’s Real Legacy
27) Three Congressional Missteps on Healthcare
28) The Supreme Court Defanged Trump’s Tariff Weapon
29) We Deserve Better War Propaganda
30) The European Tiger Roars
31) America’s Date With Destiny: An Appointment in Samarra
32) It’s beginning to feel a little like Sarajevo in June 1914
33) The Propaganda Assault: A Tale of Two Venezuela(n)s
34) Are the “Liberals” of Today Really Liberals?
35) What Social Security Should Do — and What It Shouldn’t
36) A Letter to London
37) Accomplish Nothing, Form a Committee
38) Legacy of a Libertarian Leader
39) What does Putin really want?
40) US Actions Toward Cuba Are Criminal
41) Trump’s Tariffs Weren’t Really About Trade Policy
42) Tariffs and the New Economic Lysenkoism
43) Who’s Afraid of AOC?
44) The problem with “relative poverty”
45) Dems will roll out their perfect agent of subterfuge, Abigail Spanberger, in response to SOTU
46) Why is American Healthcare so Expensive
47) Stand back, Congress needs a second Supreme Court jolt
48) A Message to Valeria Chomsky from a “Hysterical” Abused Woman
49) Inside the First-Ever Young Worker March on Washington
50) SCOTUS tariff ruling offers a lesson on statutory limits
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Roundtable, 02/23/26
52) Rising, 02/23/26
53) Finding Freedom, 02/23/26
54) The Briefing Podcast with Michael Waldman, 02/23/26
55) EconTalk, 02/23/26
56) The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 02/23/26
57) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/23/26
58) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/22/26
59) PoliTicks, 02/22/26
60) Fountainhead Forum, episode 429
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Dow drops 800 points on AI disruption, Trump trade idiocy
Source: CNBC
“U.S. equities tumbled on Monday as investors grappled with persistent fears around artificial intelligence disruptions to various industries and President Donald Trump’s decision to raise his global tariffs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 821.91 points, or 1.66%, to close at 48,804.06, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 1.13% and ended at 22,627.27. The S&P 500 shed 1.04% and closed at 6,837.75, putting it into the red once again for 2026.” (02/23/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/22/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
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2) Palestine: Israeli regime designates five media outlets as “terrorist”
Source: The New Arab [UK]
“Israel has designated five Palestinian media outlets as ‘terrorist’ entities, alleging the platforms have links to Hamas in the latest targeting of the press. Defence Minister Israel Katz signed a military order on Monday targeting Al-Asima News, Quds Plus, Alquds Albawsala, Maraj and Maydan Alquds, alleging they are behind ‘incitement’ in the occupied territories, without providing evidence to back their claims. These outlets were focused mainly on coverage of occupied East Jerusalem, where Israel is continuing to expand settlements and impose restrictions on Muslim worshippers during the holy month of Ramadan.” (02/23/26)
https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-designates-five-palestinian-media-outlets-terrorist
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3) US regime publicly confesses to three more murders in Caribbean
Source: NBC News
“The U.S. struck another alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, [murdering] three people, the military announced Monday afternoon. More than 40 such strikes have been carried out in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, [murdering] at least 137 people, according to statements from the Defense Department tracked by NBC News. The targeted boat on Monday was ‘transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,’ U.S. Southern Command said in a post on X, adding that no U.S. forces were harmed. It did not provide evidence that the boat or people on board were involved in drug trafficking.” (02/23/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/us-strike-alleged-drug-trafficking-boat-caribbean-kills-3-rcna260327
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4) EU Parliament puts US trade deal on ice after latest Trump tariff hit
Source: Politico
“The European Parliament froze ratification of the EU’s trade deal with the United States on Monday amid concerns that President Donald Trump’s latest tariff broadside breaches the terms of the transatlantic accord struck last summer. Senior trade lawmakers pulled the emergency brake after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down the main tariffs on which the deal, reached at Trump’s Turnberry Scottish golf resort last July, had been based. Trump said on Saturday he would impose a global tariff of 15 percent under a new legal authority — triggering alarm across the bloc.” (02/23/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-parliament-puts-us-trade-deal-ice-after-latest-donald-trump-tariff-hit/
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5) MD: Regime Sues DHS to Stop “Massive” ICE Gang Abduction Hub
Source: mint [India]
“The state of Maryland is suing to stop the Department of Homeland Security from turning a warehouse into an [immigrant abductee concentration camp]. DHS paid more than $100 million for a commercial warehouse near the town of Williamsport, Maryland, in January as part of a nationwide effort by the Trump administration to dramatically expand its [concentration camp] capacity. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could potentially use as many as two dozen such sites across the country as ‘mega centers’ for [caging abducted] immigrants. … Maryland is asking a federal judge to vacate the purchase of the warehouse and declare the agencies’ actions unlawful.” (02/23/26)
https://www.livemint.com/news/maryland-sues-dhs-to-stop-massive-ice-detention-facility-11771885610920.html
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6) Senile reality TV star tantrums at Netflix to fire board member
Source: Axios
“President Trump on Sunday threatened Netflix, suggesting it would ‘pay the consequences’ if it didn’t ‘immediately’ fire Susan Rice, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under the Obama administration. The comments come weeks after the president said he decided he shouldn’t be involved in the deal to sell Warner Bros. Discovery and that ‘The Justice Department will handle it.’ The president’s words shouldn’t have bearing over the approval of Netflix’s merger agreement with WBD, but they can still influence WBD’s sale process. … On Monday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told the BBC, ‘This is a business deal. It’s not a political deal.'” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/CKESU
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7) US FDA proposes new system for approving customized drugs and therapies for rare diseases
Source: Seattle Times
“Federal health officials on Monday laid out a proposal to spur development of customized treatments for patients with hard-to-treat diseases, including for rare genetic conditions that the pharmaceutical industry has long considered unprofitable. The preliminary Food and Drug Administration guidelines, if implemented, would create a new pathway for bespoke therapies that have only been tested in a handful of patients due to the challenges of conducting larger studies. The FDA announcement specifically mentions gene editing, although agency officials said the new approach could also be used by other drugs and therapies. It’s a shift long sought by patients, advocates and researchers focused on rare diseases, which often do not fit within the pharmaceutical industry’s business model or the FDA’s traditional drug-approval system.” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/8yDdj
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8) SCOTUS Won’t Revive NRA Free Speech Suit Against NY Ex-Official
Source: US News & World Report
“The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to revive the National Rifle Association’s lawsuit accusing a former New York state official of coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with the gun rights group. The justices in 2024 had reinstated the group’s lawsuit accusing Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, of violating its free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. But they declined to do so a second time after a lower court again dismissed the lawsuit. … The case returned to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled last year that Vullo was immune from the NRA’s claims because the law addressing her conduct was unclear at the time. This prompted the NRA’s second appeal to the justices.” (02/23/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-02-23/us-supreme-court-wont-revive-nra-free-speech-suit-against-ny-ex-official
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9) Palestine: Israeli squatters torch and deface mosque
Source: Associated Press
“Israeli [squatters] vandalized a mosque in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Monday, spray-painting offensive phrases and setting a fire, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. Worshippers arriving for the day’s first prayers found the damage and a smoldering fire that spewed black smoke across the entrance of the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque in the town of Tell, near Nablus, and stained the ornate doorway. … The Israeli military and police said they responded to the incident and were searching for suspects. The military said it ‘strongly condemns’ harm done to religious institutions. Palestinians and rights groups say Israeli authorities routinely fail to prosecute [squatters] or hold them accountable for violence.” (02/23/26)
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-news-02-23-2026-306e91dd7abbf0ad1b02935f1d1d9d4a
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10) France: Regime Summons US Ambassador Over Comments on Activist’s Killing
Source: New York Times
“The French government has summoned the U.S. ambassador to Paris, Charles Kushner, to protest the State Department’s criticism of a deadly attack this month on a right-wing activist in Lyon. The beating death of the activist, Quentin Deranque, 23, caused tensions to spike between the far left and the far right in France. It also reverberated internationally, with the Trump administration and the right-wing prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, both raising concerns — and rankling French officials in the process. … The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, confirmed the decision to summon Mr. Kushner on Sunday. He told a French broadcaster that his government rejected efforts to exploit the killing for political purposes and that the United States should not interfere in an internal French matter.” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/b5kOK
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11) SCOTUS takes up oil companies’ plea to end climate change lawsuits
Source: NBC News
“The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an attempt by energy companies to throw out a lawsuit filed in Colorado seeking to hold them accountable for the costs of climate change. The court’s ultimate ruling in the case will have national implications, likely determining whether similar lawsuits filed by cities and municipalities across the country seeking billions of dollars in damages can move forward. Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy are appealing a May 2025 Colorado Supreme Court ruling that said the lawsuit brought by the City of Boulder and Boulder County could move forward in state court.” (02/23/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-takes-oil-companies-appeal-end-climate-change-lawsuits-rcna252425
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12) Chad: Regime shuts border with Sudan after cross-border incursion kills its troops
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Chad has closed its eastern border with Sudan after clashes in recent days linked to Sudan’s civil war killed five Chadian soldiers, as the conflict spilled over into Chadian territory, two sources told the Reuters news agency. The border closure on Monday comes after a Chadian official told Reuters that clashes on Saturday between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and militia fighters loyal to Sudan’s military-backed government in the border town of Tina killed five soldiers and three civilians and wounded 12 people.” (02/23/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/23/chad-shuts-border-with-sudan-after-clashes-from-conflict-kills-five-troops
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13) Citing logistics, US women’s hockey team declines Trump’s SOTU invitation
Source: Fox News
“The United States women’s ice hockey team, fresh off a gold-medal victory over Canada in the 2026 Milan Cortina Games, declined an invitation from President Donald Trump to attend his State of the Union address on Tuesday. ‘We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal-winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,’ USA Hockey told NBC News. ‘Due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games, the athletes are unable to participate. They were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.’ The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.” (02/23/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/us-womens-hockey-team-declines-trumps-state-union-invitation
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14) Judge who let Trump skate in classified documents theft case blocks release of special counsel’s report
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
“A federal judge on Monday permanently barred the release of a report by special counsel Jack Smith on his investigation into President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, granted a request from the Republican president to keep under wraps the report detailing Smith’s findings in the probe that resulted in criminal charges in 2023. … Cannon, who in 2024 dismissed the case after concluding that Smith was unlawfully appointed, said the release of the report would present a ‘manifest injustice’ to Trump and his two co-defendants.” (02/23/26)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/02/23/judge-special-counsel-trump-classified-documents/
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15) NH: Feds investigate gang violence at Canada border crossing; suspected gang opponent hospitalized
Source: SFGate
“Authorities are investigating a shooting near the country’s northern border in New Hampshire in which a person is accused of firing a gun at a border patrol agent, who returned fire and struck the subject. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said the incident occurred at about 1 a.m. Sunday morning in Pittsburg, a town of about 800 people at the border with Canada. The FBI did not provide a name of the accused shooter, but said the person was receiving medical attention at a hospital. The border patrol agent, who the FBI also did not name, was unharmed in the incident, an agency spokesperson said. The shooting happened in a rural community that is home to the state’s sole border crossing with the Canadian province of Quebec.” (02/23/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/feds-investigate-shooting-at-new-hampshire-canada-21904725.php
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16) Netherlands: King swears in new coalition regime led by youngest premier Rob Jetten
Source: ABC News
“Dutch King Willem-Alexander swore in a new minority Dutch coalition government Monday led by the Netherlands’ youngest-ever prime minister, who will have to use all his bridge-building skills to pass laws and see out a full four-year term in office. Rob Jetten, 38, heads a three-party administration made up of his centrist D66, the center-right Christian Democrats and the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. The parties together hold only 66 of the lower house of parliament’s 150 seats, so Jetten will have to negotiate with opposition lawmakers to find support for every piece of legislation his government wants to pass.” (02/23/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/dutch-king-swears-new-coalition-government-led-youngest-130401772
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17) US partially evacuates Beirut embassy amid rising Iran tensions
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“The US government has ordered all non-essential staff to leave its embassy in the Lebanese capital of Beirut after a security review, a senior State Department official has told the BBC. The decision comes as there are heightened tensions in the region, with US President Donald Trump threatening military action against Iran if it does not reach a deal over its nuclear programme. Iran has previously vowed to retaliate if attacked by the US, with American bases and facilities in the Middle East thought to be possible targets. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has delayed a planned trip to Israel without announcing a reason. A senior State Department official said: ‘We continuously assess the security environment, and based on our latest review, we determined it prudent to reduce our footprint to essential personnel.'” (02/23/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj32l00k47lo
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18) Monster blizzard “bomb” paralyzes northeast US in extreme snow, soaring power outages
Source: Fox Weather
“With Blizzard Warnings covering over 40 million people, major hubs like New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia have shut down as up to two feet of snow buries the I-95 corridor in Blizzard ’26. Stay tuned for updates on power outages, mandatory travel bans, flight cancellations, and emergency declarations.” (02/23/26)
https://www.foxweather.com/live-news/live-updates-monster-blizzard-bomb-paralyzes-northeast-in-extreme-snow-soaring-power-outages
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19) Trump threatens countries to abide by tariff deals despite Supreme Court decision
Source: SFGate
“President Donald Trump on Monday threatened countries around the world to abide by any tariff deals they agreed to despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down many of his far-reaching taxes on imports. And he said he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from 10% he had announced immediately after the ruling. The court’s Friday decision struck down tariffs Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law. But the Republican president won’t let go of his favorite tool for rewriting the rules of global commerce and applying international pressure. ‘Any Country that wants to ‘play games’ with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have ‘Ripped Off’ the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to,’ Trump posted Monday on Truth Social.” (02/23/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/the-latest-trump-says-he-ll-raise-tariffs-to-21843381.php
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20) North Korea: Kim reelected to top post of ruling party
Source: ABC News
“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was reelected to the top post of the ruling Workers’ Party, with delegates crediting him for bolstering the country’s nuclear arsenal and strengthening its regional standing, state media reported Monday. The report from the party congress, a major propaganda spectacle where Kim is expected to outline his political and military goals for the next five years, suggests he will double down on accelerating a nuclear arsenal already equipped with missiles capable of threatening Asian U.S. allies and the American mainland. The party also released a new roster for its powerful Central Committee that confirmed a generational shift in Kim’s leadership circle, with aging military chiefs and the 76-year-old head of Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament among dozens replaced in the 138-member body.” (02/22/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/kim-reelected-top-post-north-koreas-ruling-party-130396302
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Bad cop
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Robert Corn-Revere
“The president doesn’t like it when late-night TV talk show hosts make fun of him. That undeniable fact is the common denominator for a series of actions that have kept the Federal Communications Commission in the news this past year and why Brendan Carr, its chairman, has been talking lately about the FCC’s ‘equal time’ rule. … There are many reasons why the FCC’s equal time rule is obsolete (and likely unconstitutional in today’s technological environment) and why Carr’s reliance on it to squelch television talk show interviews is wildly inappropriate.” (02/23/26)
https://www.fire.org/news/bad-cop
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22) The End of Artificial Employment
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Roman Kireev
“The real scandal of our time is not that artificial intelligence is replacing human labor. The scandal is that so much of that labor was misallocated to begin with. AI is not the killer — it is the coroner. For decades, vast portions of the workforce have been diverted away from productive enterprise into roles sustained not by consumer demand, but by the state: subsidized credit, regulatory protection, government contracts, and legal coercion. Entire departments and job functions endured not because they created value, but because they were politically entrenched and institutionally shielded from market forces. This was never sustainable.” (02/23/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/end-artificial-employment
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23) The Supreme Court Spurns a Presidential Power Grab
Source: The Dispatch
by Ilya Somin
“The framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure the president would not be able to repeat the abuses of English kings, who imposed taxes without legislative authorization. Under Trump’s interpretation of the law, the president would have virtually unlimited tariff authority, similar to that of an absolute monarch of the kind King Charles I aspired to be. The court decisively rejected this aspiration to unconstrained presidential power. … But the judiciary’s future ability to constrain dangerous presidential power grabs depends in large part on an issue the court managed to avoid in the IEEPA case: whether and to what extent to defer to presidential assertions that an extraordinary situation exists justifying the invocation of sweeping emergency powers.” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/Vkroh
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24) Another Drug Lord Killed. Is the Drug War Now Over?
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“I can’t help but laugh every time I read an account in the mainstream press about how a big drug kingpin has just been killed or captured. Mainstream-press reporters and editorial writers get so excited over the death or capture that they become almost giddy. Their mindset is: ‘Finally — finally! — we are making progress in the drug war!’ Why do I laugh when I see that? Because it is so dumb — so idiotic. How can anyone really buy into this nonsense? I figure it’s a real testament to public schooling’s ability to adversely affect people’s minds. … No killing or capture of any drug lord ever means — or will ever mean — the end of the drug war. It will just keep going on and on.” (02/23/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/02/23/another-drug-lord-killed-is-the-drug-war-now-over/
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25) The Supreme Court Didn’t Fully End the Trade War, but It Reinforced Limits on the Presidency
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“In dollar terms, the Tax Foundation’s Erica York and Alex Durante found ‘the Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase per US household of $1,000 in 2025.’ Even after Friday’s ruling, ‘the President’s remaining new tariffs under Section 232 amount to average tax increase per US household of $400 in 2026.’ So, any relief, even if only partial, from the Trump administration’s trade war should be welcome news to Americans and for the prosperity around the world encouraged by relatively free trade. But the Supreme Court’s decision also reinforced overall boundaries around presidential power – power that has grown for decades beyond constitutional limits.” (02/23/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/23/the-supreme-court-didnt-fully-end-the-trade-war-but-it-reinforced-limits-on-the-presidency/
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26) Jesse Jackson’s Real Legacy
Source: Town Hall
by Will Alexander
“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Jesse Jackson, Jr., his father’s namesake and the last person to see his extremely frail dad in the quiet moments before he died. ‘I woke up at about 12:35 a.m., I heard a gasp, and that gasp was my father’s final breath,’ he said in a CBS interview. … ‘That pressure is the inability to live up exactly to who he is, and what he’s been able to accomplish, and I’ve also lived with that my entire life. … At a critical juncture in the centuries-old freedom saga, Jackson helped to write those chapters as heir apparent to Martin Luther King, Jr. Or was he? From the moment King died, there was a general sense that Jackson was pushing himself to be ‘king’ of a movement that never bestowed the crown.” (02/23/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/willalexander/2026/02/23/jesse-jacksons-real-legacy-n2671722#google_vignette
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27) Three Congressional Missteps on Healthcare
Source: Independent Institute
by John C Goodman
“For the past six months or so, Obamacare subsidies for people who buy their own health insurance have been an issue that has loomed over a sharply divided Congress. One reason why the two parties can’t reach some sort of compromise is that neither party has been willing to tackle the three biggest problems that afflict the market the Affordable Care Act created. On the buyer side, we have been trying to force people to buy insurance they would never buy with their own money. On the seller side, we have been trying to force insurers to enroll people they do not want to enroll. And on both sides of the market, we have created perverse incentives that cause costs to be higher and quality lower than would otherwise have been the case.” (02/23/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/23/three-congressional-missteps-on-healthcare/
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28) The Supreme Court Defanged Trump’s Tariff Weapon
Source: Persuasion
by Francis Fukuyama
“The Supreme Court has done the country a service by invalidating Trump’s use of IEEPA tariffs. The Section 122 authority he subsequently turned to mandates a uniform tariff, and not one that can be targeted against disfavored countries. Moreover, that authority expires after 150 days, undercutting its utility as a political weapon. Future tariffs under other authorities may be possible, but almost all of them reduce the president’s discretion in imposing them, requiring formal procedures to justify the imposition of the levy. So, Trump has not just lost the foundation of his economic policy; he has also been stripped of a political weapon that he was particularly fond of deploying against friendly countries.” (02/23/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-blow-to-trumps-favorite-political
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29) We Deserve Better War Propaganda
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They’re not even trying anymore. US middle east envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday that Iran is ‘probably a week away’ from having the materials necessary to make a nuclear bomb — a line that Iran hawks have been falsely repeating for over three decades. It’s such a transparently bogus claim that even The Jerusalem Post dunked on Witkoff for making it, quipping that ‘The US envoy left out that Iran currently has no access to its material, no machines to enrich it, and no weapons program to use it for any operational purpose.’ This is the guy supposedly assigned by the White House to the task of establishing peace in the middle east, churning out the most fuzzbrained justifications for war with Iran you could possibly imagine.” (02/24/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/02/24/we-deserve-better-war-propaganda/
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30) The European Tiger Roars
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Harry Phibbs
“Poland was pivotal to the fall of Communism in Europe. The Solidarity protests in the 1980s gave hope that political change was possible, even among those who feared that totalitarian states might prove permanent with their grim monolithic structures. Poland’s subsequent success as a free nation serves as an exemplar to others. What a contrast with Russia, which has also overthrown Communism and remains beset by poverty, tyranny, and an aggressive foreign policy.” (02/23/26)
https://fee.org/articles/the-european-tiger-roars/
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31) America’s Date With Destiny: An Appointment in Samarra
Source: TomDispatch
by Alfred McCoy
“Some tales can cross cultures, continents, and even centuries to arrive in our own era … That’s particularly so for the immortal story of ‘an appointment in Samarra.’ It first appeared in the fifth century in the Babylonian Talmud, that ancient repository of Jewish rabbinical wisdom. Then it crossed over into Islamic literature … before popping up on the London stage in Act III of William Somerset Maugham’s 1933 play Sheppy. In Maugham’s retelling, the tale is rich in irony. Once long ago, he wrote, there was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to shop in the market. But the servant soon returned home in a panic and told his master about a woman in the crowd there who stared at him angrily. ‘It was Death that jostled me,’ the servant announced, pleading with his master for a horse to flee to the town of Samarra.” (02/23/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/americas-date-with-destiny/
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32) It’s beginning to feel a little like Sarajevo in June 1914
Source: The Hill
by Harlan Ullman
“With two U.S. carrier strike groups assembling in the Arabian Sea, the chances of an armed conflict with Iran are uncomfortably high …. Unfortunately, other contingencies loom that raise uncomfortable historical parallels. I refer specifically to June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sophie were shot and killed on a bridge in Sarajevo by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip. That assassination triggered a series of mobilizations among the major European powers, based on faulty, outdated premises that whoever mobilizes first wins and that Prussia could easily and quickly defeat France by using railroads to mobilize. More than 110 years later, it is not mobilization that catalyzes catastrophe, but a series of crises that could ignite into a conflagration by a single spark or even a smoldering ember.” (02/23/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5748465-us-iran-conflict-arabian-sea/
-----
33) The Propaganda Assault: A Tale of Two Venezuela(n)s
Source: Common Dreams
by Yader Lanuza
“After the Trump administration illegally kidnapped the legitimate president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, 2026, we saw two distinct and divergent responses from Venezuelans. On the one hand, the Venezuelan diaspora, especially in the United States, celebrated President Maduro’s kidnapping and bombing of their birth country. They congregated in small gatherings the weekend of the abduction, including in Miami. These celebrations, alongside videos online, were widely disseminated in corporate and social media for a US-based (and broader Western) audience, all broadcasting the same message: Venezuelans support President Maduro’s abduction. On the other hand, inside Venezuela, for weeks after the illegal abduction, citizens engaged in (almost) daily and massive demonstrations to condemn the attack that killed and wounded over 100 people.” (02/23/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/propaganda-venezuela
-----
34) Are the “Liberals” of Today Really Liberals?
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Bert Olivier
“Everywhere one looks today you see signs of the opposition between ‘conservatives’ and so-called ‘liberals.’ Sometimes conservatives are designated ‘far-right,’ and liberals ‘left-wing.’ Both terms appear to be self-explanatory, unless one keeps in mind that concepts do evolve historically. The term, ‘amateur,’ for example, used to have a very positive or affirmative meaning, namely someone who does something (like painting, or playing the piano) well, because they love doing it (‘amateur’ derives from the Latin for ‘love’), but today its meaning is pejorative, contrasting with the term, ‘professional,’ which means more or less what ‘amateur’ used to mean; namely, that it applies to someone who excels at what they do. Similarly, the term, ‘liberal’ has arguably undergone a semantic shift in recent times – one that places it at a considerable remove from its original historical meaning.” (02/23/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/are-the-liberals-of-today-really-liberals/
-----
35) What Social Security Should Do — and What It Shouldn’t
Source: Law & Liberty
by Sita Slavov
“Policy analysts have been warning about Social Security’s funding shortfall for decades, while politicians have sat on their hands. But time is running out: the Social Security trust fund will run out of money in 2034 and, unless Congress acts, current and future beneficiaries will face a 23 percent benefit cut. Congress’s available options include raising taxes or reducing promised benefits, both of which are politically unattractive. The only way to finance promised benefits without raising current taxes is to borrow the money, which will be challenging given the already unsustainable path of the federal debt. In this context, Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia’s new collection — Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes — represents an important contribution to the public discussion.” (02/23/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/what-social-security-should-do-and-what-it-shouldnt/
-----
36) A Letter to London
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
‘Thinking about a great old city, yesterday and today, with Western Civilization in decline.” (02/23/26)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-london
-----
37) Accomplish Nothing, Form a Committee
Source: The Pamphleteer
by Davis Hunt
“The mayor’s Winter Storm Response Commission, chaired by former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, convened this morning for its first meeting. The commission is set to deliver its final report on the storm response in August. During the inaugural meeting, former TVA board member and Republican speaker of the House, Beth Harwell, indicated that members are still uncertain about their mission. ‘Are the recommendations going to the mayor, the Council, or the [NES] Board?’ asked Harwell. ‘And I’m a little confused as to really our overall objective, and so maybe the staff can answer that at some point.’ Throughout the proceedings, Chair Bredesen emphasized that he wants to avoid a ‘finger pointing’ exercise. Instead, members focused on procedure and constructive goals. During presentations, OEM Director Chief William Swann said that the department is independently implementing after-action changes.” (02/23/26)
https://pamphleteer.co/newsletter/accomplish-nothing-form-a-committee/
-----
38) Legacy of a Libertarian Leader
Source: The Bulwark
by Joshua Tait
“Ed Crane used to say, as one of his longtime colleagues recollected a couple of years ago, ‘that the thing he did for libertarianism was put libertarians in suits and ties.’ The burly institution builder was not a household name, but he made the modern libertarian movement into what it is today, dragging weirdos and dreamers to the halls of power. A driven activist and domineering organizer once described by P.J. O’Rourke as having a ‘sequoia spine,’ he built both the modern Libertarian Party and the preeminent libertarian think tank in the United States, the Cato Institute.” (02/23/26)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/legacy-of-a-libertarian-leader-ed-crane-cato-institute
-----
39) What does Putin really want?
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Martin Di Caro
“After four years of nearly ceaseless combat, Russia has not conquered all of the Donbas. Minuscule territorial gains have come at such a cost that losses now exceed recruitment. Neither side has achieved a military breakthrough, and neither appears on the brink of military or political collapse. Moreover, important questions that emerged in the early months of this endless war of attrition remain difficult to answer. Thus, the two sides aren’t mired only at the front lines in eastern Ukraine. There’s been little substantial movement around the obstacles to a durable peace. I asked several experts to comment on how Russia’s autocrat defines victory — what are Putin’s aims?” (02/23/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-ukraine-war-anniversary/
-----
40) US Actions Toward Cuba Are Criminal
Source: Libertarian Institute
by William Anderson
“While communist systems elsewhere fell like dominoes, beginning in the late 1980s, Cuba stubbornly kept its state-dominated economy, even as the standard of living deteriorated after Russia failed to continue subsidizing Cuba after the USSR disappeared into political history. Because of aggressive U.S. policies, Cuba’s political leaders — beginning with Castro — were able to appeal to Cuban patriotism and keep the communist system in place. Although U.S. government pressure has played a role in Cuba’s stubbornness of holding onto a failed system, American supporters of the revolution have also spread falsehoods about what they believe has been the superiority of communism over capitalism, especially in the areas of literacy and healthcare. Indeed, left-wing Americans have been supplying propaganda about Cuba since the late 1960s.” (02/23/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/u-s-actions-toward-cuba-are-criminal
-----
41) Trump’s Tariffs Weren’t Really About Trade Policy
Source: The American Prospect
by Harold Meyerson
“They were about his nostalgia, his ego, his bigotry, and his greed.” (02/23/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/02/23/trump-tariffs-trade-policy-supreme-court/
-----
42) Tariffs and the New Economic Lysenkoism
Source: The Daily Economy
by Peter C Earle
“Kevin Hassett’s recent call to ‘discipline’ Federal Reserve researchers over a New York Fed study on tariffs is not just a political swipe. It is a troubling signal about the growing willingness of policymakers to delegitimize economic analysis they find inconvenient or unsupportive. Disagreement with research is a normal, healthy part of scientific inquiry. But attempts to intimidate researchers because their findings conflict with a preferred narrative undermine the credibility of policymaking itself. At a moment when trade policy is already generating uncertainty across markets, this kind of rhetoric risks turning economic debate into a loyalty test rather than an evidence-based process.” (02/23/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariffs-and-the-new-economic-lysenkoism/
-----
43) Who’s Afraid of AOC?
Source: The American Conservative
by Spencer Neale
“Watching Trump repeat his rolling critique of AOC, I wondered why he, Vance, and the broader conservative movement seem so driven to undermine her aspirations for higher office beyond mere partisan loyalty. The obvious answer is that AOC has made a career out of punching back against Trump and the ever-shifting brand that is MAGA conservatism, which recently is drifting daily toward a retrograde neoconservatism. … nothing the congresswoman said in Munich—not her stumble on Taiwan or tacit support for the war effort in Ukraine—was so disastrous as the Trump administration’s current, real-life intentions for Iran are, should a deal fail to materialize.” (02/23/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/whos-afraid-of-aoc/
-----
44) The problem with “relative poverty”
Source: spiked
by Albie Amankona
“Working-class Brits face genuine hardship, but not the Dickensian destitution that the left seems to imagine.” (02/22/26)
https://archive.is/nrXLt
-----
45) Dems will roll out their perfect agent of subterfuge, Abigail Spanberger, in response to SOTU
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine
“Abigail Spanberger, the new governor of Virginia, who has been tapped to deliver the Democrats’ State of the Union reply Tuesday night, is the perfect avatar for her party’s deception. With her long blond bob, minimalist makeup, pinched face and brisk air, she looks like the sort of competent working mom you’d encounter at school drop-off in any affluent suburb. In other words, she seems like somebody you instinctively trust. But don’t be fooled by appearances. Spanberger is an expert at subterfuge, having spent eight years as an undercover CIA case officer, aka a spy, under Barack Obama and John Brennan, in the era when Democrats turned national security back on itself.” (02/22/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/22/opinion/miranda-devine-dems-will-roll-out-their-perfect-agent-of-subterfuge-abigail-spanberger-in-response-to-sotu/
-----
46) Why is American Healthcare so Expensive
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Bryan Tehunissen
“Americans are told that high medical costs are inevitable. Medicine is complex. Technology advances. The population is aging. Saving lives, we’re assured, simply costs more. But that explanation collapses the moment we look at parts of medicine that operate under different economic rules. Consider LASIK eye surgery. Since its introduction in the 1990s, the procedure has become safer, more precise, and more technologically advanced. Yet when adjusted for inflation, the price for the procedure has remained stable or even dropped. Cosmetic surgery shows a similar pattern: improving quality, competitive pricing, transparent costs. These are not simple services. They require advanced equipment, skilled specialists, and serious safety standards. What they lack is something else: third-party payment distortion.” (02/22/26)
https://fee.org/articles/why-is-american-healthcare-so-expensive/
-----
47) Stand back, Congress needs a second Supreme Court jolt
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“By curtailing the president regarding tariffs, the Supreme Court on Friday perhaps applied a defibrillator to Congress. Its weak contemporary heartbeat threatens the constitutional architecture of powers separated, checked and balanced. But Congress’s fluttering pulse requires a stronger jolt than last week’s 6-3 decision. It addressed only part of the problem that Congress has created by behavior that fuels today’s rampant presidency.” (02/22/26)
https://archive.is/PY5Yu
-----
48) A Message to Valeria Chomsky from a “Hysterical” Abused Woman
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“I adored Chomsky growing up. I knew the man through his work as a tireless crusader for the voiceless and the disenfranchised. His writings strongly informed my own writings and beliefs. But his relationship with billionaire child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has been exposed to be far more significant and far more sinister than a handful of chance encounters. Quite the contrary, Chomsky appears to have been complicit in a garish attempt to rehabilitate this man’s flagging reputation in hopes of allowing him to get away with his sundry predations a second time. And once again, there is a line of well-intentioned, thoughtful people curling around the block, waiting on bated breath to make the same tired old excuses.” (02/22/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-message-to-valeria-chomsky-from.html
-----
49) Inside the First-Ever Young Worker March on Washington
Source: In These Times
by Amie Stager
“For Eric Chornoby, leisure time is a ’luxury’ he can’t afford. He’s a union postal worker from Detroit who hasn’t gone on vacation in five years. ‘Everyone told me our generation was getting it good. I did what I was supposed to do. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot get ahead,’ Chornoby said at a rally in Washington, D.C., on February 7. Chornoby, along with other workers from the American Postal Workers Union’s (APWU) Young Members Committee, traveled to the U.S. Capitol to attend the first-ever march for young workers. Today, the federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 an hour, and it hasn’t been increased since 2009. Many states and cities have doubled their minimum wages, but workers want to see an increase at the federal level that’s adjusted for inflation.” (02/23/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/young-worker-march-washington-labor-federal-government
-----
50) SCOTUS tariff ruling offers a lesson on statutory limits
Source: Orange County Register
by Tom Campbell
“Last Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court tariff decision was a workmanlike exercise of statutory analysis. The reaction from the administration was not. President Trump impugned the integrity and patriotism of the justices, claiming that ‘the court has been swayed by foreign interests.’ … When Trump announced tariffs on any country that did not agree with his plans to seize Greenland, or increased tariffs on Brazil because Brazil’s Supreme Court refused to reverse the conviction of former President Bolsonaro, a friend of Trump, he was broadcasting to the court that his interpretation of the law had no limits. In light of those actual examples, it was a surprise that there were any justices willing to uphold the president’s view of his tariff power.” (02/22/26)
https://archive.is/JsCOd
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Roundtable, 02/23/26
Source: Reason
"Trump Replaces Old Illegal Tariffs With New Illegal Tariffs." (02/23/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/02/23/trump-replaces-old-illegal-tariffs-with-new-illegal-tariffs/
-----
52) Rising, 02/23/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on recent comments from Sen. Bernie Sanders about the potential dangers of A.I., and what role governments should play in regulating it.” (02/23/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/5747065-rising-february-23-2026/
-----
53) Finding Freedom, 02/23/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“Breaking the Sugar Cycle, with Dulsa Founder Natalie Nicole.” (02/23/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/ff-breaking-the-sugar-cycle-a-better-way-to-sweeten-with-dulsa-founder-natalie-nicole
-----
54) The Briefing Podcast with Michael Waldman, 02/23/26
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
“What Will It Take to Make Progress in the South?” (02/23/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhN7sB_5PKM
-----
55) EconTalk, 02/23/26
Source: EconTalk
“The Man Who Would Be King of Saudi Arabia (with Karen Elliott House).” (02/23/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/the-man-who-would-be-king-of-saudi-arabia-with-karen-elliott-house/
-----
56) The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 02/23/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump’s Rage at SCOTUS Explodes — Then Backfires as GOPers Turn on Him.” (02/23/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/206884/trump-rage-scotus-explodes-then-backfires-gopers-turn
-----
57) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/23/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Witkoff: Trump Curious Why Iran Doesn’t ‘Capitulate,’ Huckabee Causes Diplomatic Firestorm, and More.” (02/23/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUP-NJc98kA
-----
58) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/22/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Hector Roos, the Libertarian Party Flim Flam Man.” (02/22/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPCAe_UuhjM
-----
59) PoliTicks, 02/22/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“FCC Targeting Shows, Prince Andrew Arrested!” (02/22/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/politicks-fcc-targeting-shows-prince-andrew-arrested
-----
60) Fountainhead Forum, episode 429
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Agustin Almada and Max Marchi on Javier Milei’s labor laws.” (02/22/26)
https://rumble.com/v764jdm-ff-429-agustin-almada-and-max-marchi-on-javier-mileis-labor-laws.html
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Today's Freedom News:
1) Dow drops 800 points on AI disruption, Trump trade idiocy
2) Palestine: Israeli regime designates five media outlets as “terrorist”
3) US regime publicly confesses to three more murders in Caribbean
4) EU Parliament puts US trade deal on ice after latest Trump tariff hit
5) MD: Regime Sues DHS to Stop “Massive” ICE Gang Abduction Hub
6) Senile reality TV star tantrums at Netflix to fire board member
7) US FDA proposes new system for approving customized drugs and therapies for rare diseases
8) SCOTUS Won’t Revive NRA Free Speech Suit Against NY Ex-Official
9) Palestine: Israeli squatters torch and deface mosque
10) France: Regime Summons US Ambassador Over Comments on Activist’s Killing
11) SCOTUS takes up oil companies’ plea to end climate change lawsuits
12) Chad: Regime shuts border with Sudan after cross-border incursion kills its troops
13) Citing logistics, US women’s hockey team declines Trump’s SOTU invitation
14) Judge who let Trump skate in classified documents theft case blocks release of special counsel’s report
15) NH: Feds investigate gang violence at Canada border crossing; suspected gang opponent hospitalized
16) Netherlands: King swears in new coalition regime led by youngest premier Rob Jetten
17) US partially evacuates Beirut embassy amid rising Iran tensions
18) Monster blizzard “bomb” paralyzes northeast US in extreme snow, soaring power outages
19) Trump threatens countries to abide by tariff deals despite Supreme Court decision
20) North Korea: Kim reelected to top post of ruling party
Today's Freedom Commentary:
21) Bad cop
22) The End of Artificial Employment
23) The Supreme Court Spurns a Presidential Power Grab
24) Another Drug Lord Killed. Is the Drug War Now Over?
25) The Supreme Court Didn’t Fully End the Trade War, but It Reinforced Limits on the Presidency
26) Jesse Jackson’s Real Legacy
27) Three Congressional Missteps on Healthcare
28) The Supreme Court Defanged Trump’s Tariff Weapon
29) We Deserve Better War Propaganda
30) The European Tiger Roars
31) America’s Date With Destiny: An Appointment in Samarra
32) It’s beginning to feel a little like Sarajevo in June 1914
33) The Propaganda Assault: A Tale of Two Venezuela(n)s
34) Are the “Liberals” of Today Really Liberals?
35) What Social Security Should Do — and What It Shouldn’t
36) A Letter to London
37) Accomplish Nothing, Form a Committee
38) Legacy of a Libertarian Leader
39) What does Putin really want?
40) US Actions Toward Cuba Are Criminal
41) Trump’s Tariffs Weren’t Really About Trade Policy
42) Tariffs and the New Economic Lysenkoism
43) Who’s Afraid of AOC?
44) The problem with “relative poverty”
45) Dems will roll out their perfect agent of subterfuge, Abigail Spanberger, in response to SOTU
46) Why is American Healthcare so Expensive
47) Stand back, Congress needs a second Supreme Court jolt
48) A Message to Valeria Chomsky from a “Hysterical” Abused Woman
49) Inside the First-Ever Young Worker March on Washington
50) SCOTUS tariff ruling offers a lesson on statutory limits
Today's Freedom Podcast and Video:
51) Reason Roundtable, 02/23/26
52) Rising, 02/23/26
53) Finding Freedom, 02/23/26
54) The Briefing Podcast with Michael Waldman, 02/23/26
55) EconTalk, 02/23/26
56) The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 02/23/26
57) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/23/26
58) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/22/26
59) PoliTicks, 02/22/26
60) Fountainhead Forum, episode 429
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_____ Today's Freedom News _____
1) Dow drops 800 points on AI disruption, Trump trade idiocy
Source: CNBC
“U.S. equities tumbled on Monday as investors grappled with persistent fears around artificial intelligence disruptions to various industries and President Donald Trump’s decision to raise his global tariffs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 821.91 points, or 1.66%, to close at 48,804.06, while the Nasdaq Composite declined 1.13% and ended at 22,627.27. The S&P 500 shed 1.04% and closed at 6,837.75, putting it into the red once again for 2026.” (02/23/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/22/stock-market-today-live-updates.html
-----
2) Palestine: Israeli regime designates five media outlets as “terrorist”
Source: The New Arab [UK]
“Israel has designated five Palestinian media outlets as ‘terrorist’ entities, alleging the platforms have links to Hamas in the latest targeting of the press. Defence Minister Israel Katz signed a military order on Monday targeting Al-Asima News, Quds Plus, Alquds Albawsala, Maraj and Maydan Alquds, alleging they are behind ‘incitement’ in the occupied territories, without providing evidence to back their claims. These outlets were focused mainly on coverage of occupied East Jerusalem, where Israel is continuing to expand settlements and impose restrictions on Muslim worshippers during the holy month of Ramadan.” (02/23/26)
https://www.newarab.com/news/israel-designates-five-palestinian-media-outlets-terrorist
-----
3) US regime publicly confesses to three more murders in Caribbean
Source: NBC News
“The U.S. struck another alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean, [murdering] three people, the military announced Monday afternoon. More than 40 such strikes have been carried out in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since September, [murdering] at least 137 people, according to statements from the Defense Department tracked by NBC News. The targeted boat on Monday was ‘transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Caribbean and was engaged in narco-trafficking operations,’ U.S. Southern Command said in a post on X, adding that no U.S. forces were harmed. It did not provide evidence that the boat or people on board were involved in drug trafficking.” (02/23/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/us-strike-alleged-drug-trafficking-boat-caribbean-kills-3-rcna260327
-----
4) EU Parliament puts US trade deal on ice after latest Trump tariff hit
Source: Politico
“The European Parliament froze ratification of the EU’s trade deal with the United States on Monday amid concerns that President Donald Trump’s latest tariff broadside breaches the terms of the transatlantic accord struck last summer. Senior trade lawmakers pulled the emergency brake after the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday struck down the main tariffs on which the deal, reached at Trump’s Turnberry Scottish golf resort last July, had been based. Trump said on Saturday he would impose a global tariff of 15 percent under a new legal authority — triggering alarm across the bloc.” (02/23/26)
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-parliament-puts-us-trade-deal-ice-after-latest-donald-trump-tariff-hit/
-----
5) MD: Regime Sues DHS to Stop “Massive” ICE Gang Abduction Hub
Source: mint [India]
“The state of Maryland is suing to stop the Department of Homeland Security from turning a warehouse into an [immigrant abductee concentration camp]. DHS paid more than $100 million for a commercial warehouse near the town of Williamsport, Maryland, in January as part of a nationwide effort by the Trump administration to dramatically expand its [concentration camp] capacity. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could potentially use as many as two dozen such sites across the country as ‘mega centers’ for [caging abducted] immigrants. … Maryland is asking a federal judge to vacate the purchase of the warehouse and declare the agencies’ actions unlawful.” (02/23/26)
https://www.livemint.com/news/maryland-sues-dhs-to-stop-massive-ice-detention-facility-11771885610920.html
-----
6) Senile reality TV star tantrums at Netflix to fire board member
Source: Axios
“President Trump on Sunday threatened Netflix, suggesting it would ‘pay the consequences’ if it didn’t ‘immediately’ fire Susan Rice, who served as ambassador to the United Nations under the Obama administration. The comments come weeks after the president said he decided he shouldn’t be involved in the deal to sell Warner Bros. Discovery and that ‘The Justice Department will handle it.’ The president’s words shouldn’t have bearing over the approval of Netflix’s merger agreement with WBD, but they can still influence WBD’s sale process. … On Monday, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told the BBC, ‘This is a business deal. It’s not a political deal.'” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/CKESU
-----
7) US FDA proposes new system for approving customized drugs and therapies for rare diseases
Source: Seattle Times
“Federal health officials on Monday laid out a proposal to spur development of customized treatments for patients with hard-to-treat diseases, including for rare genetic conditions that the pharmaceutical industry has long considered unprofitable. The preliminary Food and Drug Administration guidelines, if implemented, would create a new pathway for bespoke therapies that have only been tested in a handful of patients due to the challenges of conducting larger studies. The FDA announcement specifically mentions gene editing, although agency officials said the new approach could also be used by other drugs and therapies. It’s a shift long sought by patients, advocates and researchers focused on rare diseases, which often do not fit within the pharmaceutical industry’s business model or the FDA’s traditional drug-approval system.” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/8yDdj
-----
8) SCOTUS Won’t Revive NRA Free Speech Suit Against NY Ex-Official
Source: US News & World Report
“The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to revive the National Rifle Association’s lawsuit accusing a former New York state official of coercing banks and insurers to avoid doing business with the gun rights group. The justices in 2024 had reinstated the group’s lawsuit accusing Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of New York’s Department of Financial Services, of violating its free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment. But they declined to do so a second time after a lower court again dismissed the lawsuit. … The case returned to the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled last year that Vullo was immune from the NRA’s claims because the law addressing her conduct was unclear at the time. This prompted the NRA’s second appeal to the justices.” (02/23/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2026-02-23/us-supreme-court-wont-revive-nra-free-speech-suit-against-ny-ex-official
-----
9) Palestine: Israeli squatters torch and deface mosque
Source: Associated Press
“Israeli [squatters] vandalized a mosque in the Israeli-occupied West Bank early Monday, spray-painting offensive phrases and setting a fire, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. Worshippers arriving for the day’s first prayers found the damage and a smoldering fire that spewed black smoke across the entrance of the Abu Bakr Al-Siddiq Mosque in the town of Tell, near Nablus, and stained the ornate doorway. … The Israeli military and police said they responded to the incident and were searching for suspects. The military said it ‘strongly condemns’ harm done to religious institutions. Palestinians and rights groups say Israeli authorities routinely fail to prosecute [squatters] or hold them accountable for violence.” (02/23/26)
https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-gaza-news-02-23-2026-306e91dd7abbf0ad1b02935f1d1d9d4a
-----
10) France: Regime Summons US Ambassador Over Comments on Activist’s Killing
Source: New York Times
“The French government has summoned the U.S. ambassador to Paris, Charles Kushner, to protest the State Department’s criticism of a deadly attack this month on a right-wing activist in Lyon. The beating death of the activist, Quentin Deranque, 23, caused tensions to spike between the far left and the far right in France. It also reverberated internationally, with the Trump administration and the right-wing prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, both raising concerns — and rankling French officials in the process. … The French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, confirmed the decision to summon Mr. Kushner on Sunday. He told a French broadcaster that his government rejected efforts to exploit the killing for political purposes and that the United States should not interfere in an internal French matter.” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/b5kOK
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11) SCOTUS takes up oil companies’ plea to end climate change lawsuits
Source: NBC News
“The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear an attempt by energy companies to throw out a lawsuit filed in Colorado seeking to hold them accountable for the costs of climate change. The court’s ultimate ruling in the case will have national implications, likely determining whether similar lawsuits filed by cities and municipalities across the country seeking billions of dollars in damages can move forward. Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy are appealing a May 2025 Colorado Supreme Court ruling that said the lawsuit brought by the City of Boulder and Boulder County could move forward in state court.” (02/23/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-takes-oil-companies-appeal-end-climate-change-lawsuits-rcna252425
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12) Chad: Regime shuts border with Sudan after cross-border incursion kills its troops
Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]
“Chad has closed its eastern border with Sudan after clashes in recent days linked to Sudan’s civil war killed five Chadian soldiers, as the conflict spilled over into Chadian territory, two sources told the Reuters news agency. The border closure on Monday comes after a Chadian official told Reuters that clashes on Saturday between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and militia fighters loyal to Sudan’s military-backed government in the border town of Tina killed five soldiers and three civilians and wounded 12 people.” (02/23/26)
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/23/chad-shuts-border-with-sudan-after-clashes-from-conflict-kills-five-troops
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13) Citing logistics, US women’s hockey team declines Trump’s SOTU invitation
Source: Fox News
“The United States women’s ice hockey team, fresh off a gold-medal victory over Canada in the 2026 Milan Cortina Games, declined an invitation from President Donald Trump to attend his State of the Union address on Tuesday. ‘We are sincerely grateful for the invitation extended to our gold medal-winning U.S. Women’s Hockey Team and deeply appreciate the recognition of their extraordinary achievement,’ USA Hockey told NBC News. ‘Due to the timing and previously scheduled academic and professional commitments following the Games, the athletes are unable to participate. They were honored to be included and are grateful for the acknowledgment.’ The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.” (02/23/26)
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/us-womens-hockey-team-declines-trumps-state-union-invitation
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14) Judge who let Trump skate in classified documents theft case blocks release of special counsel’s report
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
“A federal judge on Monday permanently barred the release of a report by special counsel Jack Smith on his investigation into President Donald Trump’s hoarding of classified documents. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, granted a request from the Republican president to keep under wraps the report detailing Smith’s findings in the probe that resulted in criminal charges in 2023. … Cannon, who in 2024 dismissed the case after concluding that Smith was unlawfully appointed, said the release of the report would present a ‘manifest injustice’ to Trump and his two co-defendants.” (02/23/26)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/02/23/judge-special-counsel-trump-classified-documents/
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15) NH: Feds investigate gang violence at Canada border crossing; suspected gang opponent hospitalized
Source: SFGate
“Authorities are investigating a shooting near the country’s northern border in New Hampshire in which a person is accused of firing a gun at a border patrol agent, who returned fire and struck the subject. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said the incident occurred at about 1 a.m. Sunday morning in Pittsburg, a town of about 800 people at the border with Canada. The FBI did not provide a name of the accused shooter, but said the person was receiving medical attention at a hospital. The border patrol agent, who the FBI also did not name, was unharmed in the incident, an agency spokesperson said. The shooting happened in a rural community that is home to the state’s sole border crossing with the Canadian province of Quebec.” (02/23/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/feds-investigate-shooting-at-new-hampshire-canada-21904725.php
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16) Netherlands: King swears in new coalition regime led by youngest premier Rob Jetten
Source: ABC News
“Dutch King Willem-Alexander swore in a new minority Dutch coalition government Monday led by the Netherlands’ youngest-ever prime minister, who will have to use all his bridge-building skills to pass laws and see out a full four-year term in office. Rob Jetten, 38, heads a three-party administration made up of his centrist D66, the center-right Christian Democrats and the center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy. The parties together hold only 66 of the lower house of parliament’s 150 seats, so Jetten will have to negotiate with opposition lawmakers to find support for every piece of legislation his government wants to pass.” (02/23/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/dutch-king-swears-new-coalition-government-led-youngest-130401772
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17) US partially evacuates Beirut embassy amid rising Iran tensions
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“The US government has ordered all non-essential staff to leave its embassy in the Lebanese capital of Beirut after a security review, a senior State Department official has told the BBC. The decision comes as there are heightened tensions in the region, with US President Donald Trump threatening military action against Iran if it does not reach a deal over its nuclear programme. Iran has previously vowed to retaliate if attacked by the US, with American bases and facilities in the Middle East thought to be possible targets. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has delayed a planned trip to Israel without announcing a reason. A senior State Department official said: ‘We continuously assess the security environment, and based on our latest review, we determined it prudent to reduce our footprint to essential personnel.'” (02/23/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj32l00k47lo
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18) Monster blizzard “bomb” paralyzes northeast US in extreme snow, soaring power outages
Source: Fox Weather
“With Blizzard Warnings covering over 40 million people, major hubs like New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia have shut down as up to two feet of snow buries the I-95 corridor in Blizzard ’26. Stay tuned for updates on power outages, mandatory travel bans, flight cancellations, and emergency declarations.” (02/23/26)
https://www.foxweather.com/live-news/live-updates-monster-blizzard-bomb-paralyzes-northeast-in-extreme-snow-soaring-power-outages
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19) Trump threatens countries to abide by tariff deals despite Supreme Court decision
Source: SFGate
“President Donald Trump on Monday threatened countries around the world to abide by any tariff deals they agreed to despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down many of his far-reaching taxes on imports. And he said he wants a global tariff of 15%, up from 10% he had announced immediately after the ruling. The court’s Friday decision struck down tariffs Trump had imposed on nearly every country using an emergency powers law. But the Republican president won’t let go of his favorite tool for rewriting the rules of global commerce and applying international pressure. ‘Any Country that wants to ‘play games’ with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have ‘Ripped Off’ the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to,’ Trump posted Monday on Truth Social.” (02/23/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/news/politics/article/the-latest-trump-says-he-ll-raise-tariffs-to-21843381.php
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20) North Korea: Kim reelected to top post of ruling party
Source: ABC News
“North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was reelected to the top post of the ruling Workers’ Party, with delegates crediting him for bolstering the country’s nuclear arsenal and strengthening its regional standing, state media reported Monday. The report from the party congress, a major propaganda spectacle where Kim is expected to outline his political and military goals for the next five years, suggests he will double down on accelerating a nuclear arsenal already equipped with missiles capable of threatening Asian U.S. allies and the American mainland. The party also released a new roster for its powerful Central Committee that confirmed a generational shift in Kim’s leadership circle, with aging military chiefs and the 76-year-old head of Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament among dozens replaced in the 138-member body.” (02/22/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/kim-reelected-top-post-north-koreas-ruling-party-130396302
_____ Today's Freedom Commentary _____
21) Bad cop
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Robert Corn-Revere
“The president doesn’t like it when late-night TV talk show hosts make fun of him. That undeniable fact is the common denominator for a series of actions that have kept the Federal Communications Commission in the news this past year and why Brendan Carr, its chairman, has been talking lately about the FCC’s ‘equal time’ rule. … There are many reasons why the FCC’s equal time rule is obsolete (and likely unconstitutional in today’s technological environment) and why Carr’s reliance on it to squelch television talk show interviews is wildly inappropriate.” (02/23/26)
https://www.fire.org/news/bad-cop
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22) The End of Artificial Employment
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Roman Kireev
“The real scandal of our time is not that artificial intelligence is replacing human labor. The scandal is that so much of that labor was misallocated to begin with. AI is not the killer — it is the coroner. For decades, vast portions of the workforce have been diverted away from productive enterprise into roles sustained not by consumer demand, but by the state: subsidized credit, regulatory protection, government contracts, and legal coercion. Entire departments and job functions endured not because they created value, but because they were politically entrenched and institutionally shielded from market forces. This was never sustainable.” (02/23/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/end-artificial-employment
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23) The Supreme Court Spurns a Presidential Power Grab
Source: The Dispatch
by Ilya Somin
“The framers of the Constitution wanted to ensure the president would not be able to repeat the abuses of English kings, who imposed taxes without legislative authorization. Under Trump’s interpretation of the law, the president would have virtually unlimited tariff authority, similar to that of an absolute monarch of the kind King Charles I aspired to be. The court decisively rejected this aspiration to unconstrained presidential power. … But the judiciary’s future ability to constrain dangerous presidential power grabs depends in large part on an issue the court managed to avoid in the IEEPA case: whether and to what extent to defer to presidential assertions that an extraordinary situation exists justifying the invocation of sweeping emergency powers.” (02/23/26)
https://archive.is/Vkroh
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24) Another Drug Lord Killed. Is the Drug War Now Over?
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“I can’t help but laugh every time I read an account in the mainstream press about how a big drug kingpin has just been killed or captured. Mainstream-press reporters and editorial writers get so excited over the death or capture that they become almost giddy. Their mindset is: ‘Finally — finally! — we are making progress in the drug war!’ Why do I laugh when I see that? Because it is so dumb — so idiotic. How can anyone really buy into this nonsense? I figure it’s a real testament to public schooling’s ability to adversely affect people’s minds. … No killing or capture of any drug lord ever means — or will ever mean — the end of the drug war. It will just keep going on and on.” (02/23/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/02/23/another-drug-lord-killed-is-the-drug-war-now-over/
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25) The Supreme Court Didn’t Fully End the Trade War, but It Reinforced Limits on the Presidency
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“In dollar terms, the Tax Foundation’s Erica York and Alex Durante found ‘the Trump tariffs amounted to an average tax increase per US household of $1,000 in 2025.’ Even after Friday’s ruling, ‘the President’s remaining new tariffs under Section 232 amount to average tax increase per US household of $400 in 2026.’ So, any relief, even if only partial, from the Trump administration’s trade war should be welcome news to Americans and for the prosperity around the world encouraged by relatively free trade. But the Supreme Court’s decision also reinforced overall boundaries around presidential power – power that has grown for decades beyond constitutional limits.” (02/23/26)
https://reason.com/2026/02/23/the-supreme-court-didnt-fully-end-the-trade-war-but-it-reinforced-limits-on-the-presidency/
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26) Jesse Jackson’s Real Legacy
Source: Town Hall
by Will Alexander
“I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for Jesse Jackson, Jr., his father’s namesake and the last person to see his extremely frail dad in the quiet moments before he died. ‘I woke up at about 12:35 a.m., I heard a gasp, and that gasp was my father’s final breath,’ he said in a CBS interview. … ‘That pressure is the inability to live up exactly to who he is, and what he’s been able to accomplish, and I’ve also lived with that my entire life. … At a critical juncture in the centuries-old freedom saga, Jackson helped to write those chapters as heir apparent to Martin Luther King, Jr. Or was he? From the moment King died, there was a general sense that Jackson was pushing himself to be ‘king’ of a movement that never bestowed the crown.” (02/23/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/willalexander/2026/02/23/jesse-jacksons-real-legacy-n2671722#google_vignette
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27) Three Congressional Missteps on Healthcare
Source: Independent Institute
by John C Goodman
“For the past six months or so, Obamacare subsidies for people who buy their own health insurance have been an issue that has loomed over a sharply divided Congress. One reason why the two parties can’t reach some sort of compromise is that neither party has been willing to tackle the three biggest problems that afflict the market the Affordable Care Act created. On the buyer side, we have been trying to force people to buy insurance they would never buy with their own money. On the seller side, we have been trying to force insurers to enroll people they do not want to enroll. And on both sides of the market, we have created perverse incentives that cause costs to be higher and quality lower than would otherwise have been the case.” (02/23/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/02/23/three-congressional-missteps-on-healthcare/
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28) The Supreme Court Defanged Trump’s Tariff Weapon
Source: Persuasion
by Francis Fukuyama
“The Supreme Court has done the country a service by invalidating Trump’s use of IEEPA tariffs. The Section 122 authority he subsequently turned to mandates a uniform tariff, and not one that can be targeted against disfavored countries. Moreover, that authority expires after 150 days, undercutting its utility as a political weapon. Future tariffs under other authorities may be possible, but almost all of them reduce the president’s discretion in imposing them, requiring formal procedures to justify the imposition of the levy. So, Trump has not just lost the foundation of his economic policy; he has also been stripped of a political weapon that he was particularly fond of deploying against friendly countries.” (02/23/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/a-blow-to-trumps-favorite-political
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29) We Deserve Better War Propaganda
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“They’re not even trying anymore. US middle east envoy Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday that Iran is ‘probably a week away’ from having the materials necessary to make a nuclear bomb — a line that Iran hawks have been falsely repeating for over three decades. It’s such a transparently bogus claim that even The Jerusalem Post dunked on Witkoff for making it, quipping that ‘The US envoy left out that Iran currently has no access to its material, no machines to enrich it, and no weapons program to use it for any operational purpose.’ This is the guy supposedly assigned by the White House to the task of establishing peace in the middle east, churning out the most fuzzbrained justifications for war with Iran you could possibly imagine.” (02/24/26)
https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/02/24/we-deserve-better-war-propaganda/
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30) The European Tiger Roars
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Harry Phibbs
“Poland was pivotal to the fall of Communism in Europe. The Solidarity protests in the 1980s gave hope that political change was possible, even among those who feared that totalitarian states might prove permanent with their grim monolithic structures. Poland’s subsequent success as a free nation serves as an exemplar to others. What a contrast with Russia, which has also overthrown Communism and remains beset by poverty, tyranny, and an aggressive foreign policy.” (02/23/26)
https://fee.org/articles/the-european-tiger-roars/
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31) America’s Date With Destiny: An Appointment in Samarra
Source: TomDispatch
by Alfred McCoy
“Some tales can cross cultures, continents, and even centuries to arrive in our own era … That’s particularly so for the immortal story of ‘an appointment in Samarra.’ It first appeared in the fifth century in the Babylonian Talmud, that ancient repository of Jewish rabbinical wisdom. Then it crossed over into Islamic literature … before popping up on the London stage in Act III of William Somerset Maugham’s 1933 play Sheppy. In Maugham’s retelling, the tale is rich in irony. Once long ago, he wrote, there was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to shop in the market. But the servant soon returned home in a panic and told his master about a woman in the crowd there who stared at him angrily. ‘It was Death that jostled me,’ the servant announced, pleading with his master for a horse to flee to the town of Samarra.” (02/23/26)
https://tomdispatch.com/americas-date-with-destiny/
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32) It’s beginning to feel a little like Sarajevo in June 1914
Source: The Hill
by Harlan Ullman
“With two U.S. carrier strike groups assembling in the Arabian Sea, the chances of an armed conflict with Iran are uncomfortably high …. Unfortunately, other contingencies loom that raise uncomfortable historical parallels. I refer specifically to June 28, 1914, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his pregnant wife Sophie were shot and killed on a bridge in Sarajevo by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip. That assassination triggered a series of mobilizations among the major European powers, based on faulty, outdated premises that whoever mobilizes first wins and that Prussia could easily and quickly defeat France by using railroads to mobilize. More than 110 years later, it is not mobilization that catalyzes catastrophe, but a series of crises that could ignite into a conflagration by a single spark or even a smoldering ember.” (02/23/26)
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5748465-us-iran-conflict-arabian-sea/
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33) The Propaganda Assault: A Tale of Two Venezuela(n)s
Source: Common Dreams
by Yader Lanuza
“After the Trump administration illegally kidnapped the legitimate president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3, 2026, we saw two distinct and divergent responses from Venezuelans. On the one hand, the Venezuelan diaspora, especially in the United States, celebrated President Maduro’s kidnapping and bombing of their birth country. They congregated in small gatherings the weekend of the abduction, including in Miami. These celebrations, alongside videos online, were widely disseminated in corporate and social media for a US-based (and broader Western) audience, all broadcasting the same message: Venezuelans support President Maduro’s abduction. On the other hand, inside Venezuela, for weeks after the illegal abduction, citizens engaged in (almost) daily and massive demonstrations to condemn the attack that killed and wounded over 100 people.” (02/23/26)
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/propaganda-venezuela
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34) Are the “Liberals” of Today Really Liberals?
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Bert Olivier
“Everywhere one looks today you see signs of the opposition between ‘conservatives’ and so-called ‘liberals.’ Sometimes conservatives are designated ‘far-right,’ and liberals ‘left-wing.’ Both terms appear to be self-explanatory, unless one keeps in mind that concepts do evolve historically. The term, ‘amateur,’ for example, used to have a very positive or affirmative meaning, namely someone who does something (like painting, or playing the piano) well, because they love doing it (‘amateur’ derives from the Latin for ‘love’), but today its meaning is pejorative, contrasting with the term, ‘professional,’ which means more or less what ‘amateur’ used to mean; namely, that it applies to someone who excels at what they do. Similarly, the term, ‘liberal’ has arguably undergone a semantic shift in recent times – one that places it at a considerable remove from its original historical meaning.” (02/23/26)
https://brownstone.org/articles/are-the-liberals-of-today-really-liberals/
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35) What Social Security Should Do — and What It Shouldn’t
Source: Law & Liberty
by Sita Slavov
“Policy analysts have been warning about Social Security’s funding shortfall for decades, while politicians have sat on their hands. But time is running out: the Social Security trust fund will run out of money in 2034 and, unless Congress acts, current and future beneficiaries will face a 23 percent benefit cut. Congress’s available options include raising taxes or reducing promised benefits, both of which are politically unattractive. The only way to finance promised benefits without raising current taxes is to borrow the money, which will be challenging given the already unsustainable path of the federal debt. In this context, Romina Boccia and Ivane Nachkebia’s new collection — Reimagining Social Security: Global Lessons for Retirement Policy Changes — represents an important contribution to the public discussion.” (02/23/26)
https://lawliberty.org/book-review/what-social-security-should-do-and-what-it-shouldnt/
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36) A Letter to London
Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders
‘Thinking about a great old city, yesterday and today, with Western Civilization in decline.” (02/23/26)
https://underthrow.substack.com/p/a-letter-to-london
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37) Accomplish Nothing, Form a Committee
Source: The Pamphleteer
by Davis Hunt
“The mayor’s Winter Storm Response Commission, chaired by former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, convened this morning for its first meeting. The commission is set to deliver its final report on the storm response in August. During the inaugural meeting, former TVA board member and Republican speaker of the House, Beth Harwell, indicated that members are still uncertain about their mission. ‘Are the recommendations going to the mayor, the Council, or the [NES] Board?’ asked Harwell. ‘And I’m a little confused as to really our overall objective, and so maybe the staff can answer that at some point.’ Throughout the proceedings, Chair Bredesen emphasized that he wants to avoid a ‘finger pointing’ exercise. Instead, members focused on procedure and constructive goals. During presentations, OEM Director Chief William Swann said that the department is independently implementing after-action changes.” (02/23/26)
https://pamphleteer.co/newsletter/accomplish-nothing-form-a-committee/
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38) Legacy of a Libertarian Leader
Source: The Bulwark
by Joshua Tait
“Ed Crane used to say, as one of his longtime colleagues recollected a couple of years ago, ‘that the thing he did for libertarianism was put libertarians in suits and ties.’ The burly institution builder was not a household name, but he made the modern libertarian movement into what it is today, dragging weirdos and dreamers to the halls of power. A driven activist and domineering organizer once described by P.J. O’Rourke as having a ‘sequoia spine,’ he built both the modern Libertarian Party and the preeminent libertarian think tank in the United States, the Cato Institute.” (02/23/26)
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/legacy-of-a-libertarian-leader-ed-crane-cato-institute
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39) What does Putin really want?
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Martin Di Caro
“After four years of nearly ceaseless combat, Russia has not conquered all of the Donbas. Minuscule territorial gains have come at such a cost that losses now exceed recruitment. Neither side has achieved a military breakthrough, and neither appears on the brink of military or political collapse. Moreover, important questions that emerged in the early months of this endless war of attrition remain difficult to answer. Thus, the two sides aren’t mired only at the front lines in eastern Ukraine. There’s been little substantial movement around the obstacles to a durable peace. I asked several experts to comment on how Russia’s autocrat defines victory — what are Putin’s aims?” (02/23/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/russia-ukraine-war-anniversary/
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40) US Actions Toward Cuba Are Criminal
Source: Libertarian Institute
by William Anderson
“While communist systems elsewhere fell like dominoes, beginning in the late 1980s, Cuba stubbornly kept its state-dominated economy, even as the standard of living deteriorated after Russia failed to continue subsidizing Cuba after the USSR disappeared into political history. Because of aggressive U.S. policies, Cuba’s political leaders — beginning with Castro — were able to appeal to Cuban patriotism and keep the communist system in place. Although U.S. government pressure has played a role in Cuba’s stubbornness of holding onto a failed system, American supporters of the revolution have also spread falsehoods about what they believe has been the superiority of communism over capitalism, especially in the areas of literacy and healthcare. Indeed, left-wing Americans have been supplying propaganda about Cuba since the late 1960s.” (02/23/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/u-s-actions-toward-cuba-are-criminal
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41) Trump’s Tariffs Weren’t Really About Trade Policy
Source: The American Prospect
by Harold Meyerson
“They were about his nostalgia, his ego, his bigotry, and his greed.” (02/23/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/02/23/trump-tariffs-trade-policy-supreme-court/
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42) Tariffs and the New Economic Lysenkoism
Source: The Daily Economy
by Peter C Earle
“Kevin Hassett’s recent call to ‘discipline’ Federal Reserve researchers over a New York Fed study on tariffs is not just a political swipe. It is a troubling signal about the growing willingness of policymakers to delegitimize economic analysis they find inconvenient or unsupportive. Disagreement with research is a normal, healthy part of scientific inquiry. But attempts to intimidate researchers because their findings conflict with a preferred narrative undermine the credibility of policymaking itself. At a moment when trade policy is already generating uncertainty across markets, this kind of rhetoric risks turning economic debate into a loyalty test rather than an evidence-based process.” (02/23/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/tariffs-and-the-new-economic-lysenkoism/
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43) Who’s Afraid of AOC?
Source: The American Conservative
by Spencer Neale
“Watching Trump repeat his rolling critique of AOC, I wondered why he, Vance, and the broader conservative movement seem so driven to undermine her aspirations for higher office beyond mere partisan loyalty. The obvious answer is that AOC has made a career out of punching back against Trump and the ever-shifting brand that is MAGA conservatism, which recently is drifting daily toward a retrograde neoconservatism. … nothing the congresswoman said in Munich—not her stumble on Taiwan or tacit support for the war effort in Ukraine—was so disastrous as the Trump administration’s current, real-life intentions for Iran are, should a deal fail to materialize.” (02/23/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/whos-afraid-of-aoc/
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44) The problem with “relative poverty”
Source: spiked
by Albie Amankona
“Working-class Brits face genuine hardship, but not the Dickensian destitution that the left seems to imagine.” (02/22/26)
https://archive.is/nrXLt
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45) Dems will roll out their perfect agent of subterfuge, Abigail Spanberger, in response to SOTU
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine
“Abigail Spanberger, the new governor of Virginia, who has been tapped to deliver the Democrats’ State of the Union reply Tuesday night, is the perfect avatar for her party’s deception. With her long blond bob, minimalist makeup, pinched face and brisk air, she looks like the sort of competent working mom you’d encounter at school drop-off in any affluent suburb. In other words, she seems like somebody you instinctively trust. But don’t be fooled by appearances. Spanberger is an expert at subterfuge, having spent eight years as an undercover CIA case officer, aka a spy, under Barack Obama and John Brennan, in the era when Democrats turned national security back on itself.” (02/22/26)
https://nypost.com/2026/02/22/opinion/miranda-devine-dems-will-roll-out-their-perfect-agent-of-subterfuge-abigail-spanberger-in-response-to-sotu/
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46) Why is American Healthcare so Expensive
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Bryan Tehunissen
“Americans are told that high medical costs are inevitable. Medicine is complex. Technology advances. The population is aging. Saving lives, we’re assured, simply costs more. But that explanation collapses the moment we look at parts of medicine that operate under different economic rules. Consider LASIK eye surgery. Since its introduction in the 1990s, the procedure has become safer, more precise, and more technologically advanced. Yet when adjusted for inflation, the price for the procedure has remained stable or even dropped. Cosmetic surgery shows a similar pattern: improving quality, competitive pricing, transparent costs. These are not simple services. They require advanced equipment, skilled specialists, and serious safety standards. What they lack is something else: third-party payment distortion.” (02/22/26)
https://fee.org/articles/why-is-american-healthcare-so-expensive/
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47) Stand back, Congress needs a second Supreme Court jolt
Source: Washington Post
by George F Will
“By curtailing the president regarding tariffs, the Supreme Court on Friday perhaps applied a defibrillator to Congress. Its weak contemporary heartbeat threatens the constitutional architecture of powers separated, checked and balanced. But Congress’s fluttering pulse requires a stronger jolt than last week’s 6-3 decision. It addressed only part of the problem that Congress has created by behavior that fuels today’s rampant presidency.” (02/22/26)
https://archive.is/PY5Yu
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48) A Message to Valeria Chomsky from a “Hysterical” Abused Woman
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“I adored Chomsky growing up. I knew the man through his work as a tireless crusader for the voiceless and the disenfranchised. His writings strongly informed my own writings and beliefs. But his relationship with billionaire child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has been exposed to be far more significant and far more sinister than a handful of chance encounters. Quite the contrary, Chomsky appears to have been complicit in a garish attempt to rehabilitate this man’s flagging reputation in hopes of allowing him to get away with his sundry predations a second time. And once again, there is a line of well-intentioned, thoughtful people curling around the block, waiting on bated breath to make the same tired old excuses.” (02/22/26)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-message-to-valeria-chomsky-from.html
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49) Inside the First-Ever Young Worker March on Washington
Source: In These Times
by Amie Stager
“For Eric Chornoby, leisure time is a ’luxury’ he can’t afford. He’s a union postal worker from Detroit who hasn’t gone on vacation in five years. ‘Everyone told me our generation was getting it good. I did what I was supposed to do. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot get ahead,’ Chornoby said at a rally in Washington, D.C., on February 7. Chornoby, along with other workers from the American Postal Workers Union’s (APWU) Young Members Committee, traveled to the U.S. Capitol to attend the first-ever march for young workers. Today, the federal minimum wage sits at $7.25 an hour, and it hasn’t been increased since 2009. Many states and cities have doubled their minimum wages, but workers want to see an increase at the federal level that’s adjusted for inflation.” (02/23/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/young-worker-march-washington-labor-federal-government
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50) SCOTUS tariff ruling offers a lesson on statutory limits
Source: Orange County Register
by Tom Campbell
“Last Friday’s U.S. Supreme Court tariff decision was a workmanlike exercise of statutory analysis. The reaction from the administration was not. President Trump impugned the integrity and patriotism of the justices, claiming that ‘the court has been swayed by foreign interests.’ … When Trump announced tariffs on any country that did not agree with his plans to seize Greenland, or increased tariffs on Brazil because Brazil’s Supreme Court refused to reverse the conviction of former President Bolsonaro, a friend of Trump, he was broadcasting to the court that his interpretation of the law had no limits. In light of those actual examples, it was a surprise that there were any justices willing to uphold the president’s view of his tariff power.” (02/22/26)
https://archive.is/JsCOd
_____ Today's Freedom Podcast and Video _____
51) Reason Roundtable, 02/23/26
Source: Reason
"Trump Replaces Old Illegal Tariffs With New Illegal Tariffs." (02/23/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/02/23/trump-replaces-old-illegal-tariffs-with-new-illegal-tariffs/
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52) Rising, 02/23/26
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on recent comments from Sen. Bernie Sanders about the potential dangers of A.I., and what role governments should play in regulating it.” (02/23/26)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/5747065-rising-february-23-2026/
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53) Finding Freedom, 02/23/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“Breaking the Sugar Cycle, with Dulsa Founder Natalie Nicole.” (02/23/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/ff-breaking-the-sugar-cycle-a-better-way-to-sweeten-with-dulsa-founder-natalie-nicole
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54) The Briefing Podcast with Michael Waldman, 02/23/26
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
“What Will It Take to Make Progress in the South?” (02/23/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhN7sB_5PKM
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55) EconTalk, 02/23/26
Source: EconTalk
“The Man Who Would Be King of Saudi Arabia (with Karen Elliott House).” (02/23/26)
https://www.econtalk.org/the-man-who-would-be-king-of-saudi-arabia-with-karen-elliott-house/
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56) The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 02/23/26
Source: The New Republic
“Trump’s Rage at SCOTUS Explodes — Then Backfires as GOPers Turn on Him.” (02/23/26)
https://newrepublic.com/article/206884/trump-rage-scotus-explodes-then-backfires-gopers-turn
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57) Antiwar News with Dave DeCamp, 02/23/26
Source: Antiwar.com
“Witkoff: Trump Curious Why Iran Doesn’t ‘Capitulate,’ Huckabee Causes Diplomatic Firestorm, and More.” (02/23/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUP-NJc98kA
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58) Pink Flame of Liberty, 02/22/26
Source: Pink Flame of Liberty
“Hector Roos, the Libertarian Party Flim Flam Man.” (02/22/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPCAe_UuhjM
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59) PoliTicks, 02/22/26
Source: Lions of Liberty
“FCC Targeting Shows, Prince Andrew Arrested!” (02/22/26)
https://www.lionsofliberty.com/episodes/politicks-fcc-targeting-shows-prince-andrew-arrested
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60) Fountainhead Forum, episode 429
Source: Fountainhead Forum
“Agustin Almada and Max Marchi on Javier Milei’s labor laws.” (02/22/26)
https://rumble.com/v764jdm-ff-429-agustin-almada-and-max-marchi-on-javier-mileis-labor-laws.html
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