President Donald Trump, broadly speaking, is not at base a liar. Sure, almost every word out of his mouth is a lie. You don’t have to go back to his marriage vows to prove this; a simple survey of his 2024 campaign promises versus his results during the first eighteen...
The first time I met Vladimir, my Russian college roommate freshman year, we got to talking about politics and it turned out he was all for the free market, and in fact went on to join the college investment club. At that time Bill Weld was governor of Massachusetts...
Washington's yearly defense measure has ground to a halt, and one buried clause explains why a widening bloc of lawmakers wants the whole thing pried back open. Members voted down the procedural rule required to open debate on the Fiscal Year 2027 National Defense...
Last week, on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his demand that Ukraine be invited to join NATO, which was bold, considering that Ukraine’s president wasn’t even invited to the NATO summit. Zelensky attended a leaders dinner but was not...
In 2026, the world’s first trillionaire—following the recent stock debut of SpaceX—Elon Musk has remained one of the most influential figures in American politics. After campaigning for Donald Trump in 2024 and initially playing a leading role in the Department of...
The China hawks are an industrious bunch. Full of ideas and financing, they are never short of time and fill it with lengthy publications from their comfy sinecures arguing about what Washington “needs” to do to confront the “China Threat.” One of the most notable of...
I am far from your typical, mainstream economist. Rather than focus on the broad aggregates that the state publishes in an effort to convince us that things are “just fine,” I choose to observe economic conditions at the most micro of levels. While my colleagues pour...
One of America’s most talented antiwar artists and political satirists passed away last week. Tom Blanton did one of the best daily roundups of government oppression and outrages stories on the Internet. His Project for a New American Revolution was an inspiration for...
We’ve all seen the memes: “You do not earn a billion dollars. You steal it. Nobody works a billion times harder than a nurse, a teacher or a farmer. That wealth comes from underpaying the people who actually did the work.” The other end of the spectrum is the slogan:...
The Ukrainian Armed Forces were in trouble. Russian assaults and Ukrainian desertions had left a weakened force with an unsolvable manpower shortage. Weapons were running out, and America’s war on Iran had diverted the most needed military equipment, including Patriot...
Five years ago, about eighty American cities had an average starter-home price of $1 million. Today, it’s 242 cities. A starter home runs seven figures in three times as many places today as it did before the pandemic. Zillow published the count recently. Half the...
Israel's latest war on Lebanon is now threatening to unravel the fragile understanding that Washington and Tehran reached to halt their 2026 confrontation. Under the interim agreement that Pakistan mediated, the United States and Iran declared a permanent end to...
Americans reading this are lucky enough to be alive on the 250th anniversary of their country’s declaration of independence. How independent the United States actually is these days or how much the country remains dedicated to the ideals of the founding is highly...
Today, Taiwan occupies a uniquely important position in the global economy. The island produces the overwhelming majority of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, manufacturing the chips that power everything from smartphones and artificial intelligence systems to...
Poison once sang that every rose has its thorn. Georgia’s Rose Revolution had plenty. Eduard Shevardnadze returned to Georgia in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, stepping into a country already torn apart by civil war and ethnic divisions. He was seen...
On this day in 1995, I helped shatter the coverup of federal killings at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. For millions of Americans, those brazen killings epitomized how the U.S. government had become a deadly peril to their rights and liberties. In 1991, an ATF informant entrapped...
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te (William Lai) appears to be missing signs from multiple sources that he lacks both international and domestic support for pursuing a more assertive policy regarding the island’s de facto independence. Taipei heavily depends on two...
In a few days, Americans will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. There will be fireworks, concerts, speeches, and millions of backyard barbecues. But what precisely are we celebrating? Most Americans know that on July 4, 1776, the...
