The White House just admitted to pressuring a private company to punish an employee for criticizing the president and another WH official. This is the type of jawboning that President Trump vowed to end with his Jan. 20 executive order on "restoring freedom of speech."

Ronald Reagan:

People respond: do two things, enforce the rules and simplify them. The problem is that all of the emphasis is on enforcement of existing rules, and few with any meaningful political power are serious about simplifying them. So you get draconian enforcement of bad rules. Sad!

The pattern of harm to journalists in LA (plastic bullets, pepper balls, tear gas, detentions) raises serious red flags. Several cases appear targeted. A free press doesn’t survive under attack. We MUST defend reporters’ rights.

I find his platform almost entirely the clownish stuff of the populist left, but threatening this sort of action against citizens and politicians with whom we disagree is extremely dangerous and short-sighted

Governments are increasingly invoking “incitement” and “hate speech” as catch-all justifications to punish political opposition, satire, and minority viewpoints. This week’s Free Flow highlights how global authorities are stretching these terms to silence dissent.🧵

There is nothing to celebrate. Moving from average tariffs of less than 2% on trade between the USA and Europe to 15% under today’s deal will inevitably lead to inflation. Almost everything will become more expensive in both Europe and the USA, and we will all be worse off. The

Abundance theorists are right to focus on the importance of building things. But by ignoring public choice theory, they miss the risk that state-driven growth will benefit the elite rather than the masses. My review of _Abundance_ and _Why Nothing Works_, at Econlib. Link below.

Bold suit from @thefireorg today. "America’s founding principle is that liberty comes not from the government, but is an inherent right of every individual. Every person — whether they’re a U.S. citizen, are visiting for the week, or are here on a student visa — has free

Sigh

Suppose you think the state should be much smaller than it is. It doesn’t follow that any cut is good, or that we should just start hacking away with a chainsaw at a stack of programs. We need a theory of *how* to shrink the state.

Campus censorship is about to get a whole lot worse. The Trump administration, picking up where the Biden administration left off, is attempting to do two very unconstitutional things: 1) Resurrect the dead doctrine of "group libel" to effectively prohibit hate speech. 2)

With generous support from the Institute for Humane Studies (grant ID IHS019227), I am pleased to announce the fall schedule for Purdue's PPE workshop. You can learn about it and find out how to get involved here: cla.purdue.edu/academic/philo…

Okay, folks. This is historic. When the Babylon Bee comes after you, and CORRECTLY nails you, you are not a conservative.

The courts just took a step to save the economy, the rule of law — and the very foundation of property rights. This thanks in part to Ilya Somin, a principled liberal whose work just spared Americans trillions in realized and unrealized taxes. He may be the most consequential

Government subsidies to corporations like Intel distort markets, waste taxpayer dollars, and reward inefficiency—but taking an equity stake is objectively worse, even without voting rights, as it entangles the state as an investor with perverse incentives and heightened risks. A

4 out of 5 Harvard doctors fail an introductory statistics question Expertise is real, but most "experts" are shockingly innumerate

Hot off the presses! Important new book from the excellent ⁦Reid Pauly⁩.

Please donate to the hardest working free speech shop in show business!

Taking a pretty unorthodox approach to my Philosophy of Law class this semester.