Gracias laid out the whole thing, saying:

"So now you’re in the country with some quasi-legal status, you’re waiting for your court date, while you’re waiting for your court date — six years is the average by the way, it could be longer than that — you can fill out an asylum application, so without an interview, just an application … once that application is in, you can file another form, a 765 [form] to get work authorization, once you get that, you get a 766 which is the authorization and we automatically send you a Social Security card in the mail. No interview, that is the majority of the growth you see in these numbers. //

Adding to this grift is the fact that no identification verification process was in place, and roughly one-quarter of the illegal immigrants who were reviewed by DOGE were never fingerprinted by the Border Patrol. The result: around 1.3 million illegal immigrants now receive Medicaid paid for by you, the taxpayer, and voilà, as an illegal immigrant, you will be grateful enough to keep voting Democrat in perpetuity. //

It gets better. Even though several states, including Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Virginia, and Ohio, purged thousands of non-citizens from their voting rolls before the election, some had, in fact, voted. Gracias stated:

We looked at voter rolls and we found that thousands are registered to vote in friendly states. And we looked even further in those friendly states and found that many of those people had actually voted. It was shocking to us. If I hadn’t seen this with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it … it is shockingly bad.

Included on those voter rolls were criminals and those who had names that matched ones on the federal Terror Watch List. But for Democrats, criminals, and terrorists voting is just collateral damage as long as they vote Democrat. //

DonR
7 minutes ago
IIt Absolutely gets worse from there. My daughter in law works for social services. She stated that she was finding these people often had 2 or 3 or even more fake id's all of them on government assistance. Without benefit of fingerprints or any home country identification, all they have to do is fill out a couple forms. Get a new mailing address, rinse and repeat.

As the headline says, whenever a political figure or a leftist claims that "paying taxes is patriotic," you will note that they are about to tell you that you should pay more. This is a fundamental law of the universe, to be known henceforth as Clark's Law of Taxational Patriotism: "When taxation is levied, the claim that paying taxes is an act of patriotism shall invariably be followed by a demand for a higher taxes.". //

The left seems to have this idea that the tax system is a dial they can turn up, that an increase in marginal rates will always return an increase in receipts, and that just isn't so.

The other thing the left doesn't get about taxes is that paying them isn't some noble, patriotic gesture. If it were, we wouldn't have an army of people on the public payroll making sure those taxes are paid. No, taxes are monies confiscated from the people by force of law, and if you doubt that, try not paying your taxes and see how long it takes for the government to send men with guns out looking for you. And if the left really believed that paying taxes was a noble, patriotic gesture, they'd pay more voluntarily. They never do, so there you are.

Taxation is, at best, a necessary evil. //

Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.

And no country ever taxed itself into prosperity. Remember that next time you're confronted by some whining leftie claiming that paying taxes is patriotic.

Baptiste @BaptisteVicini
·
Apr 7
"They amputated their own legs on this," Stewart admitted.

This reveals a deeper issue: complexity as a control mechanism.

By making internet deployment convoluted, officials control who gets access.

The implications are troubling for democracy.

Internet access isn't just convenience—it's opportunity.

When bureaucracy blocks connectivity, it creates knowledge gaps.

Those in power benefit when information access is limited.

Musk retweeted Stewart's viral reaction and ...

Stewart's realization reflects a growing consensus:

The problem isn't about politics—it's about effectiveness.

When these systems prioritize process over people, we all lose.

Technology should connect us, not be used to divide us further.

While the government spends years on paperwork, companies like Starlink deploy solutions in weeks.

This raises questions about whether bureaucracy is intentional.

By keeping access complicated, information flow remains controlled.

This affects our entire society.

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At a Congressional hearing earlier this week, Matt Blaze made the point that CALEA, the 1994 law that forces telecoms to make phone calls wiretappable, is outdated in today’s threat environment and should be rethought:

In other words, while the legally-mandated CALEA capability requirements have changed little over the last three decades, the infrastructure that must implement and protect it has changed radically. This has greatly expanded the “attack surface” that must be defended to prevent unauthorized wiretaps, especially at scale. The job of the illegal eavesdropper has gotten significantly easier, with many more options and opportunities for them to exploit. Compromising our telecommunications infrastructure is now little different from performing any other kind of computer intrusion or data breach, a well-known and endemic cybersecurity problem. To put it bluntly, something like Salt Typhoon was inevitable, and will likely happen again unless significant changes are made.

This is the access that the Chinese threat actor Salt Typhoon used to spy on Americans:

The Wall Street Journal first reported Friday that a Chinese government hacking group dubbed Salt Typhoon broke into three of the largest U.S. internet providers, including AT&T, Lumen (formerly CenturyLink), and Verizon, to access systems they use for facilitating customer data to law enforcement and governments. The hacks reportedly may have resulted in the “vast collection of internet traffic”; from the telecom and internet giants. CNN and The Washington Post also confirmed the intrusions and that the U.S. government’s investigation is in its early stages.

But if you value more control over your digital footprint, consider cultivating a file collection as part of that:

• Cobalt.tools is a free web-based utility that converts content from YouTube, Instagram, and other online sources into downloadable video and audio files.
• PlayOn, which I’ve written plenty about on the cord-cutting beat, can save videos from streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu.
• Keep an offline archive of articles you find useful. The Single File browser extension can save web pages as self-contained HTML files that are readable offline, and Obsidian has a free web clipper that works in tandem with its desktop app.
• If you’re a big note-taker, consider apps that store your notes in open formats that other apps can access. Obsidian is one, but there are others, like Joplin and Logseq.

For 151 years, Indians expressing their right to free speech and expression have faced the prospect of being accused of sedition: ‘showing disaffection’ towards the State under section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. Our new database counts 13,000 people charged with sedition between 2010-2021 and provides unprecedented insight into India’s use of a law discarded by most democracies. Its use has risen inexorably over the last decade, most recently against public protests, dissent, social-media posts, criticism of the government and even over cricket results.

The fact is that if Senate Republicans stand by the parliamentarian’s ruling and allow her to determine what executive communications are and aren’t actually rules, they will be setting their own new precedent for the CRA; call it “the Whitehouse Rule” after Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the senator who goaded GAO into action. Going forward, those opposed to CRA resolutions would be able to smother them in the crib with adverse GAO “observations” adjudicated by the parliamentarian, who will herself be mired in an endless morass of legalese about statutory construction and APA interpretation.

Furthermore, if the comptroller general is able to foil the White House’s energy agenda, Donald Trump will surely fire and replace him. Tenure protections have not stopped the president yet. When that legal storm subsides, does anybody really think a Trump comptroller’s “observations” will green light, say, Democrat CRA resolutions against the Department of Government Efficiency? The Whitehouse Rule would set a precedent even Democrats will regret — and perhaps a lot sooner than they think.

Much has been made about Congress outsourcing its legislative responsibilities — to the courts, the executive, and private parties. Senate Republicans shouldn’t continue this unfortunate trend by outsourcing their legislative prerogatives to the parliamentarian.

In the dumpy little borough of Millbourne, Pennsylvania, three elected Democrats cheated in the 2021 election in almost every imaginable way. Their candidate, one of the three cheaters, still lost his bid for mayor by some 30 votes. Two are still in office as of April 4, according to a phone call to the borough hall.

The three pleaded guilty April 1 to a host of election fraud offenses at separate hearings before United States District Judge Harvey Bartle III.

To examine their scheme is to see in play many of the red flags election integrity experts have warned about. It is a textbook for cheaters to study, and they will, unless Pennsylvania changes some laws to make it harder to cheat. //

Requiring in-person voting and photo voter ID would have prevented this scam. While some states require photo ID, Pennsylvania does not.

Along with other right-wing influencers and writers, Keeperman offered his thoughts on family formation and human fertility. Yet, unlike other speakers who discussed remedies for encouraging people to have more children, Keeperman took a different approach by declaring from the outset: “I’m going to explain why this conference should be disbanded as soon as possible.”

Far from dismissing the very real problem of depopulation, Keeperman thinks about it more than most people, but has concluded that this is one of those cases where less is more. As he puts it, people “need to care a lot less about their kids” and should stop calling themselves “pro-natalists.”

His first point warrants elaboration since most non-parents usually miss it. For several generations now, parents are expected to devote ever more of their time and attention to their children for the purpose of guaranteeing their material success, boosting their self-esteem, and conforming to an artificial standard projected by mass media. This means following all the new parental trends, seeking out the best schooling options, blocking out harmful influences, spending endless time bonding, and sparing no expense to keep their children happy and entertained.

Keeperman notes how these additional parenting burdens have made having more than one or two children far too onerous: “When parenting is redefined from an obsessive, resource-intensive exercise in micromanagement and resume-building to something much more hands-off and organic, each child no longer represents an exponential increase in parental workload and anxiety.”. //

For his part, Keeperman rightly sees the bigger problem with both views, which is that they make raising kids much more stressful and thus much less appealing. Hence, he admonishes his audience: “Don’t do this [over-parenting]. Stay as far away from this as possible. Actively reject this. Your kids don’t want this. It will not help them. You don’t want this. It is completely and utterly the wrong approach to parenting.”. //

After all, no normal person has children for the good of the country or to own the libs, nor should they. Rather, they should have children out of love. As Peachy Keenan said in her own excellent speech at the Natal Conference, “any healthy natalism movement must be about more than numbers and technology. It has to be about, simply, maternal love. We should do it for their babies, for our babies, out of infinite love for them.”

And for that infinite love to fully emerge, prospective parents need to distance themselves from the pressures to over-parent as well as disengage from the natalist debates. To do this, they need limit their exposure to the incessant chatter of digital media so that they can rediscover their natural impulses to pair up, procreate, and raise children. There is little need to complicate it, and much to lose from making the effort.

Black people aren't inherently violent, but they do have an overwhelming amount of fatherlessness in their communities. With a father-shaped negative space in so many lives, it shouldn't be any wonder why so many in the black community are destabilized, and thus destabilizing everything around them.

This is a cultural matter for the black community that's only reinforced with government rewards. Welfare even goes so far as to disincentivize marriage by reducing benefits if there is a father present, effectively making it more lucrative to be a single mother. It should be the opposite. Tax benefits should be given to rewarding nuclear families.

Moreover, in our greater cultural zeitgeist, fathers are considered an afterthought, or unnecessary altogether. It's pretty clear that this has been severely damaging to society overall, but it's been particularly hard on the black community. Fathers should be looked at as integral. The presence of a masculine figure and the effect they can have on a young life should be seen as essential.

I'm not entirely sure how things change without changes to how we reward and encourage fatherlessness. Until we do differently, the black community will continue to be plagued with violence and crime, especially toward each other. //

justpaul
2 hours ago

There's a common thread here that isn't being addressed, and that's the lack of masculine influence. In other words, the black community is plagued with fatherless homes. According to the Census Bureau, in 2023, 54 percent of black children live with a mother only.

I think you forgot an important word there, that being the word 'positive'. Young "Black" men are awash in masculine influence, but most of it comes from very negative sources. And that may well be due to a lack of fathers in their homes. But we shouldn't pretend that Karmelo Anthony wasn't being exactly the kind of masculine man his upbringing taught him and so many others like him to be. Modern "Black" culture admires and aspires to thug life, and having Dad around doesn't help when he's a thug too. //

C. S. P. Schofield
2 hours ago
Through the 19th century, successive waves of poor ethnic immigrants climbed out of the slums, through family cohesion and education. Irish, German, etc. all managed it. Blacks were held back by being more obvious even than readheaded Irish. But they made progress, especially once some of their culture started to be embraced during the Jazz Age. Progress was slow, for a variety of reasons, but it was there.

And then in the mid 1960’s Progressive policies devastated the Black family and destroyed the public school systems.

I’m not insisting that it’s deliberate. But if it isn’t, it’s hard to see how it could have been made intentionally worse.

Illegal aliens don't put any effort into the American experience. They might hold jobs and some might pay some taxes, but I bet if I asked one of the numerous landscape workers that visit the same Quik Trip I do each morning, "Hey, I forget, was it the Germans or the San Franciscans who bombed Pearl Harbor?" I know I'd get "¿Que?" for an answer. At least being aware of stuff like that is important to our collective experience because a lot of it explains how we occupy time and space right now. But if you're here illegally, and not in high school, you probably don't know it was the Japanese. And if you are in public high school, you still probably don't know it was the Japanese. When I was in college, I had a history professor who taught us the acronym SCRAPE, which stood for Social, Cultural, Religion, Art, Political, and Economic. These were the threads that held the tapestry together. They were the glues that made up what a society was and ensured cohesion. Doesn't mean that everybody has to be Methodist and like Picasso, but it does give definition to a people who have many of these things in common. It's patently true. Look at the Middle East. Most of those guys are Muslim and most of those guys stick together. Even hating Israel more than they love their own kids. But when you don't have enough common beliefs, virtues or experiences among your population, then your culture fractures and your country Balkanizes. Some of the Nordic countries are learning this painful lesson right now. //

Suffice to say that people like Rosas who are here illegally think that they're entitled to be here because they're queer and progressive. They intend to stay here and think that defiance of a basic tenet of U.S. law makes them 'bold and beautiful" enough to demand that other such entitled nobles jump the fence and run to the racist, homophobic and xenophobic place called America.

I hope Tom Homan puts her on the next bus out of here. Pour encourager les autres.

Miles Smith IV
@IVMiles
A whole generation of people dont understand why this photo was so significant, and it shows...
8:42 PM · Apr 6, 2025

Samaritan Prime
@SamaritanPrime
·
3h
Context: that’s Boris Yeltsin, and he poked his head into a random supermarket in America while on a visit. Dude could not compute that the shelves were full. Soviet Russia didn’t have that.

Demetri D Williams
@DemetriDeshone
·
32m
This was before the fall of USSR and before he was President. He went from a communist to a capitalist because of this.

Woodrow Call
@WoodrowCall1
·
2h
iirc this was in Houston. He was there touring NASA, I believe. At first he assumed it was fake, that they had stocked it for his visit to make it look like the US was prosperous, cuz that's what the Soviet Union would do. He had to be convinced this was normal life here.

Charlie Kirk

@charliekirk11
In his interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, THIS FACT made Tucker Carlson pause and say, "That's the message right there. Just as a bystander I'm like, wow, okay."

This is what Sec. Bessent described to Tucker:

"The good news is we have President Trump's previous term ...working class Americans and hourly workers did better than supervisory workers. The bottom 50% of households, their net worth increased faster than the top 10% of households.

And look, I'm not happy with what's going on in the market today, but the distribution of equities across households, the top 10% of Americans own 88% of equities, 88% of the stock market.

The next 40% owns 12% of the stock market. The bottom 50 has debt. They have credit card bills. They rent their homes, they have auto loans and we've got to give them some relief."

5:41 PM · Apr 6, 2025
·
739.2K
Views

On Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz released documentation indicating that Hamas had asked Iran for $500 million to complete the destruction of Israel. This request was made before the October 7th, 2023, attacks Hamas launched into Israel. //

Iran is and has been for some time the leading state sponsor of Islamic terrorism. They are, as Defense Minister Katz puts it, the head of the snake. They have the destruction of Israel as a primary role, but here in the United States, we should always bear in mind that to Iran, Israel is the "Lesser Satan," whereas we, in America, are the "Greater Satan.". //

The request wasn't for a lump sum but rather for $20 million per month for two years, which would be spent on, as Hamas phrased in the document, "to achieve these great goals, through which we will change the face of the world."

“We are confident that by the end of these two years, or during them, God willing, we will uproot this monstrous entity, and we will end this dark period in the history of our nation,” the letter reads. //

Laocoön of Troy
5 hours ago edited
If this is true...and I have no doubt that it is...then Israel and the US need to set up reletively sophisticated measures to go after wealth amassed by the Hamas biggies. I don't pretend to know how to do that...but we have alot of pretty elite bankers who can sell freakin' ice to the Eskimos. Or sand to the Saudis. I have every confidence that we can run scam after scam to get our hands on at least part of their cash. Or encourage their comrades to get their slice of the pie...

Danny Costanzo: [unable to arrest Snake] This block is being designated a Neighborhood Watch Area. There's a guy up here named Snake. He's wearing garage-sale clothes and the top of his head looks like a parakeet. He also has FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in small bills in a briefcase. As his neighbors, it is your responsibility to make sure there are no suspicious characters or evil perpetrators lurking in the area who would seek to do him harm. Again, FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS in small bills, tax free, in a briefcase right in this apartment. Which has a really cheeseball lock! You can bust your way in there, bop him on the head, take the money, nobody would know! So it's UP TO YOU. Thanks a lot, have a good day.

Running Scared (1986). //

anon-ymous99
5 hours ago
Likely $100 million for Sinwar, $100 million for Deif, $50 million among their commanders, and the rest for weapons. For the Gazans? Not a penny.

Level it, and build condos and resorts.

Send the Gazans to Somalia, Syria and who-cares-where-else.

NorCalGC anon-ymous99
4 hours ago edited
They’re already sending some to Indonesia as construction workers.

myx0mop NorCalGC
29 minutes ago
Not sure about construction. They're way more qualified as demolition workers.

Ninety-nine years ago, H.L. Mencken - the "Sage of Baltimore" - released his book, "Notes on Democracy," which I really need to go read again. Mencken was no fan of big government, even by the standards of the 1920s; in fact, you could argue that he was no fan of government at all. What's interesting about his work is his prescience.

Granted, society and politics run in cycles. The Strauss-Howe Generational Theory is one attempt at defining these cycles. So is the old saw that goes, "Tough times make tough people; tough people make good times; good times make weak people; weak people make tough times." //

Mencken. He wasn't an optimist. But when you read his work, you wonder if he didn't have some kind of premonition as to what's going on in the United States today. Back then, in the Roaring Twenties, Mencken made this observation:

The ideal government of all reflective men, from Aristotle onward, is one which lets the individual alone – one which barely escapes being no government at all.

Good government is that which delivers the citizen from being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily and violently – one that relieves him sufficiently from the barbaric business of guarding them to enable him to engage in gentler, more dignified, and more agreeable undertakings.

In other words, the only legitimate role of government is to protect the citizens' liberty and property. //

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naive and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself … Almost inevitably, he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable.

All government … is against liberty.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. //

Sarcastic Frog
2 hours ago
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself …"

This was true in ancient times; it was true in 1926; and its true today.

Unlike almost every other country, the US was founded on rebellion- people thinking for themselves and resisting the pressure to obey the government for the sole reason of "because we tell you to."

There are those who hate this quality and actively push against it with their NewSpeak and pronouns and "canceling".

I hope we will always have the rebels, who think for themselves and resist the conformity.

anon-t75 Sarcastic Frog
2 hours ago
"A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny." ~ Thomas Jefferson. //

anon-t75
2 hours ago
"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first." ~ Thomas Jefferson. //

idalily
2 hours ago
My favorite Mencken quote: "Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." Not sure quite why I love it. I just do.

Some argue that drones reduce costs by the very virtue of being “unmanned.” But the pilot isn’t the main reason an F-35 is expensive.

Manned fifth-generation fighter jets are expensive because they need powerful engines to travel long distances, complicated electronics systems for detection and targeting, state-of-the-art composite materials and design to ensure stealth, and large frames to carry sufficient ordnance to complete the mission. A drone capable of doing what an F-35 can do would cost just as much, as it would have to do all the same things—and it would still need to be operated or commanded remotely by a human pilot.

Nor do drone swarms—in which large numbers of small disposable drones with single, relatively small payloads attack a base or a ship—clearly eliminate the need for warships or jets. These swarms are both a cause for concern and an offensive capability to be studied. However, it’s far from clear that they would be more effective than precision-guided munitions in, say, sinking ships during an attempted amphibious invasion, especially given limited payload and range.

Moreover, every major military is working to develop countermeasures against individual drones and swarms. These militaries are observing drones in action in Ukraine and using those observations to develop systems to defend ships and bases.

Drones cannot yet automate the many functions performed by manned warships—from frigates to destroyers to aircraft carriers—which play a vital role by conducting strikes with large numbers of missiles or aircraft, projecting concentrated firepower, and displaying the flag in foreign ports (which reassures partners and allies).

The Chinese certainly believe such vessels are still needed. Indeed, they’re currently engaged in a massive military buildup of aircraft carriers and fifth-generation fighter aircraft. //

While drones and autonomous systems have shown that they have an important and (almost certainly) increasing role to play in modern warfare, that role remains one of complementing existing systems, rather than replacing them.

As the country’s largest funder of civil legal aid, LSC provides critical legal representation to low-income Americans—including veterans, families with children and seniors—who are facing life-altering civil legal challenges such as wrongful evictions, domestic violence and consumer fraud. Defunding LSC would not only deny vulnerable individuals access to justice, but would ultimately increase costs for taxpayers.

When someone is accused of a crime and does not have the resources to hire an attorney, state and federal governments provide legal representation. This is not the case when people face civil actions such as custody battles, foreclosure or denial of veterans and social security benefits. To qualify for legal aid, people must meet strict income guidelines: a family of four must earn less than $32,150 a year and an individual must earn less than $15,650.

A well-functioning legal system is fundamental to maintaining order and ensuring justice. LSC provides essential funding for legal aid organizations that assist low-income American workers and families in navigating civil legal disputes. Without this assistance, many would be left without legal recourse, exacerbating instability in communities and overburdening the courts with self-represented litigants. //

Rather than promoting progressive legal activism, as the misguided article states, LSC and its grantees are bound by strict statutory limitations (imposed by Congress) on the types of cases it can support. LSC grantees cannot engage in class-action lawsuits, lobbying, or political advocacy, and those restrictions apply to funding from any source. In other words, if a grantee accepts so much as $1 from LSC, it must abide by the same conditions that Congress imposed; it cannot raise money from other sources and engage in any prohibited activities. Moreover, extensive, multi-layered oversight mechanisms, including an independent Office of the Inspector General, review and ensure that both LSC and its grantees operate within the scope of these limitations. The idea that civil legal aid is a vehicle for partisan activism is a mischaracterization that ignores the broad restrictions set by Congress. //

Rather than eliminating LSC, a more constructive approach would be to ensure its funding is used effectively and transparently. Lawmakers should focus, as they have in the past, on strengthening accountability measures while maintaining this critical safety net that aligns with the principles of fairness, efficiency and limited government intervention. //

Reply:

Hecht and Malcolm assert that, today, Congress has finally succeeded in restricting LSC’s radical mission. Let us for a moment grant that they are correct (which they are not); is it not strange that they see no irony in urging conservatives to accept and embrace Lyndon Johnson’s original Great Society vision of federal funding for private lawsuits? As constitutionalists, conservatives flatly reject the notion that Congress, under any circumstances, should be injecting each year hundreds of millions of dollars into the private practice of law. //

Meanwhile, California Rural Legal Assistance continues to sue state entities, such as the Bakersfield City School District, for not spending enough public money on education. A generation ago, Governor Reagan wondered, as should President Trump today, what business the federal government has in financing private lawsuits against state and local entities. If a majority of Californians seek to change public policy on education, let them win at the ballot box, not in the courthouse in league with an activist judge. //

It is the same with America’s out-of-control homelessness policies, which have been pushed to extremes, ruining much of our country’s urban life. Homelessness is another public policy passion in the legal aid world and judicial activism is the approach that most LSC grantees support.

Helen Andrews
Feb 20, 2024
12:04 AM
The year 1994 marked the beginning of the era of globalization. For a short time after the end of the Cold War, it was unclear what would be the driving theme of the next period in history. Then it emerged: borderlessness. The theme of the new era would be the free movement of goods, people, and capital. In a few short months on either side of January 1, 1994, the European Union was formed; the Marrakesh agreement was signed, creating the World Trade Organization; the Channel Tunnel opened; and the North American Free Trade Agreement came into effect.

Hubris was present from the beginning. During the negotiations over NAFTA, union leader Richard Trumka, then of the United Mine Workers of America, later president of the AFL-CIO, asked a Clinton administration official whether he was worried about the effect of free trade on American blue-collar workers. The official said yes, but eventually “wages would start to go up again, and things would even out around the world.” Trumka asked him how long this would take. The official answered, “About three to five generations.”

We are now one generation into this process, thirty years from the start of NAFTA, so we are at a good point to ask: Are things evening out? Is the new equilibrium we were promised any closer, and it is better than the one we had before? //

On the 30th anniversary of NAFTA, its opponents stand vindicated and its defenders are chastened—or at least they should be. In many corners of the left and right, free trade dogma is as strong today as it was the day NAFTA was signed. It is therefore worth looking back to see what exactly went wrong with NAFTA, what made people blind to its flaws, and why its costs proved greater than anyone predicted at the time. //

The U.S. lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between 1995 and 2015. Even in advanced technology products, we now have a massive trade deficit. Globalization has not made our manufacturing sector leaner and meaner. Between 2011 and 2022, manufacturing productivity in the U.S. actually declined. To be clear, these dismal numbers are not mainly the fault of NAFTA. The number of jobs lost to Mexico was relatively small; the China shock dwarfs it. Yet NAFTA set off the chain of events that allowed globalization to run free the way it did. It gave the free traders a big win and reshaped the coalitions to their advantage.

There have also been non-economic costs to NAFTA that don’t show up in economic statistics. For one, NAFTA made Mexico fat. The same cheap corn that pushed the farmers off their land flooded grocery stores with processed food and high fructose corn syrup. Coke became cheaper than water. The result was that Mexico’s obesity rate almost doubled; 17 percent of adults are now diabetic, compared to 9 percent in 1990. In 2016, diabetes was Mexico’s leading cause of death. If you believe the online nutrition gurus, NAFTA exported the same obesogenic diet patterns based on massive corn subsidies that have caused Americans to get fatter in the last half-century, far more than our rates of calorie consumption and physical activity can explain. It also gave an economic boost to the same corn producers fueling that dynamic at home.

NAFTA also made Mexico liberal. Today Mexico has gay marriage, gay adoption, and abortion, all things that would have been unthinkable when the agreement was signed. //

The lawsuit that led to the 2023 Mexican supreme court decision decriminalizing abortion was brought by a progressive NGO funded by the MacArthur Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Tides Foundation. //

Pork prices surged after the pandemic because, as journalist Rana Foroohar explains in her book Homecoming, “the largest pork producer in the United States, Smithfield, is owned by a Chinese company that takes orders from the Chinese government, which understandably wanted to export to China what pork was available during a time of scarcity.”

Whether you already have a media sharing system on your network or are setting one up for the first time the options can be bewildering. To stream high-quality video you will want the fastest possible connections. Unfortunately, the easiest systems to set up are also the least efficient so some effort is needed to get the best performance. Here are some recommendations.