by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
April 26, 2026

Last night the regional Society of Professional Journalists recognized my work with a First Place award for Columns/Op Ed Pieces for my article, "What's Next—Genital Inspections at Book Stores?" (July 23, 2025), for the Colorado Times Recorder. SPJ presented its annual Top of the Rockies Excellence in Journalism Awards in Denver.

My piece argues that a logical implication of a lawsuit filed on behalf of Born Again Used Books of Colorado Springs by Alliance Defending Freedom is that the bookstore would have to perform genital inspections. I ask, "If the bookstore's owners believe . . . they 'cannot' use a transgender person's chosen name and pronouns, then how are the store's clerks to follow this policy except through genital inspections, regardless of the age of the clerk or the patron?"

In recognizing the piece, SPJ noted, "The essay functions as polemical commentary rather than reporting, employing exaggeration to challenge the logic of a lawsuit concerning gendered language and compelled speech. This rhetorical strategy is sharp and effective in exposing practical contradictions, particularly where enforcement would rely on unverifiable assumptions about identity."

I've written a monthly column for CTR, an explicitly progressive publication, since 2023. Although I'm not a progressive in the usual American sense, and I also write for the conservative-libertarian Complete Colorado, my views overlap substantially with others at CTR in that I am a secularist and a strong critic of Donald Trump.

In all, CTR won eight awards in the "small newsrooms" category:

• Ari Armstrong, First Place, Colums/Op Ed Pieces, "What's NextGenital Inspections at Book Stores?"
• Logan Davis and Chloe Ragsdale, Third Place, Investigative Reporting, "Invisible Hand: The Man Behind Colorado Schools' Efforts to Ban Trans Athletes"
• Robert Davis, First Place, News Reporting Single Story, "Legal Protections for Trans People Are 'A Perversion of God's Plan,' Says Boebert at Worship at CO Capitol"
• Logan Davis, First Place, Informational Graphic, "Funding Stream for Advance Colorado, a Conservative Advocacy Group"
• Jamie O'Rourke, First Place, Politics News, "How GOP Legislators Manufactured Outrage Against a Transgender Rights Bill in Colorado"
• Jason Salzman and Erik Maulbetsch, Second Place, Politics News, "Five CO Springs News Outlets Scrub Their Websites of an Article About the Arrest of Former GOP Council Member"
• Logan Davis, First Place, Education Feature, "The Plot to Take a Local School District to the Supreme Court"
• Logan Davis, First Place, Feature Long Form, "Bully: The Crisis of Leadership in Montezuma-Cortez Schools"

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/26-spj.html.

Bad ideologies and force can lead to authoritarian lock-in.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
March 26, 2026

I've been thinking a lot about the sci-fi novel The City and the City by China Miéville. The premise of the story is bizarre: Within the same geographic space, two cities exist side by side, with completely different governments and cultures, and a shadowy enforcement agency maintains the divisions.

So, for example, you might be walking down the street, right by someone you know from the "other" city, and you're just supposed to pretend you can't see the person. If you want to visit the "other" city, you have to leave via an official port, then enter the "other" city, even though you're traveling right back down the same street.

The novel follows the investigation of a murder involving the two cities; here I want to focus on the idea that societies can get locked in to certain ways of operation, even bizarre, irrational, and damaging ways. True, the divisions within City are implausible, but the premise points to real-world cases.

Some Important Cases of Lock-In

Consider these cases:

• In the 20th Century, various societies became controlled by Communist and fascist authoritarian regimes, leading to mass oppression domestically, genocides, and international war. During the Cold War era, the free West Berlin existed within Communist East Germany, right beside Communist East Berlin (maybe the closest real-life example to the cities from the novel). Today North Korea, controlled by a vicious cult of personality, remains one of the clearest examples of that sort of societal lock-in.

• You may have seen photos of Iranian women wearing bikinis to the beach back in the '60s '70s. Since 1978, Iran has been dominated by a harsh theocratic regime that severely oppresses women and others. Recently the Iranian regime murdered many thousands of protesters.

• Today we Americans find the idea of a king absurd. Yet the English still have a king, although a figurehead, and the transition from monarchy to constitutional republicanism in much of the world was a long and bloody one. Today hardly anyone reads John Locke's First Treatise on government, which refuted claims of the divine right of kings, because today no one takes divine-right theory seriously.

• In the United States and the prior colonies, African slavery remained the norm for over two centuries, even during the period when black people fought for the American Revolution and its ideal that "all men are created equal." The matter came to a head with the bloody Civil War, and after that war the KKK's reign of terror and a general system of racist laws especially in the South remained dominant for decades.

Causes of Lock-In

Steven Pinker talks about common knowledge and coordination problems, undoubtedly important.

Here I want to talk about what I think are the two main drivers of lock-in: ideology and force. Communism, fascism, and theocratic Islam are, at root, ideological movements. Many people embrace those ideas, fight for them, even die for them.

But, once an ideological authoritarian regime takes hold, it can sustain its power through force even if most people reject the underlying ideology. That's a tough problem to get out of, as decades of Soviet rule and the regimes of North Korea and Iran illustrate. Another example: What we now think of as mainstream Christianity became such partly by various Christians murdering dissenters.

Good Lock-In

We in the United States, and people in much of the rest of the world, fortunately are (somewhat precariously!) locked in to constitutional republicanism, which is rooted in the ideology of liberalism (broadly conceived). The Founders were basically Lockeans.

Precisely because of their democratic nature, liberal societies rely more for their continued existence on widespread embrace of the underlying ideology. Liberal societies also are prone to problems of demagoguery and factions, which seek to harness the force of government for short-sited personal advantage.

We've also gotten locked in to a lot of narrower political structures that I think ultimately are harmful; e.g., government-funded education and Social Security, where, in both cases, means-tested programs surely would be better presuming government must be involved.

Still, I'd much rather face the problems of the United States than the problems of regions lacking liberal political structures. If, as in Miéville's City, much of politics remains absurd, as least we're dealing with a sort of lock-in that often takes seriously things such as individual rights, the federal government's current system of concentration camps notwithstanding. We still can and should work within the system to improve our condition.

In the System Not Of the System

I very much enjoyed City (although I hated it at first, until I bought into the premise). I like the main character and his friends, and the telling of the story is rich in detail.

But there is something very disconcerting about the story (spoiler alert). The protagonist, a likable and generally admirable character, nevertheless in the end joins the independent enforcement agency that polices the cities' "boundaries." Although the agency somehow keeps itself delimited to its mission (impossible in the real world), its mission is a fundamentally repressive one. The novel ultimately is dystopian.

The protagonist doesn't have much of a choice; he can "join or die" (to pervert the American expression). He just sort of accepts that he has to join and make the best of it. Here we can see the effects of ideology—although the protagonist does not buy into the ideology, enough people do to sustain the system— and force, in that the agency captures and even murders transgressors.

A problem with authoritarian capture is that enough people join the regime for self-advantage to sustain it. Of course, it is possible, although extremely dangerous personally, to join a regime with the aim of undermining it. For example, if one of Hitler's underlings had killed Hitler, that might have saved the world enormous grief. It is sometimes possible to be marginally revolutionary; Oskar Schindler was a Nazi who nevertheless protected many Jews.

We in the Unites States remain able to genuinely and explicitly work within the system to reform it and, more important, to champion a pro-human, pro-liberty ideology.

Still, I'm dismayed by the willingness of many people who call themselves Americans to promote and actively participate in obviously fascistic policies. No, the United States government for the most part is not liquidating people, except (as examples) Renée Good, Alex Pretti, and some people unfortunate enough to be operating boats in a way that the government deems suspicious. But the United States government now is operating concentration camps, mostly filled with people who have done nothing morally wrong, including children, including people legally seeking asylum, in brutal conditions. And "we" are letting it happen. To some degree we all live in the City.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/lock-in.html.

Trump, ICE, crime, libertarians, fertility, fentanyl, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
February 13, 2026

Trump Watch

Corrupt DOJ: The corrupted DOJ failed to get a grand jury indictment of Democrats, including Jason Crow, who participated in a video making the obvious point that members of the military should not follow illegal orders. This does raise the political status of Crow, a combat vet and all-around decent fellow.

Trump Vs. 9News: Conservatives who say they care about freedom of speech should be outraged. Donald Trump has publicly called for Nexstar to take over TEGNA, owner of 9News in Denver. See the 9News report. Of course, few will acknowledge the obvious, that putting federal regulators in control of business mergers inherently politicizes the process.

Trump Continues to Lie about Peters: Trump claimed that he did not invite Jared Polis to the governors' dinner because Polis "unfairly incarcerated in solitary confinement a 73-year-old cancer stricken woman (A nine year term!), for attempting to fight Democratic Voter Fraud." It's astonishing how many lies Trump can pack into a short statement. Tina Peters was criminally prosecuted by a Republican District Attorney, and found guilty by a jury, and sentenced by a judge, for granting unauthorized access to election machines. No one who has the slightest knowledge of how government works thinks a governor incarcerates people (although Polis has declined to pardon her). Peters is age 70. Her lawyers have claimed that Peters has suffered a recurrence of lung cancer, but I haven't seen verification of that claim. Peters was not placed in solitary. But Trump doesn't actually expect anyone to believe his transparent lies; he expects his followers to pretend to believe them and to act as if they do. Anyway, I guess Trump will invite Polis after all.

Sex Abuse Under MAGA's Nose: It's astonishing to me how much Team MAGA is obsessed with sexual abuse of children—except for where it is actually happening. A recent example from NPR: "A Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by Trump was convicted of sexually abusing children." We all know Trump will face zero political fallout over this from his followers.

White Homeland: New York Times: "A young aide behind social posts that echoed white supremacist messaging will help run social media for the much larger Homeland Security Department." Mostly it's all out in the open!

Election Shenanigans: NPR: "The FBI seizure of Georgia 2020 election ballots relies on debunked claims."

Nationalizing Elections: New York Times: Trump has called to "nationalize" voting. Believe him, urges Kyle Clark. See also Susan Glasser and Judd Legum.

Trump Is a Racist: Which we already knew.

Rauch: "Yes, it's fascism."

Profiteering: David Kirkpatrick: "Trump's profiteering hits $4 billion."

Norberg on Trump: Johan Norberg: "In the United States, it is hard to escape the feeling that President Trump has read my book [Peak Human] in reverse. He speaks of unleashing a new American golden age, but the way in which he is upending many of America's greatest strengths seems designed to move the country straight toward its phase of decline and fall. The attack on trade and immigration is meant to make America less open to outside ideas and innovations."

Red Tape Down: Notes J. D. Tuccille. So that's one good thing.

ICE Watch

Children in Concentration Camps: Propublica rounds up letters from some of the children placed in these camps. Future generations will curse us for such moral depravity.

Warrantless Arrests: Sun: "ICE is violating court order against warrantless arrests in Colorado, lawyers say." More: "Federal Agents Used a Battering Ram to Enter a Minneapolis Home Without Valid Warrant, Video Shows."

ICE Ignores Courts: Seth Klamann: "Federal immigration authorities have repeatedly violated a court order by continuing to 'indiscriminately' arrest people in Colorado without warrants and without first checking if they're likely to flee, attorneys alleged in a new legal filing." See also Reason: "Judge Says ICE Violated Court Orders in 74 Cases."

ICE Lies: 9News: The head of ICE told Congress that Aurora police tipped off gang members about an upcoming raid. "The apartment complex [ICE was targeting] was already empty," he said. But, as Kyle Clark points out, the clearing out of the apartments in question "was a process that had started weeks before [ICE] agents showed up in Aurora," because the city had declared various buildings "a public safety risk." ICE removed its social media posts on the matter following 9News's inquiries, Clark reports. This does, however, point to a huge problem in Aurora: Given the city knew crime was rampant on the properties, why didn't police arrest the criminals rather than force everyone to move out?

Echoes of History: The Sand Creek Massacre Foundation said in a statement: "We are again witnessing the dehumanization of targeted groups of people, the deputizing of an untrained militia given extrajudicial rights to attack civilians, egregious disregard for the rule of law, and the disintegration of human rights."

ICE Aces: Jennifer Brown details two allegations against ICE: Agents used car sirens to impersonate local police, and agents left behind an Ace of Spades on vehicles of occupants ICE seized. "Ace of spades cards are linked historically to racism, including as 'death cards.'"

Schwartz on ICE: Peter Schwartz is among the Objectivists sticking to their principles and calling out injustices: "The entire justification offered for the anti-immigration crusade is a pretext. It is a rationalization to disguise the tribalist hostility toward foreigners, i.e., toward people whose appearance and language are different. It is a rationalization for the goal of making America 'pure' by ridding it of foreigners. How is this tolerated in a country that was once made great by its devotion to the individual’s inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" See also Harry Binswanger and Onkar Ghate.

Pretti's Parents: They remember their son.

Culleton Case: Reason: "Boston Man With Pending Green Card Application Held in ICE Custody for 5 Months: Seamus Culleton was detained despite being married to a U.S. citizen and having a work authorization permit." Again: Cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

Campos Case: NPR: "A Cuban migrant held in solitary confinement at an immigration detention facility in Texas died after guards held him down and he stopped breathing." Related: "In 2025, 32 people died in the custody of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)."

Rahman Testimony: Video. The federal agents who did this are moral monsters who deserve criminal prosecution. Aliya Rahman is an American hero.

Breaking Heads: AP: "Immigrant whose skull was broken in 8 places during ICE arrest says beating was unprovoked."

ICE in Maine: Reason: "Civil rights groups and local media say the federal government mostly swept up people without criminal records, such as asylum seekers, not the 'worst of the worst' that the DHS said it was targeting."

ICE in Minnesota: New York Times: "Dozens of refugees with valid status were sent from Minnesota to Texas to be revetted, prompting a lawsuit. Those released had to pay their way back."

ICE Cruelty: Oren Peleg: "Immigration authorities have weaponized medical neglect to encourage self-deportations."

Short Takes

Immigrants Benefit America: The evidence is clear to anyone not wearing ideological blinders.

Immigrants Boost Health Care: Paper via Cowen: A lot of immigrants enter "the immigrant-intensive health and long-term care sectors," and more immigrants in those fields translates to less death. Also, deporting workers actually hurts "native" real wages long-term and drives up prices.

Debt Up: New York Times: "Federal Debt to Hit Record Levels."

Crime Down: Newsline: "Crime continued to decline in 2025, with homicides down 21% from 2024 and 44% from a peak in 2021." Atlantic: "The Great Crime Decline Is Happening All Across the Country."

Life Expectancy Up: See NPR.

Nucs: NPR: "For the first time in decades, the U.S. and Russia have no limits on nuclear weapons." What could go wrong?

Libertarians Against Trump: Katherine Mangu-Ward's February 9 article for the New York Times, titled, "Libertarians Tried to Warn You about Trump," is raising some eyebrows, including among libertarians and former libertarians who watched much of their movement embrace Trump's MAGA movement. Mangu-Ward writes, "On immigration, speech and trade, Americans are living in a libertarian’s nightmare. Masked federal officials are swarming areas far from the border, shooting American citizens and whisking away children in the name of immigration enforcement. Armed National Guardsmen walk the streets of several cities under the banner of vague emergency mandates to maintain law and order. Legal visa holders are being deported for expressing their opinions on Gaza and Charlie Kirk. Tariffs on China have been set at 10, 20, 54, 145 and 30 percent in just the past few months. TikTok, Intel, U.S. Steel and their ownership have become matters in which the president has taken a personal interest—and threatened dire consequences if his wishes are not taken into account." All that's true, and some libertarians did cry a warning. However, as Shikha Dalmia wrote in 2024, "Faced with Trump, Libertarianism Shrugged." Both things are true. Libertarians and fellow-travelers including Dalmia, Ilya Somin, Walter Olson, and Radly Balko have been loud and consistent critics of Trump. But many other self-identified "libertarians" basically have become cheerleaders for fascism.

Crawford on Progressives and Progress: Jason Crawford: "Progressives used to believe in progress. . . . But instead of just being anti-pollution and anti-war, the new left decided to become anti-technology and anti-growth. That was a mistake."

Iran's Murders: The regime is mass-murdering its own people.

Tabarrok on FDA: Alex T.: "I had high hopes and low expectations that the FDA under the new administration would be less paternalistic and more open to medical freedom. Instead, what we are getting is paternalism with different preferences. In particular, the FDA now appears to have a bizarre anti-vaccine fixation."

Heritage on Family: The (White) Heritage Foundation has out a new paper on "saving the family." ChatGPT summary. People including Jessica Valenti and Logan Davis are worried. My off-the-cuff take: I'm very worried about social engineering whether by left or right. I agree with much of what Heritage says here: Most people do best in a monogamous marriage, and stable families are very good for children. But Heritage is absolutely wrong to reject or degrade other sorts of families, including gay marriage, unmarried but committed partners, and responsible single parents. I do worry about the fertility crisis, but I also worry about women's autonomy and ability to pursue meaningful careers. Part of the answer is for men to step up and be more supportive of their children and of their wives or female partners.

Cowen on Fertility: He thinks the main driver on reduced fertility is simply most women's desire to have one and only one child, in the context of increased availability of birth control, plus generational turnover and "fertility contagion effects." This seems very plausible to me. One issue here: Assuming AI-driven improvements to health care, as people live and work more years, that will somewhat offset reduced fertility. Related: See Lyman Stone's arguments that Romania's pronatalism, although substantially evil, increased fertility at least in the short-run.

Arming Cartels: New York Times: Tens of thousands of .50-caliber rounds seized from Mexican cartels came from a Missouri Army plant, or at least so says Mexico's defense secretary.

Sharia Law: Ilya Somin explains why the "Preserving a Sharia-Free America Act" is stupid and wrong. He writes, "Sharia law is simply a standard term for the religious precepts of the Muslim faith." That said, there are some interpretations of Sharia Law that I think reasonably could be included in immigration evaluations. If someone is on the record as clearly supporting the death penalty for homosexuality or so-called "honor" killings of women, that seems like good grounds to keep the person out.

Autism Diagnoses: Adam Omary: "Between 2000 and 2016, there was a 464 percent increase in diagnoses among children with no significant functional impairment whatsoever. In fact, during the same time period, there was a 20 percent decrease in the prevalence of moderate or severe autism, from 15 to 12 cases per 10,000 children." An obvious issue: "function" depends very much on how an autistic child is treated, not just on the inherent traits of the child.

Teen Social Media Use: Maybe it's not so bad?

Fentanyl Deaths: Stat: Fentanyl deaths are down partly because purity has decreased and many users have switched from injection to smoking. Charles Fain Lehman argues (citing a paper) that the main cause is a "drought" in Chinese sources. More Stat; purity is related to supply.

AI Disruption: Matt Shumer makes the case it's coming soon.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-68.html.

Guns, trafficking, legislature, harassment, GOP, schools, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
February 13, 2026

Kimbal Musk: Denver Post: "Kimbal Musk dated woman who was likely sexually abused, trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein."

Privatize RTD: Denver Post: "RTD ridership is down 40%, its budget has holes, and lawmakers are fed up."

Red Flag Expansion: Dave Kopel: The proposal has many problems. In related news, We the Second raises important concerns about the 3D gun-printing bill, which outlaws even the keeping of "wrong" computer files.

Shrinking Workforce: See the Post.

Human Trafficking: However you slice the numbers human trafficking remains a serious problem in Colorado. However, we can't necessarily take the statistics compiled by the Common Sense Institute as perfectly reflective of the underlying reality. Reported trafficking cases depend not only on the underlying level of criminal activity but also on how aggressively law enforcement investigates and prosecutes such crimes. There could be (and likely are) regional differences in how well law enforcement investigates cases. Let's take two hypothetical states of comparable populations, State A and State B. State A has 500 actual cases of trafficking in a given year, while State B has 400. But enforcement in State A catches 250 perpetrators of trafficking, while enforcement in State B catches 300. Obviously you can't just look at the raw reported numbers and conclude that State B has a worse trafficking problem. In this case, State A has the worse problem but also does a worse job addressing it, so the reality of the problem is not reflected in the crime stats. So the CSI numbers are good places to start, but they may not tell us very much about the severity if the underlying problem in Colorado versus other states. A Congressional report from last year discusses some of the severe limitations of the data.

Genrich Case: It sounds to me as though the case against James Genrich, involving pipe-bomb murders, rested on pretty thin circumstantial evidence, aside from overstated toolmark analysis. See CPR.

No Forced Sterilization: Fox21: Bill 1040 cleans up language about forced sterilization, requiring informed consent except in highly prescribed circumstances (with amendment). Offhand this seems good; obviously in the past women have been sterilized against their will, which is horrific.

Pig Farm Harassment: Allison Sherry: "An Eastern Plains pig farm has agreed to pay $334,500 after multiple female employees reported routine sexual comments, propositions for sex and were intruded on while showering, frequently touched and grabbed without permission."

Erie Cop Fired: Savana Kascak: "An Erie police officer is out of a job after posting an anti-ICE comment condoning violence on social media."

Data Center Regs: Sarah Montalbano worries HB26-1030 would push data center projects out of Colorado. The bill "creates a new bureaucracy, imposes burdensome labor and workforce requirements, and requires data centers to use 100% clean energy."

Price Controls for Captives: Of course the very terminology of a "captive consumer" is total bullshit; no one is holding anyone by force or forcing anyone to buy anything. Savana Kascak reports on the stupid new legislative effort to impose yet more price controls.

Pesticide Regs: The legislature is considering limits on "seeds coated with neonicotinoids" (per the Sun). ChatGPT offered a pretty good first pass CBA analysis. There does seem to be a real problem of marginal personal gains to the farmer and substantial external harms in terms of harming wildlife. I don't know if that justifies the regulatory regime in question though. One problem is that a "prescription" system is prone to bias and favoritism. Another problem, as Chat notes, is that in some cases farmers may substitute more-harmful pesticide applications. But I'm hardly an expert in these matters (as the legislators who will be voting on the bill are mostly not experts).

Alcohol Taxes: KUNC: "Democratic lawmakers are reviving a proposal to raise money for addiction prevention, treatment and recovery programs by imposing new fees on alcoholic beverages." Here's another case of calling a tax a "fee" to evade TABOR restrictions. This is a bad idea because only a minority of alcohol consumers have substance-abuse issues. The bill punishes responsible drinkers to fund the problems of a few.

Conspiracy GOP: In normal times Barbara Kirkmeyer would be a strong candidate for governor. The problem is her Republican Party is a shitstorm of conspiracy mongering and bigotry. Suzie Glassman: "A sitting state legislator [Scott Bottoms] predict[ed] sedition indictments against the secretary of state and attorney general, and a podcaster [Joe Oltmann] claim[ed] Elon Musk [should send] a 'strike team' to stop Serbia from stuffing American ballot boxes."

More Bottoms: Sean Beedle: Bottoms recently told people at a campaign stop, "Pedophilia runs through our House, our Senate, and our governor's office." Kirkmeyer called him out on his bullshit: "Either he's made this story up or he's been sitting on his hands for three years while the little kids are being trafficked and raped, apparently."

Holtorf Out: In other party news, Richard Holtorf resigned as vice-chair of the state GOP, complaining he found it "impossible to work with" chair Brita Horn.

Lundbert's Bigotry: Kevin Lundberg, former legislature and conservative leader, referred in his newsletter to "the transgender plague."

Financial Non-Disclosure: According to Logan Davis, 27% of legislators are "failing to file their annual personal financial disclosures (PFDs) as mandated by the law."

Jaquez Lewis: Sun: Senator "Sonya Jaquez Lewis, a Boulder County Democrat, was convicted by a Denver jury of attempting to influence a public servant and forgery."

Catholic Leadership Shifts Left: I say good. Maybe this will result in less culture-war conservatism.

Vacancy Tax: Joshua Sharf did not like HB26-1036 to increase taxes on high-vacancy properties. I agree this was not the way. The bill went down February 9. I also don't like the idea of government building rental housing for teachers. We need a free housing market, not more central planning. In related news, Denver vacancies are up but people still need more housing.

YIMBY Denver: Activists want to upzone, making it easier for people to build denser housing on their properties.

Cherry Creek Schools: Denver Post: "The president of Cherry Creek Schools' Board of Education acknowledged Monday that the district's freeze on employee travel and contracts is related to the 'decisions and actions' of former Superintendent Christopher and his wife, Brenda Smith, the district's chief human resources officer." Huh. See also the Post. But wait, there's more.

Public Christian School Building Closes: Ann Schimke: "It's unclear if the closure of Riverstone's building . . . will spell the end of the school or if its leaders will seek to move it elsewhere or switch to an online format."

Peña on Denver Schools: He wants to merge "our school system with city government." That sounds like an absolutely terrible idea, and at any rate one that will not happen. He's right that Denver schools generally do poorly.

Colorado Bill of Rights: Natelson offers a nice historical review.

Trump Vs. Colorado: NPR: "Colorado's Democratic leaders say President Trump is on a political retribution campaign against their state and the fallout will be rural communities on everything from water to planning for disasters." There's been some judicial pushback on some of Trump's cuts.

Crank: Dems think they have a shot at the Fifth Congressional.

Ag Overtime: Rachel Gabel on 2021 legislation: Because agriculture is seasonal, "a small window of time . . . requires more hours and more labor than the majority of the year." Evidence suggests ag overtime laws reduce the incomes of the people they're supposed to "help."

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-141.html.

Venezuela, Greenland, Bari Weiss, Minnesota, immigration, Christianity, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
January 7, 2026

Maduro: Two things are true: Maduro is a horrible person and a mass-murderer, and the U.S. had no legitimate business invading Venezuela or capturing Maduro. Congress has the authority to declare war, but, as we have known for a long time, Trump and his MAGA movement are anti-Constitutionalists. So much for Trump's already-warn isolationist schtick! I don't believe for a second that Trump ordering Maduro's capture has anything to do with the drug trade (the main pretext for the assault); remember Trump's pardon of a major drug trafficker? I think this is mainly about three things: a distraction from the Epstein files (see Trump's old posts predicting Obama would use the military as political distraction), yet another assertion of the raw power of the Imperial Presidency, and Trump's mercantilist mentality. That said, Venezuela did nationalize the property of U.S. oil companies in 1976 and 2007 and ran its oil industry into the ground. I hope that the military action, although an unjust and dangerous assertion of U.S. power, leads to improvements in the lives of Venezuelans, who have suffered terribly under Chávez and Maduro. This seems far less likely given that Trump favors Maduro acolyte Delcy Rodríguez over democratically elected reformer María Corina Machado. David Frum: "Trump uses the military so often because he correctly assesses that respect for the courage and professionalism of its personnel will transfer to him." Read also Ilya Somin and Laura Jedeed.

Greenland: The Trump administration keeps threatening to take Greenland, currently a territory of Denmark. This is completely insane. Here's why this worries me. By making such threats, Trump and his minions not-so-subtly signal to Putin and Xi that it's not really such a big deal to invade Ukraine (or the Baltics, or Poland) or Taiwan. After all, if the territory is nearby, if it serves some sort of military advantage to hold, why the hell not? We have to look at Trump's invasion of Venezuela and his threats against Greenland in the context of the expansionist aims of Russia and China. I think we're closer to WWIII, and then nuclear warfare, than most people imagine.

Balko on the Boat Murders: Radley Balko: "104 murders in 107 days: These are murders, and basic humanity demands that we not get complacent about them."

Weiss Caves: Bari Weiss pulling the 60 Minutes story on the U.S. sending Venezuelans to a horrific torture prison in El Salvador looks bad. Watch the segment leaked via Canada. The United States government sent people there without due process of law, knowing full well they would be brutalized. No one who defends such actions can justly claim to be a defender of the Constitution. Weiss and her defenders said pulling the story was justified because the news team did not try hard enough to get relevant government agents on tape. But the team did try, and no government agent was willing to be interviewed for the story. Also this seems like ridiculous both-sides-ism. Imagine a story about the horrors of slavery pulled because it did not adequately present the viewpoint of the slavers. The story is complicated by the fact that CBS is owned by Paramount Skydance, which was trying to acquire Netflix, a merger subject to government interference. Politicizing business decisions is horrible policy and inherently corruptive. Yaron Brook mentioned the story in his December 22 podcast (1:25:00 marker).

Corruption in Minnesota: Despite Nick Shirley's lack of journalistic rigor, I found his video on Minnesota fraud to be basically convincing in terms of revealing fraud in Minnesota child-care and health-care. See also the New York Times, ABC, and Reason. Tim Walz dropped out of his reelection campaign for governor.

RFK's Vax Irrationalism: Amesh Adalja speaks.

Targeting Immigrants: Stateline: "Immigration arrests under the Trump administration continued to increase through mid-October, reaching rates of more than 30,000 a month. But, rather than the convicted criminals the administration has said it’s focused on, an ever-larger share of those arrests were for solely immigration violations." In Colorado ICE is arresting mostly people without criminal convictions, including children and elderly people. DHS has revoked "Protected Status" for many Ethiopian immigrants. There's been some judicial pushback regarding migrants from some regions.

Paging DOGE: J. D. Tuccille: "Rand Paul's Annual Festivus Report Highlights $1.6 Trillion in Wasteful Spending." (It's almost as though Republicans other than Paul don't actually care about wasteful spending.)

Huemer on Religion: Michael Huemer argues that Christianity, although false, is not as bad as some other common doctrines. He writes: "Religion gives them [some people, especially Christian philosophy students] immunity to some of the completely false and destructive ideas going around our culture, such as moral relativism, skepticism, communism, (il)logical positivism, determinism, physicalism, and empiricism. Religious people are immune to those beliefs because they are basically ideological beliefs, and religious people already have their own ideology. Since they have no need for these other ideologies, they are free, on a wide variety of subjects, to just accept what common sense tells them." I concede some ideologies are further from the truth and more destructive than others. But we should aim to embrace ideas that are true, not just ideas that are marginally less-bad than others. I think Huemer substantially underestimates the harms of religious faith; see chapters 6, 7, and 8 of my book.

Techno-Humanist Manifesto: Read Jason Crawford's essays on the matter (or wait for the MIT book).

DeLong on Alexander: Brad DeLong: "As a society we no longer measure greatness by who is the best at killing."

Wei on the Alien and Sedition Acts: William Wei: "The underlying reason for the passage of these laws [by the Federalists] was to undermine their political opponent: the Democratic-Republican Party led by Thomas Jefferson. In other words, national security became a pretext for political repression. The Naturalization Act and the Alien Act restricted immigrants who were believed to favor Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party. . . . The Federalists sought to protect themselves against a 'horde' of Irish Catholic immigrants arriving in their fledgling country who might vote for their political opponents, as well as potentially dangerous Frenchmen promoting revolution on their shores." The Sedition Act was used to censor political speech.

Trump's Nastiness: Trump called people from Somalia "garbage," a straight-up racist remark. Trump called Tim Walz "retarded," then doubled down, inspiring his supporters to mock the Walz family on social media and even to engage in drive-by harassment. To paraphrase Aaron Ross Powell, Trump is the weak man's fantasy of a strong man ("weak" here referring to character).

Failed Federalism: The New York Times article talks about how the Trump administration wants to replace no-strings housing subsidies with requirements for "sobriety or work." But why is this even a federal policy?

Early Hominins: Science: "Three kinds of hominins, including a species that was our direct ancestor, living in the same swampy valley [in what is today South Africa] roughly 2 million years ago," evidence suggests.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-67.html.

English, power outages, Denver crime, trans care, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
January 7, 2026

Recent Columns in Complete Colorado:
• Obviously Colorado should opt-in to tax credits for scholarships
• How Coloradans celebrated Christmas before there was a Colorado
• The 'soft bigotry of low expectations' at MSU Denver
• Proposed initiative wrong way to address a horrible crime

Racist English: I wrote an article about Metro State's writing center's ridiculous advice for writing. Rob Natelson and Jimmy Sengenberger also addressed the matter.

Land for Natives? Rick Williams thinks it's a good idea. I'd be willing to consider transferring some government lands back to Native tribes. But how would the land be managed? Putting some recognized tribal leadership in charge inherently leaves out the interests of dissenters.

Power Outages: Plenty of people, including Jared Polis and Phil Weiser, are pissed about Xcel's power outages during the recent wind storm. But, as I've said repeatedly, we can have tort waivers or we can have blackouts. Xcel paid out $640 million for the Marshall Fire. Of course buried power lines also would dramatically reduce risks, but I don't know how costly that would be. (My area already has buried power lines; I'm not sure what portion of the state does.)

Denver Crime Down: Homicide is down. Auto thefts are down. I'll hold my breath waiting for Colorado conservatives to celebrate the news.

People Moving Out: Aldo Svaldi: Colorado "now ranks fifth in the country for its share of outbound moves. . . . [H]ousing costs have greatly outstripped incomes."

Transgender Care: John Ingold: "Children’s Hospital Colorado has suspended gender-affirming care for transgender youth amid a new federal investigation." See also S. Baum. Update from Meg Wingerter: "Judge moves to throw out DOJ subpoena for transgender patients' records at Children’s Hospital Colorado."

Therapy Shortage: Seth Klamann: "More than 160 of them [people in prison for sexual assault] are past their parole dates but remain incarcerated because of a yearslong shortage of therapists." If government is going to commit itself to this system, and make punishment contingent on it, it needs to operate it competently.

Funding Cuts as Punishment: Jesse Paul: "Amid Tina Peters fight, Trump is withholding funding from parts of Colorado that overwhelmingly voted for him." CPR: "An OMB official confirmed that the Administration has frozen funding as of Monday for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and the Social Services Block Grant program to Colorado and four other Democratic-led states."

Sex-Assault Lawsuit: Allison Sherry: "Hinge and Tinder ignored Denver women's complaints about serial rapist, lawsuit alleges."

Tax-Funded Recycling: Colorado is rolling out a robust recycling program funded by industry taxes. I'm skeptical that recycling is on net better for the environment (as opposed to landfilling the waste), except for aluminum. This feels more like government-forced virtue-signaling than any actual redress of an externalities problem.

Methane: At least methane controls for landfills have some plausible benefit, although I worry the cost of that program exceeds its benefits. A better approach would just be to impose a tax or fee on methane emissions. Regulations on methane leaks from oil and gas production seem to have a big effect.

Nationalizing Energy Policy: Meanwhile, Gabe Evans wants more national control of regional energy policy. This seems like an effort to use the federal government to interfere with Colorado's energy policies. One can dislike the Colorado policies and also the federal interference.

Politicized Libraries: Mesa County edition. (It's so weird how putting politicians in charge of libraries makes them political.)

Health Lab Woes: CPR: The state lab that's supposed to test water and food in the state has been beset by extraordinary problems, including outright "manipulated test results."

Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce: Denverite: The organization has suffered extraordinary staff turnover. Some allege the harsh management style of J. J. Ament is at fault.

Cost of Tariffs: Colorado Sun: Tariffs cost one Colorado interior design company some $42 million.

Cost of Regs: Deborah Grigsby: Regional regulatory burdens harm small businesses.

Zebra Mussels: KUNC: Farmers are worried they'll damage water infrastructure.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-140.html.

Block wrongly judges homeschoolers by the worst examples and ignores serious problems in schools.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
December 23, 2025

In his December 14 op-ed for the New York Times, Stefan Merrill Block, pitching his new book Homeschooled, paints the entire homeschooling community with a brush dipped in his personal resentments.

The headline for the piece (and I'm not sure whether Block or the newspaper selected it) is, "Home-Schooled Kids Are Not All Right." Obviously this is an absurdly biased headline. The Times would not in a million years publish the headline, "Public-School Kids Are Not All Right," based on some anecdotes of problems in schools. It would not publish the headline, "Muslims Are Not All Right," based on cases of some Muslims committing acts of terrorism, or "Christians Are Not All Right," based on cases of sexual abuse in some churches. But I guess homeschooling parents are acceptable punching bags for the Times.

Block says that his mother, under cover of homeschooling, treated him in ways that I'd call abusive; "She had me crawl whenever I was at home" when he was 12. Obviously such behavior is unacceptable and probably criminal.

Block promotes the organization Coalition for Responsible Home Education, which aims to impose severe restrictions on homeschoolers. Such controls are not needed for government to do its job investigating real cases of abuse and neglect, and they would disrupt healthy homeschooling practices that exist in the overwhelming majority of homeschooling homes.

Block writes, "An online project called 'Homeschooling's Invisible Children' has documented hundreds of heinous cases of children whose neglect and physical and sexual abuse ultimately resulted in their death." As I've pointed out, government already has the authority to investigate suspected cases of abuse and neglect. And my preliminary checks cause me to suspect that in many of the horrific outcomes blamed on homeschooling either don't involve actual, legal homeschooling or are more fundamentally the fault of government agents failing to act on available reports. Regardless, the answer is not to punish the overwhelming majority of responsible homeschool parents because of the crimes of a few. Hopefully in the future I'll have the time to investigate these matters more thoroughly.

I wrote up a short op-ed in reply to Block, then discovered that the New York Times does not accept op-eds in reply, then wrote a 200-word letter on the matter that the Times declined to publish. Following is a version of my op-ed.

Homeschooled Kids are Just Fine

I'm sorry that Stefan Merrill Block's mother mistreated him under cover of homeschooling ("Home-Schooled Kids Are Not All Right," Dec. 14, 2025). But one thing I'll teach my homeschooled son is that it is unfair and inaccurate to extrapolate to a large group based on a small number of anecdotes.

Block presumes that anything that can go wrong with homeschooling will go wrong and, conversely, that alternatives to homeschooling will function perfectly. Both presumptions are false.

Block shared his story; here's mine. As part of a vibrant secular homeschool community in Colorado, I have met dozens of homeschooling families, and generally the children are happy, well-adjusted, and academically on-track.

When my child was ready to enter kindergarten, we toured all the schools in our neighborhood. He wanted to homeschool instead, and I knew my wife and I had the resources to help him with that. Now, at age 10, he has solid math skills (we use the challenging Dimensions Math program from Singapore) and reads at an advanced level, as testing confirms. He also enjoys his once-a-week enrichment program provided by the district (Colorado leans into choice) and his many social events with friends.

The National Home Education Research Institute shows generally positive results.

Meanwhile, many public-school students struggle academically and emotionally; see, for example, New York's results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (or Colorado results) or the NYC Comptroller's Dec. 9 report on the mental-health crisis in schools. Bullying in schools is common, and news occasionally reports sexual assaults by staff.

When I attended public school, I was repeatedly physically assaulted in ninth grade by another student who stabbed me in the kidneys with his pencil (thankfully the eraser end).

Earlier, I had the misfortune of attending elementary school in Muleshoe, Texas, where staff routinely beat children with wooden boards, often behind thin partitions so other students could hear the whacks and the cries of pain.

Later, when I was in high school, a shocking number of students took illegal steroids and other drugs, and bullying and harassment of some students was common.

Recently my home district (Jefferson County) suffered multiple scandals involving alleged sexual assaults by school staff, and the Chief of Schools was investigated for child pornography (he subsequently killed himself). Such problems hardly are unique to my area.

Such anecdotes are not representative of public school, you say? I agree! If my child told me he wanted to attend local school, I'd be happy to send him. Similarly, Block's anecdotes are not representative of homeschooling.

Here is where Block and I agree: Government has a responsibility to protect children from abuse and neglect, and parents have a responsibility to provide their children with a basic education as part of decent care.

Crucially, government already has the authority to investigate suspected cases of neglect and abuse. And all of us have the ability to report suspected cases.

Beyond that, I favor a light regulatory approach. As a homeschool family in Colorado, we have to register with a school district, which may review our records at will and to which we must submit test results or an evaluation every other year, and we have to meet some basic requirements. I'm fine will all that.

Block's heavier-handed approach would harass decent homeschool parents and sometimes discourage homeschooling even when that's the best option for a child.

Block says that, rather than act only on suspected wrongdoing, government agents should instead proactively check on homeschooled kids. Besides misallocating scarce resources, that would be a civil liberties nightmare. Does Block think government also should do this for all children younger than school age, when many more parents unofficially "homeschool" by default? It seems rather that Block wishes to cast homeschoolers uniquely under a net of suspicion. That's discrimination.

It will not do to presume guilty homeschool parents or utopian schools. Homeschooling is a great option for many families, including mine, and parents have the right to pursue it free from onerous controls.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/homeschool-block.html.

MAGA, immigration, TSA and pumping moms, education, AI, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
December 10, 2025

MAGA Watch

Trump Calls for Death: Mike Littwin is right: Trump's remarks calling for the death of six Democrats are "next-level unhinged." Unsurprisingly, "Death threats surge against Democrats targeted by Trump." Now the Pentagon is "investigating" Mark Kelly over this, and the corrupted FBI is harassing Jason Crow and others.

Murder of a Guard Member: An Afghan national allegedly shot and killed Sarah Beckstrom and seriously injured Andrew Wolfe, as they patrolled D.C. The suspect was in the country legally because, says ABC, he "previously worked with the U.S. government as a member of a partner force in Kandahar." This horrible crime prompted some conservatives to immediately look for scapegoats. On Fox News, Stephen Miller immediately and ludicrously blamed the Democrats who had correctly pointed out that members of the military should not follow illegal orders. Trump and his sycophants blamed immigrants. Notice the conservative double-standard: If any member of any ethnic minority commits a crime, that damns the entire group; but, if any MAGA-type commits a crime, that is completely ignored. This crime was horrible, obviously. That doesn't justify abuse of innocents. If the United States government badly mistreats people who risk their lives to help us, we will soon find that no one is left willing to help us. Trump used the murder as a pretext to pause immigration applications from nineteen countries. I'm all for careful vetting; at the same time, we should recognize that many people seek to escape oppressive conditions and forge a new life in America.

Boat Strike Survivors: NYT: "Officials initially weighed sending survivors of U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling to a notorious prison in El Salvador, to keep them away from American courts." Pure evil.

California Guard Decision: Charles Breyer: "The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances. Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one. Six months after they first federalized the California National Guard, Defendants still retain control of approximately 300 Guardsmen, despite no evidence that execution of federal law is impeded in any way—let alone significantly. What's more, Defendants have sent California Guardsmen into other states, effectively creating a national police force made up of state troops."

Trump Trashes Free Speech: MAGA's claim to favor free speech always has been a transparent lie. Now the Trump administration is threatening to target people specifically for their ideas. As Adam Goldstein reviews, "a national security presidential memorandum" casts suspicion on people who articulate "anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity" (that would include Ayn Rand and me on the religious point) and who express "hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality." Okay, which "traditional" views? America under European colonialism has a longer "tradition" of "slavery" than of its abolition, so which "traditions are we talking about? The vagueness is the point. Goldstein writes, "In America, we shouldn't target people for their ideologies. We should target them for their actions, full stop." This goes for government; of course we should in the private sphere criticize and ideologically oppose bad ideas.

Antisemitism: Ilya Somin: "American conservatism has been rocked by the rise of 'Groyper' antisemitism within its ranks." See also Coleman Hughes on Fuentes. Know your enemy!

Pardon Abuse: Jeremy Kohler: "How Trump Has Exploited Pardons and Clemency to Reward Allies and Supporters." Everything is about personality with this administration; nothing is about principles.

Art of the Netflix Deal: No one now honestly may claim that Trump is for free markets or capitalism. He's for a centrally managed economy. For example, Trump has followed his tariff damage by promising $12B in subsidies to agricultural interests. Now, Trump is actively interfering in proposals to acquire Warner Bros. New Republic even claims, "David Ellison Made Trump a Big Promise on CNN in Warner Bros. Convo." Of course, the left will not take the appropriate lesson from this, which is that letting the federal government interfere with business mergers is a horrible idea and something inherently prone to political abuse.

Depravity: Phil Klay: "Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers[,] of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison." As I have often said, the cruelty is the point.

Betrayal of Ukraine: Applebaum: "The 28-point peace plan that the United States and Russia want to impose on Ukraine and Europe is misnamed. It is not a peace plan. It is a proposal that weakens Ukraine and divides America from Europe, preparing the way for a larger war in the future." Bob Zubrin posts the full text of Zelensky's speech on the matter; Zelensky fears that a Putin victory means for Ukranians "life without freedom, without dignity, without justice."

Anti-Corporate Populism: Trump sounds a lot like anti-capitalist leftists in his demonization of U.S. corporations, Alex Tabarrok notes. Should we really be so surprised that Trump and Mamdani get along so well? Their political ideologies are remarkably similar. Walter Olson quipped, "My heart sank to see a man who'd happily seize your or my private property, whose fiscal irresponsibility could endanger millions of people, and who'd trample constitutional liberties without thinking twice, make himself welcome in the Oval Office. And it didn't help matters that Zohran Mamdani was there right next to him."

Heritage: The latest on the (White) Heritage Foundation: Stephanie Slade: "Conservative Think Tanks Should Never Have Crawled Into Bed With Tucker Carlson in the First Place." Ya think? See Team ARI on conservatism's moral decay. Adam Mossoff: "Why I Am Resigning from the Heritage Foundation." See also Jonathan Chait.

Field on the Right: William Galston reviews Laura Field's Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right. It's on my list.

Patel: New York Times: "Patel Under Scrutiny for Use of SWAT Teams to Protect His Girlfriend." Wow, it's almost as though putting incompetent political hacks in positions of extraordinary power was a bad idea.

DOGE: Reuters: "Trump's Department of Government Efficiency has disbanded with eight months left to its mandate."

Comey: NPR: "A federal judge . . . dismissed the Justice Department's criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that the acting U.S. attorney who secured the indictments against the two prominent critics of President Trump was unlawfully appointed."

Tariffs: Washington Post: "Trump's tariffs are pushing Canada closer to China and India." So stupid and self-destructive. Obviously tariffs raise prices on given products. But, Noah Smith notes, tariffs also can be overall deflationary, because they "hurt the real economy, causing shocks in the system and an increase in negative sentiment that reduces aggregate demand."

MAGA Vs. Health: The Hep. B vaccine saves lives. RFK, who is a moron and completely unqualified for his position in government, falsely said it "likely" causes autism.

Bad Signal: NPR: "Hegseth risked the safety of U.S. servicemembers by sharing sensitive military information on the Signal messaging app."

Immigration Watch

ICE Is a Terrorist Organization: These federal agents typically go around masked, refuse to show identification, nab people off the streets without warrant or cause (this sometimes includes U.S. citizens), and lock people in cages for no good reason. This is domestic terrorism. I am not saying that every action ICE agents take falls into this category; sometimes ICE also pursues actual criminals. The expansion of ICE into a lawless gang is the single most dangerous development in this country in my lifetime. If we don't get the agency in check, it easily could morph into the enforcement arm of a fascist dictatorship.

Yes, It's Fascism: Bryan Caplan: "The fascist nature of U.S. anti-immigration policies has been especially blatant this year. The Department of Homeland Security claims to have deported over 400,000 people. The vast majority of them are accused of no crime against person or property. Instead, they are being violently detained and expelled simply for breathing the air of our country without government permission—permission that is almost impossible to obtain. Even migrants who managed to get this elusive permission have had it revoked. Not because of anything they did, but simply because the government didn't want them to keep breathing our air."

Colorado Loses a Family: Durango Herald: "A Durango family arrested by ICE last month has signed paperwork for self-deportation to Colombia, according to an immigrant advocate close to the family. '(The father is) hurt and angry and done believing promises, said Liza Tregillus, a member of the Apoyo Immigrant Partner Team." The family was detained without a warrant, and ICE mistook the father for someone else. The Trump administration has turned the American Dream into a nightmare.

Ice Imprisons 79-Year-Old: Reason: "79-Year-Old World War II Refugee Remains in ICE Custody After Living in the U.S. for Over 70 Years." Shameful. (This was from November 19; offhand I didn't find an update.)

Disgusting Conditions: Reason: "Federal Judge Blasts 'Disgusting' ICE Facility Conditions, Orders Basic Humane Treatment for Detainees."

Failing At Every Single Level: Taylor Dolven: "For months, immigrants imprisoned at the Aurora detention facility have been asking to be deported. And yet, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has kept them there with no answers about when they will get out." An immigration lawyer said, "The system is failing at every single level."

Self-Harm: Washington Post "These surgeons want to treat patients. A visa ban is stopping them."

Carman on Dadfar: Diane Carman: In Afghanistan, Mohammad Ali Dadfar "for 14 years . . . risked his life to aid American troops in the war against the Taliban. . . . Now, Crow and Rep. Joe Neguse are fighting for the release of Dadfar, 37, who was working under a valid work permit last month when he was swept up in an immigration crackdown on the Illinois border. He remains held in a detention center in Missouri." Absolutely shameful. This is also suicidal. The message this sends to people around the world is that, if they stick their necks out for the United States, the U.S. government will assault and traumatize them. See also Krista Kafer's take. Thankfully, a judge finally released the man.

Judicial Limits: Taylor Dolven: "Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents' conduct during arrests in Colorado has been 'unlawful,' a federal judge ruled. . . . The lawsuit alleges that ICE agents are arresting and detaining people in Colorado because of their skin color, accent or perceived nationality, without determining flight risk, to fulfill arrest quotas set by the Trump administration."

Economic Harm: Landry Ayres: "Donald Trump's mass deportation policies aren't merely cruel and inhumane to those targeted, most of them peaceful, they're also harmful in a variety of other ways. They constrict the labor market, particularly construction, which makes housing less, not more, affordable. They divert precious law enforcement resources away from fighting real crime—including of sex trafficking and other heinous offenses—and toward the expulsion of law-abiding immigrants." NPR: "ICE is sending a chill through the construction industry."

Somali Immigrants: AP: "Trump said . . . that he's 'immediately' terminating temporary legal protections for Somali migrants living in Minnesota. . . . Many fled the long civil war in their east African country and were drawn to the state's welcoming social programs. . . . Congress created the program granting Temporary Protective Status in 1990." In other words, the U.S. is now preparing to kick out people who have made this country their home for 35 years. That is cruel and insane. Insofar as welfare programs are a problem, the proper solution is to curtail or end them. Insofar as crime is a problem (as Trump claims), the proper solution is to target the criminals, not the people living here peacefully.

Priorities: Landry Ayres: "Trump Deports Peaceful Immigrants Instead of Sex Traffickers."

Injustice Anywhere: ProPublica: "Immigration Agents Have Often Grabbed and Mistreated Citizens, Congressional Investigators Find."

Venezuelans: Allison Sherry: "Thousands of Venezuelans in Colorado lose legal status, move into the shadows."

Quick Takes

TSA Hassling Pumping Moms: From Brittany Pettersen's November 19 release: "This week, U.S. Representative Brittany Pettersen (CO–07) announced that the House of Representatives passed the Bottles and Breastfeeding Equipment Screening (BABES) Enhancement Act unanimously, a bipartisan victory that will make air travel safer, more consistent, and more humane for parents traveling with breast milk, formula, and feeding equipment. The bill will now go to the President to be signed into law. Pettersen's bipartisan BABES Act is co-led in the House by U.S. Representatives Eric Swalwell (D-CA), Maria Salazar (R-FL), and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL). U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) introduced companion legislation in the Senate, co-led by Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), and Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI). The legislation requires the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to strengthen and streamline its screening protocols for breast milk, formula, and related feeding equipment. These improvements will ensure parents can navigate airport security without unnecessary delays, confusion, or the risk of damaging essential nutrition products."

Actual Education: Natalie Wexler's thesis is that phonics instruction is necessary but not sufficient; to advance in their reading children need to read to learn about real subjects. Wexler also argues, "When learners are new to a topic, what works best is explicit instruction that incorporates lots of teacher-directed interaction with students." What this implies for testing, argues Wexler, is that testing for overly abstract skills does students a disservice: "That focus might boost scores in the short-term, at lower grade levels, but it backfires when students reach higher grades. That’s because as grade levels go up, the texts increasingly assume readers are familiar with academic knowledge and vocabulary. Students who haven’t been taught anything about history, geography, or science often lack that knowledge and vocabulary, which means they’ll hit a wall."

Australia Social Media Ban: Cowen: "YouTube in particular, and sometimes X, are among the very best ways to learn about the world. . . . Who is in charge of the family anyway? If I have decided that my 15-year-old should be free to follow Magnus Carlsen on X and YouTube, should we have the boot of the state tell me this is forbidden?" Jon Haidt disagrees of course.

Huemer on AI: Michael Huemer reasonably supposes that AI (at least in the form of LLMs) will have neither revolutionary nor catastrophic impacts. He notes, "The LLMs we’re using have only been trained on sequences of text." They function literally by probabilistically stringing together text based on its textual "training." Huemer: "The AI would only be mining word-sequences that humans have produced and trying to extrapolate to other word-sequences that humans have not yet come up with but that are somehow implied (in a purely syntactic-pattern-matching sense) by the existing word-sequences." That's true; however, humans can use LLMs to find new implications of existing text, then generate and feed more data into the LLMs based on observations of the world and human-style intelligence. I think that will generate important advances. As Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok point out, if LLMs increase GDP growth even by a fraction of a percent, that could have profound consequences over time. See also Adrej Karpathy. Also check out my joking around with ChatGPT.

New Axis: Russia and China threaten Europe.

KFF on Health Insurance: NPR published an editorial masquerading as a news article from the independent outfit KFF arguing that high-deductible health plans are a bad idea. The lead example is about a woman making six figures who was "buried under more than $13,000 in medical debt." I guess that's uniquely a problem, whereas people "burying" themselves under fifty k of car debt is perfectly fine. Anyway, the entire point of high-deductible insurance is to use it with health savings. The article argues that people often don't actually shop by price, ignoring the fact that government has outlawed genuinely high-deductible policies by forcing insurers to cover many sorts of routine and predicted care. KFF correctly points out (and no one has ever doubted) that price-shopping generally is infeasible during a true emergency. But the basic problem is that now everything is run through insurance, whether or not insurance ends up paying for it. What we need to do is move away from employer-provided insurance (a product of stupid federal tax policy) and move to a system where most transactions are cash-out-of-pocket, where people don't even interact with insurance except for unexpected, high-cost care.

Mass Shootings Down: Fingers crossed. The Christian Science Monitor chalks this up largely to better prevention especially in schools.

Benefit of Law: A Man for All Seasons: "What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? . . . And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, . . . the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, . . . do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

Mississippi Miracle? A new paper (via Cowen, see the Chat summary) argues that the "Mississippi Miracle" of improved reading scores might be largely (partly? completely?) the result of holding back third graders who are weaker readers, which obviously would drive up fourth-grade reading scores. But Kelsey Piper replies (and Cowen agrees), "I think the strongest argument is simply that steady improvements in every decile for the last twenty years cannot be explained by a one-off change in which students are retained in 2015."

Against Political Education: Dave Throgmorton writes about how some Ukranian students, educated under the Soviet Union, denied the fact that Stalin murdered millions of Ukranians through starvation. He concludes, "The people deliberately erasing and rewriting the events of Jan. 6 cannot be trusted to write an honest curriculum for a patriotic education." But he doesn't seem to see the broader implications of his concerns!

Outer Space Treaty: Mike Mazza: "The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, like the Antarctic Treaties, had some plausibility in the context of the cold war as a measure to prevent military conflict. However, both treaties enshrined a collectivist opposition to commerce fundamentally incompatible with the recognition of property rights, the essential legal protector of freedom and precondition of technological progress."

Lab Leak: The claim has gotten weaker. ChatGPT reviews Cowen on Centrist Madness.

Aliens: Michael Shermer, of course, is skeptical. Tyler Cowen is slightly less so. I think many people very often are astonishingly good at bullshitting themselves.

Christian Love: Hemant Mehta: "A Minnesota church told kids to hug and forgive their abuser. Then he found more victims."

Nigerian Horrors: NPR: "More than 300 children were abducted in an attack on a Catholic school in Nigeria."

Hate Symbols: AP: After initially designating swastikas and nooses "potentially divisive," the Coast Guard stiffened its language about the prohibition of such symbols in a military context.

Cowen on "Affordability": "Affordability" is the buzzword among many Democrats. Cowen worries: "The affordability mantra too often leads to 'free lunch' thinking and political giveaways. It is a new form of economic populism." Example: I want local governments to free up the housing markets so that developers can increase the stock of housing, which will tend to bring prices down. A lot of leftists sometimes agree with this, but they're also super-excited about subsidized housing and even rent control (an example Cowen mentions). Cowen also mentions Mamdani's terrible idea for government-run grocery stores.

Job Retraining: Surprise, surprise: It's harder to retrain for a job that requires a very-different skill set. This could have big implications for AI job-market disruptions. Cowen link, paper, and Chat summary.

Cowen Interviews Altman: If you want to know about AI trends watch this interview. Among many other things, Altman discusses how OpenAI might take a cut from (say) hotel bookings without sacrificing quality. (I love that everyone can watch these sorts of conversations among some of the world's most interesting people.)

AI and Religion: Cowen describes AIs as "oracles" explaining God or gods, the Bible and other religious works, and religious ideas. He says AIs are raising questions about who we are as humans, our role in the world, and so forth, and he says the most important thinkers of the future will be "religious." But I don't even know what he means by that. If he means people will be interested in questions of metaphysics and values, that's philosophy. Religion most coherently refers to belief in the supernatural. We don't need religion in that sense to consider questions of metaphysics and values. In this discussion with Luke Burgis, Cowen also discusses his views about talent and how to nurture it, and how to adapt in life to AI. Also: There's Chatbot Jesus (or Chatbot Satan if that's more your style).

IQ Heritability: Cowen links to Noah Carl, who links back to Sasha Gusev. I found Chat's walk-through of some other sources helpful.

Ugly New York: Alex Tabarrok: A stupid law incentivizes "400 miles of ugly sheds" in New York City.

Gender Pay Gap: A clever paper by Tatiana Pazem and colleagues (via Cowen) looks at women born without a uterus and finds that the women in the study "perform as well as men in the labor market in the long run. Results confirm that 'child penalties' on the labor market trajectories of women are large and persistent and that they explain the bulk of the remaining gender gap."

Nanotyrannus: I once presumed that "nanotyrannus" was just a juvenile T-Rex. Now it strongly appears that there were actually two species of mini-tyrannosaurs. See the Nature paper.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-66.html.

Tina Peters, DSA, redistricting, Little Saigon, TABOR, crime, housing, AI, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
December 10, 2025

Ari's Recent Columns
• Chair Signals Return to Roots for Colorado's Libertarian Party (Complete)
• Censorship Claim Against History Colorado Fails Smell Test (Complete)
• A Tax-Funded Religious School in Colorado Would Undermine Reality-Based Education (Times Recorder)
• Homeschool Flexibility Optimizes Deep, Adaptive learning (Complete)
• Romanticized Lessons in Democracy a Disservice to Colorado Kids (Complete)
• History Colorado Exhibit Highlights Moments that Made US (Complete)
• Jason Crow Was Right to Warn Against Illegal Orders (Times Recorder)
• Tina Peters Deserved Her Conviction (Complete)

Notes on Peters: Complete Colorado published my article, "Tina Peters Deserved Her Conviction, Just Not a Prison Cell." Here is a line cut from the piece: "Let me say this as clearly as I can: If you are a Republican leader in Colorado, particularly one with past ties to Oltmann, and you do not now publicly and unambiguously condemn Oltmann's antisemitism and pro-violence rhetoric, then you are a coward and an enemy of the rule of just law." Kyle Clark, whom I mention in the piece, graciously says, "As usual, [Ari Armstrong] has a thoughtful take on Colorado's headlines. The libertarian columnist argues that Tina Peters' allies calling for vengeance & mass killings obscures what could be a compelling case for her to leave prison for home detention." I don't explicitly make that argument but it's implicit in what I say. Interestingly, the push-back I got on Bluesky was over calling for lighter punishment for Peters (specifically in-home detention). But, as I replied, I'd argue for the same treatment for any defendant similar to Peters. In-home detention is a severe punishment, and it's a lot cheaper than prison. No defendant, including Peters, should get harsher treatment because of the views of the defendant's allies. That said, Peters's relationship with the likes of Oltmann and Ticktin does bear on the question of whether she'd obey the rules of in-home detention, so I'm not saying in-home detention is a slam-dunk. I have a long history of criticizing inappropriate punishment (as in the case of drug possession "crimes"), over-punishment, and overly severe punishment, and I'm not about to make an exception for Peters just because she and her supporters are horrible people. (Also, I usually don't call myself a "libertarian" anymore because much of the libertarian movement and party have become so corrupted.) Recent news: A federal judge has denied Peters's release while her attorneys work on appealing, and Peters's attorney claims Peters was repeatedly attacked in prison.

Ex-DSA Gonzales: Kyle Clark: "Progressive State Sen. Julie Gonzales is dropping her Democratic Socialist affiliation as she challenges Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO). Gonzales told me she is no longer a member of the DSA." John Frank: "Up and down the ballot, progressives are challenging the Democratic centrist establishment." I doubt this gets very far. Dems didn't win here by being crazy.

Redistricting: Both Michael Bennet and Phil Weiser call for Dem-friendly Congressional redistricting to counter Republican-friendly redistricting elsewhere. I support this. You can't let one party abuse the rules with impunity. Of course it's stupid that we're in this position; we should have solved the gerrymandering problem long ago.

Little Saigon: Congratulations to History Colorado for making the New York Times over its decision to reject a politically charged painting for its Little Saigon exhibit. Read my take. Joia Ha of Colorado Asian Pacific United wrote in, "CAPU that commissioned the pieces, not History Colorado." Jasmine Chu of CAPU wrote in, "After a public RFP process, we selected, commissioned, and paid for Madalyn Drewno's artworks for the 'Big Dreams in Denver's Little Saigon' exhibition; one of the final pieces was removed by History Colorado due to its political content which was not included in Madalyn's original proposal. CAPU did not have a role in the decision to remove the artwork, and we did push to have the piece included or to find a compromise. . . . Since its removal, we have remained committed to opening dialogue, opportunities for repair, and solutions that are mission aligned. . . . We would also like to note that CAPU was not included in the decision to request assistance from NCAC [National Coalition Against Censorship]. . . . The images of the artwork feature community members that did not consent to their image and stories being used for NCAC’s campaign."

Rare TABOR Victory: Rob Natelson: "Metropcs California, LLC v. City of Lakewood should have been a slam-dunk for the taxpayers. In 1969, the City of Lakewood enacted a tax on certain telecommunication businesses. In 1996, the city expanded the services and businesses subject to the tax. In 2015, it did so again. Both expansions were clearly 'new taxes' as TABOR uses that phrase. But Lakewood ignored TABOR and never sent the new taxes to the voters. The only reason the Lakewood case actually was not a slam dunk was that [it] was to be decided by the Colorado Supreme Court, which almost always rules against TABOR. But—mirabile dictu!—the justices finally did the right thing: They ruled unanimously that Lakewood’s 1996 and 2015 measures were new taxes and should have been reviewed by the voters. Pro-TABOR plaintiffs had accomplished an almost unheard feat: They actually had won in the Colorado Supreme Court!"

Murderous Burglar: Denver Post: "Lakewood woman killed in home during suspected burglary, police say." The potential for escalation is one reason why it is crucially important for government to take property crimes seriously! Sun: "Of the 351,283 burglary and theft from building cases [in Colorado from 2014 to 2024], 15% have been cleared." Seems bad!

Government Stupidity: But I repeat myself. Denver Post: "Aurora nudges restaurants to quit automatically serving water as part of effort to count 'every single drop.'"

Polis on Social Media: Westword criticizes Jared Polis for promoting "Richard Hanania and Nicholas Decker on social media." Hanania, at least, has apologized or recanted, however much one might doubt his sincerity. Regardless, I don't see any upside to Polis's remarks.

Housing: KOAA: "Colorado Springs is facing massive housing crisis." Affordability also is rough in rural Colorado. But I certainly don't think the state should be subsidizing housing.

HOAs and ADUs: An HOA in Aurora says a resident may not rent out the basement. I'm conflicted about this. On one hand, I think people have the right to join HOAs. On the other hand, a rule against renting out the basement is obviously stupid. The state should not push people into HOAs in a way that does not involve genuine consent. The people within an HOA (collectively) should be able to escape the HOA if it no longer serves their interests. Obviously existing HOAs can and should eliminate stupid rules. And local governments certainly should not restrict the development and use of housing. The key problem is local governments have place severe restrictions on most aspects of the housing market.

Literacy Is Justice: Jenny Brundin: The Rocky Mountain Prep charter network is paying parents to serve as literacy tutors. "Trained parent tutors were just as effective as classroom teachers in helping students make literacy gains."

Bennet on Cap-and-Spend: CPR: Michael Bennet wants to establish "a declining cap on climate-warming emissions," then "issue or sell a limited number of [emission] permits each year." Apparently he wants to direct the revenues raised toward private and corporate welfare projects. Bad idea.

Hemp: CBS: "Colorado hemp producers and sellers stunned by new federal limits on THC products." So stupid.

Greystar Settlement: Greystar settled with the AG over claims that the housing company misled people about fees. Assuming the facts are as Phil Weiser states, offhand this seems reasonable.

Wage Controls: Even Boulder is worried about the harmful effects of minimum wage hikes.

Drug Busts: "Record breaking" drug busts in Colorado don't do much in terms of street availability, CPR points out. The main effect of government action is to stir the criminal pot, which often leads to more turf-war violence. But I guess we're going to keep fighting the drug war, regardless of how ineffective it is and how much violence it generates.

AI Regs: NYT: "Trump Promises Executive Order to Block State A.I. Regulations." This probably will affect Colorado. I'll maintain the standard libertarian skepticism about new regulations while noting that I have not deeply studied the relevant issues. I do think carefully designed regulations that protect people's (actual) rights can be a good idea, but those are not usually the sorts of rules that regulators come up with! Axios reviews the approach of the Colorado legislature. Some Colorado parents are advocating for harsher restrictions, but, I reply, parents have the responsibility to monitor their childrens' use of social media, and other things, to ensure safety. Government isn't supposed to be the parent.

Digital Threats: Andrea Dukakis: "Jefferson County Sheriff Reggie Marinelli . . . wants a new Colorado law that requires social media companies to respond more quickly when authorities want digital information on users posting violent or threatening content."

Sean Beedle: You will see a new name at the progressive Colorado Times Recorder (where I write a column): Sean Beedle. But the reporter is the same Beedle, formerly known as Heidi. Beedle announced the name change at the end of a recent CTR podcast (44:59 minute marker). "I am, once again, identifying with my birth sex. I am a man," Beedle said.

School Boards: Ann Schimke: Progressives won a lot.

Tax-Funded Christian School: A Christian school in Pueblo may not become the test case its supporters hoped given the school is struggling with health and safety regs.

JeffCo Schools: The district is shrinking. So of course district leaders want a tax hike.

International Students: CPR: Colorado is losing some of them.

Dam Uranium: So there's some uranium in the rocks planned for a dam in northern Colorado. Okay, there's trace uranium all over Colorado. How much is in the rocks at the dam? Unknown. Is this a problem, at all? Unknown.

Leave It to Beavers: Colorado wildlife has a plan.

Denver Community-Led Safety: In a November 4 email, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition reported, "The Denver City Council voted 13–0 to approve $3.1 million for a new Community-Led Safety Grant Program."

Hate Speech in Broomfield: After someone spray-painted a swastika on the sign for Beautiful Savior Church in Broomfield, "city officials and church leaders" issued a "joint message titled 'Hate has no place in Broomfield,'" 9News reported. (It's not clear to me whether the vandal meant to promote Nazi ideas or to criticize the church somehow; either way vandalism is bad and this particular tag was especially ugly.)

Stay Classy Boebert: For Halloween Rep. Lauren Boebert dressed up as an Hispanic woman worried about ICE. For good measure Boebert mocked the "Mexican" accent. To state the obvious, she is not a good person.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-139.html.

Trump's authoritarianism, immigration cruelty, Gaza, trade wars, antifa, Mounk and Rufo, literacy, crime, Vance sees demons, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
November 3, 2025

Trump's Authoritarianism

Trump Is a Mass-Murderer: The U.S. military under Donald Trump now has murdered at least 61 people for allegedly smuggling drugs in boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. The term "murder" applies even if those killed really were smuggling drugs into the U.S., although there's some argument that the killings were justifiable if those killed were drug smugglers connected to such violent organizations as Tren de Aragua. One problem is that evidence that those killed really were drug smugglers is scant at best. See articles by Jacob Sullum and Ilya Somin. Somin writes, "These attacks are both illegal and unjust. . . . Drug smuggling is, at most, a criminal law issue, not an act of war. And, in many cases, the people targeted either were not actually smuggling drugs or were not on their way to the US." See also commentary by Walter Olson.

Wehner on Trump's Authoritarianism: Peter Wehner: "Trump . . . has never tried to hide his malice, his lawlessness, or his desire to inflict pain on others. . . . It's getting ever harder to avoid connecting the authoritarian dots. Trump is in the process of building his own paramilitary force. He is invoking wartime powers to deport people without due process, even suggesting that American citizens may be sent to foreign prisons. He has deployed National Guard troops to cities over the objections of local officials. . . . Trump has signaled that he is open to invoking the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows the president to deploy the military in the United States. And he has claimed, without legal justification, that he has the right to order the military to summarily kill people suspected of smuggling drugs on boats off the coast of South America."

Trump's Anti-Constitutionalism: Trump again teased a third term, and he continues to conspiracy-monger about the 2020 elections, which functions among the weak-minded as some sort of pretext for another run. This is extremely dangerous, and Trump supporters who fail to speak out against it are openly courting dictatorship.

Partridge on Trump's Authoritarianism: Roger Partridge: "Trump's systematic capture of law enforcement, regulatory agencies, and emergency powers achieves tyranny in all but duration—authoritarian control operating through constitutional forms. . . . Across multiple domains—law enforcement, regulation, press freedom, and emergency powers—Trump has systematically converted democratic institutions into instruments of personal will. The result weaponizes federal powers to punish opponents and reward loyalty. The methods may be legal in form. But the function remains authoritarian."

Bauer and Goldsmith on the Insurrection Act: Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith write, "The Insurrection Act is a dangerous law that gives the president broad powers to authorize far-reaching uses of the military in the domestic sphere. It is based on highly permissive standards for action and provides neither a role for Congress nor a basis for serious judicial review. . . . Now, in the second Trump administration, the president is threatening to invoke it for sweeping domestic military deployments in big cities across the country." Trump's abuses have been made possible by decades of governmental negligence and irresponsibility.

Tracinski on NSPM-7: "Everyone's a terrorist," potentially, if Trump gets his way, as Robert Tracinski explains. According to this "National Security Presidential Memorandum," expressing "anti-Christianity" is considered a marker of terrorism. That's all atheists.

Self-Enrichment: Tracinski: "Trump Is Using His Office to Enrich Himself and His Family."

Swartz on the Federal Police Force: Jacob Swartz: "Trump's National Guard Plan Edges the U.S. Closer to a Permanent Federal Police Force."

An Immigration Policy of Cruelty

ICE Locks Up Father and Children on Way to School: Allison Sherry: "ICE officers picked up a father and his two children as they were going to school" in Durango, Colorado. At a protest an ICE agent reportedly threw "an elderly woman to the ground." "Durango Police said they asked if they could help unite the children with the mother and were told by federal authorities that it was no longer an option. . . . Police say they received a call that one of the children was in distress and tried to do a welfare check at the ICE facility in Durango. They were not allowed inside. . . . The family is from Colombia and seeking asylum and has a pending asylum claim. . . . ICE has transferred the two children to an undisclosed location separate from their father." This is horrifying. This is not "Making America Great Again." This is state-sponsored terror. Denver7: "A Colombian man and his two children endured '36 hours in a dungeon' during their detainment at the ICE field office in Durango. . . . The Denver Post reported . . . the agency had mistaken the father for somebody else." ICE had no warrant. See more from Colorado Newsline, CPR and again, the Denver Post, and the Colorado Sun and again.

ICE Locks Up Teacher and Children: Ann Schimke: "A fifth grade teacher from a metro Denver charter school was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. . . . The teacher is now being held with family members, including minor children, in a Texas detention center. . . . The teacher was arrested with her family . . . during a routine immigration appointment at a Centennial ICE office." Denver Post: "Douglas County teacher arrested by ICE had legal authorization to work, school says." Locking teachers and children in cages is not "Making America Great Again."

Warrantless Arrests: Allison Sherry: "Federal judge to hear lawsuit on ICE carrying out 'warrantless' arrests in Colorado."

ICE Breaks Man's Ribs: Daily Beast: Immigration agents raided a Halloween party in Chicago. "A 67-year-old U.S. citizen allegedly suffered six broken ribs and internal bleeding when he was dragged from his car and pinned to the street by federal agents in an immigration sweep carried out in front of terrified children." This is state-sponsored terror.

ICE as Retribution: CNN: "A DACA recipient objected to ICE's detention of a community member. He's now facing deportation."

Nicolais on ICE Leadership: Mario Nicolais: "Immigration and Customs Enforcement leadership in five major cities, including Denver, have been pushed aside to make way for more hardline Border Patrol agents. . . . For many the jackboot tactics are a feature, not a bug."

ICE Arrests Citizen Twice: Reason: "An Alabama construction worker [Leo Garcia Venegas] is challenging the Trump administration's warrantless construction site raids after he says he was arrested and detained by federal immigration agents–twice–despite being a U.S. citizen with a valid ID in his pocket." ProPublica: "We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They've Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days."

ICE Violence: Reason: "Federal Immigration Agents Accused of Tear-Gassing Peaceful Protestors, Pointing Gun at Veterans in Chicago." Also: "ICE Spent Over $71 Million on Guns, Armor, and Chemical Munitions in 2025 So Far." Also: "ICE Is Mounting a Mass Surveillance Campaign on American Citizens." NPR: "It's the deadliest year for people in ICE custody in decades; next year could be worse."

ICE Harassment: Nick Gillespie, posting a video of a woman harassed by ICE, writes, "Masked agents harassing people in Walmart parking lots about where they were born. If you've got a legitimate suspicion of criminal activity, detain someone and follow due process. Otherwise, stop."

Destroying Families: A man from Kenya, "an immigrant living in the US without permanent residency," self-deported to Kenya, leaving his wife and three children behind, CNN reports. This is your "pro-family" conservative movement at work.

Salt Lake Airport Raid: Unidentified ICE agents dragged a women screaming through the Salt Lake airport.

Many Adopted Children Lack Citizenship: This is crazy: Upwards of 75,000 children adopted by U.S. parents lack citizenship.

The New Dred Scott: Frank Robinson: "In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the infamous Dred Scott decision, ruled (actual quote) that Black people 'had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.' On September 8, 2025, in Noem v. Vazquez Perdomo, the court went one better: nobody has any rights. . . . The . . . ruling allows ICE officers to seize people even absent any such notional offense. Just on vague suspicion, how they look or talk, etc. Mainly racial profiling."

The Gaza Deal

We celebrate the release of the remaining living Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. Donald Trump deserves substantial credit for helping secure the release (see his speech). But I worry that Trump was too quick to take a victory lap. I'm optimistic, but cautiously so.

Hamas did not immediately release the bodies of murdered hostages as promised. Hamas immediately started murdering political rivals, declaring "death to collaborators," killings Trump rationalized as anti-crime measures.

As of October 16, Trump was discussing the possibility of renewed strikes. On October 19, Axios reported, "U.S. scrambles to save Gaza peace deal amid new clashes."

In exchange for the hostages, Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners, including "250 Palestinians sentenced to prison terms, most of them convicted for deadly attacks on Israelis," NPR reports. Beyond the fact that those people are highly dangerous, I worry that the "deal" sends a strong signal to Hamas and other nefarious actors that, if they want to get U.S.-backed concessions, the way to do that is to capture a bunch of hostages. There's a reason why "don't negotiate with terrorists" is standard wisdom.

Another problem: Trump promised to next apply his "art of the deal" to the Russia conflict. But, even conceding negotiations worked relatively well in the case of Israel-Palestine, I doubt they work as well with Russia. The basic problem with such "dealing" is that it tends to concede ground to the aggressor, in this case Putin. Insofar as that's the case, the long-term message is, if you want to seize an inch, threaten a seize a mile, and you might get two or three inches out of the "deal." Thus can "dealing" create incentives for periodic aggression.

More Trump and GOP Updates

Trump Goes Nuclear: Trump is threatening to resume nuclear testing. Unsurprisingly, Russia is threatening to do likewise. But as of November 2 it seems like Trump may be backing down.

Trump and Venezuela: Trump and MAGA are strictly nationalists and anti-war except for when they're not. Atlantic: "The U.S. Is Preparing for War in Venezuela."

Kaminski Versus Heritage: Ross Kaminsky calls out the Heritage Foundation for excusing the racist evil of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. See also David Bernstein and Ali Breland.

Trump's Price Controls: CNBC: "Trump administration will set price floors across range of industries to combat China, [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent says." Because we can't defeat socialism without central planning and price controls.

Trump's Trade Wars: Noah Smith writes of the "hapless Americans" trying to win a trade war with China. Smith describes the "common caricature of Trump as a cowardly bully who acts with extreme aggression toward weak opponents, but who retreats from any rival who stands up and hits back." This is ominous: "The obvious next set of demands is geopolitical—control of Taiwan, dominion over the South China Sea, U.S. troops and ships out of Asia, and so on." To me (and I think to Smith) the answer on rare-earths is obvious: We have to free up our own mining of rare-earth metals. Consider this headline from last year: "Rare earth minerals found in Utah, Colorado, are critical for cleaner energy sources." See also Tabarrok's post. Meanwhile, Trump's general tariff policy is doing plenty of damage domestically. Trump's idea of "Making America Great Again" is to punish businesses with higher taxes and deprive businesses of workers.

Young Republicans: Politico: "'I love Hitler': Leaked messages expose Young Republicans' racist chat: Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape." Vance isn't too worried about it. No, we're not talking about "kids."

Unhealthy RFK: Washington Post: "As former U.S. surgeons general appointed by every Republican and Democratic president since George H.W. Bush . . . we took two sacred oaths in our lifetimes: first, as physicians who swore to care for our patients and, second, as public servants who committed to protecting the health of all Americans. Today [October 7], in keeping with those oaths, we are compelled to speak with one voice to say that the actions of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are endangering the health of the nation. . . . Science and expertise have taken a back seat to ideology and misinformation."

Racist MAGA: David Brooks: "MAGA is identity politics for white people."

Free Speech? New York Times: The U.S. government has revoked the visa of Sami Hamdi, apparently because of his criticism of Israel. MAGA is all for free speech unless it's speech they disagree with.

Breast Cancer Crossover: ProPublica: "Citing Trump Order on 'Biological Truth,' VA Makes It Harder for Male Veterans With Breast Cancer to Get Coverage."

More Tylenol: Stat: "Texas lawsuit against companies behind Tylenol asserts unproven claims of autism risk." Remember when conservatives used to be against politically motivated attacks on businesses?

Quick Takes

A Note on Antifa: Obviously the Trump administration is wrong to declare "Antifa" a terrorist organization; it's not an organization at all, and most people who claim to be antifa are not violent. At the same time, it is wrong simply to say that "antifa" means anti-fascist, end of story. For the most part, the people who call themselves "antifa" mean by that term that they are hard-left protesters, often who employ or at least tolerate violence during protests, when "punching Nazis," and so on. Here is Wikipedia: "Antifa political activism includes nonviolent methods of direct action such as poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, speeches, protest marches, and community organizing. Some who identify as antifa also use tactics involving digital activism, doxing, harassment, violence, and property damage. Supporters of the movement aim to combat far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis and white supremacists." So certainly I'm anti-fascist, certainly I'm against white supremacists, but that doesn't mean I line up with the antifa movement.

ARI vs. Mounk and Rufo: Team Ayn Rand Institute takes on Yascha Mounk and Chris Rufo in a recent discussion featuring Sam Weaver, Ben Bayer, Nikos Sotirakopoulos, and Ibis Slade. I'm very glad to see these intellectuals take on such important ideas. Team ARI overall agrees with the criticisms of "woke," identity-based politics. Bayer prefers the terms egalitarian collectivism or tribalism to describe the ideas in question. Slade points out that conservatism has its own strains of egalitarian collectivism. Bayer says Mounk does a better job than Rufo of tracking the ideas behind the movement both writers criticize. Bayer also points out that the same Christian doctrines that influence conservatives also influence leftist egalitarian collectivists. The ARI speakers also point out that Rufo self-consciously embraces many of the tactics for which he criticizes the left. And Mounk, argues Slade, has his own tribalist or collectivist commitments. Still, Sotirakopoulos argues, Mounk's book at least at some level well-explains the ideas it criticizes, and, Slade argues, Mounk overall tries to promote America's best founding ideals.

Declining Literacy: Idrees Kahloon chalks up the decline in student literacy to "a pervasive refusal to hold children to high standards." He writes, "Schools have demanded less and less from students—who have responded, predictably, by giving less and less." A key line: "When I computed the correlation between . . . demographically adjusted scores and state spending, I found that there was none. If you're an underprivileged kid in America, you will, on average, get the best education not in rich Massachusetts but in poor Mississippi, where per-pupil spending is half as high." Mississippi emphasized a literacy exam, screening, phonics-based training, and literacy coaches. Other points: Some charter networks have done very well, merit-based pay probably works. See also NPR on the latest poor test results.

Solow Growth: Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok discuss (among other things) the Solow model of capital formation. The basic idea is that the first capital you build is relatively easy to build and relatively productive, and, as you build more capital, you have to spend more resources maintaining it. Tabarrok also has a talk and a short video on the topic.

MR on Crime: Cowen and Tabarrok also address the 1970s crime wave. They discuss several possible likely contributors: a younger population, relatively high lead levels, urbanization, social contagion, and overwhelm of the criminal justice system. Cowen also discusses local losses of industrial jobs, which can lead to decline. And Cowen discusses the violence of the black market drug trade; this lines up with Jeffrey Miron's 2004 book Drug War Crimes. Both economists are very worried about potential problems of contagion and overwhelm, which could plunge us into a new crime wave. (Mass shootings already seem driven largely by contagion.) Tabarrok's sensible solution is to double the number of police in the U.S.

MR on Commercial Culture: But wait there's more! Cowen and Tabarrok discuss Cowen's 1998 In Praise of Commercial Culture. Cowen's main thesis is that, contra popular views, the arts are not inherently tainted by capitalism or financial concerns. Instead, as the summary says, "commerce disciplines and amplifies creativity." Great discussion.

Cowen on AIs: Cowen discusses all sorts of things with Rick Rubin; I especially liked the commentary about AI models. Cowen asks ChatGPT some things on the fly. Cowen also points out that the Gulf states (particularly UAE) likely will start building nuclear plants and solar farms to power AI data centers. The United States should be on the forefront of such developments but we'll probably screw ourselves. Sigh.

Tsoungui Drums "Limelight": Philo Tsoungui, drummer for Mars Volta (example one, example two), created a new drum part for Rush's "Limelight," having never heard the song before, and without hearing Neil Peart's part. This was for a video by Drumeo. She did an amazing job creating a very passable all new part in a very short time, and I had a fun time hearing a new take on the song.

Florida Schools Phone Ban: Chalkbeat reports results from an NBER working paper claiming that Florida's bans on phones in schools improved test scores, although mostly by improving attendance (odd). But (via Cowen), Chris Ferguson is skeptical, saying "the effect size is near zero," "it conflicts with NAEP data which shows a Florida state-wide decline in standardized scores after implementing cellphone bans," and "there's no control group."

Inflation Coming? John Cochrane is worried about the teriffs (via Cowen).

Rao on Progress: Arun Rao has a lot of thoughts flowing from the recent Roots of Progress conference (again via Cowen). The world is moving fast!

Microplastics: Maybe they're overhyped? Via Cowen. I think it's something to worry about, but how much? Also: Are microplastics really that much worse that small particles of other substances? And what are the alternatives to plastics? Tradeoffs matter.

NIMBY Is Anti-Human: NPR: "Families say cost of housing means they'll have fewer or no children."

Tabarrok on Canada's Private Air Traffic Control: Semi-private, anyway. Alex Tabarrok: "It's absurd that a mission‑critical service is financed by annual appropriations subject to political failure. We need to remove the politics. Canada fixed this in 1996 by spinning off air navigation services to NAV CANADA, a private, non‑profit utility funded by user fees, not taxes. Safety regulation stayed with the government; operations moved to a professionally governed, bond‑financed utility with multi‑year budgets. NAV Canada has been instrumental in moving Canada to more accurate and safer satellite-based navigation, rather than relying on ground-based radar as in the US."

Vance Channels Douthat: J. D. Vance sounds exactly like Ross Douthat: "I'm a big believer that there are things out there we can't explain. If another person sees an alien, maybe I see an angel or a demon. I'm a big believer that there are like spiritual forces working on the physical world that a lot of us don't see and a lot of us don't understand.” Although I can't rule out alien visitations, I think that if aliens really were visiting Earth the evidence would be profound and unmistakable. So I tend to interpret such "evidence" as a combination of ambiguous observations, wishful thinking, and psychosis. But to stretch such "evidence" to "explain" a demon-haunted world is absurd. See my essay on Douthat.

Mass Carnage: Mass murders in Darfur and Sudan. Will the human species ever get its act together?

Covid and Autism: There appears to be some association between severe Covid (SARS-CoV-2) infection and increased incidence of autism. This does not prove a causal link! It suggests there might be one. The more pressing question is whether vaccination mitigates the risk (if indeed it's a risk).

Wage Gap: Via Cowen: Women unable to have children did "as well as men in the labor market in the long run," suggesting that "'child penalties' on the labor market trajectories of women are large and persistent and that they explain the bulk of the remaining gender gap."

Youth Like Socialism: Axios: "67% of survey respondents say they hold a positive or neutral association with the word 'socialism,' compared with 40% with the word 'capitalism.'" Socialists slaughtered scores of millions of people in the Twentieth Century, and the two worst mass-murderers in terms of numbers of victims were socialists Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. Meanwhile, capitalism has radically improved living standards and lifted much of the world from extreme poverty. Part of the problem is branding. "Socialism" is the appropriate term for capitalism, as capitalism rests on voluntary social transactions that promote social harmony. The better term for socialism is something like "coercionism."

Nanotyrannus: I'd assumed that "nanotyrannus" was just a phantom classification for fossils of young T. Rex. But a new paper claims to "conclusively" show that Nanotyrannus is real, and indeed two distinct species. See also Live Science, NPR, and the New York Times. I'll wait a while to see if the experts agree this is the new consensus.

Profit-Driven Health Care: Writers for Stat say "The U.S. experiment with profit-driven health care has failed." No. The experiment with government-controlled health care has failed.

Peanuts: Telling parents not to expose their babies to peanuts turned out to be horrible advice. Now that advice has changed, peanut allergies have declined, reports NPR. This is a good example of the self-correcting tendencies of science.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-65.html.

Dinosaur Ridge destruction, conversion therapy, a Boulder racist, Colorado crime, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
November 3, 2025

Ari's Recent Columns at Complete Colorado and the Colorado Times Recorder:
• Bureaucrats dither as Colorado dinosaur tracks fade away
• Much of Colorado public education a slow-rolling disaster
• Path to Camp Amache ran through Denver’s Chinatown
• When cancel culture came for a Wheat Ridge brewpub
• Colorado 'free' school lunch measures wrong policy for problem
• Amache: The sordid story of Japanese internment in Colorado
• 'Land-use socialism' on the local ballot in Littleton
• Debunking a seance scam: Colorado's original ghost busters
• When Harry Houdini exposed Denver's spirit photographers
• Gov. Candidate Offers No Campaign Promises, Instead Pitches 'Unseen War' with 'Demons'

Dinosaur Ridge Degradation: As I've written, the the main trackway at Dinosaur Ridge is rapidly degrading. A recent article in the Jeffco Transcript is somewhat more optimistic. But if you go look at the tracks for yourself, you will plainly see the problems. Here are three photos I recently took of the site. You can see cracking and sluffing rocks, failed retaining walls, root wedging, poor water drainage, and a failed water retention wall.

Polis on City Cast: "Gov. Jared Polis on RTD's Failures, Taking On NIMBYs, and His Plans for the Future." Polis discusses the "abundance agenda." He correctly explains that high housing costs are largely caused by government-constrained supply.

Sandefur on Conversion Therapy: Timothy Sandefur of the Goldwater Institute writes, "Conversion therapy–at least, the kind offered by counselor Kaley Chiles, the plaintiff in the Colorado lawsuit–isn't like other kinds of treatment. It involves no medical intervention. It consists exclusively of talking. . . . People have the right to communicate, even if their words might seem foolish or dangerous to others." Here is the key point that Sandefur does not cover here: At issue are the rights of the minors receiving the "therapy." It would be very strange to say that a minor has the right to consent to transgender-affirming health care but does not have the right to consent to conversion therapy. Yet that is the standard leftist position. On the other hand, forcing a minor into conversion therapy could amount to child abuse. Compare: Would we let parents take their child to a "counselor" who urged the child to commit suicide? Obviously not. So the issue is not just that adults have the right to freedom of speech. The issue is that minors have rights too, and subjecting minors to certain forms of speech without their genuine consent can violate their rights. In short, minors have the right to consent to conversion therapy and the right to avoid it.

Boulder Racist Attacked: Nathaniel Ellis, secretary for CU Boulder's Turning Point USA, is on film saying he wants to depart Black Americans and saying, "I'm actually racist. I'm just straight-up racist." Front Range Anti-Fascists posted flyers about Ellis, and someone allegedly yelled "f*** you, fascist, "before striking Ellis on the head" with a hockey stick, Westword reports. See also Fox31. This illustrates our predicament. People who flirt with neo-Nazi ideas and who proclaim themselves to be racists are genuinely evil people (capable of reform). At the same time, they have a right to voice their views without fear of violence. If there is no free speech for racists, there is no free speech. A major problem with the so-called "antifa" movement is that its members often equate violence with speech, so they undermine their ability to defeat racism ideologically.

What the Flock? Olivia Prentzel: "After police used Flock cameras to accuse a Denver woman of theft, she had to prove her own innocence." See also 9News. Kyle Harris: "The Denver Police Department has signed a free trial contract with Flock to use the company's Aerodome flying drones."

Health Insurance Hike: John Daley: "Congress failed to extend tax credits to help people pay for health insurance on state marketplaces. Now hundreds of thousands of Coloradans will see their costs double."

Masters Film: A teaser for Peace Officer, a film about Bill Masters, Colorado's longest-serving sheriff, is out. See also the article by Jason Blevins.

Colorado Crime: In a recent fundraising email for Coloradans for Common Sense, a pro-Republican group, Mark Hillman says, "Since 2017, violent crime has risen faster in Colorado than in 48 other states. Car theft is rampant, violent crime is surging, sex crimes are soaring, drug use is pervasive." ChatGPT finds support for Hillman's claims for the period from 2017 to 2022. However, it's also true that crime mostly has decreased since 2022. Here's a recent report from Colorado Politics: "Violent and property crime rates in Denver and Aurora saw sharp declines over three years. . . . Denver's crime rates declined steadily since 2022. . . . Still, Denver topped the list of cities in violent crimes, with more than 234 per 100,000 people. . . . Aurora also saw a noticeable decline since its 2022 apex." The paper cites an October 28 report from the conservative Common Sense Institute.

Domestic Murders: CPR citing the AG: "Of the domestic violence deaths in 2024, 38 were victims; 26 were perpetrators, some of whom died by suicide or were killed by police; and eight were considered 'collateral deaths,' all of whom were children under the age of eight. . . . Five of the children were killed amid custody disputes between their parents, highlighting custody litigation as a high-risk period for families experiencing domestic violence."

Westy Teen Attacked: Fox31: Allegedly a woman and a teen attacked another 16-year-old girl inside a Westminster store, "as employees and other customers watched." Fox31 reports, "The teen says a supervisor later stepped in and handled the situation. . . . Many businesses do not allow employees to become involved in conflicts or apprehend suspects for their own safety. In some cases, doing so is a strict violation of company policies and can result in dismissal." Okay, that's crazy, and anyway it doesn't explain why others apparently stood by and did nothing.

Not Posting Rent: Denver Post: "The Denver Post has not paid more than $2 million in rent to the city as the newspaper attempts to buy out its long-term lease of the 11-story building it once called home." Maybe the city should not be in the real-estate business?

Montezuma Schools: I've glanced at articles about Montezuma-Cortez School District superintendent Tom Burris from the Colorado Times Recorder and the Durango Herald. I'm not going to spend the time to try to figure out what's going on. It does seem clear, though, that the underlying bureaucratic and political system gave rise to the tensions.

Commerce City Homeless: Fox31: "The city's plan to get them off the streets is twofold: Offer services to those experiencing homelessness while also clearing encampments from public spaces like parks and sidewalks." Another needed key policy is to free up the housing market.

Wolves: I think the wolf reintroduction plan was ill-conceived, but I don't see why the federal government is getting involved (beyond just partisan payoff politics). Specifically, per the AP, the feds are barring Colorado from getting wolves from Canada.

Medicaid Spending Out of Control: So says Democratic Governor Jared Polis.

Anti-Trans Catholics: James O'Rourke: "Colorado's Catholic Bishops have directed parishioners to gather signatures at church to place anti-trans initiatives on next year's election ballot."

Murder In the Sky: In 1955, a Colorado man murdered 44 people by giving his mother "dynamite wrapped as a Christmas gift," reports CPR. The man had purchased flight insurance for his mother. History Colorado also has a small exhibit about the crime.

Pettersen Induced: Rep. Brittany Pettersen had to be induced because her child's heart rate was low and had "the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck." Scary.

Church Housing: The Montrose Methodist Church is in a fight with the city over homeless people "camping" on church land.

Denver Horror Collective: It exists, and it has out a book of short stories.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-138.html.

Weiser is best positioned to take on Trump.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
October 21, 2025

National politics should not matter in races for governor. But Donald Trump and his stooges, with the support of decades of Congressional ineptitude and malfeasance, have made them matter. Indeed, they are now what matter most to the well-being of Coloradans, which indicates how far we've strayed from the Founder's conception of federalism.

Between Phil Weiser and Michael Bennet, Weiser, now Colorado's Attorney General, clearly is the far better candidate for governor in terms of who is best positioned to challenge Trump's overreaches. As of early August, Weiser as AG had sued Trump 37 times, notes the Colorado Sun.

This is not about whether I agree with all of Weiser's lawsuits. I don't. For example, Weiser's suit over gun trigger regulations involving a New Jersey case seems completely inappropriate for the Colorado AG. (This is a matter of Congressional action.) This is about Weiser's ability and inclination to stand up for Coloradans in the courts and in the court of public opinion in the face of improper federal interference. That is why I plan to vote for Weiser in the primary and urge others to do likewise.

This is a hard pill for me to swallow. In terms of state policy, I think Weiser will be a disaster. I doubt Weiser could name a single realistic business regulation or tax-hike proposal that he'd oppose. Jared Polis almost always pretended he couldn't find his veto pen in the face of legislative insanity, but at least once in a while Polis would bring to bear his anemic libertarian side. I have no doubt that Weiser will enthusiastically sign every damned bill the legislature puts forth expanding the power of state politicians and bureaucrats.

In my perfect world, Phil Weiser never would be governor of Colorado; but, then again, Donald Trump never would be president of the United States. We are where we are. And we face the choices we face. So I will vote for Weiser and try not to crack my molars in the process.

In case you needed another reason to vote for Weiser, that meddling statist Michael Bloomberg recently gave $500,000 to a PAc backing Bennet, the Sun reports. (Bloomberg also contributed big money to the nanny-statist Denver effort to ban flavored tobacco.)

What tipped me over the edge was Weiser's October 11 article, "A Republic, As Long As We Can Keep It." He starts off by quoting Reagan: "Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction." Okay, you had me at "freedom."

Weiser writes:

Our founders fought for independence from a king, recognized the risks of a standing army that operated as an occupying force in our communities, were committed to a system where laws were administered fairly and equally, and safeguarded our freedom of speech. . . .

At this perilous moment, we are witnessing historic attacks on our fundamental freedoms. These attacks—on law enforcement in blue states; on the rule of law that requires prosecutions be based on the law and the evidence, not used as a tool to harass opponents (or reward allies); and on the freedom of speech (by television networks and others)—are lawless, dangerous, and reckless. We cannot be silenced or bow down to the Trump administration in the face of such intimidation. Rather, when dealing with a lawless bully, the only response is to stand strong for your principles and fight like hell for what you believe in.

Yes, yes, yes. This is exactly what we need right now in a state leader.

Meanwhile, who is Bennet, and what does he stand for? Since Bennet joined the Senate in 2009, the term that has come most readily to my mind is "empty suit." (Okay, there's the child tax credit. Chat offers a policy comparison.)

I think Bennet might push back slightly more on bad bills, but maybe not. The same PAC that, shamefully, accepted a check from that meddling statist Bloomberg also took money from a charter-school group, so maybe there's some reason to think Bennet would be slightly less horrible on school choice. But, again, these are not the things that most matter right now. Right now what we most need is someone who will fight like hell against federal overreach.

Phil Weiser is that person.

(By the way, both Weiser and Bennet are welcome to send me their replies, say up to 1500 words, and I'll publish them below if I receive them.)

What About Kirkmeyer?

Just because I endorse Weiser in the primary, does that mean I'll endorse him in the general? Bluntly, it doesn't matter. The Democrat almost certainly will win.

Barb Kirkmeyer recently bragged that she'd "raised almost as much money as every other Republican candidate in the race combined to date." Okay, but the same tally shows she raised only a small fraction of what either Bennet or Weiser has raised.

Kirkmeyer is a relatively sane and responsible Republican politician (a rare animal in Colorado politics these days). I have no doubt that she would veto a lot of bills that I'd oppose, and in that respect she'd be a governor far more to my liking.

At the same time, Kirkmeyer once endorsed the anti-abortion "personhood" measure, which by itself means she cannot win a statewide race in Colorado.

The only race that matters here is the Democratic primary. And, again, for that I support Weiser.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/25-weiser.html.