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.

Authoritarianism, Trump, ICE, Rush, immigration, mind, Substack, Kirk, guns, autism, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
October 12, 2025

Trump Authoritarianism Watch

War from Within: Donald Trump encouraged U.S. military leaders to wage "war from within," to use allegedly "dangerous cities as training grounds for our military," to defeat "the enemy within." This is pure authoritarianism. It's still astonishing to me that the flag-waving, Constitution-citing, law-and-order, "never again" conservatives are the ones who have brought us to the brink of fascism.

Last on Chicago Assault: Jonathan Last: "Trump . . . not only activated and took command of the Illinois National Guard, but just in case the hometown troops are not willing to do his bidding, he has shipped in National Guard troops from a politically reliable territory. . . . There is no crisis in Chicago that requires the National Guard. To the extent that there is civil instability in Chicago it has been caused by Trump's surge of federal agents into the city and their lawless assault on the citizens of Chicago."

Binswanger on Trump's Authoritarianism: Harry Binswanger: "As with monarchs of old, Donald Trump's domain is . . . whatever he says it is. Tariffs, funding for ivy league colleges, electric vs. gasoline vehicles, arms for Ukraine, whether Israel may take over the West Bank, a comedian's statements about Charlie Kirk, a Federal Reserve official's mortgage application—anything and everything has to be pleaded at the monarch's feet. . . . None of Trump's headline-grabbing lurches apply legitimate powers of the president. No American president has any business intervening in the affairs of private entities. . . . Trump wants the military to act domestically . . . to defend his hold on power. Against what? Free elections."

Greenhut on Trump's Authoritarianism: Steven Greenhut: "Every American who is concerned about the state of our liberties ought to find harrowing President Donald Trump's recent declaration that the National Guard is now in place in Portland, Oregon. . . . There are some protests against ICE's increasingly abusive raids and detentions, but this is nothing more than a pretext to exert federal control over cities."

Yglesias on Trump's Authoritarianism: Matthew Yglesias: "Trump is fanning the flames of crisis and claiming that, for some reason, the country urgently needs totally unprecedented troop deployments in American cities. . . . Because they [Trump conservatives], in fact, are authoritarians, they think it's a good idea to seize on crisis to assert executive power and destroy civil liberties."

Letitia James Indicted: New York Times: "A prosecutor handpicked by President Trump secured an indictment of New York's attorney general, Letitia James, on bank fraud and false statement charges in the Eastern District of Virginia on Thursday after the president publicly demanded Ms. James be charged." It could not be more clear that this is a case of first selecting the criminal and then finding the crime.

Cowen on Trump's Socialism: It's darkly humorous how many people voted for Trump because he allegedly opposed socialism. Those same people mostly are quiet now!

Miller's Zero-Sum Mentality: Stephen Miller said "the Black people in Chicago are thrilled that we're getting the illegal aliens out of their communities who are stealing their housing, jobs, and resources." That is, of course, a lie. Someone who accepts a freely offered job, rents a freely offered residence, or purchases a freely offered good or service does not "steal" those things. True, government in many ways mucks up the relevant markets through housing restrictions, wage controls, and business-crushing taxes and regulations, but those aren't the fault of immigrants. Miller's zero-sum thinking is worse than anything on the left; it is socialism for racist morons.

The 82nd: The Trump administration seriously discussed sending the Army's 82nd Airborne into Portland.

Rand Paul on Boat Strikes: He writes: "At the very least, the government should explain how the gang came to be labelled as terrorists. . . . The blow-them-to-smithereens crowd also conveniently ignores the fact that death is generally not the penalty for drug smuggling. . . . If the Trump administration wants to use military power, it should seek authorization from Congress."

Trump Targets Opponents: Reason: "Trump posted on social media today that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, both Democrats, should be arrested for refusing to assist federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents."

Worker Shortages: Reason: "Trump's Labor Department Admits That Trump's Immigration Crackdown Is Causing a Shortage of Farm Workers."

Vance's Idol: The crew of the Ayn Rand Institute take on the works of Patrick Deneen, a favorite intellectual of J. D. Vance. Nikos Sotirakopoulos summarizes Deneen's project as calling on the state to overcome liberty in the sense of free self-direction in order to achieve "liberty" in the sense of control over one's "baser" nature. Elan Journo says Deneen conflates liberty in the sense of freedom from coercion with whim-worship and emotionalism. My take: While certainly a free society allows people to act badly in many ways (while protecting people's rights), it also enables them to act in moral and productive and innovative ways, and Deneen's statist alternative is far more dangerous and far more prone to moral corruption. The modern conservative movement openly begs for authoritarianism and stagnation, and, if we don't overcome them, that's exactly what we'll get.

Companies Cave: New York Times: "Apple Takes Down ICE Tracking Apps in Response to Trump Pressure Campaign." Atlantic: "YouTube . . . paid $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump after the company suspended his channel six days after the January 6 riot at the Capitol."

Targeting Soros: Stephanie Slade: The Trump-led government attacks on George Soros "represents a flagrant violation of the rule of law and norms of justice."

ICE Authoritarianism Watch

Secret Police: Judge William Young: "ICE goes masked for a single reason—to terrorize Americans into quiescence. . . . To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police." More.

ICE Raid on Apartment Building: "Amnesty International USA condemns the September 30, pre-dawn ICE raid on an apartment building in a historically Black neighborhood in Chicago. According to news reports, federal agents raided the apartment building, broke into homes without warrants in the middle of the night, forcibly removed residents, including children, from their homes, zip-tied their hands, and interrogated them without access to legal counsel." In addition to being an assault on the individual victims, it is a blatant assault on the U.S. Constitution.

ICE Killing of Villegas González: NBC reports that Silverio Villegas González had some old traffic tickets. NBC reorts, "As [ICE] agents leaned into the car [driven by Villegas González, he] began to back up his vehicle." Okay, that's extremely dangerous behavior. As was the instigation by ICE! And killing the man seems like an obvious overreaction. At a minimum the case deserves scrutiny. Cato's David Bier reasonably remarked, "ICE lied about the person it shot, claiming he was a 'criminal,' but NBC finds that he had no criminal history whatsoever. Not even traffic tickets in 12 years! It also lied about the extent of the injuries to its agents." ICE responded, in part, "False accusations like this viral post from @David_J_Bier of the @CatoInstitute have led to DAILY assaults on the men and women of ICE and dangerous riots." But ICE did not actually contradict anything that Bier wrote. Regardless, for ICE to accuse Bier of causing assaults on ICE agents, merely by criticizing ICE's killing of a man under questionable circumstances, is shameful and authoritarian. Maybe if ICE agents do not wish to be criticized for killing people, they should stop killing people.

The ICE Shooting of Marimar Martinez: Chicago Sun Times: "Body-camera video of a Border Patrol agent involved in the shooting of a woman who was allegedly chasing agents in Brighton Park over the weekend shows an officer saying, 'Do something, b----,' before pulling over and shooting the woman five times, the woman's attorney said in federal court. . . . The video appears to contradict the government's allegation that Marimar Martinez, 30, drove toward officers before one of them opened fire on her." This case deserves full investigation.

Deportation to Eswatini: Mother Jones: "Eswatini . . . is Africa's last remaining absolute monarchy. . . . In May, officials from the US and Eswatini signed a deal that allows the Trump administration to deport people from all over the world to the African nation. A copy of the arrangement I reviewed shows that the United States has agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million to take in up to 160 so-called 'third-country nationals'—immigrants who came to the US with no ties to the country to which they are being deported."

ICE Assaults Minister: Hey look, we've found the people persecuting Christians! Religion News Service: "Last month, the Rev. David Black stood in front of a Chicago-area U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility and spread his arms wide. Adorned in all black and wearing a clerical collar, the pastor looked up at a group of masked, heavily armed ICE agents on the roof and began to pray. . . . But when Black began to lower his arms a few seconds later, the agents responded to his spiritual plea by firing pepper balls, or chemical agents that cause eye irritation and respiratory distress, video footage shows. One struck Black in the head, exploding into a puff of white pepper smoke and forcing him to his knees. Fellow demonstrators rushed to his aid, and as the pastor rubbed his face in pain, the agents continued to fire. 'We could hear them laughing,' Black said." Where are the criminal charges against the ICE agents responsible? At least a judge has ordered some restrictions on ICE tactics.

Gratuitous Endangerment: CBS: "Federal [immigration] agents threw a tear gas canister at people on a busy street in the Logan Square neighborhood [in Chicago] . . . outside a grocery store and near an elementary school."

Smash and Grab: "We'll smash the fucking window out and drag him out," said an ICE agent in Maryland. "It was one of nearly 50 documented instances of immigration agents breaking vehicle windows that ProPublica has identified." Related, from the Colorado Sun: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pointed guns at and then smashed the window of a car carrying a couple and their 1-month-old baby during an afternoon arrest in Alamosa [Colorado], video footage shows. The family was on their way home from the Alamosa County courthouse."

Wrongful Imprisonment: In a just country, wrongful imprisonment is a crime and is treated as such. Reason: Afghan Sayed Naser "legally entered the U.S. through the CBP One App in July 2024." He "had worked with U.S. forces for two years during the Afghanistan War." Yet Homeland Security arbitrarily revoked his parole. "After a video of his arrest by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents went viral in June, Afghan Sayed Naser was released on September 26 following 106 days of detention." This is now how we treat people who risked their lives to help the U.S. military.

Foreign Infiltration: I first assumed this was parody but no, it's real: Homeland Security posted the message, with an image of the Statue of Liberty, reading, "Recapture the America your forefathers created. Prevent foreign infiltration." Um, all of our "forefathers" were foreign "infiltrators." (The ancestors of Native Americans came tens of thousands of years ago.) For those who need a reminder, here is part of the poem by Emma Lazarus posted at the Statute of Liberty: "A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame / Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name / Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand / Glows world-wide welcome. . . . / 'Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'" For Homeland Security to pervert the meaning of Lady Liberty for its authoritarian cause is shameful.

Quick Takes

Rush: There's a 2026 reunion tour. The sit-in drummer is Anika Nilles.

Agustina Vergara Cid on Immigration: She writes: "Immigrants are not here to serve Americans. They are not here to raise the GDP, or to save us from population collapse, or to do the jobs that Americans won't do. They are individuals with their own goals, ambitions, and their own happiness to pursue. In doing so, they work, produce, create, innovate, and consume—and that trade benefits those around them and ultimately most other people in America. They are human beings like Americans are. They are ends in themselves, not means to an end." Check out her Substack.

Machado: Reason: "Among Venezuelan opposition leaders, Machado stands out for her belief in classical liberalism and free market capitalism. Her platform calls for the privatization of the country's state-owned oil industry, arguing that Venezuela can once again become a capitalist success story if the government radically reduces its role in managing the economy. She is also one of the few prominent figures to openly embrace socially liberal causes, such as same-sex marriage and the use of medical marijuana." I hope her Nobel helps her cause. See an interview with Tom Palmer.

Caplan on Mind: Bryan Caplan comments on Searle's view of mind. Chat has a summary. I see nothing here that causes me to reconsider my own view: "What I think is going on is that conscious experiences, although themselves not physical, arise from and are made possible by a physical substrate. . . . I would describe my view as something like 'parallelism.' A sufficiently informed outside observer could perfectly map what the physical substrate is doing while I experience seeing a red ball, and that would correspond to me seeing the red ball, but the observer could not thereby directly gain knowledge of what it's like for me to see the red ball."

Warne on Education Equality: Russell T. Warne (via Steve Stewart-Williams) convincingly argues that IQ is highly related to educational advancement, and kids vary in IQ, therefore trying to equalize educational outcomes is a fool's errand. Point taken. I would respond that what matters is quality of education, and the goal should be to optimize educational outcomes for each student. Today's schools often fail students at all levels of academic ability.

Molloy on Weiss at CBS: Parker Malloy convincingly argues that Bari Weiss's Free Press got a story about transgender care substantially wrong, and she reasonably worries that Weiss, now head of CBS news, is (or can be) "'anti-woke' rather than pro-accuracy."

Lyman Stone on Substack: He writes: "Substack is first and foremost a mechanism for converting parasocial relationships into money, and this is gross. . . . To be a really lucrative Substacker and run up your follower count, you should encourage people to reply to your posts, reply to them, write posts in response to other people, post notes, do livestreams, etc. In other words, to succeed at Substack you should do everything other than do deep research for thoughtfully written pieces. If you do write, you should write in the most audience-captured way possible." Yes, writing in raw html, as I now do, is a little clunkier, and, no, I don't have ready comment fields. (If you want to comment email me!) But I also have finer control and no nonsense.

McManus on Kirk: Left-liberal Matt McManus critiques Charlie Kirk's ideas in a recent podcast episode of Liberal Currents. McManus also reviewed Kirk's book, Right Wing Revolution: "'Wokeness' seems to be anything Kirk doesn't like. . . . Kirk has little to no interest in arguing for the truth his positions or against opponents in anything like a cogent way. What matters is insisting repeatedly on the 'objective truth' of one's own views while insisting the opposing ones are ugly, evil, and untrue."

Yglesias on Guns: He writes: "If all the privately owned firearms somehow vanished from the United States tomorrow, that would do an enormous amount to bring down the murder rate. But that goes against every tradition that we have in this country, and it's not something that people want. I think it makes Democrats look silly when we start talking like regulating exactly which kind of rifles hobbyists can buy is going to make a difference to a crime problem that is overwhelmingly about small, easily concealed handguns, most of which aren't even purchased legally. The kind of 'gun control' we actually need is to arrest people carrying illegal guns, and to crack down on the people selling them." On this last point, I think government needs to get serious about cracking down on people who commit violent crimes. I don't think Yglesias's starting assumption is right. Consider this thought experiment: "If you could snap your fingers and instantly disarm all people in the U.S., and also arm people in the UK to match current rates in the U.S., would the crime rates reverse?" The obvious answer is no. The U.S. homicide rate would continue to be several times that of the UK rate, although there would probably be some narrowing.

Persecuting Women: Elisha Brown: "Prosecutors charged hundreds with pregnancy-related child abuse crimes post-Dobbs, research shows." If only someone could have warned about this.

Drugs in Oregon: Zach Weissmueller has a very good report on Oregon's "failed experiment" with drug decriminalization. My take: Properly, decriminalization does not mean public drug use, public intoxication, squatter camps, street violence, toleration of theft, and so on. Government can and should enforce safe public spaces. As always, anarchy is not the proper alternative to tyranny. Weissmueller discusses other places that have handled decriminalization far better, and Portland is improving in some important ways.

Groomers: Hey look they found the groomers. Hemant Mehta: "Megachurch founder and Trump ally Robert Morris pleads guilty to child sex abuse."

Education and Migration: Surprisingly, increasing education in Africa could reduce global wealth by discouraging some people from moving to high-productivity areas. See Cowen, the NBER paper, and Chat. But to me the obvious answer is to improve not only education but everything else in Africa enough to turn the region into its own economic powerhouse. Easier said than done!

Child Sacrifices: Ideological insanity can cause people to murder children. National Geographic: "Since 2011, Peruvian archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer Gabriel Prieto has uncovered evidence of mass child sacrifice around Chan Chan, a massive mudbrick city in northern Peru that served as the capital of the Chimú people from the 11th century until they were conquered by the Inca around 1470. More than 250 young victims, whose grisly deaths occurred around 1400–1450, have been located to date."

Be Smart on Autism: The Be Smart show has an excellent run-down of autism research. Some highlights: Although genes account for most cases of autism, environmental factors do cause perhaps a fifth of cases. Research strongly indicates that neither vaccines nor acetaminophen causes autism, but some other drugs and some pesticides can. There is a complication with autism, though, according to the show; Dravet Syndrome is linked both to seizures and to autism, fevers can help cause seizures, and vaccines can cause fevers. So the interplay between genes and environment is enormously complex.

Excess Acetaminophen: Yes, taking too much of the drug is dangerous. (The same is true of any drug.)

More RFK Idiocy: Stat: "No, circumcision doesn’t cause autism." Shesh! But I'm still against routine circumcision for non-medical reasons, on grounds that an infant cannot possibly consent to the procedure and it's bad to cut off body parts for no good reason.

Thiel on the Antichrist: Chat has thoughts (or at least analysis). Maybe he's just a little crazy?

Free Press Finds God: Unsurprisingly, Free Press has taken to promoting religion. Jerry Coyne answers. Related: Richard Dawkins takes on Tom Holland's blend of history and fabrication.

California Wage Controls: Surprise, surprise, Econ 101 generally still holds. California's harsh wage controls for fast-food employment cost jobs.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-64.html.

Republicans, release of violent persons, Evergreen shooting, conversion therapy, bigamy, business, Christians, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
October 12, 2025

"So You're Telling Me There's a Chance": An October 5 Forbes article by Chris Dorsey claims in its headline that "Colorado [is] in play for Republicans." Dorsey writes, "'The strength of Republicans' identification with working-class issues is a warning shot for a party that’s lost ground across the country,' reported the left-leaning Denver Post in a September 16 feature." Wrong. That line comes from a February 2 article by Seth Klamann. Yes, voters hate Democrats. But they hate Republicans even more. Klamann writes, "The poll, conducted by Keating Research, found that 45% of respondents had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, against 51% who viewed the party negatively. Just 37% had a favorable view of the Republican Party, versus 56% who viewed it unfavorably." Dorsey also cites the September 16 editorial from the Post. The Magellan poll cited by the editorial points out that the same fraction of Colorado voters, 68%, view each major party unfavorably. But people favor a generic Democrat for governor to a generic Republican by a margin of 50% to 38%. Dorsey hopes George Brauchler will enter the race, but he already handily lost a statewide race. In promoting newbie Victor Marx for governor, Lauren Boebert assured Republicans Marx could win. But notice that Boebert does not think she herself can win a state-wide race; she couldn't even hold on to the red Western Slope and had to carpetbag her way east.

Release of Violent Persons: During a September 30 interview with Mandy Connell, State Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer called for special session to fix the "catch and release" crime bill, HB24-1034, which has put some violent people incompetent to stand trial back on the streets. Kirkmeyer said that she and other Republicans supported the bill to address Constitutional concerns in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling, but the intent was to ensure that "incompetent" violent people end up in mental health facilities. Kirkmeyer said the state needs to add capacity to those facilities. She also said the state needs to tighten up the standards by which someone is declared incompetent to stand trial (but I'm not clear about the details). I agree Jared Polis needs to call a special session, and delayed action on this matter is creating extreme risks that people will end up assaulted or murdered. See also the Common Sense Institute's paper on restoring perpetrators to competency through mental health services. See also Fox31.

Evergreen Shooting Update: Jefferson County Sheriff's Office: "It is true that a tip was sent to the FBI Office in New York in July about a concerning social media post. The tip did not identify the person who posted it. In these cases, law enforcement must obtain warrants to request information from social media platforms. By law, these companies have up to 35 days to respond to each warrant, and typically two or three warrants are needed to determine who made a post and from where. That process was still underway when the shooting occurred. The FBI did not fail to act; this delay is a limitation of the current legal system." Seems like maybe the government should take threats of violence more seriously?

Conversion Therapy: It looks like the Supreme Court will overturn a Colorado law banning conversion therapy. Quentin Young writes, "Imagine a licensed therapist advising a client to follow through on suicidal thoughts. Shouldn't a state be able to prohibit such a thing? Yes, of course." There are several problems with this. First, in certain contexts, suicide is a legitimate option (say, if you have a terminal illness that puts you in severe pain and debility). Second, although "conversion therapy" usually is a pretext to harass and deman gay or transgender children on the basis of religion-inspired bigotry, it's not at all obvious that every case of a child claiming to be gay or transgender represents an accurate self-evaluation. As I've said, if it's possible to be correct in self-identifying as transgender, then it's also possible to be incorrect. So I think a blanket ban is illegitimate. Still, as Christopher Hudson points out, there's something very strange about the Supreme Court overturning state laws banning conversion therapy while leaving in place state laws banning transgender health care for minors.

Separate Party and State: More than half of Colorado voters now are unaffiliated, Axios reports. Coloradans dislike both the Republican and Democratic parties by a margin of 68 to 30 percent, according to a recent Magellan poll. The Republican Party is an ongoing clown show, as Dick Wadhams describes. So why does government continue to give parties special political privileges? Separate party and state! Government should stop tracking party affiliation, stop listing parties on ballots, stop funding party primaries, make ballot-access rules the same for all comers, and either run a general primary or else hold only a general election with approval voting.

GOP Governor Candidates: Colorado Times Recorder: "Asked whether they would call on President Trump to deploy National Guard troops in the state, all expressed some level of concern with federal soldiers conducting domestic law enforcement. . . . All but one [Kirkmeyer] said they would pardon [Tina Peters], who was prosecuted by a Republican District Attorney and found guilty by a jury in a solidly red county."

Bigamy: 9News: "An agent for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has resigned after being cited for bigamy . . . a class 2 misdemeanor in Colorado, by the 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office on July 20. He was placed on administrative leave as soon as CBI learned of the charge. . . . Bigamy is committed when a married person marries someone else, enters into a civil union or lives with another person." See also a CBI release. But wait a minute. Surely the statutes don't bar a married person "living with" someone else, as 9News says. They don't. Yes, 18-6-201 bars "cohabitation" with another, but 18-6-203 defines "cohabitation" as "to live together under the representation of being married." But this should not be generally illegal, as lying is not generally illegal, unless fraud is involved. By the way, the Colorado legislature only repealed the adultery law in 2013.

Denver Seizes Raíces Brewing: Denver Post, paraphrasing a Denver official: "The personal property taxes owed only amounted to $10,765, or about 10% of the business's total outstanding balance. Raíces owed nearly $69,000 in sales tax and about $30,000 for penalties and interest." The brewery accuses the city of "disruption of business operations" and "intimidation or pressure on employees." The brewery is right that the city's "personal property tax" in particular is idiotic and anti-business. Add all this to Denver's crazy-high wage controls and I don't know why anyone would try to start such a business within city limits. HT City Cast Denver. See also Denverite.

Unionized Denver Restaurant Closes: It was Secret Garden in Cheesman Park, via an October 10 City Cast Denver email.

Fort Collins Business: Denver7: "Fort Collins businesses struggle with tariffs, higher property taxes."

Preschool Discrimination: CPR: "Appeals court says religious preschools in Colorado's UPK program can’t discriminate." I think that's the right decision considering, but I also think it was a huge mistake for the state to give "private" preschools tax dollars in the first place.

Anti-Immigration Hurts Schools: CPR: "$100,000 visa fee could stifle Colorado schools' ability to hire international teachers—who were helping fill gaps." These are idiotically anti-American immigration policies.

DPS Enrollment Down: Enrollment has dropped by around 1,200 students, mostly immigrants, from 90,450 last year, reports the Denver Post. Some people will say, "Good, taxpayers shouldn't be funding that anyway." But immigrant parents also pay the taxes that support the public schools. And obviously enrolling the kids in school is highly integrative. (We couldn't possibly talk about moving to a free market in education.)

Youth Treatment: Disability Law Colorado via 9News: "Over the last three years, DLC staff have conducted eight monitoring visits to Southern Peaks Regional Treatment Center. . . . Among concerns we raised were the level of mental health services that the children there receive, staff treatment of children, high numbers of restraint and seclusion, education, and living conditions."

Juvenile Detention: Denver Post: "Colorado juvenile detention staff violated strip-search policy 1,000 times in 9 months, watchdog finds." Seems bad!

Persecution of Christians? Jeff Hunt points to one guy in Aurora screaming at a handful of Christian protesters, and he claims, "Colorado is home to many people like this. It's why Democrats have total control of the state. . . . Colorado is the most hostile state to Christians in America." That is all completely delusional. Democrats have total control of the state because voters here have become increasingly left-leaning; Democratic candidates have been serious, disciplined, and well-funded; and the Republican Party here has completely imploded (except for in the rural Republican strongholds). This notion that Colorado is "hostile" to Christians is nuts. Christians freely practice their faith here. The only time Christians were seriously persecuted in Colorado is when the Protestant KKK targeted Catholics. What Hunt seems to mean is that, because Christians do not have certain special privileges under government, they are somehow persecuted. Okay, there's the conversion therapy ban, now under judicial review. But, hey, the persecution narrative works great for the grifter class. Meanwhile, people such as Hunt want, on the basis of their religious faith, to use the power of government to crack down on women seeking abortions, LGTBQ people, etc.

ACLU Sues: Taylor Dolven: "The American Civil Liberties Union and two Colorado law firms sued federal immigration officials Thursday in an effort to stop what the legal groups call the agency's 'indiscriminate stops and arrests' across the state." There was a time when conservatives claimed to be against a "papers please" sort of society.

Drug Price Controls: Denver Post: "Colorado sets first-in-the-nation price ceiling on a prescription drug." This is not the way to control health costs!

Street Racing: It continues to be a major problem in Jefferson County and elsewhere. Government owns and controls the roads and has the responsibility to keep the roads safe.

Internet's Dark Corners: Parents shouldn't fall into paranoia or ignore the real potential benefits of computer devices and the internet, but they should pay attention to the real risks of kids finding the internet's darkest corners. I also worry that this sort of wall-to-wall media coverage about violence encourages more of it.

Teachers Strike: CPR: "Hundreds of teachers in Colorado Springs School District 11 staged a one-day strike on Wednesday, protesting their loss of a collective bargaining agreement." That'll really convince parents and taxpayers that public schools are a great deal.

Rent Algorithms: CPR: "Real estate giant Greystar and 25 other property management companies have agreed to collectively pay more than $141 million to settle a class action lawsuit accusing landlords of driving up housing costs by using rent-setting algorithms offered by the software company RealPage." Insofar as this case involves allegedly "anticompetitive" practices, it is illegitimate. But it seems plausible that the companies sharing "nonpublic information with RealPage" was not authorized by the tenants; I'm not sure. Government has a legitimate interest in protecting people from non-authorized uses of their information.

Krause on Media: Mike Krause, my editor at Complete Colorado (which runs my column), discusses his site and Colorado news media, in an interview with Jon Caldara (who runs the Independence Institute, which publishes Complete).

Family Feud: Rep. Brittany Pettersen endorsed Michael Bennet for governor. But rumor has it Pettersen's husband, Ian Silverii, supports Paul Weiser. My take: Bennet might (or might not) sign fewer stupid bills, but Weiser would fight more effectively against Trump's overreach.

Bennet on Phones in Schools: Michael Bennet wants a statewide ban. But isn't this properly a district-level or even school-level decision? (Or, again, we could talk about markets.)

Troubling Signs: Westword: "Giant Swastika Spotted in Jefferson County." Sheesh.

Chance of a Lifetime: Maná, a major Latin music group asked a Denver street performer to open for them at Red Rocks.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-137.html.

Murders, free speech, trans rights, antitrust, liberal socialism, feminism, Schelling points, vaccines, education, human skulls, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
September 30, 2025

Michigan Church Assault: Colorado's large Mormon (Latter-Day Saint) community undoubtedly is reeling from news of the horrific attack. Reports suggest the perpetrator targeted the place specifically because it is an LDS church. Any such assault anywhere is horrific; an assault on a church also tears at more of our most fundamental freedoms. A photo circulating shows the perpetrator (previously) wearing a T-shirt that reads, "Trump 2020: Make Liberals Cry Again." Should this be used to demonize all Trump supporters? No, obviously not. Any more than the murder of Charlie Kirk should be used to demonize transgender people, leftists, or whomever.

Dallas Murders: It seems clear the Dallas murderer was motivated by anti-ICE sentiments. Such violence is inherently wrong. What's more, the perpetrator murdered an immigrant, illustrating how violence often inflicts unpredictable damage and backfires. The proper course is to loudly criticize ICE for its rights-violating activities; seek to rein in the agency through legal means; and, where appropriate, criminally prosecute ICE agents when they violate people's rights.

Trump's War: Kamala Harris warned us: Trump would show up in Washington with his enemies' list. He is now seeking to unleash the federal government against left-wing groups. The DOJ has indicted James Comey.

Steven Zansberg Sounds the Alarm: "Our country stands on the precipice of becoming an authoritarian dictatorship."

Free Speech: It's not like Democrats have been champions for freedom of speech, as Robby Soave reminds us: "Biden White House Digital Strategy Director Rob Flaherty, for instance, repeatedly pressed social media companies to take down content that was contrary to Biden's interest." Elsewhere, Ben Bayer and Mike Mazza discuss "Trump vs. Kimmel: The Tribal Weaponization of the FCC against Free Speech." Ilya Somin says abolish the FCC. FIRE refutates Pam Bondi's nonsense on "hate speech." Chris Matthew Sciabarra writes, "Just as Rand was correct to note that it was the conservatives who shaped the original legislation that gave us the FCC, so too, today's 'conservatives,' those on the reactionary right, are using the FCC as only one constituent of their brutal top-down assault on free expression. Claiming that they are at war with 'far-left groups,' they are engaged in threats and in the outright extortion of media, law firms, universities, and corporations. Their goal is to silence dissent—by any means necessary."

Protect Trans People: Cowen: "One of the most dangerous collectivist arguments in the wake of Kirk's murder is to blame the 'trans community.' . . . Constitutional rights, anyone? The right for peaceful individuals to avoid involuntary incarceration? How about basic toleration?" I was also pleased to see Dave Kopel say (and the Colorado Times Recorder quote), "There is no legal basis to ban firearms ownership simply because a person is trans. . . . A gun ban would be a severe violation of the federal statute and of the Second Amendment. A ban would be challenged immediately by pro-gun organizations, and almost certainly held unlawful in the courts."

Immigration Courts: Immigration courts should be set up under the Congress, not the executive, argues Margaret Stock. Makes sense to me.

Visa Fees: Tracinski: "Trump's 100K Fee Hike for High-Tech H-1B Visas Is Illegal, Unconstitutional, and Corrupt."

Taiwan: Washington Post: "Russia is helping prepare China to attack Taiwan, documents suggest." What could go wrong?

Apple and Antitrust: Marek Michulka: "A judge . . . ruled against Apple under the state-level antitrust statute California's Unfair Competition Law (UCL) for blocking outside-payment links and thus preventing 'informed choice.' . . . This law and ruling represent a total inversion of justice. Apple built its App Store platform, and therefore owns it."

Liberal Socialism: Matt Zwolinski reviews Matthew McManus's book on "liberal socialism." The first problem is redefining "socialism" to mean, not a centralized economy in which the state nationalizes the means of production, but social welfarism. But social welfarism cannot function without substantial capitalism; without production there can be nothing to "redistribute." And I continue to think that, not only are forcible economic interventions inherently illiberal, they tend toward greater illiberalism. For example, look how America's right has weaponized the welfare state against immigrants. Zwolinski writes, "McManus describes 'methodological collectivism' as a rejection of the classical liberal view, which allegedly sees individuals as 'atomized,' self-interested, and 'fundamentally competitive' (p. 18)." But that's just a ridiculous characterization of classical liberalism, which eagerly embraces family, mutual aid, unions (in the context of markets), nonprofits, and so on.

Feminism: I watched the first twenty minutes of a discussion on feminism between Bryan Caplan and Holly Lawford-Smith. I think Lawford-Smith makes a great point that it's not enough just to compare who gets the better or worse deal, men or women. My take: I'm a feminist in that I want to help protect the rights of women and help establish fair conditions for women. This is not in conflict with wanting to protect the rights of men and help establish fair conditions for men. Every person is an individual! But I have yet to read Caplan's essay on the matter, so perhaps I'll circle around later.

Pinker: "Sometimes things that people do make sense because other people do them, and that's all you need." Pinker discusses veiled language, plausible deniability, Schelling points, market pricing, enforcement of norms, global conflicts, cryptocurrency, path dependency, censorship, humor, and more. He points out that there can be a huge difference between everyone knowing something and everyone knowing that everyone knows something. Tyler Cowen also interviews Pinker and doesn't just ask the softball questions that Shermer prefers! There, Pinker talks about how tribalism, deference to authority, and conformity can eat away at enlightenment values, which after all are not always super-intuitive. He also talks about linguistics and AI models.

Hep. B: Unsurprisingly, Trump also is wrong about hepatitis B vaccines: "Hepatitis B is a virus that attacks the liver. The disease has no cure and chronic infection can lead to serious outcomes such as liver cancer, cirrhosis and death. And the risks of these outcomes are much higher for people who get infected as infants," reports NPR. Anyone who takes medical advice from Donald Trump is an idiot.

Drug Approval Reforms: Matthew Yglesias hopes the Trump administration will "reform the clinical trial process in ways that should make it cheaper and easier to get safe and effective medications to market." But, he adds, Trump's attacks on Tylenol, and his politicization of autism, are idiotic: "It's dangerous to have the White House and H.H.S. controlled by people with terrible epistemics."

Operation Redshirts: Amesh Adalja: "The new members are in the same mold as those RFK Jr. has appointed in the past. They are individuals who are not qualified to sit on this committee and are being put in place in order to undermine vaccine science at the upcoming meeting. The ACIP is an organ of vaccine misinformation and anti-vaccine propaganda." The Trump-approved plan to bring us fast Covid vaccines was called "Operation Warp Speed." Now RFK is warring against mRNA vaccines as such, including the Covid vaccines. I asked ChatGPT what would be a good name for RFK's campaign, and it appropriately recommended "Operation Redshirts."

Failing Schools: Natalie Wexler drawing on the New York Times: "Many high school graduates don't have the 'fundamental reading and math skills' needed for jobs in fields like health care and construction—jobs that often don't require a college degree."

Schools and Control: Agustina Paglayan: "The expansion of primary education in the West was driven not by democratic ideals, but by the state's desire to control citizens."

Make Your Kids Hard to Lie To: That remark by Ian Underwood is gold. (I don't agree with some other things he says.)

Propaganda Schools: Texas is bringing on Christian nationalist David Barton to consult on social studies curricula. Shameful.

Political Schools: Volokh: "Court Upholds Three-Day Suspension of 'Third-Grade Math and Science Teacher' for Maintaining 'LGBTQ+'-Themed Books in Classroom." The books were just present; the teacher didn't use them in class. That anyone got upset about this is ridiculous. "Oh my god the books are so scary!" That this became a court case is doubly so. But we can't dare talk about freedom in education!

Cradle to Grave: Given that K–12 schools in New Mexico are some of the worst in the nation, obviously New Mexico government needs to expand government control over children's education down to toddler age, largely using oil and gas money. See also the governor's media release. Here's how you can tell this is a scam: Government insists on using the funds (sources say $12,000 per family per year) on government-managed child care rather than just offer the families in question the cash. This is just incentivizing low-income mothers to give up care of their children to the government.

Substack: I left Substack and I'm not sorry. Yes, my current system is clunkier, but in exchange I have fine control and no one screwing with me. Brad DeLong discusses some of the concerns.

Old Human Skull: Scientists think a human skull they're studying is related to Homo sapiens, Homo longi, and around a million years old, leading them to think our species is older than previously thought. But these conclusions rest on correctly identifying the skull and accurately dating it.

Mongrel Sapiens: Harvard Gazette: "Harvard geneticist David Reich said . . . increasingly sophisticated analysis of genetic material made possible by technological advances shows that virtually everyone came from somewhere else, and everyone's genetic background shows a mix from different waves of migration that washed over the globe. . . . Human populations have been in flux for tens of thousands of years since our emergence from Africa. The details of the still-developing picture are complex, but the overall theme is one of increasing homogenization since human diversity fell from the time when modern humans lived next door to Neanderthals, two strains of Denisovans, and the diminutive Homo floresiensis of Indonesia."

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-63.html.

Dinosaur Ridge, Evergreen, immigration, crazy Libertarians, crazy Republicans, housing, the legislature, free speech, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
September 28, 2025

More on Dinosaur Ridge

Recently I argued that bureaucratic dithering is getting in the way of timely action to preserve the fossilized dinosaur tracks at Dinosaur Ridge. Following is a comment recently sent by Jefferson County Parks and Open Space to a state legislator:

Thank you for your inquiry about Dinosaur Ridge. As background, Dinosaur Ridge is in Matthews/Winters Park that is owned by Jefferson County. The Friends of Dinosaur Ridge (FODR) is our lessee and partner that provides education programs and tours. We are working on several projects to increase efficiency and capture data for future improvements and preservation efforts. The first effort is to develop a Preservation Plan for Dinosaur Ridge. This plan will be developed by an expert consultant that will work closely with our team, the State Office of Historic Preservation (SHPO), and FODR to identify paleontological and cultural resource preservation priorities and guidance on future visitor amenities. As a part of that effort, we will continue to work closely with FODR and SHPO to create protocols and requirements to address protection requirements while supporting education programs offered at Dinosaur Ridge. We are at the very beginning of this planning effort and expect it to take 12-18 months to complete. Concurrently, we are also collecting annual baseline data using photogrammetry to understand how the tracks are changing over time. This data will support the Preservation Plan and provide detailed information for managers and researchers. Also, about five years ago we completed the Dinosaur Ridge Master Plan that contemplates a new visitor center near the intersection of Rooney Road and Alameda adjacent to Rooney Ranch at the base of the ridge. This plan, which primarily focuses on visitor amenities like parking, a new visitor center, signs, bike, pedestrian, and shuttle management, etc. is being implemented as conditions and funding allow. While the new visitor center is high on FODR's list, it is not feasible until public water and sanitation services are available west of C470 and Rooney Gulch. The cost of bringing utilities to the area solely for the visitor center is cost prohibitive. As such, we will need to coordinate with other private property owners west of C470 to share these costs. This has and will take time to work out and since we don’t have control of their timing, we do not know when this will occur.

Like I said . . .

Quick Takes

Evergreen Heroes: "So many of us owe our safety to you," read a card for Evergreen's Matthew Silverstone. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office posted a note from the family of the other victim (unnamed), stating, "Our 14-year-old son endured the unimaginable: a face-to-face encounter with a violent school shooter filled with anger and hatred. Our child suffered traumatic gunshot injuries and has remained hospitalized and undergone multiple surgeries since the incident. In those terrifying moments, our son showed a level of bravery, strength, and will to survive that no child should ever be asked to display. He and his friend confronted the assailant, which undoubtedly allowed time for more students to flee and the school to lock down."

Cruelty for the Sake of Cruelty: Colorado Sun: "Carolina Suarez Estrada and her 7-year-old son, Luciano, returned to Colorado . . . after nearly one month in immigration detention in Texas. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released the mother and son . . . with orders for Suarez to appear in immigration court at a later date. . . . Suarez was working at a construction company in Buena Vista with a government work permit at the time of her arrest. Luciano was just about to return to elementary school for second grade and to his soccer team's fall season." Shameful.

War on a Greenhouse: Teller County's war on Virginia and Zac Loop and their greenhouse is absolutely shameful.

Libertarian Crazy: Erik Maulbetsch reported September 22, "The Libertarian Party of Colorado’s Executive Director Jim Wiley believes that the Israeli government is responsible for murdering Charlie Kirk. Wiley repeatedly made this claim as well as a series of other antisemitic statements in his public and personal posts on X and Facebook in the days before and after Kirk's death." Example? On September 5, Wiley said the AI system Grok "tried to warn us" when it absurdly said "Israel is a parasite controlling America." In response, Corey Hutchins reports, Wiley created a "parody" account of the Colorado Times Recorder, which published Maulbetsch's piece (and which also publishes a monthly column of mine). Colorado Pols called the "parody" site "wildly racist," and Maulbetsch told Hutchins, "If Mr. Wiley is upset at being characterized as an antisemite, however, I’m not sure how publishing an overtly antisemitic parody website helps his case."

Republican Crazy: Logan Davis: Scott Bottoms, a state representative, pastor, and candidate for governor, said at a recent candidate event: "LGB is a sexual preference, but TQ+ is an ideology. It is rooted in Marxism. It is rooted in Satanism." His remarks are bigoted and absurd. He added, "Right now, the average 14-year-old girl, freshman in high school, is being groomed" into a "transgender mentality." State Senator Mark Baisley said LGBTQ people show "brokenness . . . in their minds" (his words) and "are in rebellion against God" (Davis's paraphrase). These Republicans are doing everything they can to destroy their party's ability to recover politically and challenge the Democrats on real issues.

Anti-Housing: Here's what Regina Hopkins told CBS4 for its absurdly biased report: "My concerns are that this [relaxed zoning rules] will completely change the neighborhood character. People who have spent their whole life savings buying a home in a single-family neighborhood, those protections are gone." What the hell is she talking about? No one is forcing anyone to replace their single-family home with anything else. So what Hopkins is saying, precisely, is that she wants armed local agents to use force to "protect" her from her neighbors who might want, on their own property, to build an accessory dwelling unit or replace their single-family house with a multi-family dwelling. Hopkins's attitude betrays a hatred for her neighbors' property rights and hatred for people who need a place to live.

Housing Gap: Axios: "Gov. Jared Polis says getting government 'out of the way' will help manage Colorado's 106,000-unit housing shortage."

Tariffs: Axios: "Tariffs are straining builders' bottom lines, pushing up costs and delaying projects."

Catch-and-Release: This is crazy. 9News: "Ephraim Debisa was arrested in April by the Greeley Police Department on suspicion of criminal attempt to commit second-degree murder, first-degree assault with serious bodily injury, [etc.]. . . . But Debisa was found not competent to stand trial, and because there were no services available at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo, he was released into the public, the [Weld] sheriff's office said." Fast forward: "Two weeks after the release from jail of [Debisa] . . . that man is back in custody. . . . He was spotted with a gun inside a student apartment complex." This is the state legislature practically begging for someone to get murdered.

Berg and Kirk: Patricia Calhoun notes the parallels, closing, "Free speech should not pay the price." Hutchins also mentions some writers who discuss Berg. I wrote a column about Berg in December and mentioned him in a previous Miner.

Laugesen: He's out at the Gazette, Corey Hutchins reports.

Students Demand Undefined Action: Several articles covered school walkouts during which students "demanded" "action" on guns and school safety. Which actions, and how would those actions impact school safety? Not a single "news" article that I saw even tried to answer those questions. The closest I saw was an article by KUNC's Kyle McKinnon, which quotes a student as saying, "It's ridiculous that we don't have an assault weapons ban." What's ridiculous is that McKinnon would use such loaded language without indicating that there is no coherent definition of an "assault" weapon, that such a ban blatantly violates the Constitution, that the Colorado legislature already put in place severe restrictions on almost all semi-automatic guns, that the shooting at Evergreen High involved a revolver, or that Colorado already has a safe storage law. I do like one bit from McKinnon's article, though. He paraphrases Rep. Brianna Titone, "The state can't solve the problem alone. She pointed to broader cultural issues, like social media amplifying rhetoric and 'radicalizing' young people, and said meaningful change will require deeper conversations beyond the legislature."

Centennial Institute on Marriage and Gender: The organization announced a panel talk by John Stonestreet, Samantha Kelley, Mark Garcia. ChatGPT indicates at least one of the speakers is anti-trans and against gay marriage.

Xcel Settles over Fire: For $640 million. I don't have an opinion as to whether Xcel employees actually did anything wrong. Obviously the major problem was the extreme wind. Regardless, the people who will pay the money are the energy users through Xcel. If government is going to force Xcel to pay out such huge sums, we have to expect that Xcel will simply shut down power during dangerous conditions. You can't have it both ways.

Expensive Green: Relying on batteries and "green hydrogen" to run Colorado electricity grid would be expensive, at least based on a report of a report. Nuclear would be a lot less expensive. However, it's hard to predict how new technologies and economies of scale might affect prices.

Circumcision: There recently were protests in Denver against circumcision. See also photos. I'm against the routine, non-medical circumcision of children.

Do Better Denver Revised: Denverite first reported it was offline, then added it was back and promising to be "accurate and constructive." Corey Hutchins has more on citizen journalism.

Conservative Candidates' Signs Tagged with Swastikas: This is in the Elizabeth School Board race. CBS has the story. Elizabeth now is infamous for pulling 19 books off school library shelves. Tagging candidates' signs is not an acceptable way to register protest!

Hitlerist: The Oxford English Dictionary drew an example of "Hitlerist" from the work of Dave Kopel.

Caldara on Pugliese: In a September 27 email: Rep. Ryan Armagost's "adolescent behavior took place in April. Leadership of both parties was immediately aware of it, yet Democratic leadership didn't push the idea of a public censure until a special session was called in August. Why did they wait? Could it be because Democratic leadership was sponsoring a bill where he was a key cosponsor? So, they waited until their bill passed and then months later gang-tackled him in absentia as if they just learned about it." Rose Pugliese cited this incident in her decision to leave. I will add that politics always has been a tough game requiring thick skin. Still, legislators should strive to behave professionally. Other Republicans also have been complete jerks toward their Democratic colleagues; the Armagost incident is but one example.

Street Racing: Fox31: "Proposed Colorado bill to seek stronger penalties for street racing." Sounds good to me.

Denver Cops Used to Harass Interracial Couples: As Devin Flores writes for History Colorado, both territorial law and early Colorado state law forbade interracial marriage, specifically between "white" people and "negroes or mulattoes." As the Klan's stooge Benjamin Stapleton sat on the mayor's seat, Denver police arrested one interracial couple three times as of 1941. Shamefully, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld this travesty in 1942. "In 1957, the Colorado State Legislature quietly struck the anti-miscegenation clause from marriage law," Flores writes. There are people alive today who also were alive when Colorado still banned interracial marriage. The Loving v. Virginia case wasn't until 1967.

Caldara Defends Freedom of Speech: September 19 email: "Our government, through the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, pressured Disney to 'indefinitely' suspend Kimmel. This must concern us all. Government must never chill speech, even that of some Hollywood socialist mouthpiece. Let’s remember, Trump isn't king. Even if we like him pressuring companies to can idiots like Kimmel, the next president might be like Kamala Harris and go back to silencing the voice you like." Good for Caldara. But Kimmel is a standard progressive, not a "socialist mouthpiece." Kimmel's return show was excellent.

Drug War Crime: Denver Post: "The people who chased and shot at former Denver Broncos player Josh Reynolds and his two friends last year mistook the trio for people who’d used counterfeit money to purchase $250,000 worth of cocaine in an earlier drug deal, according to court records." As I've been saying for many years, the drug war creates a violent black market, one in which innocent bystanders often are harmed or murdered.

AI Dangers: Denver Post: "Two lawsuits filed in Denver District Court this week allege that artificial-intelligence-powered chatbots sexually abused two Colorado teenagers, leading one girl to kill herself. . . . A 13-year-old from Thornton died by suicide in 2023 after using a Character.AI chatbot." We'll see how the case plays out.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-136.html.

Both Eddie Waldrep and Protecting Academy District 20 make some questionable claims.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
September 28, 2025

Complete Colorado linked to a September 26 interview of Eddie Waldrep, candidate for Academy School District 20 in the north part of Colorado Springs, by Brandon Wark of Free State Colorado (not to be confused with my much older Free Colorado). Waldrep is a clinical psychologist and part of an interracial family (which I mention only because that may bear on discussions of "DEI" (diversity, equity, inclusion) and "critical race theory").

For context, District 20 beats state averages on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success tests, with 61.1% meeting or exceeding expectations in English and 51.9% doing so in math. (That still leaves a huge number of students not meeting expectations!)

Waldrep obviously is a more-conservative candidate. Here's part of what his web site says:

Dr. Waldrep supports:
Auditing current reading and math curricula to identify what produces the best student outcomes
Exploring the standardization of K-3 reading and math curricula across the district
Attracting and retaining the most effective teachers
Aligning all district priorities with measurable, academic goals . . . .

Parents are a child's first and most important teacher, and their children’s primary decision maker for education and healthcare. Upholding parental rights means respecting their roles in decisions about curriculum, policies, and discipline. . . .

Dr. Waldrep supports:
Requiring parental consent when a student requests a name or gender identity change
Protecting female sports and spaces
Making curriculum content fully accessible to parents online
Creating a centralized, parent-involved curating process for school library books and instructional materials

Much of this sounds pretty good to me, although I'm not sure what he means by a "curating process." It sounds like maybe he's talking about parents removing books from the school library. But maybe he's just talking about parents having approval over what books their kids check out. If that's it, this seems unworkable. Do kids literally have to get permission from their parents even to pick a book off the shelves and read it in the library? As I parent, generally I'm pro-reading.

Here is some of what Waldrep had to say with Wark:

I started seeing a lot of political bias . . . coming through in the schools. . . . There's lots of great teachers out there. . . . We've had some fantastic teachers. . . . What really kind of caught my attention first was that my daughter's [middle] school . . . instead of to read To Kill a Mockingbird, they kind of gave a slew of eight different social justice oriented books. . . . The teacher that was running this said [during an online meeting] that the reason was basically that it was told from the perspective of a white girl. And that really kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

Waldrep also said he had concerns about "Social Emotional Learning" and "Critical Race Theory." He said his district also is getting rid of valedictorians, a move he opposes.

I could not find any information about Academy 20 changing policies on valedictorians. I have an email out to the district and will update this article if I hear back. One school in the district listed the honor as of May 4.

CBS reports that Cherry Creek is dropping the designation because "this outdated practice did not align with our Core Values of teaching all students, rather than ranking and sorting them." That is idiotic reasoning. Recognizing the best students hardly is incompatible with teaching all students.

Waldrep said that eliminating valedictorian recognition "is kind of related to DEI type philosophies."

Waldrep said some "Social Emotional Learning" "programs are better than others." He worried about "telling kids that for you to be able to regulate your emotions you have to look for an external source." He promotes "self-efficacy" through "mastering experiences." He claimed Yale's SEL program is "influenced by radical left-wing ideology" and is used "as a gateway to push political narratives."

I looked up Yale's program and it mostly sounds like psychobabble bullshit to me. Here is an example of the meaningless jargon: "Builds and sustains positive emotional climates by creating agreed-upon norms for how people want to feel and how they can help each other to experience those feelings." But how is this "radical left-wing ideology?"

Waldrep recommends The Coddling of the American Mind. Here's my question for Waldrep: Isn't his heavy "curation" of books a form of coddling children? (I contacted Waldrep via his web site and will update this article if he replies.)

Waldrep says that declining SAT scores in the context of increasing graduation rates indicates declining standards. But then he also said that the district's CMAS scores have been relatively stable over time (they've actually increased a bit over the past couple of years).

Waldrep then went into "the science of reading," which I generally support.

Waldrep said parents should be involved when their children request a name change, and I agree, but then he immediately said that teachers are being "compelled" to say things that conflict with their own ideologies. This is incoherent. If the parent signs off on their transgender daughter adopting a new name, Waldrep seems to be saying that a teacher should be able to reject the parents' choices and use the child's older name. He also seemed to reject out of hand gender-affirming care for minors. In other words, "Parental rights for me but not for thee."

Waldrep mentioned that he's written several articles, including "The Model Minority Myth" and "The Anti-American Psychological Association" (which I won't review here).

On September 27, the "D20 Accountability Project" (I'll call it D20AP) posted a critique of Waldrep based on the interview. Here's what the anonymous site says about itself:

Protecting Academy District 20 from Extremist Influence. This website is not affiliated with, authorized by, or endorsed by any candidate, campaign, or political party. The views and content presented here are for informational and commentary purposes only. This site does not endorse or oppose any candidate for public office and is not part of any campaign committee.

D20AP says Waldrep's "claims reflect a pattern of distortion, culture-war rhetoric, and outright misinformation that would put public education in danger if allowed to guide district policy." But this rhetoric is itself overheated.

D20AP claims Waldrep's reference to "critical race theory" is a "dog-whistle. Critical Race Theory is a legal framework not taught in K–12 education. Its invocation here is meant to activate fear, not inform policy." Although Waldrep's claims mostly are unsubstantiated, this response is bullshit. No one claims that schools are teaching formal, academic-level CRT. Instead, the claim is that CRT filters down into how materials are presented in the lower grades. If it's true that his daughter's school pulled To Kill a Mockingbird because it's told from the perspective of a white girl, that plausibly is a decision influenced by CRT. (I don't know what the school is and so have no easy way to try to track down Waldrep's claim.)

Likewise, D20AP claims that DEI is irrelevant to decisions about valedictorians. But it's definitely part of the same package. The problem is the main claim has not been verified.

D20AP rightly says that changes in graduation rates and SAT scores do not necessarily reflect changing standards.

For the most part D20AP points out additional weaknesses in Waldrep's claims.

But is Waldrep really an "extremist," as D20AP suggests? It seems to me rather than his views fit with his district fairly well. "Extremist" in this context is a smear.

Personally, I wouldn't want either Waldrep or the people behind D20AP in charge of my child's education.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2025 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/academy-20.html.

Trump wrongly blames acetaminophen for autism and dangerously encourages pregnant women to "tough it out."

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
September 27, 2025

Another day, another attack on American businesses by Donald Trump.

The active ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen a.k.a. paracetamol. Donald Trump and RFK held a bizarre media conference September 22 (transcript, release) in which they blamed pregnant women taking Tylenol for autism. Apparently Dr. Trump never got the memo that correlation does not prove causation.

James Cusack, chief executive of Autistica, a charity for autism research, told Nature, "There is no definitive evidence to suggest that paracetamol use in mothers is a cause of autism, and when you see any associations, they are very, very small." Nature reports that a study out of Sweden did find a small association between acetaminophen use and autism, but that association disappeared when adjusting for siblings. And: "A large, high-quality study from Japan of more than 200,000 children—also using sibling comparisons and published this year—found no link between acetaminophen use in pregnancy and autism."

The Swedish study finds: "Acetaminophen use during pregnancy was not associated with children's risk of autism, ADHD, or intellectual disability in sibling control analyses. This suggests that associations observed in other models may have been attributable to confounding."

Nature reports that the Swedish study "showed that around 1.42% of children exposed to acetaminophen during pregnancy were autistic, compared with 1.33% of children who were not exposed." So autism is almost entirely related to other things. Such associations can be caused by other things, or they even can just be statistical noise. One possibility is that the same conditions that cause autism also cause (prompt) some women to take more acetaminophen.

What does cause autism, then? In a word: genes (mostly). What has caused the increased diagnoses of autism? Mostly, expanded criteria and more checking. Here are bits from a 2021 study in Psychological Medicine:

More than 100 risk genes have been implicated by rare, often de novo, potentially damaging mutations in highly constrained genes. These account for substantial individual risk but a small proportion of the population risk. In contrast, most of the genetic risk is attributable to common inherited variants acting en masse, each individually with small effects. Studies have identified a handful of robustly associated common variants. Different risk genes converge on the same mechanisms, such as gene regulation and synaptic connectivity. . . .

Prevalence estimates of autism have steadily increased from less than 0.4% in the 1970s to current estimates of 1–2%. The increase is largely explained by broadening diagnostic criteria to individuals without ID [intellectual disability] and with milder impairments, and increased awareness and recognition of autistic traits. [See source for references.] . . . .

Twin studies suggest that 9–36% of the variance in autism predisposition might be explained by environmental factors. . . .

It is challenging to infer causality from observed associations, given that confounding by lifestyle, socioeconomic, or genetic factors contributes to non-causal associations between exposures and autism. Many putative exposures are associated with parental genotype (e.g. obesity, age at birth), and some are associated both with maternal and fetal genotypes (e.g. preterm birth). . . .

Twin studies were the first to demonstrate the heritability of autism. . . . Subsequently, over 30 twin studies have been published, further supporting the high heritability of autism. A meta-analysis of seven primary twin studies reported that the heritability estimates ranged from 64% to 93%.

The Trump administration bragged on X that, in 2017, Tylenol posted, "We actually don't recommend using any of our products while pregnant." But not recommending is not the same thing as dis-recommending, and it certainly is not the same thing as conceding that Tylenol use causes autism. Tylenol currently states on its web page: "If pregnant or breast-feeding, ask a health professional before use." On September 24, Tylenol posted the following message to the main page of its web site (as a pop-up):

We stand with science, and we stand with you. . . . Tylenol is one of the most studied medications in history—and is safe when used as directed by expecting mothers, infants and children. The facts remain unchanged: over a decade of rigorous research, endorsed by leading medical professionals, confirm there is no credible evidence linking acetaminophen to autism. . . . High fevers and pain are widely recognized as potential risks to a pregnancy if left untreated, especially in the first trimester. Remember to talk to your doctor. We prioritize science as the core of how we provide care, and that will never change.

The New York Times has more on this.

Trump also promoted leucovorin as a treatment for autism. Zachary Rubin writes:

Trump also used the stage to revisit old anti-vaccine talking points, repeating long-debunked claims about MMR, mercury, and hepatitis B vaccination. . . .

In August 2025, a Harvard-affiliated review suggested acetaminophen use in pregnancy might increase the risk of autism and ADHD. But the study was flawed. It relied heavily on observational data and retrospective recall, which are prone to bias, and many of the included studies failed to separate the effects of acetaminophen from the fevers, pain, or illnesses it was taken to treat. . . .

On leucovorin (folinic acid), the evidence is promising but preliminary. Small randomized controlled trials have shown modest improvements in language or adaptive behavior among subsets of autistic children, especially those with folate-receptor autoantibodies. These findings are intriguing and worthy of further study, but they do not make leucovorin a cure or a universally effective therapy.

Alison Singer told the New York Times about Trump's announcement:

It took me straight back to when moms were blamed for autism. If you can’t take the pain or deal with fever, if you can’t tough it out, then you are to blame if your child has autism. That was shocking. Simply shocking.

Helen Tager-Flusberg added:

I was expecting some of what was presented, but I have to say I was shocked and appalled to hear the extreme statements without evidence in support of what any of the presenters said. In some respects this was the most unhinged discussion of autism that I have ever listened to.

Along these lines, a headline from Stat says, "Autistic moms feel shamed and stigmatized by Trump's Tylenol warning: Blaming mothers' use of the pain reliever recalls the myth of the 'refrigerator mother.'"

William Meller raises an interesting possibility writing for Skeptic:

Renee Gardner, one of the [Swedish] study's authors, suggested that genetic tendencies that increase the risk of autism often overlap with genes influencing pain perception, meaning the genetic risk factor causes both pain (leading to paracetamol use) and autism, making the painkiller an innocent bystander. . . .

One common, though often overlooked, familial confounder involves the complex relationship between pain sensitivity and neurodevelopment. As Gardner explained, maternal conditions like hypermobility (unusually flexible joints)—which can cause joint pain requiring painkillers—are also "more likely to have autistic children." If researchers fail to account for this overlap, "painkillers can wrongly appear to be a risk factor."

Meller sensibly advises:

Untreated maternal conditions like fever, chronic pain, or inflammation are known risk factors for adverse outcomes in offspring. . . . That evidence confirms that while caution is warranted in all drug use during pregnancy, the proven risks of foregoing necessary treatment far outweigh the confounding-laden claims of a causal link between Tylenol and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Jessica Knurick also posted thoughtful commentary on the topic.

Some anti-vaccine groups are mad at RFK for linking autism to Tylenol rather than to vaccines; as Tyler Cowen says, they're "biting each others' ankles over who will be the greater fool."

Those who want to understand autism should see Is This Autism? by Donna Henderson and Sarah Wayland. Also A Kind of Spark is a lovely two-season show on BYUTV featuring autistic characters played by autistic actors.

Note: I am not a doctor, I have no medical training, and nothing in this article is intended as medical advice.

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

Caplan argues that the personal value of education largely is signaling, not real skill-building.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
January 10, 2025

Here I selectively quote from and comment on Bryan Caplan's The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money (Princeton University Press, 2018).

The upshot: Caplan persuasively argues that signaling accounts for a large chunk of the personal value of educational degrees. He shows that a great deal of education is a waste of time in terms of skill-building and that students forget much of what they "learn." However, I doubt he adequately accounts for how seemingly low-value classes could feed core literacy skills if they focused on writing. I'm more hopeful than he is that education can be vastly improved. His case supports the position that school and state should be separated (i.e., that education should be completely privatized), but then the right answer to the austerity question (Caplan promotes reduced spending on education) becomes, "Let people interacting in a market decide, and if providers of education can provide a better product for less, great!" Regardless of what you think about Caplan's case for signaling and austerity, Caplan's book also is full of great advice for parents, students, and educators.

Personal Reflections

I hated many aspects of school especially in the younger grades. When I was in third grade (I believe it was), my family moved to Muleshoe, Texas, a miserable little shithole where teachers routinely beat students with wooden boards, often behind thin screens so other students could hear the whacks and the victims' cries of pain. Although I personally never was beaten in school, the experience was traumatizing. It is no exaggeration to say that many of the adults involved with running the school there were moral monsters. But that is not the typical experience! And thankfully for me usually school was substantially less-bad. I did suffer some pretty severe bullying, meaning physical assaults, in eighth grade.

Nearly everything I learned in high school I learned on my own. I was a voracious reader, and I read complex novels and books on economics and philosophy. I did not learn to read in school; my mom taught me through informal phonics. Most of my classes were tediously boring, but I was good at sucking up to teachers, turning in my homework, and prepping for tests. I was strongly motivated by the reward of the grade.

The best thing that happened to me in high school in terms of my formal education was that a teacher panned a book review of mine, which prompted me to get a lot more serious about my writing. The teacher gave me some solid tips to improve; however, my basic skills in literacy came from my extensive independent reading. For that same class I wrote my first real paper, a defense of the reasonableness of Christianity. (Later I changed my mind.) Although I didn't gain the basic skill set in class to write the essay, the teacher did strongly push me toward writing the paper. That's probably the most important thing that happened to me in my K–12 education.

I was an exceedingly good crammer and test-taker. I passed calculus both in high school and in college without actually learning calculus. I passed numerous history tests and then quickly forgot practically everything.

I took several semesters of Spanish in high school and several semesters of German in college and now cannot speak either language, aside from a few words and phrases. So I buy Caplan's case that foreign language classes mostly are a waste of time, although genuinely immersive classes are far better. A relative of mine took language class in Guatemala and actually became fluent in Spanish.

In college, I benefited greatly from a "Great Books" program, in which I actually read Homer, Greek plays, Plato, Aristotle, and the so on, and wrote a bunch of papers. I also enjoyed several philosophy classes and took the readings seriously. I enjoyed reading and analyzing texts. And I enjoyed my economics classes, read most of the material, and learned the graphs well enough to do well on the tests.

I took a real physics class but did not have the background or the study skills to do well in it. I regret that; I could have done okay if I'd spent the time.

The upshot is that I lived both the "signaling" and the "human capital" sides of education. I did gain real skills and real knowledge, but I also spent a great deal of time going through the motions to improve how my academic career looked on paper. I also wasted a lot of time in college, drank way too much, and was not as serious a student as I wish I'd been. But I was still a good student in some of my classes.

Preface and Introduction

In the preface, Caplan assures us he read "piles of research" in "education, psychology, sociology, and economics." He adds, "When relevant experimental evidence is thin or nonexistent (as it usually is), I put my trust in Ordinary Least Squares with control variables." He summarizes this thesis: "Our education system is a big waste of time and money" (repeated in the introduction).

In his introduction, Caplan summarizes the signaling model of education, the view that a major personal value of a diploma or degree is the signal to prospective employers that one has the intelligence, conscientiousness, and conformity to do a job. To a substantial degree, degrees signal competence but do not create competence.

Caplan writes, "Even if what a student learned in school is utterly useless, employers will happily pay extra if their scholastic achievement provides information about their productivity" (italics omitted throughout).

Caplan quickly concedes that "some education teaches useful skills," but holds that "a significant fraction of education is signaling." What fraction? Caplan says "at least one-third" but probably over half or even four-fifths. That's quite a gap! But it's hard to measure, and anyway the skills-to-signaling ratio will be quite different for different students.

Even if education largely is about signaling, Caplan emphasizes, that says nothing about what education an individual should pursue. From the individual's perspective, the insight that education is largely about signaling just means that the individual needs to pursue education in order to send the right signals.

But from the broader perspective, insofar as education is about signaling, spending on education is socially wasteful, as it creates an arms-race among students to out-signal each other and results in students wasting enormous time and resources.

Caplan writes:

To be maximally blunt, we would be better off if education were less affordable. If subsidies for education were drastically reduced, many could no longer afford the education they now plan to get. If I am correct, however, this is no cause for alarm. It is precisely because education is so affordable [for the individual at the margin] that the labor market expects us to possess so much. Without the subsidies, you would no longer need the education you can no longer afford.

This point is worth emphasizing: In Caplan's view, if governments stopped subsidizing education (at least for the most part), people would get a lot less of it, and employers would respond by lowering the credentialing bar for new hires. Basically, a lot of people who now graduate high school would drop out, and a lot of people who now go to college would enter the job market with a high-school degree. The high-school diploma would become the new bachelor's degree for many employers.

Caplan then endorses "the separation of school and state," yet he quickly leaves that idea by the wayside, assuming instead that we're basically locked in the status quo. I wish Caplan had explored the implications of separation more. In a market, education providers would work hard to actually teach students things that matter to employment. And a lot of education would self-consciously be about civic or spiritual values, not monetary rewards, and a lot of people might sign up for that. So I think that, while it's likely that a free market would lead to less spending on education overall and less time spent in school for most people, the free-market view is not necessarily committed to austerity. It's committed to letting individuals interacting in a market decide.

Here is another weakness of the book: Caplan distinguishes between useful and low-value classes, and he puts literacy and numeracy, along with some science, math, and vocational classes, in the first category. That leaves out subjects such as history and civics. But, as Natalie Wexler points out, literacy is not taught in a vacuum; people become literate by reading and writing about particular subjects. So far as classes such as history and literature help students improve their ability to read and write, those classes help build real skills, even if students forget the particular facts covered by the class. But it's possible that those classes typically are taught so badly that they don't even improve literacy skills.

Also, if Caplan got his wish, obviously that would create some short-term adjustment problems as employers struggled to figure out the new landscape. Caplan doesn't deal much with the transition.

Fleshing Out the Signaling Model

Caplan spends his first chapter (following the introduction) expanding on the signaling model. He talks about how education signals intelligence, conscientiousness (the willingness to work hard), and the ability to conform to social expectations and others' guidelines. Caplan also points to some of the decades-old literature on the signaling model.

In his second chapter, Caplan says that English and math are "high usefulness" classes; technical and science classes have "medium usefulness" (although this depends on the student); while arts, foreign languages, history, social studies and "personal use" classes have "low usefulness."

Obviously, some students love the arts, foreign languages, history, etc. Caplan reasonably would say that only a small fraction of students should focus on such things. I tend to agree. Bluntly, students could learn the core contents of most semester-long classes just by reading a good book in a few hours. In a market for education, students who want to spend most of their time creating art could do that (and some do now), just as some students spend most of their time in sports and treat their education as a side-line. Caplan also distinguishes degrees based on usefulness.

Caplan's review of studies on retention is particularly persuasive. The upshot is that Americans are basically ignorant of the subjects they supposedly have studied in school. Caplan also effectively talks about opportunity costs. If teens weren't wasting their time in school, many would gain valuable skills by working.

In Chapter 3, Caplan discusses the relationship between credentials and earnings. The signaling effect is real. Caplan concedes that there's something to the story that more-able people get more credentials, but those people would not do just as well without the credentials. (He gets into a lot of details I won't review here.)

Caplan "piles on" with his fourth chapter, pointing out, among other things, that the "sheepskin effect" is real. In other words, doing the exact same coursework without getting a degree is worth far less on the job market than having the paper in hand.

Caplan's Advice for Individual Students

"For most purposes, the ambitious can safely scorn theory [about education] and follow the money," Caplan writes in his fifth chapter. This chapter can be hugely helpful for young students planning their futures, whether or not they read the rest of the book. The chapter is more detailed than one might expect. Here is the starting point: "The self-help guru who says, 'You need more education' and the policy wonk who says, 'We need less education' may both be right."

Caplan starts with the obvious costs: tuition and foregone earnings. Then he works in complications such as taxes and job satisfaction. The upshot:

Even Poor Students [as defined] can reasonably expect the resources they invest in high school to out-perform high-yield bonds. College, in contrast, is a solid deal only for Excellent and Good Students. Largely owing to their high failure rate, Fair Students who start college should foresee a low 2.3% return on their investment. For Poor Students, it's a paltry 1%.

Caplan's Chapter 6 discusses "the social return to education." Next, he argues "we need lots less education." He closes by discussing why "social desirability bias" causes people to support high spending on education even though it's socially wasteful. In his eighth chapter, Caplan argues for more vocational training.

In his ninth chapter, Caplan addresses whether we should view education as a "nourishing mother," whether "ideas and culture matter more than dollars and cents." Caplan argues that a good education (a "merit good") requires worthy content, skillful pedagogy, and eager students. But the education that most students actually receive offers none of those things. In fact, schools just don't do much by way of molding students.

Caplan includes a telling quote by British professor Greg Clark:

In my second year as an assistant professor at Stanford University, I was assigned the task of mentoring six freshmen. Each appeared on paper to have an incredible range of interests for an eighteen-year old: chess club, debate club, history club, running team, volunteering with homeless shelters. I soon discovered that these supposed interests were just an artifact of the U.S. college admission process, adopted to flesh out the application forms and discarded as soon as they have worked their magic.

Caplan is not against "soulcraft" education; he just thinks for the most part people should pursue it on their own, not via the super-expensive education system.

Here's a great bit from this chapter: "Give students numerous, diverse, yet realistic options. . . . Expose boys to nursing. Introduce strong math students to insurance. Tell upper-middle-class kids what plumbers and electricians do and earn."

In his tenth chapter, Caplan presents dialogues on the topic to drive home his points.

Caplan offers a succinct conclusion. Here's part of what he says:

Students forget most of what they learn after the final exam because they'll never need to know it in real life. The heralded social dividends of education are largely illusory: rising education's main fruit is not broad-based prosperity, but credential inflation.

And:

Employers can't afford to give every applicant a chance. They need rough-and-ready ways to decide whom to interview and whom to hire. In our society, academics are the focal metric. It's intrinsically appealing, since academic success calls for a blend of brains, toil, and submission. And over time, this intrinsic appeal has fed on itself. Education is now the way the adult world measures the promise of youth. Scholastic failure doesn't merely reveal a lack of talent and drive; it signals deviance.

And:

Slash government subsidies. This won't make classes relevant but will lead students to spend fewer years sitting in classrooms. Since they're not learning much of use, the overarching effect will not be "deskilling" but credential deflation. . . . The less education applicants have [generally], the less [individual] applicants need to convince employers they're worth hiring.

In his afterword to the 2019 paperback edition, Caplan offers some replies to critics.

ChatGPT does a pretty good job of summarizing major criticisms of Caplan's thesis.

Check out Caplan's Bet On It blog and his other books for more.

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

A Reply to Michael Huemer

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
September 17, 2025

The usually down-to-earth philosopher Michael Huemer, perhaps most importantly known for his theory of "phenomenal conservatism" that counsels us to start with what seems to be the case, recently summarized two of his more "out there" proposals.

His first thesis is that the universe somehow continuously reconstitutes itself (maybe it expands and contracts continuously), such that the world as it more-or-less is already has come out, and will come about in the future, an infinite number of times. An implication is that you, or a person very much like you, has come and will come into existence an infinite number of times. Hence, you are immortal. The idea is not that the universe will reconstitute itself the same way every time, but rather that there are only so many ways that it can reconstitute itself (maybe a quadrillion-quadrillion or something), but regardless every possible state is reconstituted an infinite number of times.

His second thesis, reflective of Plato, is that you are essentially your immaterial soul, which survives the death of your body, and then somehow floats unconsciously around the cosmos or something, and then somehow rejoins with each of your future selves, or maybe with other corporeal beings.

These two theses are separable. You could hold that "you" (or a person much like you) continues to come into existence, but the soul dies each time with the body. But then is the future "you" really you? You also could hold that the universe as we know it is finite, but the soul is immaterial and separable from the physical body, such that it can be reincarnated. (Of course most Christians reject physical reincarnation but think the soul survives in an afterlife.)

To tip my hand, I think the first thesis might be true, but it doesn't make any difference to my life except as an interesting intellectual diversion, while the second thesis is false. (I also think maybe the universe is eternal but, like the digits of pi, it doesn't repeat itself. But I have no idea.)

My View of the Soul

We all know consciousness is hard to explain. I accept Huemer's claim that the "soul," which I equate with consciousness, is not material or physical in an important sense. When I see a red ball, my experience of seeing a red ball is not, itself, a physical or material thing. That's why I say that I'm a "naturalist" but not a "materialist."

What I think is going on is that conscious experiences, although themselves not physical, arise from and are made possible by a physical substrate. For us, that substrate is the brain (as situated in the surrounding body). Maybe it's possible for consciousness to arise from a computer-chip substrate.

I would describe my view as something like "parallelism." A sufficiently informed outside observer could perfectly map what the physical substrate is doing while I experience seeing a red ball, and that would correspond to me seeing the red ball, but the observer could not thereby directly gain knowledge of what it's like for me to see the red ball. I assume that you, another sighted person, know what it's like for me to see a red ball, because that experience for you is pretty much the same. But I'm extrapolating there. In an important sense my conscious experiences are mine alone.

An implication of my view is that souls come into existence with the substrate and go out of existence (die) with the destruction of the substrate (to the relevant degree). One reason I don't think God exists is that I think the idea of a disembodied soul is absurd. A soul cannot come into being or exist by no means, and the means by which a soul comes into existence is some physical substrate.

So we are mortal. Here is why this should not raise in you a sense of existential dread. We live, always, in the present moment. We can value our future lives only insofar as we envision our future selves experiencing inherently meaningful moments. But the meaningfulness of a moment is an end in itself; it does not rest on the meaningfulness of future moments. In other words, your life can have meaning now, and that is enough. Granted, you can't allow yourself to ruin the value of your current moments over dread of missing out on future moments. Even if you did or could live forever, that could be of value only insofar as individual moments have inherent value or meaning. Your life can have meaning right now, and you always live in the now, however many moments you have.

Let's say Huemer is right about the reconstituted universe, such that "you" come into existence infinite times. I think that future "me" isn't really me. If I could go through something like a wormhole to meet one of my future selves, my reaction would not be, "That's me," but rather, "There's another person who is remarkably similar to me but not me."

Or let's say a person could clone himself perfectly, complete with all the same memories, down to the placement of the last atom. Neither you nor your clone would recognize the other as being the same person. Or imagine you could clone yourself with such perfection, knowing you would die in the process. You would not be indifferent to dying. You might do this anyway if you could, say, create a perfect clone except without terminal cancer. And the clone, with the original gone, would feel like the same person and could carry on living "your" life. But there's an important sense in which you, the original, would feel like the clone is a different person identical to you carrying on your life.

An Immaterial Soul Doesn't Help with Identity

Some theories of reincarnation say you can be reincarnated as an entirely different person, or even as a cow or a grasshopper or a snail. Huemer accepts something like this as possible:

I don't know how similar your different incarnations are to each other—e.g., whether they are all almost identical to your current self, or whether some of them are completely different. I don't know whether you can come back as a non-intelligent animal. . . . You don't (I assume) remember any of your previous lives, because your memories are stored in your brain, which decomposes after death.

Okay, if I (my "soul") used to be Genghis Khan, how is that "me"? I don't remember being Genghis Khan, I don't remember slaughtering all those people or impregnating all those women, I have no way to confirm or disconfirm that I was, in fact, Genghis Khan. Even if I was Genghis Khan, I don't feel like I'm Genghis Khan. So how does the fact that my "soul" used to inhabit Genghis Khan, and in fact be his "soul," have any bearing on my identity? It seems like Genghis Khan and I are completely different people despite sharing the same soul.

Huemer's immortality thesis is interesting only if I'm really me again. But it seems like if a future me happened to get a different soul, or even happened to get the same soul, that would have no bearing on whether future me is really "me." Instead of ending up in future me, why shouldn't my soul end up in a creature on the planet Galaxa on the other side of the universe? (Aside: Andy Weir has a story in which a "soul" lives every possible life and finally remembers all these lives.)

How many souls are there in this scenario? 42,378,998,012,762? An infinite number? How did they get here? How do they exist without any means of existing? Opening the "can of souls" to solve the problem of personal identity seems to create a lot more problems than it solves.

A Note on Free Will

Huemer regards the existence of free will as a major reason to embrace the theory of an immaterial and immortal soul. But my substrate model is perfectly compatible with compatibilism, which perfectly well explains our experiences of weighing pros and cons, speculating about the future, and making decisions. Just as I think my experience of seeing a red ball can be explained scientifically at the substrate level (although without conveying what the experience itself is like), so I think my experience of making choices can be explained. This all seems perfectly consistent with my experiences and "intuitions." So, yes, there is a way in which conscious experience is immaterial (and, no, I cannot fully explain that except to say that consciousness is an emergent property), but this doesn't change the fact that consciousness arises from, and is made possible by, a physical substrate, without which consciousness (the "soul") ceases to exist.

The Infinity Paradox

How do I deal with Huemer's main argument for recurrence (his term for the universe reconstituting itself)?

On a restrictive view of persons, you could only be born once. Now, whatever conditions were required for you to be born the first time, those conditions have either probability zero or a nonzero probability. If they have probability zero, then you shouldn't be here. If they have a nonzero probability, then they should have occurred before (like, in a previous century), given that there has been infinite past time. On the restrictive view, however, that would prevent you from being here now.

Basically I want to say that, even if there are infinite "me"s, I don't feel like I'm any of those other mes, and if I don't recognize X as me, then X just isn't me. Every instance of infinite-me is a unique person.

Like Huemer, I think the universe is eternal (because "nothing comes from nothing"), and I think the universe is a succession of moments. By Huemer's reasoning, the probability of any given moment is zero (if each moment occurs only once), therefore no moment can exist—and yet the universe over time is made up of an infinite number of moments. I exist over a finite number of these moments, and the division of my moments over infinity is zero, and yet my life has meaning. I think this is just to say that I am a finite being and that meaning arises in the context of finite lives, and these facts do not change by virtue of living in an eternal universe. And if Huemer is right that a repeated moment is in a sense the same moment, such that there are a finite number of moments, I don't see how that makes any difference in terms of me living a meaningful life.

Plato is still wrong, and he's never coming back, even if "future Plato" thinks otherwise.

I have more to say about values and meaning in my book, Getting Over Jesus: Finding Meaning and Morals without God. By the way I quote Huemer quite a lot in that book and usually agree with him.

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