by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
July 10, 2026

I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.

You Should See Me in a Crown
Leah Johnson
Scholastic Press, 2020

Reading Notes

I confess I was skeptical. The gimmicky premise of You Should See Me In a Crown is that a girl competes for prom queen to win a scholarship, which she needs to attend her college of choice. Yet I loved this book and finished it in a single day (even though I am hardly a member of its intended audience). I love the lead character and her friends, and I love what the book says about resiliency, courage, and being true to yourself.

Why was this book suppressed by Christian conservatives in the Elizabeth School District? The author herself is religious; in her acknowledgements, Johnson writes, "The first thank-you for this book, this life, always, is due to God, who has shown me an almost-unbelievable amount of grace and mercy over the past twenty-five years." The book promotes education, hard work, honesty, family bonds, and community involvement, all widely admired values.

The book prominently features an "f-bomb," but only once that I recall, and to good effect. The book does not portray smoking or much drug use (although one background character had to go to rehab), and it portrays drunkenness only once in order to portray it as bad. There's no sex in the book, just kissing. There's no portrayal of violence or suicide. There's a bit of discussion about such topics as "intersectionality." So there's just not much controversial about the book.

But the book is largely about the budding romance between the main character, Liz Lighty, and the new girl at school, Amanda "Mack" McCarthy. It is a very wholesome relationship and in many ways a model relationship (despite Liz's mishandling of aspects of it). But it is a gay relationship, and, apparently, that is enough for some conservative reviewers (or community activists who didn't actually read the book) to try to suppress it. And that is ridiculous and shameful.

Questions for Discussion and Review

1. Johnson inserts a quote by James Baldwin at the beginning of her book, "The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it." How do Liz's academic interests, her skin color, her financial status, and her sexual orientation create challenges for her fitting in, and how does Liz work to create a space to fit? To what degree do people have a responsibility to help others fit in, especially others with unusual or unique characteristics? Granting that some societies exclude certain people to varying degrees, to what extent does Baldwin here express a truth applicable to every individual, that each of us needs to work to find a place to fit? When is it appropriate to try to fit in and when is it not? Does creating a place to fit necessarily mean fitting in socially?

2. At what point does the desire to fit in become toxic, crossing the line from healthy self-presentation to unhealthy self-suppression? How does Liz learn to put herself out there while being true to herself?

3. How do Rachel and Liz differ in the way they understand themselves and relate to other people? What is the difference between asserting yourself and trying to dominate others? How does authentic self-expression fit with promoting others' well-being? Does Rachel fail to see that connection, or does she reject its importance?

4. Liz narrates, "When you already feel like everything about you makes you stand out, it just makes more sense to find as many ways to blend in as you can" (p. 5). When is trying to make yourself invisible a betrayal of self? When can trying to stand out or gain attention also be a betrayal of self? How do you remain true to yourself while participating enthusiastically in society?

5. At the beginning of the story, Liz anticipates that in college at Pennington, "I'll be . . . surrounded by people like me, in a place I fit" (p. 3). To what degree is she displaying the mentality, "The grass is always greener on the other side"? Does her limited ability to fit in at high school say more about her or more about the high school?

6. Early on, Liz calls Campbell Confidential, the local social media app, her "worst nightmare" (p. 3). Eventually she largely makes peace with it or at least views it with less anxiety. What are the harms and what are the benefits of the app and of social media more generally?

7. Liz narrates, "I grinded hard, kept my head down, and survived growing up poor and black . . . because that's the Lighty Way" (p. 19). In what ways is such an attitude admirable and often necessary for success, and in what ways does such an attitude push Liz down the path of anxiety and self-denial?

8. Liz's relative poverty dramatically affects her thinking and actions, including her decision to enter the contest. (Yet the wealth of Gabi's family hardly makes them happy.) What is the novel saying about the challenges of poverty?

9. How do the illnesses of her mother and brother, leading to the death of her mother during Liz's childhood, affect Liz?

10. How does Liz's anxiety affect her thinking and actions? What does she do to alleviate anxiety, and how do her strategies develop over time?

11. Rachel quickly outs herself as the villain when she suggests that Liz might benefit from "affirmative action" in the contest judging (p. 41). While the novel explains the context for the mistakes of other characters, it never explains why Rachel acts as she does. By contrast, Gabi eventually understands why she treated Liz shabbily and apologizes (p. 287). In the end, Rachel is just as antagonistic as ever. What is Johnson's purpose with this character, and why does Johnson never provide Rachel with a sympathetic backstory or redemption arc? What would Rachel have to change about herself, and what would she have to do, to earn Liz's forgiveness?

12. Mack explains her rules to Liz: "I never let terrible people get away with doing terrible things. And . . . if something is wrong, I say something about it. Always" (p. 42). How do different characters either succeed or fail to live by these principles? Why are they sometimes so difficult to follow?

13. Johnson drops many pop-cultural references throughout the novel (e.g., Hunger Games, Breakfast Club), and a (fictional) band plays a large role in the story. What role do popular artworks play in the novel, and why does Johnson pepper her story so heavily with such references?

14. Liz loves music, feels comfortable with music, uses music to express herself, and defines her identity partly in relation to music. She wants to go to Pennington to study pre-med and to participate in the college's high-level band. She connects with Mack over band and their love of a music group. What role does music play in Liz's emotional development and her expanding sense of identity?

15. Relatively early on, Liz narrates, "Lightys don't get fairy tales" (p. 48). Once Liz changes strategies in the prom queen competition, her message becomes, "F... your fairy tale" (p. 230). But in the end Liz gets her fairy tale (p. 324). What is a fairy tale, and how does the novel interrogate the idea of the fairy tale?

16. During freshman year, one of Jordan's friends makes a racist comment about Liz, and Jordan does not defend her (p. 65). Horribly, Gabi kept Jordan's apology letter from Liz, destroying the friendship between Liz and Jordan (p. 218). Liz blames this lack of reconciliation for her fear of humiliation and her forcing herself "to the fringes" and "hiding in [a] tiny protective bubble" (p. 224). Obviously Gabi's action was a huge betrayal. To what degree is Liz justified in blaming Gabi for her problems here? How else might Liz have responded to Jordan's betrayal and his (mis)perceived lack of remorse?

17. Britt says the prom competition is "a system designed to benefit people like Rachel Collins" (p. 107). To what degree is that a metaphor for broader problems?

18. Liz narrates, "Silence and shame aren't the same thing" (p. 109). However, both Gabi and Liz fear that, if Liz comes out as gay, that will tank her chances to win the competition. Why do they put so much stock in the opinions of their classmates? Why do they underestimate the good will of their classmates? Thankfully, coming out as gay in the United States is much safer than it was in the past and than it still is in some parts of the world. How does a person know when it's safe enough to come out? How does the act of people coming out make it safer for others to do the same?

19. Why does Liz say to Mack, "I'm sort of terrified of you"? (p. 169)

20. While arguing with Mack, Liz thinks, "The stakes are always higher for me. . . . I don't get the option of not being in control" (p. 209). To what degree is Liz pointing to real external problems, and to what degree is she rationalizing her mistreatment of Mack? Notably, soon after this, Liz narrates that she has "learned how to say when enough is enough" (p. 225).

21. After Rachel outs Liz in an effort to humiliate her, the school principal reacts by excoriating Liz. Why does he respond this way, and how are Gabi and Ms. Simone able to overcome his stance? In what ways is this a metaphor for larger social problems?

22. Dr. Frederickson tells Liz, "You are not your brother's keeper" (p. 275). To what degree has Liz taken on too much responsibility for her brother's well-being, and what responsibility does she actually have toward him? How do responsibilities change with context?

23. Liz develops intense friendships, and her friends play a huge role in her life, happiness, and development. What is a virtuous friendship, according to the novel, and why do we need virtuous friends?

24. Although Liz and Mack go to the prom together, they are not officially allowed to attend as a couple. Liz narrates, "There's no mistaking that we're together. And that small act of resistance feels good to me" (p. 307). Should they have fought harder for an inclusive prom, or was their "small act of resistance" adequate or appropriate under these circumstances? In general, when should we take our victories where we can find them within the system, and when should we condemn the system?

25. One approach in youth fiction, and in youth life, is for the "enlightened" kids to shun things like prom and school spirit. But Liz ultimately embraces such things. Liz defends prom as "feeling special in a town that doesn't feel special at all" (p. 311). Liz even makes friends with the "cool kids" such as Quinn, who turns out to be a very kind person. What is the novel saying about hometown spirit, popularity contests, the artificiality of a lot of social divisions, the possibility for reconciliation, and the building of genuine community?

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
July 6, 2026

I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.

The Hate U Give
Angie Thomas
Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins), 2017

Reading Notes

Recently my family watched the first Rambo film, First Blood (1982). It's about a Vietnam war veteran struggling with PTSD, depression, suicidal inclinations, loneliness, and loss of purpose. It's also about police abuses and violence, which are what set the main story in motion. Basically, the film is about Rambo waging war against a local police force that had subjected him to wrongful arrest and brutality. Because the victim in the film is white and a war hero, we don't usually hear complaints that the film promotes violence against police or treats police unfairly.

The Hate U Give also is about police violence, but the victim is black. And apparently that makes all the difference, for this is one of the books suppressed by the Elizabeth School District and often challenged elsewhere.

I am not someone who automatically assumes that anytime a police officer shoots or harms someone the officer is in the wrong. Indeed, I think most police shootings and comparable acts are justified, morally and legally. I also think cases should be evaluated based on specific facts. For example, I think the police-involved killing of Elijah McClain (2019) absolutely was not justified.

The Hate U Give not only is about the unjustified police killing of an unarmed young black man. Mainly it's about a girl struggling to live in two worlds, her poor black neighborhood and her upscale mostly-white school, and struggling to cope with the death of her friend, Khalil, at the hands of a police officer, an incident that she witnessed close-up. But the central event of the story is the police shooting, and, for some reviewers, that is unforgivable.

In a way this is a strange book for Christian conservatives to suppress, because the book is in its own way both deeply Christian and deeply conservative. Yes, it has quite a few swear words. Yes, it has a brief discussion of manual sexual stimulation—but that is in the context of the lead character, Starr, flatly telling her boyfriend that she is not ready for sex, and him quickly apologizing for suggesting full-on sex despite her expressed desire not to have it.

The author, Angie Thomas, begins her acknowledgements by thanking "my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ." Christianity is extremely important to Starr's family, although Starr's father worships Black Jesus, which will make some white conservatives uncomfortable. Church life plays a significant role in the novel.

Starr's nuclear family is portrayed in a highly positive light (despite its struggles), and Starr has a very strong relationship with both her mother and father. The novel promotes education, self-improvement, and community involvement, all conservative values. Yes, the novel portrays drug use—as uniformly destructive.

True, the novel is somewhat tolerant of property damage as a form of social protest (or at least it can be read that way), although Starr ultimately comes out against it. And, while the most-discussed villain of the book is a black gangster (the white cop who shoots Starr's friend resides in the background), the novel also portrays gang activity as understandable and at times even benevolent. Those are provocative stances, obviously.

Notably, The Hate You Give is decidedly not anti-police. Yes, the officer in question shoots and kills and young black man, and many of the novel's characters, including Starr, understandably consider that killing a murder (even though the officer is not prosecuted). Yes, during a protest, some characters shout, "F... the police." And Starr throws back a tear-gas canister toward police that they had first thrown at her. But that is not the end of the story. Starr's uncle, practically a second father to the girl, is a police officer. During an interview, Starr says, "My uncle's a cop. I know not all cops are bad. And they risk their lives, you know?" (p. 289) And, toward the end of the novel, police justifiably "draw their guns" on the villainous gangster and arrest him, portrayed as "something to celebrate" (p. 425, 428). So claims that the novel is anti-cop are just ignorant.

Questions for Discussion and Review

1. The book opens with Starr's anxiety about her identity: "There are just some places where it's not enough to be me. Either version of me" (p. 3). A lot of people feel like they inhabit two or more worlds. What is behind Starr's split identity, how does she alter her speech and behavior in different circumstances, and how does she eventually close the gap?

2. Thomas reveals the meaning of her title (p. 17), a quote by Tupac Shakur. Various characters praise Shakur (e.g., p. 168). Why does Thomas pick that title? In what ways, and to what degree, are the sentiments of the quote true? What should we make of Thomas's use of the quote given Shakur's troubled personal life?

3. How else, and to what effect, does Thomas invoke popular culture to tell her story? For example, she also refers to The Fresh Prince of Bell-Air (p. 35).

4. What role does religion play in Starr's life, her father's life, and her community?

5. Research question: Starr's father was influenced by the Black Panthers (p. 31). What was the purpose of the group? What were its tactics? What led to its decline? What should we make of its "Ten-Point Program?

6. Much of the story involves Starr finding the courage to speak out and to use her voice as her "biggest weapon" (p. 410). Why is speaking out so hard for Starr and for so many others? What drives her eventually to speak? What are other key examples in the novel of people acting courageously? In what ways is the novel Thomas's weapon?

7. Maverick made some serious mistakes in his life. How is he able to become a good father, a successful businessman, and a respected community leader, and what does his example say about the possibility of redemption?

8. Although some of Thomas's characters are basically good (Maverick, Carlos, Starr) while some are basically evil (King), Thomas presents many characters as morally complex and all characters as capable of making mistakes. We've mentioned Maverick's serious past mistakes. Khalil, while basically a good person, got involved with selling drugs. Carlos initially defended the police officer. Several of the characters have serious substance-abuse problems, although they remain largely sympathetic. Starr herself makes several serious mistakes throughout the novel. Carlos says of Khalil, "He was more than any bad decision he made" (p. 256). What is Thomas saying through these examples about character, mistakes, and the potential for growth?

9. As presented in the novel, what is the relative importance of environment versus choice in a person's life? What does this say about drug abuse and gang involvement?

10. Initially Starr hides her white boyfriend from her father, Maverick, and at first Maverick reacts very negatively to Starr dating a white boy. Why does Maverick react that way, and how does he eventually come around?

11. At one point Carlos, Starr's uncle and a police officer, says to Maverick about the shooting, "Why does it always have to be about race with you? Other races aren't killing us nearly as much as we're killing ourselves" (p. 53). Does he have a point? Is the problem with his remark here only one of wrong place, wrong time? How does the novel respond to Carlos's claim?

12. One of the characters says about Starr's area, "This neighborhood makes young men deaf to their elders" (p. 65). What is Thomas saying about the generational conveyance of culture and wisdom and about social problems that can undermine such transmission? How does the concern apply elsewhere?

13. The novel describes property damage, including the burning of businesses, during social protests. Notably, businesses marked "black owned" often are spared (p. 396). However, Starr, as angry as she is about the grand jury's refusal to indict the police officer who shot her friend, narrates, "I'm just as pissed as anybody, but this . . . this isn't it. Not for me." Is Thomas herself taking a stance here or mainly trying to understand different people's thinking and emotions?

14. What is Thomas through the character of Hailey saying about the nature of racism? Does Starr respond appropriately? How do various characters in the novel exhibit racism in different ways?

15. One character analyzes gang culture in Harry Potter (p. 166–167). What does that say about how different people interpret artworks and about possible double-standards in how some people approach artworks from different cultures?

16. Different parties and media outlets present Khalil's death in radically different ways. What does this say about objectivity, bias, and media spin? How should journalists report relevant background while painting a fair larger picture? In what ways can omitted facts and unverified claims bias a story?

17. In the novel, the legal system fails Khalil. To what degree does Thomas intend this to be an indictment of the legal system overall? How pessimistic or optimistic should one be about the current system and the possibility for reform? What is the novel saying about how a person should respond to a failure of justice?

18. Starr's parents argue over whether to move out of the neighborhood. What responsibility does a person have toward his or her neighborhood and broader community? When should a person stay and fight for improvements and when should a person leave?

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
July 4, 2026

Jefferson Against Slavery

Yes, Jefferson was a slave holder. Yes, Jefferson repeatedly raped and impregnated one of his slaves. Yes, that's all horrible. Nevertheless, at some level Jefferson raged against slavery. Unfortunately, the part of Jefferson's Declaration against slavery was cut. Here is that language:

He [the king] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Jefferson here neglects to mention that the American colonists held the black slaves in question by force. Offering black people their freedom if they fought for the Crown might have been partly cynical, but at least the British government, in fact, freed the people in question, insofar as it could. The American colonists could have offered to free their slaves, they just didn't.

Yet, at least, here we have Jefferson recognizing the horrific evil of slavery. This does not buy him absolution—if anything, the text reinforces that Jefferson knew bloody well that what he was doing was very wrong—but he does get some credit for at least recognizing a great evil. It's a shame the leaders of the young nation-in-progress did not fully take their own principles seriously.

And at least the general principle was preserved, if less directly, in the famous final language of the Declaration. In the end, Jefferson's text played a large role in the abolition of slavery.

The Constitution Center has out a collection of essays on the Declaration, recorded to video based on a book. Jane Kamensky discusses Jefferson's cut passage.

Education Updates

Gifted Education: I have long disliked the term "gifted" to refer to academically adept students, as I prefer to find a person's unique gifts, whatever those may be. But let's ignore the terminology and grant that some students are "naturally" much more comfortable with academic and intellectual pursuits. Matthew Yglesias's concern with "gifted education" is that it often doesn't much help gifted students.

Teacher Merit Pay: Matt Barnum: It seems to work at least sometimes, "particularly when paired with additional resources."

AI and Motivation: Jenny Anderson and Mike Goldstein: "Khanmigo, like so many other ed-tech tools, has floundered because it hasn’t solved the challenge at the center of education: How do you motivate students to experience the discomfort of learning something new?"

Standardized Tests: Idrees Kahloon: "Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All." Meagan O'Rourke: "More Than 1,000 University of California Professors Want Standardized Tests Back."

Prayer in Schools: Pew via Mehta: Although at the top level Americans oppose prayer in schools 53-46%, if you dig down 53% say "teachers should be allowed to lead their classes in prayer but only if students are NOT required to participate," while an additional 8% say students should be required to participate in prayer. Of course this is ridiculous; will any prayer do, say, a prayer to Satan? Also, a slim majority favors posting the 10 Commandments in classrooms. Now, in a free market, individual schools would be able to decide such policies. But, in today's context, such poll results indicate a dangerous indulgence of religious ideology by force.

Bible Reading in Texas Schools: Also: "Texas just made Bible reading mandatory in public schools." Although there's nothing wrong per se with students reading historically important religious texts, the Texas effort obviously was about promoting Protestant Christianity. That said, a few passages of the Bible appear on a lengthy list that also includes many other works. It's hard to argue that the Bible passages in question are inappropriate in an educational setting.

Bad Teachers: ProPublica: "California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints."

Homeschool Results: Brian D. Ray: The bulk of the evidence suggests homeschooled students have at least as good of academic outcomes. However, there are a lot of limits to the research.

Quick Takes

$2 Billion: NYT: Trump has "pulled in" at least that much in his second term, especially from his "crypto businesses." "Unprecedented profiteering." I don't think Trump is the most morally repugnant president of all time—Andrew Jackson at least probably would beat him—but he may be the most corrupt.

Birthright Citizenship: Ilya Somin opines. In a sane world Somin would sit on the Supreme Court.

Thompson's Betrayal of Legal Equality: How embarrassing for the Objectivist movement. Not only does historian C. Bradley Thompson pepper his newsletter with unreliable links to conspiracy-mongering sites, now he has condemned gay marriage on the ridiculous grounds that it's somehow akin to "inter-species" marriage and is not "metaphysical," proving only that some Objectivists at their worst throw around Objectivist-sounding language without having a clue what it means.

MRNA Vaccines: Safe and effective. (Which we already knew.) What's more: "Covid vaccination cut risk of adverse heart events." Also: "The Shingles Vaccine Reduces Dementia." The shingles vaccine absolutely sucked for me, but I'm glad I got it, as shingles can be horrible.

Sunscreen: The U.S. finally is getting new types.

The Venezuelans: Some of us get lucky in life, others not so much. Gisela Salomon: "More than 100 people just deported from the United States were being held in a hotel when earthquakes struck Venezuela, setting off a scramble to find survivors and bodies buried in the rubble, according to survivors." Heartbreaking. Of course this is not only about luck; I think the U.S. should have allowed in many more people from Venezuela.

Magness on Slobodian on Mises: Phillip Magness convincingly argues that, in Hayek's Bastards, Quinn Slobodian substantially misquotes Mises. But ChatGPT notices, "The article addresses only one component of [the work]. The book's broader argument about later libertarian figures such as Murray Rothbard, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and others is largely untouched." Undoubtedly much of the modern "libertarian" movement has associated itself with alt-right politics; this is no secret.

Adalja on Disease: In discussing Ebola, measles, and avian flu, Amesh Adalja writes, "Three of the biggest stories this week share the same shape: an outbreak outrunning the response because the people who would have caught it early were cut, a disease returning not by any act of nature but by bad human choices, and public health institutions being rebuilt in a way that will make the next outbreak harder to handle." More on measles.

Reason and the Declaration: This summer's Reasons Papeers focuses on the declaration.

National Socialists: Yep, Nazi Germany "embraced extreme socialist policies." Bryan Caplan brings receipts.

Rent Control: It didn't work in Norway either.

Supersonic Flights: Cowen: The feds are opening the door to more supersonic flights by moving to noise-based rather than speed-based regulations.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-71.html.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
July 4, 2026

More on Kiros

Republican? Maybe Republicans ran someone sensible against Kiros? Nope. Here's a line from Christy Peterson's platform web page: "No to chem-trails, toxic weather modifications." Sheesh.

James on Kiros: Scott James riffs on my recent column about Melat Kiros. He says that Kiros trying to distinguish calls to end the state of Israel from antisemitism "is moral laundering with footnotes." He writes, "Asked about the Boulder firebombing, Kiros would not plainly call it antisemitic, saying she did not know what was in the perpetrator's heart. Colorado's political hall monitors can spot a microaggression from space, but when Jews are attacked, suddenly we need emotional forensics." He adds that Joe Oltmann's antisemitism "should embarrass every Republican with a pulse and a Sunday school memory." He adds, "You can criticize Netanyahu. You can criticize Israeli military decisions. You can criticize settlements, borders, aid, strategy, and every elected official in Jerusalem. But when your framework treats the existence of the world's only Jewish state as the core problem, do not act surprised when people hear antisemitism knocking at the door."

More Criticism: Jimmy Sengenberger says Kiros in her 9News interview was "justifying terrorism." The progressive Colorado Pols has out three pieces: "Disqualifying: Melat Kiros Rationalizes Killing Jews," "Melat Kiros Proved Us Right And Then Some," and "Fellow Progressive Candidates Finally Condemn Melat Kiros." John Fund: "If anything, Kiros is more radical than AOC." Phil Weiser criticized Kiros over her comments about the terrorist act in Boulder.

WSJ: The Journal correctly notes that Kiros is a self-described socialist, but then bizarrely includes Phil Weiser in the "socialist left." It offers no evidence for that, of course. There's hardly any difference between the views of Weiser and Bennet.

The Left's Boebert: Sun: "Republicans’ new strategy in Colorado: Tie every Democrat to Melat Kiros."

Primary Upates

Team Bottoms Claims Election Rigging: Because of course they do. Trent Leisy, "communications director" for Scott Bottoms, said Victor Marx pulling ahead in the primary (as of Wednesday evening) was sign of "election fraud." Bottoms supporter Joe Oltmann posted, "The elections are fraudulent. . . . The fraud is real, the elections are fake." Via Kyle Clark. These assholes will claim that any election that doesn't go their way is rigged.

Stupid Rules: Assuming his lead holds, the "reluctant exorcist" Victor Marx will be the general-election Republican candidate for Colorado governor with around . . . 5% of active voters in the primary (or around 15% of primary ballots cast). Our primary rules are stupid and wrong. As I've said, we need unified party-free primaries with the same ballot-access rules for all comers, and preferably with approval voting.

Bounced Ballots: 9News: "More than 1,000 unaffiliated voters already disqualified in Colorado's primary after returning both ballots."

Marx vs. Homelander: Metzger: "Who said it: Colorado governor candidate Victor Marx, or Homelander?" Of course any direct comparison between the two is unfair; Homelander was a mass murderer, while Marx's homicides, if any, can be explained by coercion, self-defense, or combat.

Quick Takes

Barney Ford's Declaration of Independence: History Colorado: "Sir, I have thought seriously and deliberately upon this matter, and have finally come to the conclusion that I am entitled to my liberty." 1848. Ford also is buried at Riverside Cemetery (see next).

Silas Soule's Grave: Riverside Cemetery, where one of Colorado's greatest heroes is buried (Soule), along with many other important historical figures, is in serious disrepair. Now Denver Water might help, Skyler McKinley reports. Offhand I wouldn't be opposed to the cemetery being acquired and managed by Denver Parks.

Fentanyl Ballot Measure: CCJRC is opposed. I agree with them.

Peters Visited Trump: And Trump lied his ass off about why Peters was sentenced to prison. It's sort of remarkable to me that this is how Polis chose to blow up his legacy.

Polis Fired Clemency Board Members: Jack Healy: Polis "fired two members of his clemency board after they spoke out against his decision to commute the prison sentence of the election denier Tina Peters."

Tax Funds for Conspiracy Mongering: Sean Biddle went to "Freedom Fest" (so-called!) so you didn't have to. "The Douglas County Board of Commissioners were willing to give Ganahl and Hunt $25,000 for the event," based partly on Hunt's declaration that the event was "nonpartisan." Ha! See also Erik Maulbetsch.

Illegal Powered Bikes: Jennifer Brown: "Douglas County restricts use of electric dirt bikes, off-road scooters after rash of crashes." Good. These are extremely dangerous for users and passers-by alike. Some will proclaim freedom here, but we all pay for public sidewalks and streets. If you want the freedom to ride a bike go to appropriate sites or grow up and follow the rules.

Funeral Abuses: Alex Tabarrok points out that heavy regulation of funeral businesses does not prevent abuses. It definitely reduces competition and increases prices.

Workplace Defense: Allison Sherry: "Mary Ann Moreno, then 72, had been working as a Circle K store clerk for 16 years when a man came into the store in October 2020 and was acting erratically. He got close to her behind the counter and had two knives, according to court records. She pushed him before he eventually stole some cigarettes, the records say. The next day, Circle K fired her, saying she instigated the scuffle. Moreno got an attorney and sued." And won.

House Printing? Michael Booth: "Azure’s 3D printers in Montbello can build a $70,000 home out of 100,000 recycled plastic bottles in just a couple of days." Also: Factory Housing.

1968 Brighton Flower Strike: Quentin Young has the history. Sometimes business owners really do impose policies bad for them and bad for workers, so union action can serve as an important corrective.

Gerrymandering Stalls: Krause: The state Supreme Court squashed proposals.

Foster Kids: Yes, foster parents should use a child's preferred name and pronouns and not physically abuse the child. (Spanking already is disallowed, as it should be universally.)

Gun Suits: Krause: "Lawsuit challenges Denver, state over gun and magazine bans." Also: "Lawsuit filed over rules aimed at Colorado gun dealer records."

ICE and Dougherty Tangle: Following a road-range incident involving shots fired, Boulder DA Michael Dougherty reasonably wanted to prosecute the individuals responsible. But ICE, after dramatically mischaracterizing the incident, moved to deport the men. See CPR.

Three Firefighters Died: A dreadful story. Photos from the procession.

What Happened to Parental Rights? Republicans are the pro-parent party unless they're not. Newsline: "Doctors at Children's Hospital Colorado cite federal threats as they refuse to offer [transgender] care to minors despite court order." To summarize my views: The federal government should not be involved, hospitals have a right to offer such care if minors and their parents consent, hospitals also have a right not to offer such care, and people have a right to sue for damages in various contexts. I also think parents should be deeply skeptical about the need for such interventions.

Alan Berg: Quentin Young remembers.

Trump vs. Jeffco Schools: Melanie Asmar has updates.

Christian School: Ann Schimke: "A controversial public education co-op that spearheaded a 'public Christian school' in southern Colorado last year [since closed] will lose a member in August, putting its existence in jeopardy."

Religious Enrichment? Schimke: The former leader of the "public Christian school," Quin Friberg, "is pitching a new venture that involves public funding for students who opt out of public schools: overseeing homeschool enrichment programs." He "asked the Pueblo County District 70 school board to consider contracting with a nonprofit he created last month called Keystone Education Services." Terrible idea. This hijacking of some enrichment programs by various religious-right figures has been a terrible for secular homeschoolers.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-146.html.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 29, 2026

Immigration Watch

Deporting a Priest: Lindsey Toomer: "Federal officials plan to deport a 78-year-old priest who has lived in Colorado for more than two decades, despite humanitarian concerns regarding his health and fear of persecution in Uganda." Insane and wrong.

Closing Alligator Alcatraz: C. J. Ciaramella: "Good Riddance to 'Alligator Alcatraz,' a Cruel, Expensive, and Pointless Authoritarian Stunt."

Louisiana ICE Facility: NYT: "A report by the Department of Homeland Security's internal watchdog described officers putting one man in a chokehold and stabbing another with a pen."

Texas ICE Facility: NPR: "Immigrant detainees sue over 'horrific' conditions at Texas ICE facility."

Lack of Medical Care: Rae Ellen Bichell: "An Albanian man’s pain grew so unbearable, he said, he pulled out his own tooth as he languished for months in a New Mexico immigration detention center. . . . Hundreds of detainees across at least 33 states allege in federal lawsuits that immigration detention facilities are failing to provide adequate medical care."

Wrecking Families: Alan Taylor: "Samantha, originally from Honduras, was naturalized as an American citizen in 2025 and became the first member of her family to graduate from college. . . . She left Honduras at age 11 with her parents seeking asylum. . . . Marvin [her father] was ineligible for asylum due to a previous deportation, and he remained undocumented in the U.S. . . . The family made a heartbreaking decision to sacrifice family cohesion: Marvin would self-deport to Honduras following Samantha's graduation from Yale, and the rest of the family would remain living in the U.S." The "pro-family" GOP strikes again.

Trump Watch

Coddling Criminals: NYT: "Granted Clemency by Trump, Scores of Jan. 6 Rioters Have Been Accused of New Crimes." The "law and order" party strikes again.

Murdering People: The U.S. government murdering some 200 people on boats unsurprisingly has not curbed the flow of drugs.

Wasting Tax Funds: Eric Boehm: "The federal government lost an estimated $186 billion to 'improper payments.'" Notice that the same Republicans who obsess about improper spending in blue states ignore it when it comes to the federal government under Trump.

Quick Takes

Slaughter Case: Sotomayor: "Chaos will follow." NYT: "Trump Renews Threat to Fire Fed Governor in Wake of Court Loss." Opinion. Brad DeLong, in discussing the related Cook case, calls the Roberts court "deeply cynical and corrupt."

Topaz Museum: Recently I went with my family to Delta, Utah to dig fossils and minerals. An unexpected surprise was the Topaz Museum, dedicated to the history of a WWII Japanese internment camp. You can see some of the extraordinary art works hosted by the museum at its website.

Capitalist Dems? NYT: "Centrist Democrats Rebuke Party's Left Wing: 'We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist.'"

Ancient Capitalism: Surse Pierpoint: A four-thousand-year-old clay tablet from Turkey "specifies the [twelve] partners by name, the starting capital, the profit split, and the penalty for any partner who wishes to withdraw early." Via Cowen.

AI Socialism? WSJ: "Imagine the temptation for corruption if government owns stakes in America's wealthiest companies." Bernie Sanders joins Trump in calling for partial socialism.

Cowen Vs. the Nanny State: Tyler Cowen: "If marijuana and sports gambling can manipulate weak individuals, so can unscrupulous political leaders. A greater realization of individual weakness does not translate into a case for more government action; if anything, it suggests the opposite." Cowen also points to possible drugs and "self-surveillance" to help address problems of addiction.

Graham on Wealth: Paul Graham via Cowen: "I was talking to the founder of a startup I'd funded. I began by asking, as I usually do when I meet a founder, what her growth rate was. 93% last month, she said. I pointed out that this meant her net worth was also growing at 93% a month. She was getting richer at a stupendously rapid rate. And yet she hadn't been doing anything bad. The reason her startup was growing so fast was simply that users loved what she'd built. So she could feel from her own experience how wrong that politician was [who said in effect it's impossible to get that rich without doing something bad]. She wasn't exploiting anyone. Exactly the opposite in fact. The reason her startup was growing so fast was that she and her cofounder had been working their asses off to make their users happy, and as a result the users had been telling their friends. And that gets you exponential growth."

Autism Therapy Growth: Derek Thompson via Tyler Cowen: "In 2019, there were about 150,000 people working in autism therapy. Six years later, there were 654,000—more than the number of people who work in mining and logging, or telecommunications, or at the US Postal Service." Medicaid seems to be skewing this field pretty dramatically.

Haidt: Here's the new TED Talk. I'm still skeptical about a number of Haidt's claims, and I also see a good side to smart-phone use. Still, I think there's good reason for parents to monitor and restrict their children's device use.

Cowen and Tabarrok on AI: Here's a great 20-minute talk distilling Cowen's views. And don't miss Cowen's and Alex Tabarrok's talk with OpenAI. One thing that struck me about this talk was how young are the crew from OpenAI (as suggested by the video screen). Both Cowen and Tabarrok spoke in glowing terms of AI development, praised the team for doing great work, and talked about AI development as supremely important for human development. The economists said it was an honor to talk with the team, akin to sitting in on Alexander Graham Bell's lab. Tabarrok emphasized that the percentage of hours worked, as a fraction of a person's total life, already has declined from around 50% to 10%, so, he said, an additional drop to 5% is not such a scary proposition. The point that I think the economists underemphasized is that people always will value human contact, so it's just impossible that AI and robots will take over all tasks that humans value.

Noah Smith on Pig Welfare: He argues, reasonably, that "'crating' is torture."

Exercise: Yiwen Zhang et al.: "Compared with no resistance training, 90–119 min/week of resistance training was associated with a 13% lower risk of all-cause mortality (HR 0.87, 95% CI 0.81 to 0.95), 19% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality (HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.67 to 0.97) and 27% lower risk of neurological disease mortality (HR 0.73, 95% CI 0.58 to 0.92), adjusting for aerobic activity." Benefits of weights seem plausible; however, it also seems plausible that healthier people tend to exercise more.

Education Updates

Note: Previously I published updates about education in separate posts, but from here on I plan to merge them into my Roundups.

Spaces for Free Play: Ben Forman argues that, although phones are part of the youth mental health crisis, the deeper problem is lack of free play and space for that.

Teacher Arrested: Katherine Schaffstall: "A high school teacher [Matthew Warden] in Ohio has been arrested on assault charges after he allegedly punched a student in the jaw and tried to hit a second student." Warden claims he was "only joking around."

Art Updates

Note: Previously I published updates about art in separate posts, but from here on I plan to merge them into my Roundups.

Rush: Chris Willman: "Two heroes walked into the Forum—Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson—and three walked out," the third being "new drummer Anika Nilles." Great review for Variety.

Project Hail Mary: I love Andy Weir. See his recent interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's pretty extraordinary that he's written three novels, and two have been turned into outstanding blockbuster movies. Hail Mary is basically a buddy film in space, with cool science and high stakes. Ryan Gosling is fantastic, and the team behind Rocky creates a strange yet endearing character. As others have noted, Weir promotes a can-do attitude of progress. Martian and Hail Mary are two of my all-time favorite films.

Sheep Detectives: I love this film. It's superficially a whodunnit. But really it's about dealing with death, grief, and bigotry. Its argument against evasion is not as strong as Rand's but it's still good. It also has a message about animal welfare but in the context of anthropomorphized animals.

Houdini: The History Channel commissioned a three-hour miniseries about Houdini, with Adrien Brody playing lead. I loved this film (although not everything about it). The first part deals with Houdini's rise to fame as an escape artist, as well as a (largely fictionalized) account of his espionage activities for the U.S. and British governments. The second part deals more with Houdini's rhetorical war on "spiritualism." (See my first and second article about this for Complete Colorado.)

Angine de Poitrine: This French-speaking Canadian band is something like Ventures meets Primus, with a fabricated alien backstory and costumes. Their performance for KEXP is genius.

Miracle: Because hockey was in the air (prior the Avalanche getting sweept), my family watched the Disney film Miracle, about 1980 Olympic hockey. I was struck by how much of the background ties directly to events today: moon missions, conflict with Russia, conflict with Iran, a fuel crisis. In ways the film feels very much a product of its time. Characters smoke in crowded meetings, which today seems crazy. And the coach as portrayed in the film is at times abusive; today the trend seems to be toward calmer, non-abusive, or "positive and understanding," coaching.

Florence Nightingale '85: There's a lot I didn't love about this older TV film; it starts slowly and overemphasizes FN's suitors. Yet it offers a good portrayal of FN's tenacity in her work to reform nursing, especially during the Crimean War. The film effectively portrays the sexism and classism hindering FN's progress. The film emphasizes the aspect of FN's story as a journey of Christian self-sacrifice, but it does also cover aspects of her scientific and medical breakthroughs. It unfortunately omits her work in data analysis. One thing I wonder is to what degree Nightingale invoked a mission from God to cut through social barriers. According to one article, "Because of her deep conviction about universal law, she did not believe in miraculous intervention as an answer to prayer. Human beings must discover the laws of God and apply them for health and wholeness. Prayer is attuning or joining one's personal self with the consciousness of God, which is found in the deepest recesses of one's own being. Nightingale's idea of spirituality as intrinsic to human nature and compatible with science can guide the development of future nursing practice and inquiry." Regardless, FN is a moral hero and one of the most important women in science. By the way, there's also a good Animated Hero Classics on FN.

Is This Thing On? I didn't even recognize Bradley Cooper when he first appeared in this movie. Then I learned that Cooper also cowrote and directed the film, starring Will Arnett and Laura Dern (the entire cast is great), about a man who, in the midst of separating from his wife, turns to stand-up comedy to sort himself out. Meanwhile, his wife returns to sports through coaching. Can they put themselves back together and maybe also get their marriage back on track? I very much liked this film.

Puddles Pity Party: That's a singer dressed as a clown. "Holy Diver" with Primus, AGT.

Sinbad's Work Ethic: Arabian Nights is deeply misogynistic and racist; nevertheless there are some interesting things in it. Here is a quoted poem in Arabian Nights (trans. Malcolm C. Lyons, Penguin 2010, vol. 2, p. 456, Night 538):
It is through toil that eminence is won;
Whoever seeks the heights must pass nights without sleep.
The pearl fisher must brave the depth of ocean
If he is to win power and wealth.
Whoever hopes to rise without effort
Will waste his life in search of the impossible.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-70.html.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 29, 2026

Lynn Bartels: RIP.

GOP Gov Primary: See Dick fume: "Colorado Republicans stand on the brink of total irrelevance and embarrassment if they nominate one of the two nonsensical, buffoonish candidates running for governor, Victor Marx and Scott Bottoms." Meanwhile, Seth Klamann wrote a report on Marx. It's nothing like the deep investigative piece I'd hoped for. Marx is probably happy with the article, as its headline calls him "atypical" and "a force." A Post editorial offers quite a lot more information and says Marx's "social media accounts, his websites, and his YouTube page grossly overstate the work his ministry has done since 2003." Mandy Connell provides additional details about the Florida operation. Shaun Boyd reports that Darcy Schoening said she reported Marx for collecting donations from some people over the legal limit, leading to Marx issuing some refunds. Meanwhile, Sam Tabachnik has an article on Bottoms that includes discussion of the candidate's anti-gay stance and his conspiracy mongering about the elections and about child trafficking in the Capitol. Bloomberg backs Bennet, btw (which is a good reason to vote for Weiser).

Polis-Thiel Connection: Winston Cho: "Behind closed doors, powerbrokers across the world in politics, tech and media have convened at an annual in-the-know retreat hosted by Peter Thiel. . . . Dialog membership isn't limited to conservatives. Many prominent Democrats or figures associated with left-leaning politics are connected to the group, including . . . Colorado governor Jared Polis." It'll be interesting to see if this "leaked" information is confirmed.

Activists Push Cherry Creek Investigation: Jamie O'Rourke: "A new investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) into alleged 'racially discriminatory programming' in Cherry Creek Schools was seemingly instigated by a local conservative, anti-LGBTQ, pro-charter activist group. The group's leader [Lori Gimelshteyn of Colorado Parent Advocacy Network] now says she's working together with the federal agency on the investigation." Okay, so that's weird. But what are the underlying facts? Here's what DOE claims: "OCR is investigating allegations that the District sponsors clubs that exclude students based on race. Reports further allege that the district requires teachers to consider race when assigning classes and to provide differing levels of academic support based on race. Additionally, complaints claim that the District promotes a teacher training program that restricts participation based on race." I'll guess we'll see what more comes to light.

JeffCo Investigation Seems Like Bunk: Melanie Asmar: "District says 61 boys the Trump administration found on girls’ sports rosters were mascots, managers."

I Got a Golden Ticket: No, not the candy-bar kind. I got a parking ticket in Golden enforced by a contracted company, Interstate Parking Company of Colorado LLC, a relationship that strikes me as deeply problematic. Anyway, here's what I wrote for the appeal: "The signage is extremely misleading. I parked to the proper side of a sign saying no parking here to the corner. Right across the street and right around the corner are signs saying 2-hour parking. The tiny sign saying permit required is approximately 25 yards up the street, barely visible, and I did not see it because I did not come in that way. If you're going to enforce these permitting rules you need clear, visible signage in the relevant areas." A rep arbitrarily cut the fee in half. Obviously this was nothing like an objective or evidence-based review. Golden is largely a tourism-based town. I'm surprised its officials want to risk gaining the reputation of extorting visitors.

Illegal Biking: 7News: "Douglas County sets new regulations for electric dirt bikes." Good.

Pueblo Coroner: Olivia Prentzel: The coroner and his brother face 152 felony charges "for abuse of a human tissue, forgery and theft."

Generous Coloradans: CSI: Coloradans gave $6.1 billion in charity in 2025 and worked 110 million volunteer hours.

What's an In-State Crime? Well here's a crazy one from Michael Karlik: A woman charged $10,000 on her ex's credit card without his permission. "Prior to trial, the defense argued that Colorado lacked authority to prosecute [her] because no part of her alleged crimes occurred 'wholly or partly within the state,' as Colorado law requires." Seems like an easy legislative clarification (for future cases).

Kiros Cancelled: Kiara DeMare: "Ogden Theatre canceled Kiros-Piker event due to 'pressure and concern.'" Melat Kiros is running against Diana DeGette; Hasan Piker is a livestreamer. Logan Davis observes that a couple venues that canceled are tied to Phil Anschutz, which might or might not mean anything. The ADL has a report on Piker.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-145.html.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 17, 2026

I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky
MTV Books (Simon & Schuster) 2019, 20th Anniversary Edition

Reading Notes

One thing about Charlie, the main character of Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower, is that he can get mad at injustice. We have that in common. For example, I'm mad that the Elizabeth School District suppressed Chbosky's amazing book.

I also have something in common with Charlie's teacher, Bill. Like me, Bill generally is not afraid of books and is not afraid of children reading books. Indeed, sensing Charlie's literary potential, Bill assigns Charlie extra books as well as essays about the books. Some of the books Bill assigns are not very controversial (Peter Pan, Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise); others are highly controversial (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, On the Road, Naked Lunch).

In one of the most touching scenes of the book, Bill tells Charlie that he's "gifted" and "very special" (p. 181). Charlie tells Bill, "You're the best teacher I ever had" (p. 182).

Yes, it's obvious why this book is controversial. It includes discussions of suicide, drug abuse, mental illness, sexual assault, general assault including domestic violence, sex (including gay sex), anti-gay sentiments, and an abortion. But, as I've said before, we don't protect children from the problems of life by refusing to talk about those problems. (This is not a book for younger children, obviously.)

If you reduce Chbosky's book to its controversial elements based on out-of-context passages, then, bluntly, you are an idiot, and it is a shame that no one ever encouraged you to read and think as a child. But it's never too late!

Perks mainly is about growing up, making friends, navigating school, dating, learning about the world, understanding people, and experiencing love. It is about participating in life. The story also is surprisingly hilarious at times. Chbosky has written a warm, delicate, and often-humorous story. And, yes, at times a very tough story. I love this book.

The questions below contain spoilers. Interestingly, the end of the book features its own set of questions for discussions that are also good.

Questions for Discussion and Review

1. The novel consists of Charlie's dated letters to a "Friend." The first letter describes this friend: "You listen and understand and didn't try to sleep with that person at that party even though you could have." Charlie writes, "Other people look to you for strength and friendship" (p. 2). To whom is Charlie writing? Why does Chbosky choose this format? In a letter for the 20th Anniversary Edition, twenty years later, Charlie writes, "You wrote back" (p. 216). How does Chbosky reconcieve the "Friend" here?

2. In his first letter, Charlie writes, "I am both happy and sad" (p. 2). How is that? How typical is that experience?

3. The first letter discusses Michael Dobson's suicide, but that event doesn't play too big a role in the rest of the story. Why does Chbosky start with that?

4. At two points in the novel Charlie becomes very violent, once in self-defense (p. 7), another time to defend a friend (p. 151). At the same time, Charlie is one of the most emotionally sensitive people around, extremely thoughtful of others, and prone to crying. Where is all this emotional intensity coming from?

5. Early in the novel come examples of violence. Charlie recalls his dad hitting him (the only time his dad ever does) for asking Aunt Helen about her past trauma (p. 6). Charlie witnesses his sister's boyfriend hit her (p. 11). Many characters in the story suffer sexual or other physical abuse at some point. Chbosky's book largely is about the dynamics of intergenerational trauma and abuse. Compare and contrast how Charlie, Charlie's father, Sam, Helen, and other characters deal (or fail to deal) with such trauma.

6. The event that sets up the arc of the novel is when Charlie walks up to Patrick at a football game, leading to his friendships with Patrick, Sam, and their friends (p. 19). Why does Charlie, not always the most socially outgoing person, do this?

7. Patrick tells Charlie that girls, at least before they mature, "just like somebody that can give them a purpose" (p. 23). What does that mean? Is he right?

8. Bill tells Charlie, "Sometimes people use thoughts to not participate in life" (p. 24). What does that mean? Is it true?

9. During the same meeting, in the context of Charlie's sister, Bill also tells Charlie, "We accept the love we think we deserve" (p. 24). Discuss.

10. Bill assigns several books to Charlie. Why does he assign these particular books? What is Bill's implicit message about the role of literature in understanding one's self, others, and the world around us? (What do you think Bill would say to the Elizabeth School District?)

11. When Charlie's sister says to their mom about her boyfriend, "He's my whole world," Mom replies, "Don't ever say that about anyone again" (p. 25). Why does she react that way?

12. "I feel infinite," Charlie tells his friends (p. 33). What does he mean by this? Also, what is the symbolic role of the tunnel?

13. What's a wallflower? Patrick says, "You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand" (p. 37). What are the different meanings of the term? Is being a wallflower a good thing?

14. Although Charlie is very observant of other people, often he fails to understand the significance of what he's observing, especially about himself. What does this say about Charlie, and how does this shape the experience of outside readers?

15. Mary Elizabeth tells Charlie that Zen "makes you connected to everything in the world" (p. 42). How does Chbosky see the relationship between independence (remember Charlie's mom's comment to his sister) and interdependence?

16. What are "Glory Days" (p. 52), should people try to create them, and if so why and how?

17. Charlie writes, "Things start to slip away . . . and I see nothing" (p. 74). How does Charlie understand his mental illness, and how does he cope with it?

18. I thought this was one of the funniest lines of the book: "They were really having fun being cynical, and I didn't want to ruin it" (p. 106). What do you think of Chbosky basically laughing at cynicism here?

19. What does Mary Elizabeth see in Charlie, and why is their romance such a disaster?

20. Charlie writes, "I had better start being honest with Mary Elizabeth about how I feel" (p. 133). Sam also talks about honesty in a relationship (pp. 200–201). Obviously honesty is crucially important in a relationship; why do so many people have trouble being honest?

21. Sam says to Charlie, "I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am" (p. 201). Why do people so often idealize others? To what degree does Charlie like the real Sam rather than a fantasy of her?

22. Charlie paraphrases the theme of The Fountainhead like this: "Every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people" (p. 169). How does that fit with Sam's comment, "Tell people what you need" and "want" (p. 200) and with Chbosky's broader themes?

23. In the hospital, Charlie contemplates the dynamics of recognizing the harm that others do while taking responsibility to forge ahead. Charlie writes, "I guess there could always be someone to blame" (p. 210). He writes, "I'm not the way I am" because of Helen's abuse. He tells the story of two brothers who respond quite differently to their father's alcoholism. He adds, "We can still choose where we go from there" (p. 211). Discuss.

24. This question is more about the historical context of the novel, and it points to outside research. The Perks of Being a Wallflower originally was published in 1999, following the peak of the so-called "memory wars" in psychiatry during which various experts cast doubt on some claims of repressed memories. Elizabeth Loftus argued that therapists could unintentionally help plant false memories and that in some cases dubious claims of repressed memories led to injustices. In the novel, Helen sexually abused Charlie, and Charlie suppressed those memories. Does Chbosky overrely on an implausible psychological theory? If so to what extent (if any) does that undercut the story or themes of the book?

25. Steelman the arguments for suppressing Chbosky's book in school libraries. Then give your strongest reply.

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 15, 2026

I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.

The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Alfred A. Knopf, 2025 (originally published 1970)

Reading Notes

I discuss this book in some detail in my June 10, 2026, article for the Colorado Times Recorder. As I note there, the book is controversial because it discusses the brutal rape of a child as well as other instances of sex assault against a child. The book also discusses adult sex, domestic abuse, and parents beating their children. This is not a book, then, for young children or even for especially sensitive adults.

Morrison's novel, her first, is a form of social criticism. It aims to describe certain social pathologies in order to shame or horrify readers into corrective action. As Morrison writes in the 1993 afterword, "The weight of the novel's inquiry on so delicate and vulnerable a character could smash her and lead readers into the comfort of pitying her rather than into an interrogation of themselves for the smashing" (p. 211).

I want to emphasize this: Morrison's book, despite the horror of its subject, is beautifully written. Just as a literary work, on the level of language, this book is astonishingly good.

As Morrison writes in the afterword, the central hook of the story, Pecola's desire for blue eyes, came from one of Morrison's childhood experiences (p. 209). Morrison writes, "Implicit in her [an elementary school friend's] desire [for blue eyes] was racial self-loathing." She continues, "Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her" (p. 210).

Questions for Discussion and Review

1. The only people in Pecola's life who show her any kindness are the two sisters she briefly stays with and the three prostitutes who live in an apartment above her residence. How is it that all the other people in Pecola's life, especially her father and mother, come to fail her so completely? In what ways to ordinary people, not just the book's main villains, contribute to Pecola's destruction?

2. What does Claudia's desire to "dismember" the "blue-eyed Baby Doll" (p. 20) say about external expectations of beauty and different people's responses to those expectations?

3. What is the function of the Dick-and-Jane text? Is the inclusion of that text effective as a literary device?

4. The Breedloves become "ugly" because of "their conviction" that they are ugly. They saw "support for it [that conviction] leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance." Mrs. Breedlove converted her self-perceived ugliness to "martyrdom." "Sammy [Pecola's brother] used his as a weapon to cause others pain." And Pecola "hid behind hers" as "her mask" (p. 39). Is such self-perceived ugliness a plausible central motivation for a character, as Morrison makes it out to be here? Might the focus on the outside gaze serve to excuse the rationalizations and bad choices of some of the characters?

5. Cholly's ugliness was "the result of despair, dissipation, and violence directed toward petty things and weak people" (p. 38). Undoubtedly Cholly had some extremely traumatic experiences in childhood. Despite Cholly's later horrific crimes, the reader can empathize with Cholly as he experiences racism and his father's rejection of him. To what degree do bad experiences explain or even excuse later misdeeds? Does Morrison take a position on that question?

6. Morrison writes of Pecola's mother, "She needed Cholly's sins desperately" (p. 42). Why did she?

7. Pecola says, "Please, God, please make me disappear" (p. 45). And "each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes" (p. 46). Why does Pecola so completely internalize racial self-loathing whereas Claudia fights it?

8. Why does Morrison put the three prostitutes in the story?

9. The girls have a totally wrong view of the biology of menstruation (p. 70). What does this say about sex ed and shame over sex-related topics?

10. Morrison describes certain black women as learning "how to behave" and "how to get rid of the funkiness . . . of passion . . . of nature . . . of the wide range of human emotions" (p. 83). What problem does Morrison see here, and is she fair to the real-life women she probably had in mind?

11. Morrison poetically describes the green switches of Spring with which mothers beat their children (p. 97). Mrs. Breedlove says she "couldn't seem to stop" beating her children (p. 124). How does the pervasive violence against children described in the book interact with the other themes?

12. Contrast Mrs. Breedlove's treatment of Pecola with her treatment of the white children she cares for. What explains the difference?

13. How does Soaphead Church know what will destroy Pecola, and why does he treat her as he does? What explains his evil?

14. Strangely, although the sisters "hurt for" Pecola and hope for her baby to live (p. 190), they do not in the end make an effort to befriend Pecola or try to save her. Why not?

15. What is the function of the marigolds in the story?

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 14, 2026

I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.

Melissa (previously published as George)
Alex Gino
Scholastic, 2022 (originally published 2015)

Reading Notes

I loved this story. My family loved it; I read it aloud (with my wife taking over for a spell so I could rest my voice). I loved the main characters. Spoilers ahead.

I also see why the book is controversial. The main character a transgender girl (in the early stages of coming out) and the book explicitly (although briefly) talks about gender-affirming hormones and surgeries, hormones in the context of use by a minor. That's a lot for a young child to process (and the district removed this book from the pre-K–5 elementary school). Had the story been edited to remove the few lines about gender-affirming medical care, I wonder if the district still would have suppressed it. Don't get me wrong; I think kids can handle the book and will very much enjoy the story whatever they think of the medical stuff. Certainly I don't think the book's contents justified the district's suppression of the book.

The main story arch involves a fourth grade class, of which Melissa and Kelly are members (here I'll use the name "Melissa" even though the kid goes by "George" throughout most of the book), putting on a play of Charlotte's Web. Melissa really wants to play Charlotte, but a teacher won't allow that because it's a girl's part. Thankfully Melissa has a very loyal and courageous friend in Kelly.

Woven within the story of presenting the play is Melissa's struggle to come out as a girl, her mom's struggle to accept her for who she is, and the surrounding tensions at school.

I proceed in the belief that we don't make things better by avoiding difficult conversations.

Questions for Discussion and Review

Note: I intend these questions for a somewhat older audience.

1. Melissa seems to dislike having a penis and "tried not to think about" it (p. 44). I wonder if that's typical of the trans experience (if there is a "typical"), or if a lot of transgender women accept that part of their anatomy. For reference, one study found that relatively few trans women, 5–13%, had genital surgery. The story describes a TV interview Melissa had seen: "The woman replied [to a question about surgery] that she was a transgender woman and that what she had between her legs was nobody's business but hers and her boyfriend's" (p. 46). I intend this question as an invitation to explore what trans people have said about their experiences.

2. Gino plants discussion of transgender hormone treatments (p. 47) with the idea that eventually Melissa may need to get her mother's permission to get such care. (Her father is out of the picture.) That seemed a little artificial to me. Would Melissa have been a better story (or more child-appropriate) had Gino edited out the lines about transgender surgeries and hormones, or are those topics essential to the story?

3. At first, one of Melissa's teachers, as well as her mother, are not supportive of her wanting to be or act like a girl. (Interestingly, both Melissa's mother and her brother suggest that coming out as gay is easier.) On the other hand, Melissa's friend, brother, and principal are very supportive. How do the attitudes of people around her affect Melissa's mood and thoughts?

4. What drives Kelly's heroism, and why does Kelly find it easier than some adults in the story to accept Melissa?

5. A lot about the school, such as the queues and the play parts, seem unnecessarily gendered. Would removing gendered divisions, as Heath Fogg Davis suggests in Beyond Trans, help reduce pressures to conform to traditional gender roles?

6. The story is primarily about Melissa's desire to be recognized for who she is as a girl. It's also about her discovery of a love for acting, which is also a way of actualizing herself. Yes, Melissa is about a trans girl, but how are its themes relevant to every person?

7. What motivates the bully of the story to call Melissa a "freak?" Why do people sometimes react negatively do those who seem different? How does this relate generally to tribalism and "othering" (use specific examples)?

8. Why do some parents and school officials object to books such as Melissa? Try to steelman the position.

9. What do people mean when they talk about a man finding his "feminine side?" (See p. 60.) Is that idea helpful, misleading, or both?

10. At one point the bully refers to Melissa (who at that point presents as a boy) as "such a freaking girl" (p. 89). What, if anything, does it mean to be "such a girl?" In what ways does society create artificial expectations for and restrictions on girls and women? Is there a way in which discussions about what it means to be transgender also can impose unnecessary or unhelpful expectations or restrictions on people?

11. At one point Melissa, problems piling up, finds herself in a "haze of unhappiness" (p. 95). What are the common problems confronting transgender people, how can they get help, and how can those of us who are not trans help provide support? More generally, what kinds of support help people when they feel unseen, isolated, or fundamentally understood?

12. Why do you think Gino chose Charlotte's Web as the play within the story?

13. To me this is the saddest line of the book: "Mom didn't see her" (p. 129). Why is being seen so important?

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 10, 2026

I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.

Looking for Alaska
John Green
Dutton Deluxe Edition, 2015 (originally published 2005)

Reading Notes

I recommend that people read this book and do so without any spoilers, with which my review is replete. I just can't talk substantively about the book without talking about its major events. I'm glad I read it without knowing anything about it. I will note that the first line is, "one hundred thirty-six days before." Great way to build tension! But try not to find the answer to the question ("before what") prior to reading the book until it answers. So go away, read the book, then come back after you've read it.

The 2015 Deluxe Edition contains substantial material that helps explains the book's background and themes. The author writes an introduction, offers "some last words on last words" (pp. 275–277), and answers questions in the back (pp. 319–342). Michael Cart discusses the book at the very end (pp. 345–350). Also, a large chunk of the book is devoted to deleted scenes (pp. 283–317, the only section of the book I didn't read). In these notes I lean heavily on the author's own discussions of the themes in his book.

The first thing to notice about this book, in the context of its suppression by Colorado's Elizabeth School District, is its overt religious themes. How strange that conservatives suppress a pro-Christian book!

The story mainly is about three students at a boarding school, Miles Halter, his roommate Chip Martin, and their friend Alaska Young, plus their two friends Lara and Takumi, plus the surrounding characters.

The students take a class on theology with Mr. Hyde, who discusses Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, among other religious traditions. This class makes an impression on Miles, and the book ends with an essay he writes for the class on the topic of coping with the "labyrinth of suffering" in which we as humans find ourselves (or so says the book). This topic has especial poignancy for Miles given the death of Alaska, the central event of the novel.

Miles writes, "Ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. . . . There is part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed."

The book ends, then, with Miles's affirmation of a nonmaterial soul that survives death. We should not be surprised, then, that the deluxe edition includes the following question for Green (pp. 338–339): "You've previously described Looking for Alaska as 'Christian fiction' but more recently you seem to describe it as exploring multiple theistic (and nontheistic) responses to grief."

Green replies, "Good Christian fiction can explore (and celebrate) multitheistic and nontheistic responses to grief, I would argue. . . Pudge's [Miles's] personal response is quite a Christian one, insofar as the theological idea of radical hope (that hope and forgiveness are available to all, maybe even including the dead) is central to Pudge's final conclusions." The idea of "mutual forgiveness," he adds, "is certainly an idea that I got from Christianity."

So, although Green's book does not hard-sell Christianity as the only or final answer, it certainly is friendly to Christian theology and self-consciously written from a Christian perspective. So the fact that a group of (mostly or entirely) Christian conservatives suppressed this book is ironic and, in a way, hilarious.

Ah, but the book also describes, in "clinical" terms (see p. 340), a blowjob. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that's why the book was suppressed. Because, you know, high school students definitely won't learn about such things if they don't have access to school library books that discuss them. And we can't possibly read scenes of a book in context. The novel also involves substance abuse leading to Alaska's death.

Interestingly, Green writes in his introduction, his first draft of the novel did not mention two of the novel's most important ideas, the "labyrinth of suffering" and the "Great Perhaps." Aspiring writers can learn something about the drafting and revision process by reading all of the deluxe edition.

I started off not liking this book at all. Its main character is an entitled, pretentious idiot preoccupied with pranks and alcohol and infatuated with the Bad Girl. Mainly I didn't like this character because he reminds me too much of myself in my younger years. But I came to appreciate the book as I saw where it was headed. Although in the end I disagree with Miles's answer to the problem of suffering (see my book on religion), I appreciate books that take big ideas seriously.

A personal note about drunk driving: I knew two people who, in their youth, got in a car with someone they knew to be drunk, and both died from the resulting crash (one instantly, one later due to complications). In both cases the driver had to deal with enormous guilt.

Questions for Discussion and Review

1. Before Miles goes to boarding school, he (silently) mocks his only two peers to attend his going-away party as "vastly, deeply uninteresting people." Is the real problem that Miles is being an asshole and not trying hard enough to make friends with the people around him? If he can't find his "Great Perhaps" where he is, can he reasonably expect to find it elsewhere? Is it just luck that Miles immediately hits it off with his new roommate Chip and with Chip's friends? (Green describes Miles as "weak-willed" and "self-destructive," although "he starts to affect the action in the second half of the novel" (pp. 330–331)). In general, how do you know if "the grass is greener" elsewhere or if you just need stay put and change yourself? When can longing for a "Great Perhaps" elsewhere be a form of self-destructive escapism?

2. Right after Miles arrives at boarding school, some others at the school, angry at Chip, abduct Miles, duct-tape him like a mummy, and throw him into the lake. Realistically, this easily could have killed him. I regard that incident as a violent kidnapping and assault of a sort that, in the real world, should result in arrest and criminal prosecution. Yet in Green's world, this is characterized as a prank (although an extreme one), and Chip emphasizes to Miles that students at the school do not rat on each other. In the real world, school bullying is a serious problem (recently a 12-year-old Chicago girl was killed in a case of bullying). Do students have a moral responsibility to report bullying? Do students ever not have such a responsibility? Is there a context in which the "no-ratting" mindset is reasonable?

3. Alcohol is involved in the deaths of around 178,000 Americans every year, including some 12,000 deaths by car crash. Drug and alcohol use by teens is "relatively low" these days, although still a huge problem. Why do some teens still find alcohol and other drugs alluring? To what extent is drug abuse driven by a search for excitement? What are healthier ways to seek excitement in life? To what extent is drug abuse driven (as in the case of Alaska) by depression or other psychological issues?

4. Why did Alaska think she was responsible for her mother's death, why was she not, and to what extent did Alaska accept guilt over her mother as a way to punish herself for broader feelings of self-unworthiness? (Green says, "Alaska had some pretty serious emotional problems that weren't about her mother but instead were probably about the way her brain was wired" (p. 328)). (Note: Parents certainly can teach their kids some basics about household safety, such as how to call 911, but Alaska at her age was not responsible for that.)

5. In my view, Miles treated both Lara and Alaska shabbily, Lara by cheating on her, Alaska by taking advantage of her emotionally wounded condition. Discuss or challenge.

6. In my view, Miles is infatuated with Alaska but not really in love with her. Discuss or challenge. To what degree is Miles in love with a fantasy of Alaska, as Chip suggests, rather than the real person?

7. Miles and Chip really did have a moral responsibility to stop Alaska from driving drunk, so they earned at least some of the guilt they experience over her death. At one point, Chip, angry, says to Miles, "Why'd you help her go? I was drunk. What's your excuse?" (p. 210) Was Chip drunkenness really a good excuse? To what extent are the boys guilty for Alaska's death, and how should they confront that culpability? In all seriousness, you might want to role-play or at least contemplate how you might intervene in such cases. It's much easier to take the right action in the moment if you've prepared yourself for it.

8. Miles seems to make mutual forgiveness with Alaska contingent on souls being immortal (p. 272). Can you interpret forgiveness in ways that doesn't require immortality? Obviously someone "truly dead" cannot forgive anyone, but can Miles find the sort of redemption or resolution he's looking for without postulating an immortal soul?

9. One answer to the problem of the "labyrinth of suffering" is that we should emphasize gratitude rather than suffering. What do you think of that answer, Chip's answer ("I choose the labyrinth"—p. 266), and Miles's answer (in his closing essay)?

10. What is your Great Perhaps, and how do you intend to find it?

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 8, 2026

I read this book as part of my review of the books suppressed by Colorado's Elizabeth School District. See the main document.

#Pride: Championing LGBTQ Rights
Rebecca Felix
Abdo Publishing, 2019

Reading Notes

The first book I read from the list of books suppressed by the Elizabeth School District, because it's short and available online through the library via Hoopla, is Rebecca Felix's book on LGBTQ pride. I read this 32-page book aloud to my wife and son. (I also read this book a couple years ago because of the Elizabeth controversy.)

Here is what I wrote about the book for the Colorado Times Recorder (forthcoming):

The district removed Rebecca Felix's nonfiction book, . . . a 32-page history of the LGBTQ movement. According to the original document from the district (republished by Denver 7), the focus was on "materials . . . determined to be inappropriate based on age level, flags, or lacking educational merit." There's nothing remotely inappropriate about Felix's book for any age reader. As a short history of the LGBTQ movement, clearly it has educational merit. Obviously the district removed this book because of its ideological bent (although district officials deny that). . . . I read Felix's book aloud to my family, and we discussed it and looked up aspects of its history.

Felix takes the angle that people used #pride (with the hashtag) to mark content on social media relevant to LGBTQ issues. This dates the 2019 book somewhat as hashtags have since lost prominence. But that does not affect the bulk of the book's contents, which covers the LGBTQ movement (as it came to be known) from 1924 through the Obama era.

I'd pick some nits in the book, as I would in any book. The book points out, "Historically, religion has played a large role in LGBTQ oppression." Although true, Felix also should have mentioned that many religious people embrace LGBTQ people and make theological arguments for doing so.

Felix mentions that Alfred Kinsey's work "included explorations of non-heterosexuality" and was therefore important to the gay-rights movement. Felix does not mention that Kinsey also discussed pre-adolescent orgasms. Felix could have mentioned the controversial nature of some of Kinsey's work in a way appropriate for young readers.

Sometimes critics of books on LGBTQ issues say that one cannot discuss LGBTQ issues without discussing sex, and that's inherently inappropriate for children. Even if you grant the premise (which I don't), certainly it is possible to discuss the fact that people can enter into romantic relationships, as every child has seen many times, without bringing up physical intercourse. It's not hard to say that, just as a man and a woman can fall in love, so can two men or two women. Conservatives obviously do not believe their own propaganda on this point, or they'd also say that we can't discuss heterosexual marriages with children.

For the most part, Felix is just conveying noncontroversial historical facts. Examples: "President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an order making it illegal for [gay people] to work for the US government." "In 1961, Illinois became the first state to decriminalize sexual relations associated with homosexuality." Okay, there's that word "sex," but this hardly entails or mandates a discussion about details. Adults easily can get away with saying something vague about physical aspects of a romantic relationship.

Felix justifiably places the Stonewall Riots at the center of LGBTQ activism. Felix does not draw a distinction between appropriate forms of protest (as I would call them) and outright vandalism that some engaged in. But pulling the book because of Felix's oversights is not the answer. My family benefitted by using the book as a jumping off point for precisely these sorts of complexities.

Felix mentions the importance of Ellen DeGeneres "coming out" in 1997. This gave my family the opportunity to pull up the old clip from the TV show in question. My son is a fan of DeGeneres because more recently she frequently hosted Colorado science educator Steve Spangler to put on demonstrations. So Felix's book offered a great opportunity to put the history of the LGBTQ movement in the context of our own lives.

Felix's book also is directly relevant to our region in discussing the horrific 1998 murder in Wyoming of Matthew Shepard "because he was gay." Felix's remarks hold even though the crime also involved robbery.

Does anyone really want to argue that children cannot handle learning about murders? If that's the case then schools also cannot teach anything about wars or current events, basically the entirety of history. Of course grisly details would be inappropriate for children, but those are not in Felix's book.

Felix mentions two important Supreme Court decisions, the one of 2003 holding "that laws banning sexual relations associated with homosexuality were unconstitutional" and the one of 2015 legalizing same-sex marriage. Thus, my child again was able to relate the LGBTQ movement in history to the period of his own life.

Here is the blunt fact: Felix's book was not removed because it is inappropriate for children or because it lacks educational merit. It was removed because those who removed it are biased against LGBTQ people and did not want children in their district exposed to this work sympathetic to LGBTQ rights.

I, on the other hand, am proud to have read the book to my child, and he and I both learned a lot from it and from my family's discussions surrounding it.

Questions for Discussion and Review

1. Felix discusses the use of hashtags on social media to mark LGBTQ content. Use of hashtags peaked in the late 2010s and social media companies turned more to content algorithms. Based on research or your own experience, how did people use hashtags, and now how do they categorize social media content? Also what are the downsides to such categorization?

2. How have different religious groups and ideas dealt with LGBTQ issues?

3. What do you think about Alfred Kinsey's efforts to discuss sexual practices in an academic setting? In what respects did he cross ethical lines? (Obviously whether and how people address this topic will depend on the age and maturity of readers.)

4. "Peaceful protests" often take place around the same time as, and sometimes even right beside, riots that damage property and sometimes even injure or kill people. In my view, rights-respecting protests are appropriate, whereas property damage and other rights-violating acts definitely are not. What do you make of some people's efforts to blur the lines or even to justify violent rioting?

5. Beyond social media and protests, what are the various tactics that cultural-political movements use to advance their agendas, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of different tactics?

6. One topic Felix does not cover is the AIDS epidemic, which peaked in the 1990s and into the 2000s. How did that epidemic affect the LGBTQ movement and critics of that movement? Can you think of any other important topic that Felix left out?

7. Felix mentions DeGeneres. What are some other key examples of LGBTQ people in modern American art? Generally, how to artists and political movements interact?

8. On June 3, 2026, Gallup reported, "After two decades of rising support for LGBTQ+ issues, U.S. attitudes have plateaued and begun to slide back modestly." What do you make of the relatively rapid rise of LGBTQ support in the U.S. and throughout much of the world, and what do you make of the dip in support in the Trump era? More generally, what do you think about the political coalitions that support or oppose the LGBTQ movement? (And to what extent do you think that movement is unified?)

9. Felix discusses a variety of court decisions that expanded LGBTQ rights. There can be a tension between Constitutional protections of rights as recognized by courts and democratic processes. For example, at one point Colorado was known as the "Hate State" because of a popularly supported ballot measure. When do courts appropriately intervene, and when should they defer to popular will?

10. Felix gets into some of the history of the evolving language surrounding LGBTQ issues. Even that acronym, now widely recognized, has not been in use for very long. How has the LGBTQ movement (as we now call it) developed and embraced changing terminology to discuss issues its members care about?

11. What specific person or event mentioned by Felix do you think had the greatest impact on LGBTQ rights and public acceptance? What event or events in your own life most shaped your personal views on the topic? (Note: Be careful with this last question if used in a book club with people who do not know each other well, as it could lead to some difficult and potentially heated discussions.)

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

Medicaid fraud, GOP debate, antisemitism, Polis vetoes and signatures, conversion therapy, JeffCo schools, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 6, 2026

Medicaid Fraud: David Migoya: "A four-month Denver Gazette investigation into the inner workings of the program found an exploitive system, in which homeless people were encouraged to recruit others they knew to join them, an enticement that was sweetened with promises of payments of up to $500 for each successful referral." Read the rest; hard to summarize. Wow, wow, wow. HT Mandy Connell.

GOP Debate: Rae Solomon and Bente Birkeland: "The false claims and attacks became so unhinged at times that moments could have been mistaken for a Saturday Night Live cold open, or a spoof reality show like Jury Duty." The reporters say that Bottoms told an "antisemitic joke"; regardless, he certainly openly tolerated Joe Oltmann's antisemitism, which is far worse. This CPR piece does not read like a usual straight news story, but this was anything but a normal debate.

Democratic Debate: Mandy Connell wasn't impressed. I don't see the need to watch this one; I doubt there would be much difference in electing one over the other.

Business Climate: Michael Bennet recognized the need for a "growing economy" and warned about being "on the front page of the Wall Street Journal twice in three weeks as being the place that's repelling business from our state. That won't work." Maybe Bennet would be slightly less enthusiastic about taxing and regulating Coloradans?

Marx on Daily Show: Desi Lydic features the previous reporting of Kyle Clark. Congratulations to the Republican Party of Colorado for turning Colorado into a laughing stock. Also: Mandy Connell links to Dean Singleton's discussion with Peter Boyles about Marx (no, Singleton did not endorse Marx).

Caldwell Reprimands Bradley: Marianne Goodland: "House Minority Leader Jarvis Caldwell has reprimanded Rep. Brandi Bradley after a confrontation in which she allegedly cursed at and intimidated the House chief clerk." Sigh.

Nutcase: The new GOP chair, Craig Steiner, called Trump a "nutcase." So that's a good sign.

Antisemitism in Boulder: Olivia Doak: "CU Regents publicly denounce antisemitic statements justifying Pearl Street attack"; this concerns "online student statements." David Flomberg: "The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at CU Boulder—currently unrecognized by the University—has chosen to exploit this horrifically tragic story [the terror attack in Boulder] for their own myopic political tantrum and anti-Jewish hate campaign."

Polis Vetoes: Polis vetoed a bill prohibiting credit-card interchange fees on sales taxes. I agree "it's unfair that [business are] being charged a fee to collect and deliver tax revenue on behalf of the government," as Jesse Paul and Taylor Dolven summarize, but the answer is just to eliminate sales taxes, not impose more restrictions on credit-card companies. Note that the legislature also could have just let businesses deduct the amount paid in fees on sales taxes from the amount owed to government. Polis also vetoed bills regulating price setting and restaurant distribution of utensils and condiments. Mike Krause: Polis also rejected the unreasonable union bill. Polis rejected a bill authorizing lawsuits against immigration authorities on grounds that it's too narrow. Oh, and Polis also vetoed a bill regulating social media companies.

Tamale Act: The bill makes it easier for Coloradans to sell homemade foods.

Sports Gambling: The legislature passed new restrictions, such as prohibiting credit-card use. I'm okay with torts but I don't like these nanny-state regulations.

Conversion Therapy Suits: Erin Reed says the bill expanding lawsuits over conversion therapy "defies" the Supreme Court ruling. That's not quite right. The ruling explicitly recognizes the possibility of "traditional tort malpractice claims." I'm not sure what are the proper boundaries around litigation. Certainly legitimate lawsuits at a minimum involve a) an identifiable victim, b) objective evidence of substantial harm, and c) objective evidence of substantial culpability. The aim of the legislature should be to allow legitimate claims to go through while blocking frivolous claims. Easier said than done, I know. By way of comparison, consider how Democrats would have reacted had Republicans run exactly the same bill except targeting gender-affirming health care.

CMAS Scores Out: Jason Gonzales reports. For math and literacy in grades 4 and 8, most students still do not meet or exceed expectations.

School Travel: Jessica Seaman: "Colorado's five largest school districts spent more than $121,000 in taxpayer money over the past two years to send their superintendents to conferences across the U.S. and as far away as Finland and China." As long as this is actually for professional development this seems okay to me.

Dorland Resigns in JeffCo: Amanda Kesting (May 8): "The superintendent of Jeffco Public Schools [Tracy Dorland] announced . . . that she will be stepping down. . . . She faced scrutiny last year after the Jefferson County Education Association sent a four-page letter to the school board in May 2025 announcing a vote of no confidence. The letter outlined multiple issues with Dorland's leadership, including allegedly making decisions behind closed doors, not listening to community voices and a failure to address student safety issues." Erin Brantley sees the resignation as a good sign and attributes it partly to parental involvement. Rob Stein is the interim superintendent.

DOE Threatens JeffCo: Jenny Brundin: "Federal officials said a March 2026 investigation found the district violated Title IX by allowing transgender students assigned male at birth to use girls' bathrooms and locker rooms, share overnight accommodations with female students, and to participate in girls' sports, which allegedly cost some female students spots on teams." This should not be a matter of federal policy. Then there's this line: "Federal money makes up about 8% of Jeffco schools' budget, or roughly $98 million." How about we get the federal government out of education?

School Restraint: Here's an eye-popping story from Melanie Asmar about an 11-year-old autistic student at Austin Centers for Exceptional Students in Westminster: "[He] experienced multiple restraints, including one that the 11-year-old called 'the crucifixion,' [his father] said. The boy described being pinned to the floor on his back with staff members holding his arms and legs, a situation that his father said only made the boy struggle harder."

Childcare: To me, the most interesting thing about this Stina Sieg piece is its account of one family's approach to handling childcare: "Moreno invited her friend and fellow mom, Elizabeth Keely, to live with the family. . . . She cooks, cleans, grocery shops and, crucially, she looks after the kids." I'd still want to look harder at regulatory burdens limiting childcare. Also, to state the obvious: Looser immigration rules would allow in a lot more people willing to watch kids for modest fees. Of course CPR promotes tax-funded (government-run) childcare.

Property Tax Relief: Ann Schimke: Adams and Douglas Counties will offer property tax rebates specifically for childcare providers. Why not property tax relief for everyone? I think ultimately we should dump property taxes.

Denver Water Narcs: You can have markets, or you can have rationing and water narcs.

Data Centers: The deeper problem is not that some Colorado localities do not want data centers; it is that data centers may not want to do business in Colorado do to the state's energy policies.

Renewable Energy Farce: Sure, you can achieve 100% renewable energy when the weather outside doesn't require much home heating or cooling. Sheesh. Obviously this doesn't include gasoline for transportation. Still (CPR via CoPIRG): "In 2025, solar, wind and geothermal produced the equivalent of 44% of the power consumed in the state, up from just 19% in 2016."

National Center for Atmospheric Research: Sun: "Federal judge blocks breakup of NCAR in Boulder while blasting Trump for enacting political revenge on Colorado."

McClain Update: Olivia Prentzel: "The Colorado Court of Appeals . . . reversed the homicide convictions of two former Aurora paramedics charged in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain and ordered new trials. . . . [The court] ruled that the trial judge gave jurors incorrect instructions about the legal standard they should use when considering the criminally negligent homicide charge."

Freedom Fest Nonsense: Jamie O'Rourke previews the speakers. Much of the conservative movement in Colorado is deranged.

Drug Price Controls: John Ingold: "A pharmaceutical company is trying to block Colorado’s first-in-the-nation drug price cap in court." I hope the company wins. Price controls are immoral and economically damaging.

Skiing Drop: Jason Blevins: Colorado resorts saw 24% fewer visitors. Yes the snow sucked. Also I don't make skiing a priority because it's so absurdly expensive.

Space Force: CPR: "New $250 million Space Force operations facility coming to Colorado Springs."

Passenger Rail: Randal O'Toole is not impressed.

IT Office: Tamara Chuang: "The Governor's Office of Information Technology . . . is laying off 173 employees, or about 15% of its 1,150-person workforce."

Religious School: Ann Schimke: Riverstone Academy opened as a "public Christian school" specifically to create a legal case. But after "Colorado lawmakers put limits on how and where public education co-ops can run schools," the school dropped its "religious discrimination lawsuit." Then the school closed. This is the same set of restrictions that cut out a lot of homeschool enrichment programs authorized by a particular multi-district collaborative.

A Terrifying Case: Allegedly: A 17-year-old girl ran away from home and was hanging out under the Palisade bridge. A man threatened to shoot her, kidnapped her, and sexually assaulted her. Scary!

Connell on Health: Thanks to Mandy Connell for mentioning my article on Polis's health order.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-144.html.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
June 2, 2026

Recently my family was walking through a strip mall. A young woman riding in an expensive vehicle threw several bags of fast-food trash out of her window onto the pavement. She walked up to the front door of a business, where there was a trashcan, saw the business was closed, and walked back to her vehicle.

"I think you dropped something," I said. The women then picked up her trash and threw it in a bush. After she drove away, I retrieved her trash and threw it in the trashcan that she had walked past.

Scores of dog owners use the open-space trails near my house. Almost all of them clean up after their dogs, as they are morally and legally required to do. But one or two people just refuse to pick up their dog poop.

One day I got tired of walking around the trail littered with piles of feces and resolved to clean it up myself, even though my family doesn't even have a dog. I've now picked up and discarded dozens of piles of other people's dog poop.

People fish in the reservoir near my house, and most of them leave no trace. But at least one person regularly brings a large bag of stuff and just leaves his trash behind. Recently my son and I spent a few minutes cleaning up this person's empty bottles and cans, tangled fishing line, bait boxes, and assorted other trash. At least he was considerate enough to leave a bag that we used to collect the rest of his trash.

Lessons for Our Children

I frankly do not understand the mentality of litterbugs and others who consciously choose to make the world a worse place. The sense of entitlement, the meanness, the disrespect for others bogle the mind.

At least these cases have offered me the opportunity to discuss with my son, and to show him through my actions, that it is possible to act to make the world a better place. This is true in obvious cases such as picking up others' trash, and it is true in other contexts as well.

Conspiracy mongering and spreading misinformation ("flooding the zone with shit," as Steve Bannon describes it) are sorts of intellectual littering. They mar the intellectual landscape as dog poop mars an outdoor trail. A difference is that knowingly or carelessly spreading bogus claims can have far more serious consequences.

Those who make it their job or avocation to responsibly clean up misinformation, as journalists at their best do, deserve our gratitude.

An obvious difference between physical litter and misinformation is that, while government properly defines litter and enforces laws against it as best it can, we cannot trust government to reliably identify misinformation. And a government powerful enough to ban misinformation is a government powerful enough to ban any speech.

The potentially good news is that misinformation only works insofar as people embrace and spread it. You can choose not to do that.

Civilization Is Fragile

Building and maintaining a flourishing civilization is hard work. It depends on people, and especially parents, passing down the knowledge and values on which civilization rests. It depends on people working to improve the world despite the best efforts of some to mess it up and tear it down.

In economic jargon, litter is a sort of externality, someone pushing costs onto others. Me cleaning up litter is a sort of external good; I'm doing something that benefits others as well as me.

Civilization depends on enough people making that extra effort to make the world a better place, whether by cleaning up litter, fostering fact-based discussions, promoting virtuous behavior, or teaching our children well.

If you call this article virtue signaling then I say hurrah for virtue signaling. Obviously no one likes a cocky show-off, and we won't always be recognized for our good deeds, but there's nothing wrong with doing the right or helpful thing and letting others notice us doing it. If this column encourages others to put in the extra effort, great. Maybe it will also discourage some vice signaling, which some people seem desperate to do.

Now I hope you'll excuse me as I go out for a short walk. I'll take a doggie bag with me. I'll probably need it.

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

Recall, online worlds, phones in schools, math and reading failures, conceptual understanding, risky schools, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
May 26, 2026

Recall: Natalie Wexler: "Cognitive scientists have found that [memorization or retaining information is] the necessary foundation for all learning and higher-order thinking. The more factual information you have about a topic, the easier it is to learn more about it—and to think about it analytically. Googling information is far more inefficient. . . ." I want to recognize the importance of learning facts while pushing back on Wexler's claim about its relative importance. Walking encyclopedias might do well on trivia night but otherwise be fairly useless. I'd say selective recall is important; someone should know the significance of the years 1776 and 1789 for North American history, but memorizing the dates of all the battles of the American Revolution would not be helpful to anyone except maybe a specialist. We want to learn essential facts that underpin conceptual understanding, with "essential" here depending on context. What you need to know about paleontology varies by interest and specialty. In a class that Wexler describes, students "memorize 23 dates in American history." That seems very manageable, but this is a useful exercise only if students can tell you about the significance of those dates, as apparently these students can. The school in question is a KIPP charter school; there's one of these in Colorado.

Online Worlds: Eli Stark-Elster via Cowen: "For some children, the internet may be one of the last remaining spaces where they can grow up doing what children everywhere have evolved to do: independently play and explore with their peers." Cowen: "So many schools are just deadly dull and not very intellectually stimulating," and "often what is on the phone is in fact more interesting and sometimes more instructive as well."

Phones in Schools: Hunt Allcott et al.: "For academic achievement, average effects on test scores are consistently close to zero. High schools see modest positive effects, particularly in math, while middle schools see small negative effects. We find little evidence of effects on school attendance, self-reported classroom attention, or perceived online bullying." Cowen: "It is fine to want to run a school that way, but do not expect huge educational gains, if any. The evidence on this is accumulating, but many seem unable to accept the results. In any case it is not worthy of a major moral crusade." I also tend to think that the real problem is that much of what goes in in schools is so mind-numbingly boring that many students seek escape in their phones.

Reading Failures: Chalkbeat: "Kids are in a 'reading recession' as test scores continue to decline." Education Scorecard (main): "The United States entered a “learning recession” in 2013, as student progress in math and reading stalled and achievement began to decline. In reading, the average annual loss in achievement immediately before the pandemic (2017–19) was just as large as during the pandemic (2019–22). Grade 8 reading scores in NAEP are now at their lowest point since 1990 and Grade 4 is at pre-2003 levels. . . . All of the states which improved in reading between 2022 and 2025 were implementing comprehensive 'science of reading' reforms." Matt Barnum: "Scores in both math and reading are still far below where they were over a decade ago."

Math Failures: Although I think "inquiry-based" math instruction (basically, jumping in and trying to figure things out with limited formal instruction first) has its place, I also think it's obviously true that explicit math instruction is the core of effective mathematics education. A first, second, and third article from the Center for Educational Progress argues that some recent claims in favor of inquiry approaches are overblown.

More Math Failures: Chalkbeat interviews a UCSD student who got As and Bs in high school math but then had to take remedial math in college and even change her major because she was so far behind.

Traub Against Progressive Education: James Traub rightly points out that, insofar as "progressive" education downplays factual learning, it is destined to fail: "A more effective way of teaching, in this view, is to engage their wish to ask big questions, to engage in critical inquiry and so forth, and, through that, they will come to know things. I don’t think that’s how most educated people got educated. Educated people got educated because they learned, they loved to learn, they found a way of learning. When you learn things well, you are naturally launched into the world of critical inquiry and thinking critically." No sensible person thinks that meaningless rote memorization is a good idea, but that hardly counts as an argument against conceptual structure and the teaching of facts.

Hierarchy Matters: Samantha Lippert: "When foundational skills aren't automatic, working memory is consumed before reasoning can even begin."

Conceptual Understanding: Barry Garelick is skeptical of the idea that "conceptual understanding" is necessary to learn math at a certain level. He writes, "How many 2/3-ounce servings of yogurt are contained in a 3/4-ounce container? One student knows why the invert-and-multiply rule works and the other doesn't. Both students solve the problem correctly. I maintain that I cannot tell which student knows why the rule works and which one doesn't. What I do know is that both understand what fractional division represents, and how to use it to solve problems." I, on the other hand, hold that it's very important to demonstrate to a student why some method works as they learn the short-cut. How I would approach this is to start with very simple examples. 8 divided by 6 is 8/6, which is the same thing as 8 times 1/6. Then I'd move to how many 2/3-ounce servings are contained in a 4/3-ounce container. I'd also show visually, with a box drawing, how many times 2/3 (or 8/12) goes into 3/4 (or 9/12). You can thus work yourself up Socratically to conceptual understanding. Such deep understanding is not the enemy of fluency but a crucial aid toward it.

NPR's Conceptual Muddle: NPR's Cory Turner first contrasts charter schools with "public" schools and associates the former with a "free market," before conceding, "Technically, Blietz's charter school is part of the public system." Technically, then, Turner's earlier characterizations are bullshit.

Homeschool Growth: Angela Watson (ht J. D. Tuccille) says that homeschooling has been on the rise since 2023. I'm skeptical of her numbers, though, as they seem to rely on official counts that may or may not reflect underlying trends. In Colorado, for example, most "homeschoolers" technically are enrolled in private "umbrella" schools, so the official count is much lower than the actual number of people who practically are homeschooling. I don't know how reliable other states' estimates are. You can also look at polling data, but that brings its own problems.

Dangers of School: Eli Stark-Elster: "School is way worse for kids than social media."

Good Kid Shows: I wanted to record some thoughts here for future reference. Daniel Tiger has excellent practical and moral lessons. My child very much enjoyed Last Airbender, and it seems to offer some good lessons. A Kind of Spark, two seasons through BYU TV (of all places), is an outstanding portrayal of autistic sisters (and their autistic friend). Life by Ella (Apple) is outstanding although it has some difficult themes owing to the girl's cancer diagnosis. Amber Brown (Apple) is a very nice family drama.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/ed-1.html.

Peters and Polis, school safety, primaries, trans care, Soule Hill, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
May 26, 2026

Polis's Other Clemency Decision: Douglas County Sheriff's Office: "The recent decision by Governor Polis to grant clemency to Brandin Kreuzer, a violent convicted felon, has brought a profound wave of emotion to our agency. The timing of this announcement, on National Peace Officer Memorial Day, has felt like a direct disregard for the sacrifices made by law enforcement officers every day." Kreuzer shot and seriously injured a police officer. Polis cited Kreuzer's work with the Redemption Road CrossFit Program.

Reflections on Peters: Jacob Sullum finds Polis's "reasons for approving Peters' early release . . . compelling." Surprisingly, the Denver Post, citing free speech, agrees, as does Jeremy Schulman of Mother Jones. Logan Davis, who provided evidence for the investigation of Peters, says, "I don’t know that Peters deserved nine years—our fetish for over-incarceration has warped our view of these things, I think—but she deserved more than 20 months." Democrats were not happy with Polis's decision. As for Peters, she claimed that the Democratic censure of Polis shows "that they have something to hide." Dan Rubinstein, who prosecuted Peters, thinks Polis overplayed the free-speech issue (although I think Rubinstein, while he has a point, is downplaying it). If Peters gets a federal pay-out, as J. D. Vance has suggested, that would be absolutely shameful.

JeffCo School Safety: CPR quoting Gaggle, which reviewed JeffCo schools' safety: "In our review, we found multiple references to suicidal ideation, which included indications of future plans, past attempts, and other ongoing self-harm. We also identified instances of abuse at home and potential acts of violence towards others."

Who Pays Taxes? Cory Gaines: "By comparing the number of returns filed in a given income bracket with the amount of tax revenue from that same bracket, I found quite a disparity. People earning an adjusted gross income of between $20,000 and $100,000 a year account for about 50% of tax returns, but only about 20% of all tax revenues. On the upper end, those earning $400,000 per year and up account for about 3% of all tax returns, but contribute a startling 34% of tax revenue."

Thiry on Primaries: Kent Thiry is right that the party caucus system is absurd, especially in a state where most voters are unaffiliated. But he's not nearly radical enough in his proposed solution, which is more-open primaries without caucuses. What we instead need is the separation of party and state, ballot-access rules the same for all comers, and zero direct party influence on the ballot. If parties want to declare their candidates and restrict party members from running, great (although enforceable only through party action, not government). Beyond that, get parties out!

Trans Care for Children: John Ingold: "Colorado Supreme Court sides with transgender youth in fight against Children’s Hospital Colorado: The ruling comes after families of transgender youth sued the hospital alleging that Children's violated state antidiscrimination law by suspending gender-affirming care." I don't think the federal government should be involved in this (and federal action is why the hospital stopped trans care), but I also don't think the state should require the hospital to provide trans care on antidiscrimination grounds.

Data Centers: Denver 7: Following Denver, "Jefferson County imposes temporary moratorium on development of new data centers." So stupid. "Data centers are good." That doesn't mean they should be built anywhere without regard for surrounding property owners and environmental impacts.

Child Care: CPR: "The average cost of childcare for one infant in Colorado is $21,000 a year. Nearly 14,000 children across the state are on waitlists for care. One in five parents reported being fired due to child care disruptions. The system in place is not working for many parents and providers." One push is for government-run child-care centers. That's a huge mistake. What we instead need is regulatory relief for child-care providers and tax relief for parents especially on the lower income scales. What is a bad idea is giving poor people subsidies specifically for childcare, as that increases quantity demanded without doing anything on the supply side. Far better would be to just give that money directly to the poor people.

Silas Soule: There's still no statue, but I appreciated this, from Will Costello: "The No Pingree Task Force, a small group devoted to renaming landmarks that honored George Pingree, a participant in the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, announced Sunday that it had succeeded in its work, and that the Board on Geographic Names in March approved a request to change the names of Pingree Park and Pingree Hill near Fort Collins. The two landmarks will be renamed Soule Park and Soule Hill, respectively, after Capt. Silas Soule."

Brown on Marx: Michael Brown has questions.

Schimke on Homeschool Enrichment: Ann Schimke has written a first, second, third, and fourth article for Chalkbeat on homeschool enrichment. Her articles are long on Democratic talking points and short on interviews with homeschooling families.

Weld GOP Chair: Erik Maulbetsch: "GOP Officials Say There Were Previous 'Concerns,' Including Sexual Harassment, About County Chair Arrested for Solicitation of a Child."

Midwives: KSUT: Some are "suing state regulators."

Pro-Life Poem: Fox: "A 13-year-old middle school student in Colorado (Drake Middle, JeffCo) was allegedly banned from reading a pro-life slam poem for an assignment because it was 'too political.'" I'd like to see if additional reporting confirms this.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-143.html.

Trump corruption, abuses of immigrants, A.I. and security, wealth and power, sexual novelty, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
May 26, 2026

Trump Watch

Attacks on Journalists: David Graham: "According to a report . . . from MS NOW, the FBI has opened a criminal investigation focusing on my Atlantic colleague Sarah Fitzpatrick, related to an article she published last month about Director Kash Patel." This follows Patel's defamation suit.

Jedeed: Laura Jedeed recently gave a talk at Reed College about American fascism and what to do about it.

Comey Charges: Jacob Sullum examines the absurd, political, anti-constitutional criminal charges brought against James Comey over an internet meme.

Medical Marijuana Reclassified: Okay, so that's good.

January 6 Redux: Matt Lewis: "Freed by Trump, the Jan. 6 criminals are preying on children and others."

Open Corruption: Joe Lancaster: "Trump Settles His Own Lawsuit Against the IRS for $1.8 Billion of Your Money." Walter Olson: "Grotesquely corrupt."

It's a Cult: Tuccile: "The Republican Party Is Nothing More Than a Cult of Trump."

Immigration Watch

Concentration Camps: The United States currently is operating concentration camps where migrants are held in conditions close to, or even constituting, torture. I am amazed by how many people are too cowardly simply to publicly state the obvious, that the United States is operating concentration camps for migrants, and that this is morally shameful.

Lawless: AP: "Trump flouts lower court rulings in unprecedented display of executive power." In violation of the courts, "the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release." It's "funny" how those who mostly loudly tout "law and order" often tolerate and even perpetrate lawlessness.

Lawless ICE: CPR: Senior U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson "ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to go through additional training on how to conduct legal arrests and detentions of undocumented immigrants after finding that Colorado ICE officers haven't been following the law or his previous order."

War on Liberties: Ilya Somin: "Immigration Restrictions Restrict Americans' Liberties."

Arresting Citizens: Reason: "A U.S. Citizen Is Suing ICE for Arresting Him Twice. He Just Got Arrested a Third Time." Propublica.

Deporting the Nonviolent: WaPo: "The Trump administration's vast deportation effort has led to the removal of an unusually high number of undocumented men who have lived and worked in the United States for years. . . . Nearly two-thirds of the men removed since the start of the second Trump administration do not have criminal convictions." CBS: "Trump administration to require most immigrants seeking green cards to leave the U.S. first."

Separating Families: NYT citing the Brookings Institution: "Over 100,000 Family Separations in Deportation Push, Report Estimates." The GOP has morphed into the anti-family party.

Labor Markets: Elizabeth Cox via Cowen: "ICE has not improved U.S. labor markets." (Duh.) More.

Outlawing Work: Wait, I thought we wanted immigrants to be productive and integrate, right? Nope. Stateline: "Asylum-seekers could lose right to work under proposed Trump administration rules."

Undisclosed Detention Sites: Jason Salzman: "ICE held 3,182 people between January and October of last year [in Colorado sites]. ICE detained people, including children and the elderly, in Colorado's hold rooms for weeks, without beds, in violation of ICE regulations."

Prosecution or Persecution? Liliana Segura: "Who decided to indict Kilmar Abrego Garcia over a years-old traffic stop?" Luc Cohen: "US judge dismisses Kilmar Abrego indictment, finding DOJ abused power."

What the Hell Are We Doing? NYT: "Judge Orders U.S. to Return Colombian Woman Deported to Congo."

Federal Violence: Ariana Figueroa: "US citizens shot by ICE beg Congress to rein in federal immigration agents." C. J. Ciaramella: "Reports of Abuse Pour Out of Federal Immigration Detention Centers." NPR: "Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump."

Anti-Immigrant: NYT: "Trump Is Setting His Sights on Restricting Legal Immigration." This is idiotic. Soon people in the U.S. will be begging for immigrants (see the fertility crisis).

Endangering Russian Dissenters: Ilya Somin: "Trump's effort to deport Russian anti-Ukraine War dissenters is simultaneously unjust, illegal, and harmful to US foreign policy interests."

DHS Lies: Radley Balko: "DHS shamelessly lied after its officers shot an immigrant, tear gassed two kids, and put a bullet in the wall of a child's bedroom."

AI Watch

AI and Security: Brett Goldstein: "New A.I. tools are going to increase how much insecure software you use in your day-to-day life, while giving attackers a new, powerful weapon to exploit vulnerabilities. If you're still being careless about things like the strength of the passwords you choose, you're in for a pretty bad time. If there was ever a time to finally take your cybersecurity practices seriously, it's now." See also Tyler Cowen's recent discussion about Mythos. Here's what I've personally done: 1) Use real-dice-generated, eight-word passcodes based on the EFF word list for core accounts. 2) Set up everything else in Proton's password manager, using very-strong passwords. 3) Set up physical YubiKeys for core accounts for double-authentication. If you do this, you need two keys set up the same way, one for backup. If you leave open other authentication methods that largely defeats the point of the key.

Goblins: WSJ: "ChatGPT Became So Obsessed With Goblins That OpenAI Had to Intervene." This article prompted me to initiate a conversation with ChatGPT that ended up being quite funny. First I had to tell ChatGPT the context (not just generic discussion about goblins), then I had to convince ChatGPT that the goblins were a real problem (it often over-relies on training documents and fails to read current news). In the end I called this the "goblin goblin"; a metaphorical goblin (or gremlin) leading to chatter about goblins. I told Chat that I wouldn't worry too much unless it started talking obsessively about paperclips. It replied, partly in jest (I think), "If I do start inserting paperclips unprompted, that would be a much bigger red flag than the goblins ever were."

AI and Jobs: Michael Humer has a good essay on why we shouldn't worry too much about AI taking all the jobs.

AI and Science: Yes it's promising.

The Pope on AI: So far I've only read the ChatGPT summary (!) of the Pope's encyclical on AI, but it seems important, thoughtful, and partly right. Generally I think the Catholic church has an anti-capitalist bias.

Short Takes

San Diego Murders: NYT May 18: "A mother warned the San Diego police that her teenage son and a companion had taken several guns from her home on Monday, two hours before a deadly shooting rampage at a nearby mosque." NBC: "Amin [Abdullah, a security guard] put himself between the gunmen and everyone inside."

Powell on Liberalism: Aaron Ross Powell and Jason Canon are starting a new podcast, The Inner Life of Liberalism. Meanwhile, Krista Kafer is skeptical of liberalism as a complete philosophy (but I think she substantially misunderstands liberalism).

Zwolinski on Wealth and Power: In a recent essay for Liberalism.org, Matt Zwolinski argues that concentrated wealth really is a problem insofar as people use that wealth to rig the system ("rent seek"). I'm skeptical of one of his proposals, to raise inheritance taxes. I'm on board with his more-general libertarian program: "narrower intellectual property rights, lower barriers to occupational entry, less regulatory interference with housing supply, reduced subsidies for financial risk-taking."

Pluckrose on Cultural Christianity: Helen Pluckrose wrote an important corrective to the view that what our society needs is a heavier dose of Christianity.

Ehrman on Christian Altruism: Bart Ehrman discusses his new book on Christian altruism with Michael Shermer (supportive) and Ben Bayer (more critical). Bayer says he's contributing to a forthcoming book critical of faith-based morality.

Federalizing Animal Cruelty: Krista Kafer: "The House of Representatives agreed to do their [the factory farm industry's] bidding by tucking a provision in the Farm Bill that would abrogate state humane farming laws that ban gestation, veal, and battery crates." This is not properly a federal issue. Also states should be passing these sorts of animal welfare laws. Isn't that anti-libertarian? Yes, if you think that libertarianism is just about protecting human rights. But in this case I think government rightly intervenes to prevent severely cruel treatment of animals. If you think government may stop someone from torturing their dog to death, you agree at least in principle.

Viruses Are Real: Hard to believe people have to point this out.

Torturing Children: NPR: "Wooden boxes were constructed and used to confine elementary school children . . . with disabilities." This was in the Salmon River Central School District in Fort Covington, New York. How have the perpetrators not been criminally prosecuted?

Vitamin K Shots: Duaa Eldeib: "In recent years, parents have started refusing the shot. Although the vitamin K shot is not a vaccine, it has become entangled in the anti-vaccine movement." Some babies are dying as a result of their parents' anti-scientific hubris.

Alcohol: Stat: "Alcohol kills 178,000 Americans each year."

Britain's Exploding Anti-Semitism: Yair Rosenberg.

Sexual Novelty: Someone wrote to Bryan Caplan and Michael Huemer basically rationalizing lying to women to get sex. Huemer does a good job explaining why lying is wrong. Here I want to address the person's claim, "I need novelty to feel sexually fulfilled." This person is not experiencing true sexual novelty; he is always having the same sort of meaningless sex with women he doesn't care about. The type of sex he's having is closer to masturbation than to sex within a loving relationship. The sort of sex he's never having is the most important and meaningful sort: sex with someone who loves you. If you're missing "novelty" in that context you're just not being creative enough or you're not sufficiently appreciating the benefits of loving sex.

American Economic Strength: Luis Garicano (via Cowen): "Divergence with the United States is the strongest evidence for reform in Europe. . . . American cities often have poorer centres and richer suburbs or exurbs."

Phones and Fertility: Via Cowen: The claim is that phone use keeps a lot of kids more isolated, which results in lower teen fertility and higher teen suicides. But Cowen and Elizabeth Nolan Brown are skeptical; fertility was falling prior to cell phones. But Lyman Stone argues the long-term trendlines don't adequately sort out births from surviving children, so I think he's more sympathetic to the phone-fertility thesis as a partial explanation. Similarly, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (ht Cowen) also thinks cell phones have played a real but minor role.

Opioid Deaths Down: Stateline: "Drop in opioid overdose deaths nears 50% since 2023."

Britain's Cigarette Ban: It is now illegal there to sell "cigarettes to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009." I don't approve of this, obviously. This sort of paternalism is, however, an inevitable outgrowth of socialized medicine.

More Artemis Photos: Amazing.

SPLC: I know next to nothing about the SPLC indictment. Obviously the indictment is political; that doesn't mean it's legally baseless. Tabarrok summarizes Patrick McKenzie on the matter and suggests there may have been actual bank fraud.

Ticketmaster Antitrust: CPR: "A jury has found that concert giant Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had a harmful monopoly." Antitrust laws continue to be arbitrary and a violation of people's rights of association. The way to fight companies you don't like is to stop using them and create alternatives.

Recurrence: Mike Huemer doesn't even need Eternal Recurrence to keep talking about it. To summarize my view: I think his basic theory is plausible, but I also think it's possible that the universe never repeats. Let's say there is a future Earth and a future "me." Mike wants to say something like my spirit inhabits both bodies, and the spirit continues to exist between bodies. I totally reject that (see my discussion from last year). (Mike also says that maybe a "spirit" can inhabit totally different bodies.) I think future "me" could be "me" in a nontrivial way, but not because of an eternal spirit. But because (in Huemer's framework) there's no conservation of memories or anything from one "me" to the next, none of this really matters in terms of how current me should act.

Great Lectures: Bryan Caplan has helped make available talks by George Walsh on Marxism, Walsh on Protestant Fundamentalism, George Smith on Puritanism, and more.

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/roundup-69.html.

The film is about people becoming the monsters they imagine they pursue.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
May 24, 2026

If you enjoy Twilight Zone-style science fiction, I recommend that you watch the film Bugonia without first reading another word about it. Just let the film work itself out without overlaying any presuppositions.

My discussion here is spoiler-heavy. So don't read it if you haven't seen the film, unless you don't plan to watch it or just can't help yourself from reading spoilers.

I didn't know what to think as the credits rolled. The film seemed to downplay the genocide of the human race on environmentalist grounds. If that's what the film were about, then Dana Stevens would be right that the film expresses "disdain . . . for humanity itself." But that is just to misunderstand the film.

The two main characters are Teddy, a down-on-his-luck conspiracy monger, and Michelle, the CEO of a chemical and pharmaceutical company who turns out to be an alien, per Teddy's expectations. The acting, by Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone, is first-rate, extraordinary.

Teddy, believing Michelle to be an alien responsible for harming honey bee populations and damaging his mother's health, kidnaps and tortures Michelle in order to compel her to arrange a meeting between him and other aliens so that Teddy can negotiate the aliens leaving Earth. Toward this aim, Teddy convinces his mentally slow cousin Don to help him and even to undergo chemical castration (as he also has done) to eliminate sexual distractions and seductions.

Teddy, we eventually learn, has kidnapped and murdered other people in an attempt to find the aliens among us, and he says that his victims included two aliens. So Teddy is a serial killer of both humans and aliens.

At one point, Michelle tells a story of humanity's origins. After the aliens caused the extinction of the dinosaurs by accidentally releasing a virus, the aliens created humans in their own image. But the humans, wanting to surpass their makers, manipulated their own genes and became violent, leading to nuclear war and their near-annihilation. Eventually all that are left are apes, some of which slowly evolve into modern humans.

We, the film's audience, are invited to take Michelle's account seriously, because Michelle is a wealthy and attractive CEO and also an advanced alien. The key to understanding the film is to realize that Michelle is telling a bullshit fantasy tale to rationalize the aliens' control of humans through business ventures and experimentation on humans to achieve a more manageable species.

Notice how Michelle's tale is remarkably similar to the Judeo-Christian tales about God creating perfect humans in a Garden of Edin, then humans being responsible for their own fall. This justifies God in nearly wiping out humans in the flood and moving toward an eventual apocalypse.

So Teddy and Michelle are mirrors of each other. Both create fantastic pseudo-morality tales to rationalize their own control of others and violence toward them. The film is a warning about rationalizing evil. It is an indictment of colonial mistreatment of native peoples, of totalitarian genocides, of religious wars of conquest.

Interestingly, Michelle admits that the aliens unleashed a prehistoric virus and experiment on humans, but she casts the first as an accident and the second as something for humanity's own good. She denies that her company's pesticides contributed to bee population decline, but her case sounds like a bullshit rationalization. (In fact, a type of mite seems to be the main driver of bee problems, but pesticides also hurt them. Honey bees, incidentally, are not native to North America but are human imports.)

Both Teddy and Michelle express admiration for bees while not having their best interests at heart. Michelle poisons them; Teddy smashes a tray of bees against a deputy sheriff in the course of murdering him.

Something the deputy sheriff says I think is revealing. The deputy is making a good-faith effort to look for the missing person (Michelle). In childhood, the deputy raped Teddy while babysitting him. The deputy apologizes and tells Teddy it was about exercising power of others. So he is a horrible person, but at least he expresses genuine remorse and sees clearly his past motivation. Teddy and Michelle, by contrast, abuse others while continuing to construct elaborate rationalizations to excuse their violence.

So what should we make of the fact that Teddy is a conspiracy monger who happens to hit upon a real conspiracy? I think the film treats this as a cosmic irony. Teddy constructs a conspiracy fantasy to rationalize his torture and murder of others, but the real conspiracy involves aliens constructing fantasy narratives to rationalize their torture and murder of humans. Teddy murders humans too, so we're not supposed to think that conspiracy mongering is a reliable pathway to knowledge.

The film also acknowledges that humans can be extremely violent as well as destructive of their environment. So the film is not excusing human misdeeds, but I do think it is saying that the misdeeds of some cannot justify violence against all. Demonizing "the other" is precisely about obsessing with the misdeeds, real or imagined, of some members of the targeted group, in order to rationalize violence against the group. For example, the perpetrators of the Sand Creek Massacre murdered women, children, elderly people, and peaceful people on the pretext that native peoples were violent.

The film is about people becoming the monsters they imagine they pursue.

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

The tales offer some advice for teachers as well as for parents.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
May 20, 2026

My child did a Brain Quest exercise about Arabian Nights and seemed interested, so I reserved a Penguin volume (Malcolm Lyons) through the library. Due to a cataloguing glitch, I got the second volume first. Anyway, ChatGPT recommended that, within that volume, we start with the tales of Sinbad, the City of Brass, and the Ebony Horse.

Glancing through the list of entries, I noticed that three of the stories pertain to schoolmasters, starting with Night 402.

A man found a schoolmaster "perfectly equipped to deal with any question put to him." The man said, "I said to myself that this was something remarkable in a teacher, as men of intelligence agree that schoolteachers are stupid."

One day the man found the schoolmaster in mourning. When finally the schoolmaster said he mourned his beloved, the man said, "I said to myself that this was the first sign of a lack of intelligence on his part," for he could find another love. (I think this says more about the tale's attitudes toward women.)

But then the man got a "second sign" of the schoolmaster's lack of intelligence, when he said he didn't even know whom he loved. It turns out he schoolmaster fell in love with a woman of poetry upon hearing some lines of verse through the window, then thought his beloved dead when he heard some additional lines of poetry.

Another man found another schoolmaster "cultured, sensible and refined." "This surprised him as he held that teachers in schools were never wholly intelligent." The schoolmaster continued to impress the man, until, thinking his testicles "serve no useful purpose," the schoolmaster cut off his testicles, nearly bleeding to death in the process. "The guest left saying: 'Those who say that no schoolmaster is fully intelligent are right, even if the latter know all that there is to know."

Finally, "one of the hangers-on at a mosque could neither read nor write but used to make his living by trickery. One day, it occurred to him to open a school and teach children to read. He collected and hung up slates and sheets of paper with writing on them, put on a huge turban and sat at the school door. The passers-by, looking at the turban and at the slates and papers, thought that he must be a good teacher and so they brought him their children. He would tell one of them to read and another to write, and the children would teach one another."

These stories, hundreds of years old, are interesting for various reasons. They illustrate that the stereotype of the overeducated person with no common sense is quite old.

The first story illustrates a person so embedded in literature that it pushes real life aside.

The second story I think shows that wisdom involves epistemic caution. Just because you know "all that there is to know" doesn't mean you know everything. Knowledge is inherently limited. The tale reminds me of "Chesterton's Fence," the idea that things of tradition might have some purpose that you simply don't know. Especially when it comes to biology, we should presume that an organ has a purpose, even if we don't know what it is. (However the case of testicles seems more obvious!)

The grim reading of the third story is that people are dazzled by showmanship and so will do things like place their children with charlatans. Some on the left might draw a critique of markets and say that parents are unlikely to choose schools and instructors wisely; I would counter that we seem not to select public-school leaders and teachers very wisely. At least when parents foot the bill directly they're more likely to choose wisely, evaluate results, and make changes if necessary.

The happier reading is that children often are remarkably capable of teaching themselves, so the quality of schools matters less than one might think. However, in cases involving issues such as dyslexia, it really is the case that children need solid intervention by competent adults. Even in usual cases, a competent educator knows when to step in and when to hand a child the reins. A totally hands-off school probably is better than a badly regimented one. But a student will tend to do better with appropriate levels and types of direct instruction.

I'd never paid much attention to Arabian Nights; now I find, quite by accident, that I probably should spend more time with the stories.

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

Tina Peters, legislature, housing, media, prostitution, Silas Soule, Republicans, and more.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
May 18, 2026

Polis Commutes Peters's Sentence: Tina Peters was guilty as hell and deserved her criminal conviction. But Polis is probably right: Her nine-year sentence probably was overly harsh. An appeals court agreed and called for resentencing. The main question, then, is why didn't Polis just wait for that legal process to play out rather than commute her sentence, leading to her expected release on parole on June 1? All he had to do was nothing, and he probably would have gotten a result close to what he wanted. (I suggested that Peters serve out her full sentence but under in-home detention rather than prison.) Mike Littwin indicates some of the anger directed at Polis by his fellow Democrats. See also CBS. One problem with Polis's decision is that it looks remarkably as though he capitulated to Trump's threats and pressure. Mike Lindell, of course, is gleeful. In sum, I think Polis made a mistake in commuting Peters's sentence, but I don't think it was as horrible a mistake as many of his critics make out. In the end, it's wrong to overpunish someone over political optics.

Bartels: Our thoughts are with Lynn Bartels.

Legislative Updates: The legislature considers far too many bills in a year for any one person to closely follow, including me. For reviews see Newsline and CPR. Jake Fogleman of the Independence Institute summarizes, "The Democrat-dominated legislature largely doubled down on the same governing philosophy that has increasingly defined the Capitol in recent years—more fees, more special interest tax benefits at the expense of other taxpayers, and more attempts to carve revenue streams out from under the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights."

YIMBY: The HOME Act, bill 1001, allowing nonprofits and schools to more-easily build housing, passed. Unfortunately HB26-1114, to allow people to build houses on smaller lots (preempting local governments), failed. Initially it looked like HB26-1308 making it easier to split lots, was passing, but it failed too. The war on property rights and affordable housing continues.

There Is No 'Right' to Repair: Here's a flagrantly biased headline from CPR: "State lawmakers stand up for Colorado's landmark Right to Repair consumer protections." Here's a somewhat better headline from the Colorado Sun: "Exemptions to Colorado's right-to-repair laws shot down in House committee." The Sun's subhead begins to reveal what's actually at stake: "The bill would have allowed manufacturers to withhold repair tools from IT equipment intended for use in critical infrastructure." The so-called "right to repair" is not an actual right; it is the fabricated "right" to compel business to provide people with goods and services. To call such use of force a "right" makes a mockery of actual rights. And journalists are wrong to play along with that abuse of language.

There Is No 'Right' to Hunt and Fish: Putting a "right" to hunt and fish in the Colorado Constitution is a horrible idea. In the modern context, preserving viable herds and fishing stock requires substantial management. It's just not the case that the wild animals that people like to hunt and fish are purely natural resources, unlimited in supply. We can speculate what a purely privatized system of wildlife management might look like.

Sue the Feds: Seth Klamann: "Colorado lawmakers kill ‘No Kings Act’ that would have allowed people to sue federal officials." That's too bad. However, "Bill permitting lawsuits against ICE agents reaches Gov. Jared Polis' desk." The bills are SB-176 and SB-005.

Moves Toward Accountability: Allison Sherry: "Border agent charged with assault after Durango scuffle."

AI Law: Vanessa Rutledge: "Colorado legislature takes up rewrite of poorly crafted AI law."

Criminal Competency: John Frank: The legislature tried to fix the badly broken system that lets obviously dangerous people deemed incompetent to stand trial walk the streets. That's SB-149.

Conversion Therapy Suits: A bill makes such suits easier.

Tax Decoupling: Rather than continue to tie Colorado income-tax rules to federal rules, thereby maintaining relative (!) simplicity in the tax code, Colorado legislators "decoupled" Colorado rules from federal rules in order to raise net taxes on busnesses without a vote of the people. Mark Hillman has details. This is not the way to create a business-friendly climate! This is on net good: "Polis helps axe bills rolling back business tax breaks."

Paper Boy Bill: Corey Hutchins discusses "legislation that would allow Colorado newspaper companies to classify those who deliver their papers as independent contractors instead of full-time employees." The bill was heavily amended and then defeated. My view is that government should be involved in labor contracts only in narrow circumstances. Beyond that, people can use unions and public pressure to promote better working conditions.

Government Notices: Corey Hutchins: "A House committee shelved a half-baked bill dealing with county newspaper public notices and their ability to exist online following testimony from Colorado Press Association CEO Tim Regan-Porter. 'I think we can come up with something that meets his goals and makes sense from a policy perspective without negatively impacting any legal newspapers,' he said in an email." Here's the summary of HB26-1095: "Current law requires a county or municipality to publish legal notices in a physical print newspaper. The bill gives a county or municipality discretion to publish legal notices online on the newspaper's website instead. Legal notices published online must be free to access and cannot be kept behind a paywall or subscription." My take: Whether or not these sorts of rules ever made sense, now, in the internet age, it's perfectly reasonable for governments just to post notices online on their own web sites. Government entities should not be in the business of granting formal status to any outside publication. Then if newspapers want to run information about government announcements, great.

Tax Credits for Media? Hutchins: Democratic State Senator Marc Snyder longed for "a wonderful tax credit program that's really supporting journalists and small newspapers." Reducing a business's tax burden (if that's what he's saying) certainly is better than offering subsidies. Still, in the end, inequitable taxes are unfair. Of course, I think we should eliminate all business taxes anyway.

Tax Credits for Education: Jason Gonzales: "Colorado lawmakers won’t pursue bill to place state limits on Trump-backed education tax credit program."

State Preferred Advertising: Corey Hutchins: "Colorado lawmakers want local news outlets to get priority in state advertising spending." My reaction is that the state shouldn't be spending any money on advertising to begin with. Anyway, isn't the point of a lot of this advertising to get people from outside the state to come here? Is the money supposed to buy advertising or offer subsidies? I'm increasingly nervous about the apparent willingness of some local journalists to cozy up with the state officials and agencies they're supposed to be critically covering.

Questions for Kafer: Krista Kafer argues that government may not require employers to use a transgender employee's preferred name and pronouns. I presume that Kafer thinks that government may prohibit employers from creating a hostile work environment, say, by calling a black employee "boy" or the "n-word"; the employer instead would have to use the employee's actual name or some acceptable variant. How is that different? Let's say an employer thought that marriage is a corrupt institution and refused to call a married employee by her chosen married name. Would Kafer also back that employer? I wrote more about some of the complexities of these matters last year.

Kafer and Prostitution: I argued for aspects of a Colorado bill (quickly defeated) calling for the decriminalization of prostitution, while pointing out the bill's complete usurpation of local control was unrealistic. Kafer writes, "A study of laws in 150 countries found that legalized prostitution increases human trafficking." Kafer appears to be citing a 2013 paper by Seo-Young Cho et al. (thanks to ChatGPT for helping me find this). But the paper refers to "reported human trafficking inflows." The problem is that reported trafficking may more or less closely track actual trafficking. (Also, trafficking in the larger category that includes sex trafficking.) It's possible that Country A could have higher reported trafficking than Country B but lower actual trafficking. Anyway, the obvious solution is for government to crack down on trafficking while respecting people's rights to control their own bodies. Compare: Conservatives do not argue that government should ban guns because some people commit crimes with guns.

Soule: Kevin Simpson has an outstanding review of the actions of Silas Soule, who refused to attack native peoples at Sand Creek and then helped expose the atrocities committed there.

Colorado History: Newsline published a series of articles by Chase Woodruff on Colorado History.

Trump Turns on Boebert: Complaining that Lauren Boebert campaigned for Tom Massie, Donald Trump called Boebert a carpetbagger and called for someone to run against her.

Anti-Vax Dating App: A real thing. So stupid.

Title Board Rejects Transparency: Sherrie Peif: "The Colorado Title Board . . . voted 2-1 at an April 24 re-hearing that a proposed constitutional amendment, put together by a large stakeholder group from across the political spectrum, did not meet Colorado's 'single-subject' requirement." Obviously the idea that a political board will consistently objectively determine what is a "single subject" is ridiculous. The requirement is arbitrary, and there are better ways to tighten up the ballot.

Car Thefts Down: CPR: "Auto thefts in Colorado have fallen more than 55 percent since 2021."

Denver 'Assault' Guns: AP: "Trump administration sues Denver over its 1989 assault weapons ban." I'm against the Denver ban, but shouldn't this go through the normal judicial channels?

Government in Media: A free media is incompatible with government interference. Hutchins writes, "Republican President Donald Trump’s FCC has given the green light for more TV news consolidation in Colorado." The federal government should play no role in mergers or other business decisions, and any such role necessarily is politicized. That Republicans have gotten in on the game of trying to strongarm Nextar does not make it right

Stream Rights: The problem of how to determine property rights in the case of a stream, which runs through someone's property but which long has been used by boaters and rafters, is difficult. Greg Walcher discusses some of the details. See also the Common Sense Institute's first, second, and third article. I'd caution against framing the matter as one "balancing" property rights and "public access"; rather, I'd want to show that any right-to-float is a right because of first-in-time use.

Off-Cycle Elections: Goldwater: "Off-Cycle Elections Cost Arizona Billions and Empower Special Interests." Guess who else has off-cycle elections!

Wyoming School Choice: Clair McFarland: "In 2024 and 2025, the Wyoming Legislature crafted and funded the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship program, which sought to give $7,000 per family in public money to state-contractor held accounts, which then would transfer the money to approved private and homeschool programs for qualifying families." The program has been the subject of legal wrangling. Generally I'm nervous about two aspects of such programs: first, they're by design partly redistributive, and, second, they involve substantial government control over expenditures. I like my idea a lot more: States should just let families who homeschool or use private schools keep their education-directed tax funds for the year, to spend however they see fit.

Nuclear: NPR: The feds have licensed a nuclear reactor in Wyoming.

Satanist Pee Breaks: A Colorado student had to sue on grounds of her Satantic religious beliefs to get easier hall-pass rules. Maybe kids should be able to use the bathroom when they need to? The hyper-regimentation of public schools is one reason I don't use them.

"Justice-Engaged": I was initially mystified by this euphemism in the Aurora Sentinel; the story is about "a school designed to help students get back on track after being involved with the criminal legal system."

Derailing Criminal Prosecutions: Allison Sherry: "ICE officers have deported dozens of people [facing criminal charges] in Colorado before they could face consequences for alleged crimes."

GOP Sigh: Stay classy DougCo GOP: "Republicans Turn Shooting in DC Into an Attack on Douglas County Teachers." Sheesh.

GOP Gasp: CBS: "Chair of Weld County Republicans among men arrested in connection with Northern Colorado child predator operation."

GOP Primary: Sun: "Federal judge rejects Colorado GOP's effort to block unaffiliated voters from participating in party's 2026 primaries." This is due to timing. Again: Government ought not be financing party primaries at all!

Victor Marx: Let's just say I'm skeptical of many of Marx's claims. See Sean Biddle and Mandy Connell.

Sun Glitch: Hutchins: "The Sun identify numerous stories and columns with incorrect bylines because of a WordPress problem." Oopsie!

Terms of Use | This article is copyright © 2026 by Ari Armstrong and is published at https://ariarmstrong.com/miner-142.html.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
April 26, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
March 26, 2026

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

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

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

Some Important Cases of Lock-In

Consider these cases:

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

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

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

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

Causes of Lock-In

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

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

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

Good Lock-In

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

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

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

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

In the System Not Of the System

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
February 13, 2026

Trump Watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Is a Racist: Which we already knew.

Rauch: "Yes, it's fascism."

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

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

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

ICE Watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pretti's Parents: They remember their son.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Short Takes

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

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

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

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

Life Expectancy Up: See NPR.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
February 13, 2026

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

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

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

Shrinking Workforce: See the Post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
January 7, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

RFK's Vax Irrationalism: Amesh Adalja speaks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
January 7, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
December 23, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

Homeschooled Kids are Just Fine

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

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

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

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

The National Home Education Research Institute shows generally positive results.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
December 10, 2025

MAGA Watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Immigration Watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick Takes

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

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

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

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

New Axis: Russia and China threaten Europe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
December 10, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School Boards: Ann Schimke: Progressives won a lot.

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

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

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

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

Leave It to Beavers: Colorado wildlife has a plan.

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
November 3, 2025

Trump's Authoritarianism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Immigration Policy of Cruelty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Gaza Deal

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

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

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

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

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

More Trump and GOP Updates

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick Takes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
November 3, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weiser is best positioned to take on Trump.

by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2025
October 21, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weiser writes:

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

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

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

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

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

Phil Weiser is that person.

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

What About Kirkmeyer?

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

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

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

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

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

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