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Self in Society Roundup 66
MAGA, immigration, TSA and pumping moms, education, AI, and more.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 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.