Category: reason

On Wednesday, September 23, from 12 to 1:30 PM, eastern time, the Montreal Economic Institute will be hosting an online webinar on legal challenges to the Trump tariffs against Canada, entitled “Trump Tariffs: How the American Court System Can Help Restore Free Trade in North America.” I will be one of the speakers, along with Marc Wheat (general counsel of Advancing American Freedom), and Andrew Hale (economic and trade policy expert at AAF).

Additional information and free registration are available here.

We will, I expect, cover various illegal imposed tariffs against Canada, including the Section 301 tariffs (which I wrote about here), and the Section 338 tariffs (see here and here). I will also discuss how best to avoid such harmful and tariff actions in the future.

The post Montreal Economic Institute Webinar on Legal Challenges to the Trump Tariffs Against Canadian Goods appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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On January 26, two days after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti, David Streever sent an angry email to Todd Lyons, then acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Streever called Lyons “a monstrous human being,” likened him to the genocidal Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, and predicted that he would be haunted by “shame at your own pathetic weakness” in defending the Pretti shooting “until your last day on Earth.”

That message was surely intemperate and insulting, but it was not illegal. By contrast, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday, the DHS response—a “WARNING NOTICE” that two ICE investigators delivered to Streever’s home in Rochester, New York, five months later—likely violated the First Amendment by threatening him with retaliation for constitutionally protected speech.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras issued a preliminary injunction that bars the DHS from taking any action against Streever based on that notice and from “issuing similar warnings” that “suggest he cannot engage in non-threatening criticism of the government.” The order remains in effect while the case, Streever v. Mullin, is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“ICE knowingly pursued an American citizen for criticizing his government—speech that is at the heart of the First Amendment,” said Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represents Streever in his lawsuit against the DHS. “Ominous letters warning people their speech might land them in prison are meant to coerce people into silence, and that’s not how the First Amendment works.”

Although the government conceded that Streever’s email was protected by the First Amendment, it maintained that the ICE notice was merely an advisory that caused him no real harm. Contreras, a former President Barack Obama appointee, rejected that argument, noting the threatening implications of the document’s language.

“YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW,” said the notice, which ICE investigators Abbi Henry and David Brodie left with Streever’s wife on June 23 because he was traveling in Europe at the time. It cited two statutes, one dealing with threats of violence against federal officials, the other making it a crime to reveal “restricted personal information” about them with the intent to intimidate or incite violence against them.

Streever had not violated either of those laws. But the notice said ICE had “reason to believe” his email to Lyons “may constitute a violation of Title 18 of the United States Code,” which includes more than 1,500 offenses.

The document asked Streever to “promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.” It added that “receipt of this Notice will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above.”

Given the reference to Streever’s email, the ICE “request” is “fairly read as a demand that [he] refrain from criticizing Acting Director Lyons,” Contreras writes. “The notice also warns Mr. Streever of the potential for prosecution….If that were not enough, the letter closes by telling Mr. Streever that ‘[r]eceipt of this Notice will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above. The use of ‘continue’ implies that Mr. Streever’s email already exposed him to criminal liability and, critically, that any similar speech by Mr. Streever in the future will be viewed the same way.”

Since “political speech is not a crime,” the notice “is hardly a reminder to follow the law,” as the government maintained, Contreras says. “And because the Warning Notice speaks of ‘discontinu[ing]’ Mr. Streever’s political speech and threatens consequences if he ‘continue[s]’ to speak out, it represents a continuing, rather than a past, injury.”

Streever’s injury is “the loss of his freedom to engage in political speech now because
the threat of such an investigation or prosecution looms over him like the sword of Damocles, and he is forced to self-censor under that threat,” Contreras writes. “The Warning Notice works because Mr. Streever is too intimidated by the threat of future government action that he will not test whether the government will follow through on
its threat.”

ICE has deployed the same tactic against other critics. On the same day that Henry and Brodie visited Streever’s home, his complaint notes, they “confronted a Syracuse resident,” Paigelynne Gonyea, at a polling place where she was working as a volunteer and gave her a warning notice. Gonyea’s purported offense was similar to Streever’s. “The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune,” she had written on Instagram. “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!”

ICE also has tried to unmask anonymous commentators who dared to criticize the agency on social media. The Wall Street Journal reports that ICE “has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet” that tracks online speech to identify more targets.

“I’m deeply relieved that the court affirmed what I knew all along: that I am permitted to speak my conscience in the United States of America, including when I criticize government officials,” Streever said. “While I wish this ordeal hadn’t happened, hopefully this incident will serve as a reminder that the First Amendment protects us all.”

The post A Federal Judge Enjoins DHS From Threatening To Prosecute a Critic for Constitutionally Protected Speech appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday that it had charged three individuals with defrauding federal funds intended for Los Angeles–area homelessness programs. 

Two of the defendants, Michael Young and Lakiya Malone, were arrested by federal agents at their homes Wednesday morning. Both have been charged with wire fraud. A third defendant, Donye Mitchell, remains at large. 

Young is the founder of the nonprofit Home At Last. The DOJ says that the nonprofit received $118 million in public funds through various contracts with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), a city-county body tasked with coordinating and managing a wide range of city, state, and federal homeless grant programs. 

Federal prosecutors allege that Young misappropriated $12 million of those funds for his own personal expenses, including vacations and business ventures like a nightclub he founded in Inglewood. 

Malone, an employee of the nonprofit Special Service for Groups, is accused of accepting $180,000 in bribes and kickbacks from another nonprofit homeless provider, Alexander Soofer, to place homeless clients in programs administered by his charity, including fictitious “ghost clients” who only existed on paper. 

Soofer was arrested in January on fraud charges related to these schemes and has admitted to misappropriating $10 million in public funds for his own use. He’s expected to plead guilty to felony fraud charges in the coming weeks, according to the DOJ. 

Mitchell, who prosecutors said during a press conference this afternoon had not been arrested yet, is accused of misrepresenting his experience as a homeless service provider to obtain public grant funding, which he then spent on personal expenses, including his own bail costs for a domestic violence arrest.  

“The scale and brazenness of these fraudsters expose a profound failure by the State of California and Los Angeles County to safeguard public funds,” said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli for the Central District of California in a statement. 

The charges against Malone, Mitchell, and Young come several months after the Trump administration suspended federal funding to LAHSA, citing the authority’s poor financial management and conflicts of interest with vendors. 

In August, LAist published a detailed report on how LAHSA continued to sign contracts with Soofer’s charities after internal auditors flagged it as “high-risk.” LAist had previously reported that hundreds of apartments rented by the authority to serve as housing for the homeless sat empty. 

LAHSA’s mismanagement has become a focal point in Los Angeles’ mayoral election. Mayor Karen Bass, who appointed herself to the authority’s governing commission in 2023, has been criticized for its failures and for her own absence at LAHSA commission meetings. 

Bass’ opponent, Councilmember Nithya Raman, who until recently chaired the committee overseeing the city’s homelessness spending, has been criticized by Bass allies for slow-walking efforts to redirect city homeless funds from LAHSA to city-controlled programs. 

Los Angeles County has already removed $300 million of its own money from LAHSA to support homeless programs run by its new homelessness department. 

In July, LAHSA reported that homelessness across all of Los Angeles County had risen 1.2 percent. 

The post DOJ Says Workers at L.A. Homeless Nonprofits Spent Tax Dollars on Vacations, Nightclubs, Bail appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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A former Venezuelan minister and longtime ally of Nicolás Maduro, Alex Saab, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Miami to conspiring to launder money. Saab admitted to profiting from at least six food and medicine contracts by approximately $195 million in an eight-page factual proffer.

It is the latest turn in a story that reads like a mob movie. U.S. officials called Saab, a Colombian-born businessman, Maduro’s “bag man.” In 2023, after being captured and extradited to the U.S., Saab received a full pardon from then-President Joe Biden amid a prisoner swap with Venezuela. Maduro welcomed him home as a hero and made him acting industry minister. Now Saab has agreed to cooperate with investigators and may even serve as a state witness against his old boss.

Under the plea agreement, Saab accepted a $195 million forfeiture judgment and agreed to disclose and help locate assets. He faces up to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence at the low end of the applicable range and may seek a further reduction if they determine that Saab provided substantial assistance.

Saab returned to U.S. custody after acting dictator Delcy Rodríguez’s regime deported him to the U.S. in May. While the Venezuelan Constitution prohibits extraditing Venezuelan citizens, the regime’s interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, claimed Saab’s Venezuelan identity record was fraudulent or nonexistent—even though Maduro’s regime had issued him a passport, calling him a diplomat.

Before he became indispensable to Maduro, Saab was a little-known textile businessman in his native Barranquilla, a coastal city in Colombia. Former Colombian Sen. Piedad Córdoba, an ally of Hugo Chávez, helped Saab gain access to Venezuela while Maduro was foreign minister, according to investigative journalist Roberto Deniz. Córdoba has denied introducing him to Chávez or Maduro.

In 2011, a Saab company entered a large public housing deal between Colombia and Venezuela despite, according to Deniz, having no construction experience. Saab and his business partner, Álvaro Pulido, received three to four times the homes’ actual construction costs, the U.S. Department of the Treasury later said. As Maduro consolidated power, Saab’s business also expanded from housing into food contracts, and by 2019, a payment system involving Venezuelan oil, gold, and other natural resources.

(PBS documentary A Dangerous Assignment traces Saab’s fortune to a mansion in Barranquilla, private jets, a property on Rome’s Via Condotti, and a Beverly Hills rental for his son Shadi while he pursued acting.)

Saab’s most consequential role involved CLAP, the state food program that Maduro created in 2016 amid shortages and inflation. The regime distributed boxes with groceries at subsidized prices. Most of the time, the boxes arrived late and contained poor-quality or even expired products, as Reason has previously reported. Regime officials also used access to the CLAP program to reward supporters and punish critics.

The journalists at Armando.info, a Venezuelan investigative outlet, were the first to expose Saab’s role in the food contracts. Saab sued Deniz and three editors for defamation in 2017. Facing harassment and possible jail time, they fled Venezuela. Authorities later raided the house of Deniz’s parents.

In 2019, the Treasury alleged that Saab and his associates won overpriced, no-bid CLAP contracts through bribes and kickbacks, then moved the proceeds through shell companies. Saab has now admitted that the conspirators used fake companies, false invoices, and false shipping records. They moved illegal payments through bank accounts in at least nine foreign jurisdictions. Senior Venezuelan authorities approved, participated in, and protected the operation, according to the factual proffer. Saab also admitted arranging millions of dollars in transfers toward $17 million in bribes and kickbacks promised to José Gregorio Vielma Mora, a former Chavista governor. The payments were tied to a 2016 contract for 10 million food boxes.

Authorities in Cabo Verde, an island nation off West Africa, detained Saab at the United States’ request during a fuel stop in June 2020 while he was traveling to Iran. After a 16-month legal fight, Cabo Verde extradited him to Miami in 2021. That prosecution concerned an earlier housing and currency-exchange scheme in which Saab and Pulido were accused of laundering up to $350 million.

Court records later showed that Saab had signed a cooperation agreement with the Drug Enforcement Administration in 2018, met with agents, provided information about Venezuelan corruption, and transferred $12.5 million to an account controlled by the agency. However, he missed a deadline to surrender. After the cooperation became public, Saab’s lawyer David Rivkin said the Venezuelan regime knew about the contacts and that Saab met with U.S. officials to maintain that neither he nor his companies had done anything wrong.

In December 2023, Biden granted Saab the full, conditional pardon. It accompanied Venezuela’s release of 10 Americans, six of whom the State Department considered wrongfully detained, and 20 Venezuelan political prisoners, as well as fugitive defense contractor Leonard Francis.

Maduro received Saab at the presidential palace in Caracas, interviewed him and his wife on his podcast, and made him president of Venezuela’s foreign-investment center in January 2024. Nine months later, he appointed Saab as acting industry minister. After returning to Venezuela, Saab accepted money from earlier CLAP contracts and continued to assist and take directions from Venezuelan officials through February 2026, according to the factual proffer. That political rehabilitation ended with Maduro’s fall.

Court documents describe one participant as “Government Official 1A,” one of Venezuela’s highest-ranking officials. Saab admitted that the official approved and protected the scheme and used a surrogate to receive illegal payments. The document does not identify that person, but with Maduro awaiting trial in New York, prosecutors may ask Saab to testify against his former patron. Saab may also be able to tell them who Government Official 1A was.

The post Biden Pardoned Maduro's Fixer. He Just Pleaded Guilty to New Charges and Agreed To Forfeit $195 Million. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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Shortly after the United States launched into a war with Iran, White House economic adviser Peter Navarro boldly proclaimed that the conflict would “lower energy prices.”

More than six months later—with the war still raging on and the Trump administration ignoring congressional demands to end it—that’s turned out to be as laughably false as the promise that the whole thing would be wrapped up in a few weeks.

Diesel fuel prices hit record highs this week, a direct consequence of the supply chains that have been disrupted by the war. Earlier this month, Brown University estimated that Americans had already paid more than $100 billion in higher gasoline prices due to the war—and that was before the surging prices that are now hitting after attacks last week on a key Saudi pipeline.

Higher fuel prices are the most direct way that most Americans are feeling the cost of the war, but that’s hardly a full accounting.

Neither is the eye-popping figure reported by the Pentagon’s inspector general this week. In a report released Tuesday, auditors pegged the cost of “Operation Epic Fury” at $33.4 billion, including the $22.3 billion worth of munitions that have been fired off since February 28.

But that tally only covers the first four months of the war—through June 29. It also “does not include costs for infrastructure repairs,” the audit notes.

The war’s impact on infrastructure across the region is becoming more obvious. “Hundreds of buildings and structures” on American military bases have suffered significant damage from months of Iranian drone and missile attacks, the inspector general report concludes.

Civilian infrastructure has taken a pounding too. This week, Amazon said that data centers in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates were damaged beyond repair. And then, of course, there are the crucial oil and energy supply chains—which bring us back to the higher costs on the home front.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the war with Iran was responsible for “roughly 40 percent” of the inflation that Americans experienced during the second quarter of this year. Much of that is due to rising gas prices, which affect not only the price you pay at the pump but also add to the cost of shipping just about anything.

The war has also contributed to rising interest rates. The CBO estimates that the war has pushed interest rates up by 0.2 percent, and it expects those rates “to remain higher for several quarters.” The CBO now expects inflation in early 2027 to be about 0.5 percent higher than it previously anticipated.

As if to confirm that assessment, the Federal Reserve voted Wednesday to hike its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points. In a statement released after the decision, the Federal Reserve Board said the action was taken because “inflation remains elevated.”

All signs point back to the Iran War. It is costing taxpayers billions in direct costs. It is making gasoline and other fuels more expensive, which adds to inflation throughout the economy. It is nudging interest rates higher, making everything from mortgages to credit card payments less affordable. It has led to the deaths of 18 Americans and hundreds, if not thousands, of Iranians.

If the Iran war cost only $33 billion, it would be a travesty. The real price tag is, unfortunately, much higher.

The post Pentagon Auditors Say the Iran War Has Cost $33 Billion. The Real Price Tag Is Far Higher. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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Cellphones made my life easier. So did the internet.

Artificial intelligence may enrich it even more.

But lots of people are worried.

“Stop AI or we’re all going to die!” shout protesters.

It’s possible that AI will decide that we humans are in the way and imprison us or kill us. Not likely, say AI specialists, but possible.

Anthropic’s CEO just warned that AI is advancing faster than our ability to control it. He and other AI executives say they want to slow it down.

He proposes embedding independent “evaluators” inside his company to assess risks. He also wants international coordination and federal regulation that would slow his competitors’ innovations too.

Has that ever worked? I don’t think so.

“The anti-AI movement makes all the same mistakes as the anti-fossil fuel movement,” says author Alex Epstein in my new video. “They deny the huge benefits of something and totally exaggerate the hazards and ignore all the ways we have of solving them.”

Street protesters worry about cooling water used by data centers that power AI. But data centers account for a fraction of a percent of U.S. water use (0.04 percent in 2024).

Also, they can use recycled water.

Some people worry that data centers’ demand for power will raise electricity prices.

“We can definitely do AI in a way that keeps electricity prices the same,” says Epstein. “But it’s going to require a reversal of the anti-electricity policies that have gotten us in this situation.”

Like closing nuclear plants and forcing use of renewable energy.

“With AI,” says Epstein, “we’ve screwed ourselves unnecessarily. Enact policies that make it easier to build electricity capacity and make it easy for AI to build its own private grids.”

Why not?

“It’s not that there are no concerns,” notes Epstein, “but data centers can be a dream asset to the community that basically just sits in a corner and prints money….People have no idea what they’re thinking about foregoing….A lot of your job that you consider drudgery, like a teacher spending 50 percent of her time grading or a nurse filling out medical forms. Those people can start to delegate that to AI, which makes them better teachers, better nurses.”

AI will also eliminate some jobs. But predictions about technology killing lots of jobs or most jobs have repeatedly been proven wrong.

We were told automation would cause 15 percent unemployment. Automation happened. Now there are more jobs!

Adam Thierer, author of Permissionless Innovation, says, “History shows us that technology has been a friend of humanity and utilized for great good. That will include AI…if we allow it.”

Will we?

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) wants government to take “50 percent ownership.”

“If the government owns half,” says Thierer, “we’re probably not going to develop very good AI. Government doesn’t have a very good history of creating hot new technologies that serve the public well. I don’t think we want the U.S. Post Office running our internet or communications networks and we don’t want to have Bernie Sanders…controlling our AI robotic systems.”

If American companies do slow AI, innovation won’t just stop.

“If we get this wrong,” says Thierer, “the Chinese are there waiting….They’re spending a lot of money to be the global leader….Their values will come baked into their systems: censorship, surveillance, and control.”

China does say: all AI must adhere to “core socialist values.”

“Whoever wins AI, wins,” says President Donald Trump. He doesn’t want the United States to slow AI innovation. I think he’s right about this.

AI will shape what billions of us understand about the world. We want technologies of freedom to win.

COPYRIGHT 2026 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

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