Hello Reader,
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Oblivion and overreach: Trump urges the nation to give up pencils, a new technology poses a profound constitutional question, and the most significant political realignment since Nixon collapses. Americans are sharpening the proverbial guillotine.
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A More Perfect Union

1. Trump's Marie Antoinette Moment
2. The Liberty of Every Man in Their Hands
3. The Hispanic Coalition Crumbles
4. At Least We're Not Europe—Yet
5. American Renegade of the Week

Color Key: 🟢 Advances liberty 🔴 Restricts liberty.

"The word affordability is a Democrat scam," Trump declared this week, dismissing soaring costs as a political "con job."
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76% of Americans are now unhappy with economic conditions—up from 67% in July and higher than at the end of Biden’s term. Yet when asked what grade he would give his economy, Trump replied "A +++++."
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The comparison to Marie Antoinette writes itself. History falsely credits the French queen with “Let them eat cake. The phrase appeared in Rousseau's writings decades earlier, symbolizing aristocratic obliviousness to starving subjects.
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That’s the tone Trump took to Pennsylvania voters last week, touting a “roaring” economy while lecturing “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils...You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice…”
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One wonders if those limits ever applied to Ivanka.
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How did we get here? Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, signed March 2021, flooded an already recovering economy with cash. The result was textbook monetary expansion: too many dollars chasing too few goods. Inflation spiked to 9% by June 2022.
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That price hike is now locked in. Economics 101: once prices rise, they only fall through massive supply expansion via innovation or sweeping deregulation, or through demand collapse via prolonged recession. Trump deserves some credit attempting the former, but inflation still hovers near 3%, partly fueled by his tariffs restricting supply.
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Yet Trump promised to bring prices down— a promise he could not plausibly keep.
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Stock markets have hit record highs, but that benefit is not felt broadly. Unemployment remains low, but has reached its highest level since 2021. Growth is solid, but buoyed by AI investment. Lower and middle-income families feel inflation’s squeeze.
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Trump wants Americans to eat cake this holiday season—but just two or three slices. Americans appear poised to drop the proverbial guillotine come November.

The Fourth Amendment exists for a reason: Prior to the revolution, British soldiers burst into colonists' homes with "general warrants"— authorizing searches of anyone, anywhere, without naming specific suspects. The Framers wrote "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause" specifically to end that nightmare.
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Yet here was Jesus Gutiérrez, walking home from his Chicago gym when federal agents forced him into an unmarked Cadillac, handcuffed him, and demanded his papers. The 23-year-old U.S. citizen had no ID—so agents aimed a phone camera at his face. Seconds later, their app queried 200 million government images. "He does got papers," they said. After an hour, they dropped him off, laughing.
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Mobile Fortify—ICE's facial recognition app—queries FBI databases and state warrant systems instantly, raising a profound constitutional question: Does scanning someone's face constitute a Fourth Amendment "search"?
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The answer hinges on whether Americans have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" for their faces—the test from Katz v. United States (1967). Katz held people have no privacy in "physical characteristics constantly exposed to the public." But Mobile Fortify does what human observation cannot: connects your face to government databases in seconds.
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​Carpenter v. United States (2018) may apply. The Supreme Court held warrantless cell tower data collection violated the Fourth Amendment because it revealed an "exhaustive chronicle" of movements—beyond what observation could capture.
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No federal law regulates Mobile Fortify. No oversight monitors accuracy. The facial scan functions as a digital general warrant—searching government records on anyone, anywhere, without naming whom agents seek.
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In 1761, James Otis argued against British general warrants, warning they created "a power that places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer." Today, that power is in the hands of every ICE agent.

In the late 1960s, Nixon and his strategists engineered the Southern Strategy—appealing to white Southern Democrats alienated by civil rights legislation, but also offering economic conservatism and skepticism of federal overreach. The gambit flipped the South for generations.
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Last November, Trump appeared to achieve something equally historic: 48% of Hispanic voters backed him, rejecting Biden's economic record and immigration chaos.
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The realignment didn't last a year.
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By November, Virginia and New Jersey saw massive Hispanic swings to Democrats. Then Tuesday: Miami—70% Hispanic, Republican for three decades—elected Democrat Eileen Higgins by 19 points.
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Caveats apply. Higgins is a problem-solving pragmatist who ran on affordability. Cuban Americans, with collective memory of socialism's tyranny still fresh, largely remained loyal to Trump.
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But national polling tells a broader story.
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​Pew Research's November survey of over 5,000 Hispanics reveals devastation: 70% disapprove of Trump, 55% "strongly." In two decades of surveys, Pew has never seen Hispanics say their situation worsened. Until now.
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Trump promised prosperity. Hispanics got raids, tariffs, and fear.
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Hispanic voters just proved they're nobody's captive constituency. When politicians take them for granted—whether Biden's inflation or Trump's overreach—they walk. That volatility forces both parties to compete, moderate, and deliver.
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Nixon's strategy locked in votes for generations. Trump's collapse means Hispanics remain in play—and that's how democracy should work.

Donald Trump and JD Vance love mocking Europe's “weakness” and “decay”. Yet they refuse to confront the same force debilitating the continent: addiction to runaway entitlement spending.
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The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board nailed the diagnosis this week. Europe's biggest crisis isn't immigration or cultural malaise—it's spending. Government social expenditures consume 30.6% of GDP in France, 27.9% in Germany, and 27.6% in Italy. This requires suffocating taxation—47% of GDP in France, 41% in Germany—strangling innovation and entrepreneurship while stalling economic growth across the continent.
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Americans smugly watch from across the Atlantic. But once tax breaks and private benefits are counted, U.S. social spending now rivals Europe’s—nearly matching France. Public outlays have more than doubled since the 1960s, and as Baby Boomers age, expanding entitlements crowd out other priorities, invite higher taxes, and sap growth.
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To counter Europe’s trend, Trump embraces European right-wing nationalist parties that—like him—have little spending discipline and blame immigration for all ills. His administration champions Germany's AfD, whose platform reserves benefits for Germans while opposing reform. He backs France's National Rally, which promises expanded welfare, state price controls, and massive subsidies—exactly the statism destroying European competitiveness.
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Europe drifted into the welfare trap by refusing to touch programs that grow automatically. Trump has done much the same. His administration achieved modest Medicaid curbs and now resists extending enhanced ACA subsidies—but Social Security and Medicare, which account for nearly half of federal spending, remain untouchable.
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The U.S. follows only a few steps behind Europe’s trajectory—no matter how loudly we mock it.

"María!" The shout barely cut through crashing waves. A figure waved frantically. "It's me, María."
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On December 9^th, Bryan Stern hauled Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado onto his boat, handed her Gatorade, and radioed: "Jackpot, jackpot, jackpot." His Operation Golden Dynamite had extracted this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner from dictator Nicholas Maduro’s clutches. It was the 800th mission for the bearded special forces veteran, whose motto challenges us all:
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"Don't be a spectator."
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That philosophy was forged on September 11th, 2001. Stationed at 7 World Trade Center with Army counter-intelligence, Stern felt the second plane's impact on his face. He dove under a car as the South Tower collapsed, emerging with ash in his mouth. He spent weeks digging through Ground Zero's rubble, never finding anyone alive.
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Twenty years later, watching Afghans fall from planes fleeing Kabul, Stern asked: "What would a fireman do on 9/11?" Within days, he landed the first plane under Taliban rule, extracting 117 stranded Americans the Biden administration had abandoned—the largest private rescue in American history.
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Since founding Grey Bull Rescue in 2021, Stern has orchestrated twelve jailbreaks from Russian custody, rescued five hostages from Gaza, and evacuated 69 infants from Russian-occupied Ukraine. His team broke Kirillo Alexandrov—the first living American war crimes victim since World War II—out of Russia’s FSB custody after 37 days of torture, spiriting him through 50 Russian checkpoints without documents.
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"It's like Ocean's Eleven," Stern explains. "A magic trick."
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For Stern, freedom isn't negotiable—it's something you fight for when everyone else has given up. Where bureaucracy ends, Grey Bull begins, proving private citizens can accomplish what governments cannot.
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Stern begs Machado not to return to Venezuela. But he understands—leaders go where people need them.
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That's what Americans do when refusing to be spectators.

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