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Trump Meme Coin Price Surges After Top Holders Are Invited For Dinner With President https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2025/04/24/trump-meme-coin-price-surges-after-top-holders-are-invited-for-dinner-with-president/ The price of President Donald Trump’s official meme coin jumped up sharply late on Wednesday night, after an announcement that the token’s top 220 holders will be given a chance to attend an exclusive “gala dinner” where the president will be in attendance, in a move that is likely to raise ethical concerns, as the Trump Organization and its affiliates own 80% of the token’s supply.

Ice director wants to run deportations like ‘Amazon Prime for human beings’ Todd Lyons said he wanted US immigration agency to be ‘like a business’ in its deportation process https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/09/ice-todd-lyons-deporation-amazon The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said he would like the agency to implement a system of trucks that rounds up immigrants for deportation in a system similar to how Amazon delivers packages around the US. “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” the acting Ice director, Todd Lyons, said. He said that he wanted to see a deportation process “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings”.

The Roman Way to Trash a Republic When you’re the emperor Augustus, they let you do it. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/rome-senators-republic-augustus/682469/ In about 80 years, roughly the same length of time between the end of World War II and now, the Roman Republic was transformed into a dictatorship. If you had told a Roman senator at the beginning of the first century B.C.E. that his grandchildren would willingly hand over governance to a monarch, he would not have believed you. Like the American one, the Roman Republic was founded on the rejection of a king. Rome had a representative government that, though flawed, was based on the rule of law, with freedom of speech and rights to legal recourse for its citizens. The Roman Republic lasted nearly 500 years, about twice as long as Americans have had theirs. As was surely true for the Romans, most Americans can hardly imagine that their system of self-government might break and be replaced by an imperial dynasty. That is why considering what undid the Roman Republic is useful today—if we can learn from the Romans’ mistakes. Augustus was Rome’s first emperor. In so becoming, he dismantled the republic and founded a monarchy that would last for more than a millennium. In Rome, most aristocratic men were also senators and usually held that position for life. In the later republic, some of those men—notably, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus—grew so extraordinarily rich and influential that they began to ignore the constraints of the Senate and the law. In the first century B.C.E., decades of aristocratic overreach and the authoritarian violence of Augustus’s predecessors Sulla and Caesar brought Rome to the brink more than once, but Augustus pushed it over the edge. He took control of the government gradually but completely, with the support of those wealthy aristocrats who valued fortune above principle and with the complaisance of a population exhausted by conflict and disillusioned by a system that favored the rich and connected. Perhaps most salient for us today, Augustus consolidated his power with the institutional blessing of the Senate. At first, the Senate let Augustus bend rules and push boundaries. It allowed him to accumulate domestic powers and bring unqualified members of his family into government. The Senate stood by while Augustus removed enemies from his path, and supported him when he put a self-serving spin on recent actions. Even when elections were held under Augustus, he often handpicked state officials. The senators never called him emperor in his own day, but as primus inter pares, or first among equals, Augustus was allowed to pretend he was part of the republican system even as he destroyed it. Those who praised Augustus and those who failed to fight back, despite their misgivings, created a king by another name. They may have believed they were securing their own positions by doing so, but their acquiescence to Augustus meant the practical end of their power, forever. In their defense, Rome’s senators legitimately feared death if they broke with him; Augustus certainly had a lot of people killed. Our American senators apparently have only primaries to fear—yet they and their congressional colleagues have shown little inclination to rein in their leader or assert their own constitutional powers. An ambitious and ruthless political operator such as Augustus provides opponents with only so many chances to stop him. The Framers of our Constitution drew on ancient Greek and Roman history when they established our republic and sought to protect it from the inevitable threat of dictatorship. When they discussed ways to avoid despotism, the Romans served as a cautionary tale. The checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution look very much like those that were in place in Rome before Augustus. There were none after him. All of this might raise a flag over the love for ancient Rome expressed by our contemporary elites. Mark Zuckerberg’s admiration of Augustus is famous. He recently gave up his “Caesar” haircut for young–Marcus Aurelius curls and wears big T-shirts printed with Latin slogans. Elon Musk has donated several million dollars to support the study and “appreciation of Greek-Roman culture.” Steve Bannon regularly cites Roman history, in a selective and idiosyncratic way, as a guide for modern politics. During Donald Trump’s first term, Bannon helped found a “gladiator school” at a former monastery near Rome, where students would be trained in a curriculum designed to save Western civilization. Like the wealthy elites of ancient Rome who aligned themselves with a dictator so that they could increase their fortunes, the richest and most influential men in America seem willing to let our republic fall apart as long as they believe that its demise is in their interest. And they might prosper by it. Or not. That’s the thing about capricious one-man rule—no one, not even billionaires with spaceships, can be sure they won’t get on the bad side of the emperor and suffer as a result. Thanks to the Senate that enabled him, Augustus—and every Roman emperor who followed—was a brutal dictator. Some might argue that the empire that rose from the ashes of the republic brought peace and stability to the world for centuries to come. But this ignores the costs. The Romans were nearly always at war; their celebrated expansion was achieved by military subjugation of foreign lands and harsh repression of those they conquered. Augustus alone ordered the extrajudicial killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of domestic enemies. The supposedly stable dynasty he founded gave Rome Caligula and Nero; the latter’s death was followed by a bloody civil war. More mayhem followed, and not until a century after Augustus did the Senate finally reassert itself—by appointing another emperor and initiating a new line of succession. Some emperors made sure the roads were safe and the water clean, but these more admired rulers—Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius—were nonetheless dictators. Even for the most privileged Romans, the empire could be a terrifying and unpredictable place in which a single man held absolute, arbitrary power. The United States, too, may endure as a great power for centuries to come. The ultimate lesson of the Roman Republic’s fate is that once you’ve allowed one man to rule as a monarch, even if you pretend he doesn’t, you are past the point of no return. When Augustus died in his bed at a ripe old age, the Roman Senate made him a god. This seems an honor that even the most sycophantic U.S. senators would be unlikely to suggest for our president. But as they cede ever more of their power to him, our own era of Roman-style imperial rule may be drawing closer than we think.

ICE director envisions Amazon-like mass deportation system: ‘Prime, but with human beings’ Trump immigration officials tout expanding the Alien Enemies Act while courting private contractors for mass removals https://azmirror.com/2025/04/08/ice-director-envisions-amazon-like-mass-deportation-system-prime-but-with-human-beings/ The leader of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said that his dream for the agency is squads of trucks rounding up immigrants for deportation the same way that Amazon trucks crisscross American cities delivering packages. “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said, explaining he wants to see a deportation process “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings.”

Make Smuggling Great Again Canada’s ultimate retaliation for Trump’s tariffs will be to turn ordinary Americans who cross the border to shop for cheaper goods into latter-day bootleggers. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/trump-tariffs-smugglers/682303/ President Donald Trump’s high-tariff regime will impose higher prices and lower growth on Americans. It will have another effect that nobody in the administration seems to have considered at all: a tsunami of smuggling. In a few days’ time, every desirable consumer good will be dramatically more expensive in the United States than on world markets. Flat-screen TVs, athletic shoes, video-game equipment, even household basics such as coffee, toilet paper, and soy sauce—all will soon cost 20, 25, 35 percent more than they cost on world markets. Trump has just opened perhaps the greatest arbitrage opportunity in the history of world trade. His effort to repeat the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of the 1930s will also replicate the cross-border bootlegging of alcohol during Prohibition. From around the world, goods will flow to American black markets. That flow will overwhelm U.S. enforcement capability. Only about 26,000 officers in the Department of Homeland Security are charged with enforcing customs duties at borders, seaports, and airports. Policing flows of fentanyl has been difficult enough. But as abundant as fentanyl is, most Americans don’t buy it: It’s an extremely harmful product, trafficked by some of the world’s most vicious criminals, and most people rightly want nothing to do with it. But not even the most fervent MAGA supporter will think it harmful to bargain-shop for free-trade underwear out of the back of a truck driven from Mexico or Canada. Nor will it be easy to motivate state and local police to raid the stalls and stands that will soon appear on the streets of American towns, let alone monitor the near-infinite quantity of transactions in online marketplaces such as eBay and Etsy. Against the illegal fentanyl trade, Americans can seek the help of friendly countries. But why would any country help the United States enforce its unilateral trade aggression against the rest of the world? If European luxury brands, Asian electronics manufacturers, or Indian grocery chains suddenly open enormous outlet malls in Bermuda, the French and Dutch Caribbean islands, or Toronto and Vancouver, few local authorities will pay attention to the Trump administration’s objections. In fact, those governments have every reason to help freedom-loving American citizens defeat the outrageous tariffs imposed on them. As angry as Canadians, for example, are with the U.S. government, they have no quarrel with the American people. And what better way to show friendship to Americans in a time of hardship than helping them drive home with a brand-new set of tires or replacement car battery at everyday low prices? On the way home, the cross-border American could enjoy a free-trade chocolate bar at free-trade prices. A border-town retail explosion could offset some of the economic pain inflicted on Canadian workers laid off thanks to the Trump tariffs. A job selling auto parts may not pay as well as a job making them, but it’s better than nothing. And every additional retail job has the consolation that it strikes a retaliatory blow at the hostile U.S. government that caused the layoffs. Canada could stimulate the surge in the cross-border retail sector by offering tax relief to American visitors. Canada collects a federal value-added tax of 5 percent; in some provinces, that tax is combined with a local sales tax to make the rate as high as 15 percent. Even after a retail tax, Canadian prices (adjusted for currency) will soon be much lower than U.S. prices. But what if goods were sold tax-free altogether to shoppers who carry a U.S. passport? Tariff- and tax-free shopping for Americans would stoke a Canadian retail bonanza that would cushion the shock to the rest of the Canadian economy. The United States might respond by constricting highway border crossings, creating traffic jams for drivers reentering the United States. Such countermeasures would only intensify the bitter unpopularity of Trump’s tariffs—and, as with Prohibition’s alcohol ban, they would dismally fail. The goods will move by boat from Halifax southward along the Eastern Seaboard, from Kingston and Thunder Bay across the Great Lakes, from Vancouver via the Georgia Strait, and so on. They will move by small plane, by snowmobile, and by foot. Canada could become a consumer paradise: a shiny new West Berlin to a drab MAGA version of East Germany. Even the brutal East German secret police lost their fight against the movement of goods. By the end, the Stasi had given up trying. For Canada to assist U.S. smugglers might seem an unfriendly act, but the U.S. tariffs are an unfriendlier act. The Trump administration has already made clear that the United States no longer seeks or wants allies. It has abandoned Ukrainian troops in the field. It is plotting how to annex Greenland, which is Danish territory. It does not honor Trump’s own signature on the trade treaty it imposed on Canada and Mexico just five years ago. Why would betrayed ex-friends assist the United States government in preventing Americans from buying cinnamon and cloves at normal prices? The Trump tariff scheme is headed for collapse sooner or later. The sooner, the better for both Americans and the rest of the world. Everything that can be done to accelerate that outcome is a service to humanity. The U.S.-Canada bond was forged in the agony of two world wars, strengthened by cooperation in the long struggle against Soviet Communism and Islamist terrorism, and demonstrated in happy decades of cross-border cooperation against many shared threats. That bond can now triumphantly find expression in millions of consensual retail exchanges: the world’s desirable products at honest world prices, all sold with a smile and a friendly “Alrighty then!” to every satisfied American customer.

Trump’s Auto Tariffs: We Broke Down an F-150 to Explain Industry Impact https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLpUEACVBlE President Trump says cars made in the U.S. will face “absolutely no tariff,” but it’s not so simple. No car is built from 100% U.S. parts—not even the U.S.-built Ford F-150 pickup truck. Major components of the car are from Mexico, Canada and South Korea, which could all be a part of the auto tariffs.

"A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution." — Trump on Truth Social on December 3, 2022 https://archive.ph/u0vZk

Can Trump really run for a 3rd term? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGpUZYBKx08 U.S. President Donald Trump says he's 'not joking' about potentially running for a third term in office — but if a president isn't allowed to serve more than two terms, why does he think he can do it? Andrew Chang breaks down potential avenues through which Trump could seek re-election which, as of now, is barred by the U.S. Constitution.

Is Trump right about Canada charging 250% tariffs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lURdVBCBo8 President Donald Trump says Canada has been ripping off the United States, imposing tariffs of up to 400 per cent on imported American dairy products. Andrew Chang breaks down Trump’s claims, explaining how dairy tariffs work and how likely it is that anyone is actually paying such sky-high charges.

"If you violated the law, you are not entitled to due process." — U.S. Rep. Victoria Spartz, R-Ind.

Can the U.S. auto industry survive without Canada? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcpehUVAx0k President Donald Trump says he wants every car sold in the United States to be made domestically, a move which experts say would disrupt the entire North American auto sector for years. Andrew Chang explains how interdependent the Canadian and U.S. auto industries are, and the widespread impacts of severing a 70-year partnership.