The Social Security Administration (SSA) announced Tuesday that it has corrected records for nearly 15% of all active Social Security numbers (SSN), adding missing death and citizenship data as part of the Trump administration’s drive to curb benefits fraud.
The post Social Security Corrects 15% of Active SSNs in Largest Cleanup in 91 Years appeared first on Breitbart.
Democrats on the US Senate Armed Services Committee called on the Pentagon on Monday to reveal how much President Donald Trump’s Iran war is costing American taxpayers, citing “ongoing efforts to hide the true cost.” US Central Command (CENTCOM) told Congress that the war had cost $43.6 billion as of September 3. But in Monday’s […]
The post Calls mount for a true accounting of Trump’s Iran war appeared first on Asia Times.
This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss the riots engulfing France and whether the country's increasingly unsustainable welfare state has made it ungovernable. They examine competing claims that immigration and austerity are fueling the unrest, the political gains being made by the French right, and why even modest pension reforms provoke fierce resistance.
The conversation turns to the United States, where President Donald Trump's tariffs are losing support among blue-collar voters and Republicans are struggling in traditionally conservative areas like Ohio. The panelists then discuss the abrupt departure of White House press secretary Katie Zacharia after just five days on the job. Later, they examine Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D–Mass.) opposition to a proposed $45 billion merger involving McCormick and Unilever. Finally, a listener asks why libertarians don't follow the Democratic Socialists of America's example by trying to reshape the Republican Party from within.
0:00—France's riots and the imploding welfare state
21:29—Trump's tariffs lose support among blue-collar voters.
29:41—Zacharia's tenure as White House press secretary
35:45—Listener question on libertarian influence strategy
45:52—Warren's corporate merger opposition
57:07—Weekly cultural recommendations
Reason Versus - Authoritarianism Is a Right-Wing Problem, November 10
"France Burns," by Liz Wolfe
"Protesters in France and Spain Are Angry at Government Failure—and Demanding More Government," by Reem Ibrahim
"French Tantrum," by Liz Wolfe
"Yes, Heavy Regulation Hurts the Economy. Just Look at France." by Veronique de Rugy
"Even Blue-Collar Workers Have Turned Against Trump's Unpopular Tariffs," by Eric Boehm
"Ohio's Democrat Momentum," by Liz Wolfe
"Trump Fired Kimberly Guilfoyle for Influence Peddling That Pales Next to His Presidential Profiteering," by Jacob Sullum
"Why populism leads to decline," by Nick Gillespie
"How Third Parties Die," by Jesse Walker
"How GOP Fiscal Sanity Died, in 7 Easy Steps," by Matt Welch
"Be Prepared for Elizabeth Warren's Reign of Economic Error," by Nick Gillespie
"Elizabeth Warren Wants the Government To Investigate America's 'Sandwich Shop Monopoly,'" by Christian Britschgi
"The Elizabeth Holmes Documentary You Can See Everything Is an Act of Radical Empathy," by Peter Suderman
"Thank Dutch Merchants, Not a Strong State, for Capitalism," by Edward Stringham
Cato Innovation Project: Design your own full-time, paid role at Cato. If we fund your idea, you spend two years executing it. Apply here: cato.org/reason
The post France's Welfare State Is Finally Imploding appeared first on Reason Magazine.
© Illustration: Fatima Ruiz
With little more than two weeks to go until the midterm elections, it seems increasingly possible that the Democrats, already a big favorite to win control of the House of Representatives, will also take charge of the planet's most elite nursing home, the United States Senate, where the median age is 64 years old. RealClearPolitics' poll aggregator has moved control of "the world's greatest deliberative body" (as its members are grandiosely wont to call it) to "toss up," status and prediction markets are now breaking big toward a blue wave. As of this writing, Kalshi has its Senate odds at 63 percent for the Dems vs. 37 percent for the GOP; Polymarket is at 62 percent vs. 39 percent.
As gratifying as it might be to see unprincipled Trump enablers reduced to minority status after signing off on economy-wrecking tariffs, inhumane immigration detentions, and wars of choice, there's at least one good reason to dread a Democratic majority too: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive who is spending the run-up to the midterms freaking out over possible consolidation in the condiments business and accusing private equity firms of gutting such shopping-mall favorites as Claire's and Toys R Us. There's every reason to believe that a Senate run by Warren and other economic interventionists will waste time, money, and resources trying to prevent a world in which, per the X wag Iowahawkblog, "a panopticon conglomerate owns two brands of hot sauce."
On October 13, Warren posted this dire warning to X:
Hellmann's mayo
McCormick spices
Cholula hot sauce
Frank's RedHotWhat do these products have in common? One company could soon control them all.
I have concerns that McCormick and Unilever's $45 billion merger could increase YOUR grocery prices.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 13, 2026
It's hard to think of a more competitive and varied market than the one for hot sauces, which is expected to more than double over the next decade. The barriers to entry are generally low, as are the key ingredients, and new entrants can easily market and sell online, avoiding the costs of buying shelf space in conventional supermarkets. Yet Warren is urging regulators at the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to halt mergers of both product makers like McCormick and Unilever and grocery stores like Kroger and Giant Eagle.
The latter complaint is particularly picayune. Kroger is one of the country's largest supermarket chains, operating around 2,800 stores under its own name as well as Harris Teeter, Ralph's, and others. Giant Eagle operates about 170 stores. This merger is no more the stuff of nightmares than a single company producing both Cholula and Frank's RedHot. If Warren gains more clout from being in the majority, expect her to butt in more and more on such mergers.
Making it harder for businesses to adapt is not a recipe for making goods and services more affordable. But Warren is keen to blame economic creative destruction not on "new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates" (as Joseph Schumpeter would have it), but on pure greed. In a TikTok released earlier this month, she shows a poster board with corporate logos from once-thriving companies that she says have been "gutted" by "private equity" firms.
"Here's your local mall," she piously intones. "Now, private equity wants you to believe that Red Lobster went bankrupt because of their endless shrimp….They want you to believe that Claire's went bankrupt because teens stopped shopping at the mall." In Warren's telling, private equity firms magically take over thriving businesses and then strip them bare. The typical pattern is that private equity enters the picture after a business is failing.
Virtually all accounts of the decline of, for example, Red Lobster, note that the chain had been spiraling for several reasons before the private equity firm Golden Gate Capital got involved in 2014. As this CNN article notes, the chain, which started in 1968, had seen drops in sales as customer desires changed. Management compounded the difficulties with a series of bad decisions, including continuing various all-you-can-eat menu specials, before coming out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year.
Similarly, it's true that some teens still go to malls and get their ears pierced at Claire's. But anyone who has spent time in retail America over the past few decades knows that malls are no longer the destination that they once were. As CapitalOne Shopping Research documents, "in 1986, there were 25,000 malls, large and small, nationwide." By 2023, that number had shrunk to just 1,200. While some malls are coming back, most are not, and for reasons that have nothing to do with private equity. Online retails plays a role (though a smaller one than usually imagined, with e-commerce accounting for less than 20 percent of all retail sales). But mostly, it's that people today tend to want a different sort of retail environment. Anchor stores—think Macy's and J.C. Penney—are shadows of themselves, and younger people have less unstructured time in which to prowl food courts and arcades.
For politicians like Elizabeth Warren, though, there can be no financial gains or losses that aren't the result of shadowy, conspiratorial forces. If her party takes control of the Senate, her words will carry more weight. But it will be American consumers that ultimately shoulder the burden of an even-more-regulated economy. The market for hot sauces will almost certainly stay spicy, but many other parts will surely suffer.
The post Be Prepared for Elizabeth Warren's Reign of Economic Error appeared first on Reason Magazine.
On Saturday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “Connect,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said President Donald Trump “has the biggest grifts going in American history.” Warren said, “Right now, Donald Trump has been president the last two years, and the Republican controlled
The post Warren: Trump ‘Has the Biggest Grifts Going in American History’ appeared first on Breitbart.
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