The choice then becomes either to ship from one US port to another at an outrageously expensive cost, (assuming such ships actually even exist), or else to ship our oil from US ports to foreign locations, requiring us to import oil from other foreign entities. This obviously substantially increases the cost of what Americans have to pay for their oil.

This administration decided to temporarily suspend the Jones Act -- initially to May 17 but has now extended it to mid-August, citing the unnecessary economic burden it places on Americans through higher prices. The Jones Act was originally enacted specifically for national security reasons for the purpose of solidifying our shipbuilding capability. However, the opposite has occurred; our shipbuilding capability has been decimated and in addition, the cost of shipping has skyrocketed as has our ability of being able to hire inexpensive shipping from our allies

The irony here is not lost: more than one hundred years after the Jones Act was established, we clearly see it costs us more money without actually making us safer. Thus, the question remains -- if the Jones Act just increases costs for Americans, why not just eliminate it for good and not merely suspend it?

The Internal Revenue Service remains one of the federal government’s most critical yet chronically undermined agencies. Its core mission — administering tax laws with fairness and efficiency — faces its greatest obstacle not from internal mismanagement, but from the staggering complexity Congress has built into the Internal Revenue Code.

Decades of legislative additions have created a maze of overlapping rules, conflicting definitions, and compliance obligations so dense that even experienced professionals struggle to apply them consistently. This structural flaw generates errors throughout the system: Taxpayers file incorrectly despite good-faith efforts, preparers provide flawed guidance, and IRS personnel interpret provisions unevenly. Countless mistakes go unnoticed due to the agency’s resource shortages, resulting in selective enforcement, inconsistent compliance, and profound damage to public confidence in the tax system’s equity and reliability.

Congress holds primary responsibility for this mess, yet it continues to worsen the problem through irresponsible legislation.

Enacted last year, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) exemplifies the pattern. Presented as broad-based relief, the law makes permanent many provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, increases standard deductions, and introduces populist exemptions — including no tax on tips (with a $25,000 cap and income phase-outs), no tax on overtime pay, additional deductions for seniors ($6,000, but only through 2028), expanded child tax credits, and new savings vehicles labeled “Trump Accounts.”

While politically attractive, these features add significant complexity to filing one’s taxes: intricate eligibility tests, phase-out calculations, additional reporting mandates, and retroactive modifications requiring IRS to overhaul forms, issue guidance, and educate millions of filers.

Rather than streamlining the code, the OBBB layers targeted carveouts onto an already convoluted framework, inflating error-prone areas and driving deficits higher by trillions, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office and independent analysts. This approach substitutes fiscal discipline with gimmicks — distorting economic incentives, granting unequal advantages, and undermining the principle of equal treatment under the law.

The fallout is starkly visible in the IRS’s current operations. Severe workforce reductions — roughly 27 percent since early 2025, including substantial drops in key filing-season divisions — have pushed the agency to extreme measures. The IRS is now involuntarily reassigning employees from human resources, information technology, and administrative roles — many lacking any direct tax experience — to frontline duties such as answering taxpayer inquiries and processing returns.

Hiring remains woefully inadequate, with only a small fraction of authorized positions filled and training periods of up to 80 days delaying readiness. Backlogs of unprocessed items have climbed to approximately 2 million cases, reflecting significant increases from prior periods, while phone service targets have been lowered from 85 percent to 70 percent.

Internal assessments highlight the risk of dramatically higher error rates, as reassigned staff lack the expertise to detect fraud, resolve complex issues, or adequately support small businesses with notoriously complicated tax filings. Specialized functions, including ethics oversight and recruitment, have been depleted to fill these gaps, further impairing the agency’s long-term capacity.

This crisis represents more than a temporary strain; it is a deliberate structural failure. Congress crafts ever more intricate laws and selective relief packages, then underfunds enforcement through persistent salary limitations and aggressive recent cuts.

The result? Major corporations continue to benefit from dedicated, experienced auditors, while individuals and small businesses encounter less-qualified or temporarily reassigned personnel, despite facing comparable complexity. The OBBB’s new requirements and retroactive elements exacerbate the strain exactly when resources are thinnest, guaranteeing prolonged delays, widespread inaccuracies, and growing taxpayer frustration.

Meaningful correction to the tax code cannot rely solely on internal adjustments or unproven technology. Genuine progress requires principled congressional intervention.

First, Congress ought to prioritize targeted simplification in persistently high-error domains — the Earned Income Credit, international tax obligations, and the fresh complexities introduced by OBBB provisions — by eliminating redundancies and unnecessary phaseouts.

Second, it should reform federal pay structures to enable recruitment and retention of skilled professionals, correcting the imbalance that disadvantages ordinary taxpayers.

Third, it should commit resources to specialized training for agents serving individuals and small businesses, ensuring competence amid ongoing complexity.

Fourth, it ought to implement enforceable case-management standards: prompt acknowledgment of correspondence, defined resolution timelines, and transparent communication to eliminate indefinite delays.

And fifth, Congress should strengthen partnerships with professional organizations, such as state CPA societies, to foster mutual understanding and practical improvements between the IRS and the practitioner community.

The IRS is indispensable to sustaining limited government, yet it cannot function effectively when Congress treats the tax code as an instrument of political influence and the agency as expendable. Absent serious simplification, proper resourcing, and restored accountability, the system faces collapse — further jeopardizing individual liberty, equal justice, and fiscal prudence.

American taxpayers deserve a tax system worthy of their confidence and trust. They’re currently not getting anything close to that.

I have followed Orban for years. His Fidesz party launched in 1988 was a straight-up classical liberal outfit that fought communism for open society, rule of law, and low taxes. By 2010 the party grabbed a two-thirds supermajority and Orbán went full strongman. He rewrote the constitution overnight, packed the constitutional court, forced judges into early retirement, and handed loyalists nine- and twelve-year terms in every oversight body. The Cato Institute just documented the wreckage: Hungary dropped from 31st to 67th on the Human Freedom Index, now dead last in the European Union (EU). Private pension savings worth 10 percent of GDP got nationalized. Hundreds of companies in banking, energy, and telecom were seized or muscled into sale to regime buddies. All of it was explicit policy. Orbán himself said prior center-right governments failed because they never built “their own” loyal capitalists. Economic growth lagged behind Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria despite pouring in EU subsidies equal to 4 percent of GDP some years. And he cozied up to Russia the whole time. This is not conservatism. It is textbook big-government overreach that destroys markets and individual liberty.

Peter Magyar, the adversary who just beat Orbán and now serves as Prime Minister, seems to stand for the original free-market principles Orbán abandoned. But the jury is still out on him. We are hoping he is the real deal, but we need to make sure he follows through and doesn’t turn out to be simply Orbanism without Orban.

JD Vance flying to Budapest to stump for the crook was simply out of his mind. Orbán spent sixteen years blocking the EU, cozying up to Russia, and thumbing his nose at the United States while his cronies looted the place. We do not need that model here. I have warned for years that executive power grabs, whether Trump-style tariffs without clear congressional authority or Orbán-style court packing, shred separation of powers and invite the exact corruption we see in Budapest. American conservatives should reject this illiberal nonsense, demand minimal government and equal treatment under the law, and cheer the new Hungarian leader who proves you can still win on the principles that once made Fidesz great. Anything less sells out the free-market legacy we claim to defend.

I warned when the One Big Beautiful Bill passed last year that it ranked as the worst piece of tax legislation in U.S. history, and the overtime fiasco is just one of the provisions that proves it. What the statute actually delivers is not “no tax” on overtime at all. It is a deduction—available only to workers in jobs covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)—for exactly one-third of the total overtime pay they actually receive. If your regular rate is $20 an hour and you earn $30 for overtime hours, only the extra $10 qualifies; the first $20 does not. The deduction is capped at $12,500 for singles and $25,000 for married couples filing jointly, then phases out once income hits $150,000 single or $300,000 joint. It does not apply to overtime required by state laws, private agreements, or special federal rules for railroad and airline workers. None of that fine print made it into the campaign speeches. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) never required employers to report the qualifying amount on W-2s this year, so Box 14 numbers are all over the map—some list the full overtime pay, others guess, and many put down nothing. Tax preparers are now buried in pay-stub math just to fix it. The Treasury Department’s own data released this month show nearly 22 million returns—more than 20 percent of all filers—have already taken the break, blowing past every full-year forecast. With the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) now operating on a severely cut budget, it still had to do the extra work of implementing the One Big Beautiful Bill—and now faces the massive additional burden of chasing down clearly erroneous claims that stem from huge numbers of taxpayers remembering the campaign promise, not the tax law itself.

This mess is exactly why limited government and simple tax rules matter. Instead of Reagan-era principles—lower, flatter rates on a broader base that treat all income the same—we got targeted gimmicks sold with slogans that no one read the fine print on. The deduction sunsets after 2028 unless Congress extends it; Congress should kill it now, before the audits start, the fraud penalties fly, and another layer of bureaucratic waste cements itself into the code. Taxpayers deserve straight talk and fiscal sanity, not more Washington smoke and mirrors that turn honest overtime into a compliance nightmare.

I guarantee the same fiasco is going to happen when the IRS gets around to auditing the results of no tax on tips and no tax on Social Security.

I’ve been documenting this wealth migration for years, and the latest Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data reported by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on March 27 confirms the damage. Between 2022 and 2023—the most recent years available—New York lost a net $9.9 billion in adjusted gross income as high earners fled to lower-tax states. California lost $11.9 billion, Illinois $6 billion, Massachusetts $4 billion, and New Jersey $2.6 billion. Meanwhile, Florida gained $20.6 billion, Texas $5.5 billion, and Tennessee $2.8 billion. Punitive tax rates are a major driver: New York City’s top combined rate hits 14.8 percent while states with no income tax keep attracting capital and jobs. This is basic economics. We learned in the Reagan era that lower marginal rates encourage work, investment, and growth. Today’s soak-the-rich policies do the reverse.

Hochul and New York’s progressive leaders need to wake up before it’s too late. Begging millionaires to return to subsidize ever-growing social spending while refusing to cut taxes, slash red tape, or dial back the renewable mandates that are inflating energy costs is pure fiscal madness. When the next market correction or recession hits, states overly dependent on high earners will face painful shortfalls. The only real solution is smaller government, lower taxes, and greater economic freedom. Until high-tax states like New York embrace those principles, productive Americans will keep voting with their feet—and taking their money with them.

Signed on March 13, 2026, and titled “Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction,” the order directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Secretary of the Army to streamline stormwater, wetlands, and Clean Water Act permitting rules that now tack on months or years of delays and tens of thousands of dollars in costs. It orders the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to expand categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) for housing projects and related infrastructure. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) must publish best practices for states and cities — things like capped permit timelines, lower fees, by-right development, and fewer mandates on manufactured and modular homes — while offering federal incentives to governments that actually adopt them.

This move is long overdue because federal red tape is a major reason new homes are so expensive. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) estimates that regulations now add roughly 24 percent — about $94,000 — to the price of an average single-family home, with permitting delays averaging seven months or longer. The same NEPA and Clean Water Act bottlenecks have crippled energy projects, infrastructure upgrades, and manufacturing facilities for decades. I have long argued, along with the Cato Institute, that these rules hand unelected bureaucrats and activist groups a veto over private development with zero accountability. Ronald Reagan showed in the 1980s that slashing regulatory burdens unleashes real economic growth — by deregulating airlines and trucking, which slashed prices, boosted competition, and created millions of new jobs; this order simply applies that same proven logic to one of the biggest markets Americans care about.

I strongly support expanding this approach beyond housing because the same government interference strangles growth in energy, small business, and manufacturing too. Even more important, HUD’s best-practices list gives states and cities a ready-made playbook to fix their own zoning, building codes, and local permitting disasters that are often far worse than Washington’s. If governors and mayors — especially in high-cost blue states that cling to restrictions that block new homes near existing neighborhoods and “green” mandates — refuse to copy the model, they will look ridiculous when housing stays unaffordable on their watch. This order can also turbo-charge the growing YIMBY housing movement that says yes to new development in their own backyards, finally increasing supply instead of endlessly restricting it. This order does not rewrite statutes or claim new executive power; it simply tells agencies to use the authority they already have to cut unnecessary burdens. Congress should codify these reforms, and every governor and mayor who claims to care about affordable housing should follow suit immediately — before another generation gets locked out of the American Dream.

Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 lets the President impose a temporary 15 percent import surcharge for up to 150 days only when there is a “fundamental international payments problem,” specifically a large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficit, an imminent dollar crash in foreign markets, or an international payments disequilibrium that needs fixing. That language was written in the early 1970s for the old fixed-exchange-rate world under Bretton Woods. Once those rates floated freely after 1971, the crisis the statute targeted simply vanished. Under those rules, the international balance of payments is simply not a problem and is generally acknowledged as such. Even Trump’s own lawyers admitted months ago in court filings that Section 122 has “no obvious application” to ordinary trade deficits. This is not a close call; it is an intentional stretch of a never-used provision the Supreme Court just forced him to swap in after striking down his earlier IEEPA tariffs.

Tariffs are taxes on American buyers and businesses, they raise costs across the supply chain, and they distort free markets exactly the way I have warned for decades. Justifying hundreds of billions in extra costs on companies and consumers with a rule that has been dead letter for fifty years is not clever policy—it is abuse of power that threatens the separation of powers and the rule of law. Courts are already hearing challenges; they should kill this fast. Congress needs to step up, repeal or rewrite these outdated tools, and stop letting any president—Republican or Democrat—play fast and loose with our economy. Limited government and real free markets demand nothing less.

What screamed loudest was what he skipped: the two ticking bombs threatening to blow up America's future—our runaway deficits and the looming bankruptcies of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This will also be addressed below. As I've hammered in my blogposts like "The Debt Time Bomb: Why Politicians Keep Ignoring It," ignoring these isn't leadership; it's fiscal malpractice.

Economic "Turnaround for the Ages"? Barely a Blip

Trump kicked off with: "I had just inherited a nation in crisis with a stagnant economy... but tonight, after just one year, I can say... we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages."You've gotta be kidding me. The economy Trump took over was hardly stagnant—it was chugging along at a passable clip, with GDP growth averaging 2.7% under Biden per Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) data. His "transformation"? More like a slight uptick riding market waves, not some miracle. As I detailed in "Trump's Trade Hype vs. Hard Numbers," his policies like tariffs just distort things without real gains. No "ages" here—just hype.

Core Inflation "Down to 1.7%"? Absolute Nonsense

He bragged: "In 12 months, my administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years... down to 1.7 percent."Laughable. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data shows core inflation was actually 2.6% in late 2025, not 1.7%. It eased thanks to Fed rate cuts and post-COVID supply fixes, not Trump's magic wand. I've covered this in my inflation breakdowns: His tariffs act like a hidden tax, risking spikes again.

"Record Employment" and Factory Jobs? Try Net Losses

Trump claimed: "More Americans are working today than at any time in the history of our country... and 100 percent of all jobs created under my administration have been in the private sector."The "more Americans working today" is a meaningless statement—of course there are more because our population grows and more people enter the workforce. BLS reports a slight employment bump overall, but 2025 growth was terrible—manufacturing shed 108,000 jobs net, with factory losses for seven straight months. As I pointed out in "Tariffs: Jobs Killer in Disguise," both high tariffs and constantly changing tariffs cost jobs by raising input prices and disrupting planning for U.S. firms. Record? Hardly. It's cronyism masquerading as pro-worker policy. And that second part is actually true—one of the reasons is because he cut government jobs, which was a good thing, as he made a concerted effort appropriately to reduce them.

"$18 Trillion in New Investments"? Ludicrous Fantasy

He touted: "In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe."This one's the whopper of the night. BEA data on international investment position shows asset increases in the trillions from price changes and flows, but no $18T in "new commitments." This number is total nonsense. Even the substantial supposed commitments that he announced are just responses to threats against foreign governments, with no indication they'll add to what the countries' companies were going to invest anyway. Countries don't invest—companies do, and even with a "commitment," it requires that the U.S. economy provide real opportunities to make those investments profitable. I've railed against this in "Trump's Trade Claims vs. the Data": These numbers are pulled from thin air to justify tariffs that hit Americans hardest.

"Largest Tax Cuts in American History"? Deficit Bloat, Not Cuts

Trump hyped: "Passing the largest tax cuts in American history... no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and no tax on Social Security... and we also made interest on auto loans tax deductible—but only if the car is made in America."Absolute nonsense. His "Big Beautiful Bill" wasn't historic cuts—it mostly blocked a pending tax hike while piling on deficit-swelling gimmicks like no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security. These are politically sweet but economically sour. The very wording "no tax on tips, overtime, or Social Security" is an absolute fallacy—there were some reductions on the tax on tips and Social Security, but at the expense of an extraordinarily complicated addition to the tax code, as well as heightening our impending disastrous deficit with no offsetting spending cuts. They distort markets, favor special interests, and add red ink without growth. As I wrote in "Trump's Tax Tricks: Relief or Ruin?," tying deductions to "made in America" is pure protectionism, undermining free markets and equal treatment under law. And without congressional OK? Smells like misleading bluster.

Tariffs "Ringing in Hundreds of Billions" to Replace Income Tax? Clueless

He said: "Tariffs... took in hundreds of billions of dollars... and as time goes by, I believe the tariffs... will substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax."Laughably clueless. Those "hundreds of billions" aren't from foreign countries—they're paid by U.S. importers, companies, and consumers, adding $80 billion annually to costs paid by U.S. consumers and companies. They fueled inflation too, not tamed it. And hundreds of billions per year? That doesn't even cover 10% of our deficit and is trivial compared to our economy. Tax Foundation estimates his tariffs cost households $1,200 yearly. I've exposed this in "Greenland Tariffs and the Dangerous Precedent": No way they replace income taxes without cratering revenue or jacking prices. It's regressive nonsense, not fiscal fix.

Health Care Stocks "Soaring 1000 to 1700%"? Math Fail

Trump griped: "Big insurance companies got rich... with our government giving them hundreds and hundreds of billions... as their stock prices soared 1,000, 1,200, 1,400 and even 1,700 percent.”This makes you wonder if he skipped high school math. Sure, health insurer stocks are up big since Obamacare—1032% weighted average per Paragon data—but that's over 14 years (from 2010 ACA enactment to 2024), equating to less than 19% annually compounded. A 1000% increase means stocks are up 10 times, but framing it without the time span is totally misleading. There's no evidence they got rich other than by efficiently implementing government programs—it's a truly competitive industry with many players, so the increases are caused by government policy expanding their role, not their fault. Trump's "give money directly to people" plan? He is referring here to the most important idea in health care today, that is, Health Savings Accounts. Health Savings Accounts are accounts in which the user has high-deductible major medical coverage with a tax-deductible savings account which is available to directly pay for out-of-pocket medical services, copays, and wellness costs. By paying these costs out of their own money, the free market will make sure that funds are spent for doctors, prescriptions, hospitals, procedures, etc, only in the most efficient way. Although Trump has alluded to them and appears to understand that they can truly fix health care, he has been AWOL when it comes to actually proposing anything specific. I consider this one of his major failings.

Ignoring the $1.8T Deficit Disaster

He didn't utter a word on our $1.8T FY2025 deficit per Congressional Budget Office (CBO)—unsustainable at 5.9% of GDP, set to balloon debt to 120% by 2036. Not only no fixes, but he pushed pricey ideas like Trump Accounts (tax-free, donor-funded at $6.25B start) and health overhauls that'd add trillions more on top of the recent "Big Beautiful Bill" giveaways. Congress won't pass most, given our dangerously deficit-ridden economy, but proposing them without cuts? It's borrow-and-spend madness. As I've warned in "Deficit Denial: Path to Ruin," this executive overreach risks knee-capping the economy sooner.

Entitlements on Autopilot to Bankruptcy

Worse, he vowed: "We will always protect Social Security and Medicare."Translation: No reforms means he's doing nothing to change the fact that benefits will be cut. CBO projects Medicare's trust fund exhausted by 2040, Social Security by 2035—cuts of 8-10% looming without action. His no-tax on SS benefits? Accelerates the crunch. I've covered this in "Entitlements: The Unfunded Time Bomb"—equal treatment means fixing now, not kicking the can. Hypocritical: He blasts "socialist nonsense" but locks in these massive programs' collapse.

Conclusion

Trump's SOTU was a masterclass in distraction—boasts over facts, giveaways over responsibility. From a libertarian lens, it's everything wrong: Tariffs twisting markets, deficits exploding government, overreach without constitutional checks. Trump just needs to double down on what works: lower taxes, lower regulation, and lower spending. He's been good on lower taxes and lower regulation, and has provided lip service to lower spending, but he knows what to do. We need minimal government, not this big-spending charade. Time for real fiscal sanity before it's too late.

California already struggles with high gasoline prices, and the Jones Act is making them worse. The Jones Act requires that any ship going from one U.S. port to another U.S. port (including places like Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico) can only be a ship that is owned, been constructed, crewed, and flagged in the United States. Those ships are known as Jones Act-compliant ships. Because the United States has been so incompetent in terms of shipbuilding, Jones Act-compliant ships cost four to five times more than non-Jones Act-compliant ships, making the cost of using a Jones Act-compliant ship so outrageously expensive, it’s almost never economical to use.

Therefore, because of the Jones Act restrictions, gasoline refined on the U.S. Gulf Coast simply cannot economically be shipped to California using Jones Act-compliant ships. Instead, it is often shipped to the Bahamas first before eventually reaching California -- because it is actually cheaper to ship the gasoline to the Bahamas, do more refining there, and then reship the gasoline through Panama to California than it is to actually find a Jones Act-compliant ship that can just take it the short distance from the Gulf Coast to California. It must be noted that there are only about 55 U.S.-flagged, Jones Act-compliant oil tankers available worldwide compared with more than 7,000 foreign vessels; because Jones Act-compliant ships are so expensive, they need to charge excessive amounts to cover their costs and therefore can only be used in the most limited circumstances.

The problem in California is magnified by the state’s shrinking refining capacity resulting from excessive environmental regulatory rules and compliance costs. As refineries close and no pipeline connects the Gulf Coast to the West Coast, California has become increasingly reliant on imported gasoline. The Jones Act compliance absurdity actively prevents domestic oil from being shipped from the nearby Gulf Coast to the West Coast and instead is increasingly imported from a foreign country.

The result is predictable: Californians pay more at the pump for fuel that faces unnecessary delays and inflated shipping costs. Though the law was an ill-advised but relatively small attempt at protectionism 100 years ago, today it serves no purpose beyond providing crony benefits to a small segment of the shipping industry at the public’s expense.

It’s time to repeal the Jones Act. A modern energy market requires efficient supply chains and flexible transportation. Instead, this outdated law drives up costs for consumers and weakens the very system it was meant to protect.

First, the rule clashes with the core principle of editorial freedom. By mandating equal airtime, it forces broadcasters to prioritize compliance over judgment. Journalists lose the ability to decide which content is most relevant or valuable to their audiences. Instead of encouraging open discussion, the rule pressures networks to air content simply to satisfy a government quota, weakening the quality and diversity of coverage.

The rule is also impractical in today’s media landscape. Broadcast networks must comply because they use public airwaves, but cable outlets like Fox News and CNN are exempt. That distinction no longer reflects how people consume media. It creates an uneven playing field where some platforms face strict rules while others do not. At the same time, entertainment programs—late-night shows, comedy programs, and other non-news formats—can still be swept into equal-time obligations despite not being designed for political coverage.

In practice, the equal-time rule does not create fairness. It imposes awkward restrictions that stifle creativity and complicate journalism. Worse, there is no realistic way to measure what truly counts as equal “time, place, and opportunity.” If the rule is truly about fairness, the solution is clear: the equal-time rule should be scrapped. Until then, broadcasters will remain stuck between the demands of regulatory compliance and their responsibility to provide quality, open, and free journalism.

Take rent stabilization, a sacred cow for leftists like Zohran Mamdani, who just froze rents on a million units while promising 200,000 more “affordable” homes subsidized by taxpayers. But economists from across the spectrum agree: rent control slashes housing supply by 10-15% because landlords stop building or maintaining units when profits vanish. Every time New York has ramped up rent stabilization, it’s driven up overall rents and pulled apartments out of the housing stock. In NYC, it jacks up unregulated rents by 22-25%, as confirmed by various studies, because of the smaller supply of apartments chasing higher demand. And it turns buildings into slums since there’s no incentive or money for landlords to make improvements on apartments whose rents are not allowed to rise to cover the cost of the improvements.

Then there’s the $17 minimum wage downstate, set to index to inflation in 2027, with Mamdani pushing for $30 by 2030. That forces businesses to cut jobs or hours—New York’s own rent control studies show it hikes unemployment by over four percentage points among stabilized tenants because the lower rents reduce their incentive to seek work. Add in outrageous public sector deals, where city employees and MTA workers rake in pay levels far above private sector equivalents for similar skills—in addition to overtime that averages $100K+ for some. And overdone welfare benefits cost billions more than the private sector would ever dream of paying. No wonder taxes are crushing: NYC’s top 1% of earners foot 50% of the bill, but over a million residents fled New York since 2020, with 137,000 bolting in 2024-25 alone, mirroring California’s 216,000 loss last year. And the state’s tax hounds chase them down with audits rifling through phone records and even vet bills to claw back every dime.

Instead of making new housing affordable by fixing the root problems—like scrapping rent controls and curbing union bloat—Governor Hochul’s “Housing Compact” to build 800,000 units just throws taxpayer money at inflated costs, paying inflated union labor to construct overpriced “affordable” housing that’s only cheap because it’s subsidized by the rest of us. As the Cato Institute has hammered home for decades, these policies kill incentives, balloon costs, and drive out the productive, leaving us with perpetual crises. I’ve been saying for 40 years: cap public contracts at private sector levels, scrap rent controls, and let free markets work—or watch more New Yorkers vote with their feet, taking their tax dollars south.

But Trump didn't address the legal merits at all—he ignored the Court's clear explanation that IEEPA lacks any reference to tariffs or duties, and no prior president had ever read it that way. Instead, he lashed out personally, branding the majority justices (including his appointees Gorsuch and Barrett) "fools," "unpatriotic," and "disloyal to our Constitution"—even calling them "embarrassments to their families." By labeling Supreme Court justices "disloyal" for upholding the law he swore an oath to defend, Trump has basically told them to ignore the Constitution that both he as president and the justices have sworn to uphold as their sacred responsibility—demanding loyalty to him over their shared obligation to support and defend it. This shows a criminal neglect of his constitutional duty: the president must follow the Constitution, not demand the Court violate it for personal loyalty.

It is critically important that Trump lost, because if he had won, it would have eviscerated Article I's assignment of trade and taxing powers exclusively to Congress (including duties and imposts), giving future presidents unchecked authority to impose or alter tariffs at will without legislative input. The ruling was inevitable under IEEPA's text, which requires a genuine foreign-sourced emergency—not chronic trade imbalances that have been a staple of our economy for decades with no negative effects.

Trump's response was more of the same—no reflection, just new tariffs slapped on without explanation or analysis (like the 10% global one under Section 122, quickly hiked). Even if some emergency authority existed, it wouldn't justify changing tariffs on personal whims—such as 25% duties on Canada after Trudeau called his moves "very dumb," threats against Mexico over drug accusations from Sheinbaum, a 40% (totaling 50%) levy on Brazil amid frustration with Bolsonaro's "witch hunt" prosecution, or hiking Switzerland's rate to 39% after disliking its leader's tone before dropping it to 15% following Swiss corporate gifts. In none of these did Trump declare a new emergency or cite any statutory trigger; he simply reacted to criticisms, policy spats, or slights, treating tariffs as petty revenge tools rather than trade measures.

Tariffs aren't for settling personal scores—using them that way distorts markets and empowers executive caprice over free enterprise. Constant flip-flops make business planning impossible: companies can't set prices or supply chains when import costs swing daily on presidential mood. This chaos alienates business voters, inflates prices (0.4%–1.3% hikes per Peterson Institute studies), and dooms GOP midterm hopes. We can't afford a president who puts ego over Constitution and economy— we must demand better, or watch limited government crumble under this madness.

But the real danger goes beyond this particular action. If Republicans in Congress allow or ignore Trump’s executive overreach, they should be absolutely clear-eyed about what will certainly happen later on. Once the precedent is set, Democrats will happily use it for their own advantages and probably expand on it. Future administrations will be able to apply the same logic to impose tariffs or other regulatory or economic controls in the name of “national security,” most likely focusing on energy, climate, or technology issues with little regard for the actual constitutional limits or economic impact. And they’d be able to do so with a straight face.

This is how bad governing metastasizes: through terrible precedents that outlive their moment and subsequently empower the other side. Conservatives who care about limited government, free markets, and constitutional restraint should oppose Trump’s idea -- not only because it is constitutionally suspect now, but even more so because it will be weaponized later. And when that happens, it will be far more destructive to our country.

While emphasizing the importance of lower interest rates, Forbes noted correctly that housing affordability depends on them. He also argued that easing permitting and regulatory barriers and removing tariffs on lumber and other building materials are essential to lowering housing costs.

What he did not address, however, is the core constraint: as long as the federal government is running multi trillion-dollar deficits, long-term and mortgage rates are unlikely to fall meaningfully.

Massive deficits require massive bond issuance, and an ever-growing supply of bonds inevitably forces investors to demand higher interest rates. Unless Congress makes a concerted effort to cut the deficit, efforts to lower interest rates and improve housing affordability will remain largely futile.

But here’s the incredible, stomach-turning outrage that punctuates the whole issue: ICE is now openly engaging in ongoing blatant criminal activity. Conservative federal judge Patrick Schiltz—a Scalia clerk, no less—documented 96 court-order violations across 74 cases since January 1, 2026 (and that’s almost certainly an undercount), warning that ICE has probably defied more orders this month alone than some agencies have in their entire existence. This isn’t law and order; it’s a shocking, contemptuous middle finger to the judiciary, due process, and the Constitution itself—the precise kind of rogue executive overreach I’ve hammered on these pages regarding Trump’s tariff power grabs without congressional buy-in.

To my friends who keep chanting “illegal is illegal,” fine—but if blind philosophical purity hands the keys back to Democrats and their socialist big-government nightmare, is it really worth it? With ICE flouting courts in at least 74 documented cases (and likely far more), this is bureaucratic tyranny on steroids—wasting billions, distorting labor markets, and gutting limited government. Congress has to step up right now, authorize targeted priorities, and slam the brakes on this rogue agency before we lose the fight for liberty altogether.