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Trump 2.0, Year 1: A Libertarian Nightmare

A decade into his capture of our political attention spans, there is no longer anything new that can be said about Donald Trump in a big-picture way about his nature as a person or his larger meaning as a political phenomenon. His audacity, so bold at first, and so lubricated in his second go-round, can no longer shock or surprise; his crudeness, so initially colorful, just fades into the dark background of his actions; his bottomless sea of toddlerish willfulness and grievance, so curious and compelling in 2015–16, becomes as notable as water to a fish. We all swim in Trump now, surrounded by his turbulent, turbid murk, descending to fathomless depths, his surface marking the end of what we can know.

Near the end of the first full year of his second administration, Donald Trump has demonstrated his core authoritarianism so completely and consistently that his personal character and comportment peculiarities lose significance.

Just in the past week, since his piratical and unconstitutional imperial conquest of Venezuela, he’s declared that he, from his own personal ukase, is taking command of a dizzying range of economic and foreign policy matters, from his planned further imperial conquest of Greenland (accompanied by declarations from his satrap Steven Miller and himself that no external force or authority holds back his powers to conquer and wreak destruction on the world) to dictating how weapons contractors can compensate their executives or deal with their stocks, the interest rate credit card companies can charge, and whether certain companies can buy houses.

While he’s gone hog wild so far in 2026, the pattern of his core authoritarianism was already well demonstrated in 2025. Trump wielded state power to punish enemies and reward friends, sent the military into city streets under bogus pretenses and over the objections of local elected officials, authorized masked cops to enforce “papers, please” policies on U.S. citizens moving in public (the loosing of such largely undisciplined shock troops in American cities where they are not wanted has predictably resulted in the unconscionable murder of a citizen), ordered the serial murder of suspected drug smugglers, and disrupted the global economy by making Americans pay sharply increased taxes on imported goods, for starters. 

He has concentrated what was supposed to be the competing branches of the federal government into the whims of one man, and erased distinctions between federal and state, public and private. America has never had a president who acted more like a monarch.   

Not all of Trump’s actions and statements are mired in his core authoritarianism. This does not absolve him. Not everything negative reported about Trump’s actions, or the specifics or reasonable implications of something he said or did, ultimately bears out. This does not make him acceptable. Yes, previous administrations have also violated Americans’ and the world’s economic and political liberties and lives. This does not mean Trump deserves a pass. His specific, documented exertions of state power over the past year should be enough to declare him a dangerous foe of American liberty. 

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Data Centers Use Lots of Electricity. This Bill Would Let Them Go Off the Grid.

Tech companies are building data centers as quickly as possible to run AI. These facilities are controviersial because they use copious amounts of electricity and might tax an electrical grid that in some areas is already straining.

In a bill introduced last week, Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) proposed an idea: letting these companies get off the grid altogether.

“Power officials have been raising concerns that the grid isn’t equipped to handle the sheer number of data centers tech companies are seeking to build,” Katherine Blunt wrote last week at The Wall Street Journal. “They say it will take many years to build new transmission lines and power plants needed to support the surge in demand while keeping the lights on for other customers.” Some officials, Blunt noted, “have proposed either requiring or encouraging data centers to stop using [the grid] when there is a risk of blackouts, either by powering down or switching to backup electricity supplies.”

Jowi Morales of Tom’s Hardware reports companies are “looking at alternative power sources to bring their projects online, regardless of the availability of power from the grid.” Microsoft, for example, is recommissioning the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to generate 835 megawatts of energy for its data centers (though not without a $1 billion loan from U.S. taxpayers).

“These initiatives will take years to take off, though,” Morales adds. “The Three Mile Island plant is expected to be operational only by 2028.”

Last week, Cotton introduced the Decentralized Access to Technology Alternatives (DATA) Act of 2026. Under the bill, “a consumer-regulated electric utility” would be “exempt from regulation” under federal law so long as it doesn’t connect to the overall electrical grid.

When one company contracts to sell electricity to another company, “that retail transaction presently would put you under the jurisdiction of a bunch of people” at the state and federal levels, says Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute.

And that brings a cumbersome level of red tape. “The rapid pace of innovation means the AI revolution won’t wait for multi-year permitting fights, cost-of-service hearings held by regulators, or planning processes built for the analog era,” Fisher pointed out last year in an article co-written by Cato’s Jennifer Huddleston. “And yet those are the structures that still govern electricity in much of the country. Building a new transmission line in the US now takes about 10 years, while generation projects spend multiple years stuck in interconnection queues, with more than 2,600 gigawatts of capacity now in queues nationwide.”

The DATA Act would lower the level of regulatory intrusion for enclosed systems that don’t connect to the grid. “It just serves data centers that are probably going to be clustered around it without taking electricity supply off the market for Arkansas families and businesses,” Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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President Trump Posts Picture of Himself as ‘Acting President of Venezuela’

President Trump on Sunday shared a picture of a fake Wikipedia page that described him as the “Acting President of Venezuela” as he continues to push the idea that the US is “running” the country following the attack to abduct President Nicolas Maduro.

Trump has insisted that the real acting president of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, who served as Maduro’s vice president, is willing to go along with his plan, which has received a cool reception from US oil companies.

While Rodriguez has said she’s willing to cooperate with the US, her government has maintained a message of unity and defiance in the face of US aggression and continues to call for the release of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores.

“In these difficult times our country is experiencing, Venezuelans have once again demonstrated that our greatest strength is national unity and historical awareness,” Rodríguez said in a post on Telegram on Monday.

“The collective response has been one of firmness, serenity, and determination to preserve peace, raise our voices for the release of President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, and defend the constitutional order, which guarantees protection and social justice for our people,” she added.

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Majority Of North Carolina Trucking Licenses Issued To Foreigners Are Illegal: Duffy

A review of non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) granted in North Carolina found that 54 percent were issued illegally, the Department of Transportation (DOT) said in a statement on Jan. 8.

The review was conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) and is part of its ongoing nationwide audit of trucking licensing systems, the department said.

DOT warned that if North Carolina does not “fix their serious failures” and revoke licenses issued illegally to foreign nationals, the department will withhold almost $50 million in federal funding.

“North Carolina’s failure to follow the rules isn’t just shameful—it’s dangerous. I’m calling on state leadership to immediately remove these dangerous drivers from our roads and clean up their system,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

According to audit findings, North Carolina illegally issued non-domiciled CDLs to drivers whose lawful presence in the United States had expired, and some of those drivers were found to be ineligible to hold a non-domiciled commercial license.

FMCSA sent a letter to North Carolina Department of Transportation Commissioner Paul Tine and Gov. Josh Stein, outlining audit results and the corrective actions that must be taken to prevent funding from being withheld.

The agency asked North Carolina authorities to “immediately” pause the issuance of non-domiciled CDLs, identify unexpired CDLs that fail to comply with FMCSA regulations, and conduct a comprehensive internal audit to identify errors, practices, quality assurance, and other issues that led to such CDLs being granted.

“The level of noncompliance in North Carolina is egregious,” FMCSA Administrator Derek D. Barrs said. “Under Secretary Duffy, we will not hesitate to hold states accountable and protect the American people.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the North Carolina Department of Transportation and Stein’s office for comment, but did not receive a response by publication time.

North Carolina is one of the latest states the DOT has warned regarding the illegal issuance of CDLs to foreign nationals.

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AI Shows Symptoms of Anxiety, Trauma, PTSD – And It’s Ruining Your Mental Health Too

Grok, Gemini and ChatGPT exhibit symptoms of poor mental health according to a new study that put various AI models through weeks of therapy-style questioning. Some are now curious about “AI mental health”, but the real warning here is about how unstable these systems – which are already being used by one in three UK adults for mental health support – become in emotionally charged conversations. Millions of people are turning to AI as replacement therapists, and in the last year alone we’ve seen a spike in lawsuits connecting chatbot interactions with self-harm and suicide cases in vulnerable users.

The emerging picture is not that machines are suffering or mentally unwell, but that a product being used for mental-health support is fundamentally misleading, escalating, and reinforcing dangerous thoughts. 

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Red-Washing: How the media sanitizes a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary as a ‘preschool teacher’

When police in Michigan arrested Jessica Plichta live on air as she finished a TV news interview supporting Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, she became an instant protest hero, seen as a victim of the heavy hand of law enforcement.

The 22-year-old from Grand Rapids was widely described in media reports as a “preschool teacher,” an “anti-war activist” and protest “organizer.” And while those descriptions are not wrong, they were hardly comprehensive. A Fox News Digital investigation reveals they are part of a pattern in the media in which the radical ties of leftist agitators are ignored, depriving readers of a deeper and more accurate picture of their sinister goals.

“Preschool Teacher, 22, Arrested on TV After Condemning Trump,” blared a headline in The Daily Beast, above an article that noted cynically, “Welcome to America.” The UK-based Guardian published an article framing her as a progressive “anti-war” activist. And Democracy Now, an anti-Trump platform, lamented, “Grand Rapids Police Arrest Protest Antiwar Organizer After She Condemns Trump.”

Few outlets reported that Plichta is a dedicated revolutionary in the radical Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a self-described Marxist-Leninist “organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States.” The FBI in 2010 investigated the group for alleged ties to terrorist groups, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. It is part of a sprawling network of Marxist-Leninist groups funded by a China-backed billionaire and committed to sowing chaos on American streets, using issues from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Elon Musk and President Donald Trump to fan the flames of discord.

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Antifa TikTok Agitator Urges Armed Leftist Militias to ‘Fight’ ICE Agents

Radical TikTok agitator Danesh Noshirvan has crossed a dangerous line.

The Antifa-aligned mega influencer is now openly calling for organized, armed left-wing militias to confront ICE agents and federal law enforcement in America’s largest cities.

Framing ICE as “Trump’s racist army,” Noshirvan urges followers to physically block agents and force them out of communities. The rhetoric is not abstract. It is operational. It is coordinated.

And it comes from a figure already tied to dark-money networks, digital harassment mobs, perjury, and federal sanctions.

This is not protest. It is incitement—packaged as “accountability,” powered by bots, and aimed at igniting street-level conflict.

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Democrats Demand Apple and Google Ban X From App Stores

Apple and Google are under mounting political pressure from Democrats over X’s AI chatbot, Grok, after lawmakers accused the platform of producing images of women and allegedly minors in bikinis.

While the outrage targets X specifically, the ability to generate such material is not unique to one platform. Similar image manipulation and synthetic content creation can be found across nearly every major AI system available today.

Yet, the letter sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai by Senators Ron Wyden, Ben Ray Luján, and Ed Markey only asked the tech giants only about X and demanded that the companies remove X from their app stores entirely.

X is used by around 557 million users.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The lawmakers wrote that “X’s generation of these harmful and likely illegal depictions of women and children has shown complete disregard for your stores’ distribution terms.”

They pointed to Google’s developer rules, which prohibit apps that facilitate “the exploitation or abuse of children,” and Apple’s policy against apps that are “offensive” or “just plain creepy.”

Ignoring the First Amendment completely, “Apple and Google must remove these apps from the app stores until X’s policy violations are addressed,” the letter states.

Dozens of generative systems, including open-source image models that can’t be controlled or limited by anyone, can produce the same kinds of bikini images with minimal prompting.

The senators cited prior examples of Apple and Google removing apps such as ICEBlock and Red Dot under government pressure.

“Unlike Grok’s sickening content generation, these apps were not creating or hosting harmful or illegal content, and yet, based entirely on the Administration’s claims that they posed a risk to immigration enforcers, you removed them from your stores,” the letter stated.

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Renee Good’s Minnesota ‘ICE Watch’ group shared manual detailing how to fight arrests, launch ‘a micro-intifada’

The Minnesota ICE Watch group of which slain Minneapolis protester Renee Good was a member shared a detailed manual providing instructions on fighting police officers to free arrested radicals from their grasp, comparing each “de-arrest” to a “micro-intifada.”

The “de-arrest primer” manual was reposted on Instagram in June by MN ICE Watch, part of a loose collective of agitators who teach members how to disrupt law enforcement officers performing their duties, including ICE agents.

Neighbors have told The Post that Renee Good had regularly attended meetings with the local chapter and had received “thorough training” from the group.

The manual — which says on the front cover it was published in the spring of 2024 — outlines four tactics for interfering with arresting officers, such as the best kind of grip to use while yanking someone in custody out of their hands, or even suggestions on “pushing and pulling an officer” off of an arrestee.

“Technically speaking for pushing off form you should have a low center of gravity and a wide base and push up explosive power with your head up at all times if possible,” the instruction guide reads.

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Quantum cameras could remake space-based intelligence

Can quantum physics enable better, cheaper, faster satellite photos? In a month or two, a startup will test a “quantum camera” aboard an orbital telescope. If it works, it could slash the cost of missile defenses and give smaller NATO allies and partners spy-satellite capabilities that were once exclusive to major powers.

Funded in part by NASA and DARPA, the Boston-based Diffraqtion is testing a radically different way to make images from photons.

You might think that the cameras on the world’s most expensive satellites are fundamentally different from what your grandfather used to take old movies. But whether using chemicals and paper or chargeable transistors on a circuit, the process of deriving images from the behavior of photons has changed little in more than a century. That is one reason why space-based image collection—especially at high resolution—is incredibly expensive.

It’s also why Johannes Galatsanos, Diffraqtion’s co-founder and CEO, uses the term “quantum camera” rather than “photography.”

“You basically have light coming through a lens; it hits a sensor, and then that sensor takes a JPEG, an image, and then you can view it… or you can run AI on top, right, and detect things,” Galatsanos said. “Whether in space with high-resolution digital cameras or old-fashioned pinhole cameras, that process hasn’t [changed].”

That traditional method limits what can effectively be photographed based on diffraction, the process by which light beams pass through an aperture. It’s also a reason why high-resolution imaging satellites, like the WorldView-3, are large and heavy: like a telescope, they are mostly glass lenses and empty space. This is a reason why launches cost an average of about $50 million per satellite, and why why only a few countries have access to high-resolution satellite imagery.

Quantum science opens the possibility of collecting images using sensors that don’t require the same dense, heavy components. One of Diffraqtion’s cameras is the size of a small suitcase, launchable for just half a million dollars..

That just might be the key to shooting down highly maneuverable hypersonic missiles, as envisioned by the White House’s Golden Dome effort. The method proposed by Diffraqtion might lower the cost of the imaging systems on space-based interceptors, or even reduce the number needed to do the job.

“You have more area coverage, you can look at more targets at the same time, and so on,” said Galatsanos.

The idea effectively reverses the process of deriving an image from photonic data. But in quantum science, the simple act of observing quantum behaviors changes them. That’s useful for things like quantum encryption because it means that the message changes—obviously so—when intercepted. But it is also what makes quantum “photography” impossible.

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