2) A Quick and Timely History Lesson

Regardless of what one thinks of the Trump tariff strategy, we still think it is important to set the historical record straight.

We hear economists on the left and the right argue that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 did NOT cause the Great Depression. How could a tariff signed into law in March of 1930 cause a stock market crash that began in October, 1929?

This is answered by the late Jude Wanniski (who invented the term The Laffer Curve) in a classic 1977 WSJ op-ed and in greater depth in his book: The Way the World Works.

The market started to sink when Rep. Hawley of Oregon and Senator Smoot of Utah were moving their bill through Congress, with ups and downs corresponding with the bill's prospects of passage. Then when it was signed into law by Herbert Hoover, a stock market selloff - which could otherwise have been contained - ignited into a wildfire of selling.    

Yes, we know this was an era long past, and Laffer reminds us that one difference between then and now is that Smoot-Hawley was a tariff cemented into law, whereas Trump's tariffs are by executive order and can be repealed or adjusted quickly. We hope so.

3) On COVID New York Times FINALLY Admits They Were Wrong and WE Were Right

Those of you who were readers of the HOTLINE from the beginning know that this publication was started to refute daily the epidemic of COVID lies from the public health officials and the media. We were against lockdowns on day one when even many conservatives and free market voices bought into the hysteria.

There was no louder lockdown cheerleader and serial distorter of COVID-"science" than the Times. Now, five years too late, the Times has finally admitted that the virus likely came from the Wuhan lab and that the scientists we were ordered to blindly trust were con artists.

The headline is an instant classic:

Ironically, no one was more easily "misled" than the author of the article, Zeynep Tufekci.

We at UP didn't get everything about COVID right, but we certainly got the most important things right, which is why we clashed with the Gray Lady on lockdowns, school closures, and vaccine mandates.

Now the Times admits the duplicity by our own government and the top scientists who "misled' the Times:

Perhaps we were misled on purpose... a March 2020 paper in the journal Nature Medicine, which was written by five prominent scientists and declared that no "laboratory-based scenario" for the pandemic virus was plausible. But we later learned through congressional subpoenas of their Slack conversations that while the scientists publicly said the scenario was implausible, privately many of its authors considered the scenario to be not just plausible but likely...

Spooked, the authors reached out for advice to Jeremy Farrar, now the chief scientist at the World Health Organization. In his book, Farrar reveals he acquired a burner phone and arranged meetings for them with high-ranking officials, including Francis Collins, then the director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Anthony Fauci...

Operating behind the scenes, Farrar reviewed their draft and suggested to the authors that they rule out the lab leak even more directly. They complied... Later chat logs obtained by Congress show the paper's lead authors discussing how to mislead Donald G. McNeil Jr., who was reporting on the pandemic's origin for The Times, so as to throw him off track about the plausibility of a lab leak.

The obviously fatuous and self-serving Fauci-commissioned "Proximal Origins" paper apparently threw The New York Times off the track of the lab leak for five years, until yesterday.

Then there was the top Times COVID reporter who tagged anyone who promoted the lab leak as a "racist."

Where's our apology? Why are none of the fraudsters in jail?

4) Judges Aren't Supposed to Make Law

Last month alone, district court judges issued 15 temporary restraining orders halting actions by the Trump administration. Judges should be a xxxxxx of our liberties, and we agree that Trump sometimes goes too far with executive actions. But these judicial edicts appear to be pure politics, not based on constitutional law.

Here's the evidence: More district court injunctions have been issued against Trump so far this year than were issued during the first three years of the Biden Administration. District courts have blocked an extraordinary range of executive actions ranging from the repeal of birthright citizenship to the deportation of members of Tren de Aragua, the infamous Venezuelan prison gang.

Trump may get a sympathetic hearing from the Supremes.

In 2018, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote:

I am skeptical that district courts have the authority to enter universal injunctions. These injunctions did not emerge until a century and a half after the founding. And they appear to be inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts. If their popularity continues, this Court must address their Legality.

In the years since then the Court has moved in Thomas's direction on many issues.  Will this be his next victory? If the Supreme Court doesn't curb nationwide injunctions, Congress should step in.

5) Kyrsten Sinema Reminds Democrats of Their Filibuster Flip Flop

Former Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema heroically saved the Senate filibuster when Democrats wanted it repealed. She was accused in TV ads of "supporting a Jim Crow relic."

Now a professor at Arizona State University, Sinema must have laughed out loud after seeing 38 of her former Democratic colleagues attempt to use the filibuster to stop the government funding bill last week. All 38 of these senators either voted to abolish the filibuster in January 2022 or campaigned to end the 60 vote procedural rule to pass legislation.

Much like Synema, we've been unwavering supporters of the filibuster and have opposed Republican and Democratic attempts to kill it. This is not a country of majority rule. We protect the rights of the minority.

Majority rule is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

6) Finally a Cure

In related news from Minnesota:

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