Harvards free speech lie, Dems champion Kilmar Abrego Garcia and other commentary

Joe Biden made “more than 600” federal grants “to help curb speech considered by the U.S.government to be misinformation and disinformation,” report Gabe Kaminsky & Madeleine Rowley at The Free Press.That drove Trump’s executive order directing “the Justice Department to work with other agencies to investigate” federal activities inconsistent with “Trump’s anti-censorship order.“Powerful Republican lawmakers are now working with the Trump administration to identify” spending cuts.

Yes, “the U.S.has funded many anti-disinformation initiatives aimed at repelling interference in U.S.

elections by foreign adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran.” But those same initiatives have also been credibly “accused of unconstitutionally silencing speech, including theories about a lab leak causing Covid-19 and news reports on Hunter Biden’s laptop.”President Trump’s habit of announcing new tariffs and then delaying them soon after is “not great” for people “who are trying to run businesses,” warns Reason’s Eric Boehm. This week’s New York Fed monthly survey shows that manufacturers now “expect to see fewer orders, longer delivery times, declining inventories, and lower levels of employment” as well as higher prices.To the hit of the tariffs themselves, add “the costs created by economic uncertainty,” now higher than it was even during the pandemic.

The “most immediate impact may be a loss of economic dynamism, which means slower supply chains and reduced risk-taking, as businesses wait to see what the next pronouncement” from the president “will mean for their bottom lines.”As Harvard resists the Trump administration’s demands, its “defenders” claim “academic freedom is at stake,” but these defenders want “the status quo of having academic freedom for some but not for others,” thunders Commentary’s Seth Mandel.At Harvard, “Jews were told they could not keep their Hanukkah menorah up ov...