On this week's episode of Freed Up, Robby Soave and Christian Britschgi condemn Vivek Ramaswamy's new attack ad against opponent Amy Acton before discussing their predictions for the 2026 midterm elections. Next, the boys get biblical with references to their favorite parables as they discuss Tyler Cowen's latest article on why he thinks Elizabeth Holmes—and most other non-violent female criminals—should not be in prison. The episode wraps with a thoughtful discussion on aging, state attorneys general, and the latest Meta settlement.
00:00—Vivek Ramaswamy ad controversy
20:00—2026 midterm elections
25:50—Should Elizabeth Holmes be in prison?
49:20—Getting older
58:55—An update on Rep. Ilhan Omar
1:03:10—The importance of grain
1:06:14—Robby and Christian extol author Michael Crichton
1:11:30—The war in Ukraine should end.
1:14:50—Meta settled with the state of New Mexico
1:20:00— Christian continues his crusade against state attorneys general.
If you enjoy Freed Up, come watch Robby debate at our upcoming Reason Versus in D.C. Tickets are available here.
Robby Soave on the left, Christian Britschgi on the right, Elizabeth Holmes in the middle with the words "bad blood" written above her face, and the Reason Freed Up logo in the bottom left corner
Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week, we're going to jump right into it with a philosophical question: What is an accessory dwelling unit anyway?
It's a question that officials in Somerville, Massachusetts, are realizing they didn't know the answer to after learning that a state law allowing ADUs in single-family neighborhoods could also require them to approve three-story backyard mini-apartments.
As the Boston Globereported on Sunday, Somerville's "deep ethos in favor of new housing" is being tested by the extent of the state law. Elected officials are describing the potential for three-story ADUs as a "joke," and the area's state lawmakers, including one who voted for the state law, are demanding reforms to stop them.
The law in question was a statewide accessory dwelling unit (ADU) legalization tucked inside a major housing package of mostly new spending programs that passed in 2024.
The bill required municipalities to allow ADUs of either 900 square feet or half the size of the primary dwelling (whichever is smaller) anywhere single-family homes are allowed. A subsequent rule issued by state regulators also forbade localities from imposing height and bulk limits on ADUs that are stricter than the limits imposed on primary dwellings.
That latter rule is what's causing Somerville's freakout.
Because the town allows triple-decker apartments (a three-story triplex common in New England) in all its single-family zones, the state rule means that it must also allow ADUs to be three stories tall.
The Globe story notes that the mini-triple-deckers could still only be 900 square feet, meaning each floor of a mini-triple-decker would have to be pretty small. Thus far, no one has proposed building an ADU tower in Somerville.
Even so, the town is worried that someone will eventually propose one of these "out-of-scale" units that it'll have to approve. Its officials are now agitating for changes to the state law to prevent this.
On the one hand, one can perhaps understand why Somerville officials feel blindsided.
The text of the 2024 ADU law allows localities to set "reasonable" height and bulk limits on accessory units. It was state regulators who decided after the law's passage that requiring ADUs to be shorter than the primary unit was "unreasonable."
On the other hand, allowing a second home on a lot to be as tall as the first house sounds "reasonable" enough. Can one complain about out-of-scale development when the new unit is the same height as an existing home and a little bit smaller?
Somerville is not the first city where people's own colloquial definition of an accessory unit as "a tiny home that doesn't bother anyone" has clashed with official regulatory definitions that allow ADUs to be a fair bit bigger.
San Diego's ADU Bonus program once allowed a technically unlimited number of ADUs to be built on single-family parcels near transit stops. (Height and bulk regulations imposed practical limits on how many units could fit on a site.)
That enabled developers to build what were, in effect, ADU apartment complexes on large single-family lots throughout the city. This year, the city imposed new restrictions to stop these "monster" ADU developments, including a per-lot accessory unit cap.
The latest dust-up in Somerville, like the San Diego controversy before it, provides several lessons about the realities of housing reform.
The first is that the definition of "accessory dwelling unit" is completely arbitrary.
In Massachusetts, an ADU is a 900-square-foot home that can be one story or three stories, depending on the town and zoning district it's being built in.
In Montana, it's a 1,000-square-foot unit. In California, state law can require localities to allow ADUs as large as 1,200 square feet. Under certain conditions, these ADUs can even be sold separately from the main house.
At a certain point, an accessory dwelling unit is just a dwelling unit. A house is a house.
The second lesson is that any ADU reform that is actually intended to produce new housing units is going to cause controversy.
State and local laws allowing ADUs have been one of the more common forms of housing reforms to pass.
Supply-boosters see them as a way to get a modest number of new units. Supply skeptics don't see much to object to about allowing someone to install a kitchenette and bathroom in their garage.
If the ADU regulations don't allow much more than the garage conversion, supply-boosters will be disappointed and push for expansions of the law. California passed dozens of ADU laws before they started enabling actual units to be built.
If an ADU law actually allows more homes, the ADUs will look like homes, and the supply skeptics will be mad.
No amount of branding or planning will resolve the inherent conflict of some people wanting more development while others oppose it in their neighborhoods.
Thus far, Massachusetts' ADU law has been modestly productive. The state's ADU survey reports that 2,048 ADU permits have been issued since the state law went into effect in January 2025. About half of those units are attached ADUs (think the garage with the kitchenette).
That's a little under 10 percent of Massachusetts total housing production during that time, per the Census Bureau's building permit survey.
At 50 units permitted, Somerville has actually approved the second most ADUs of any jurisdiction in the state. (Boston has only approved 49.)
But now that it's facing the prospect of allowing ADUs that look like actual homes, it's starting to get cold feet about the new law.
While Spain is tightening its tenant protections and rent controls in the face of housing protests, Portugal is trying to remove regulations on its rental housing industry. Either way, housing protesters are clashing with police.
The Urban Institute has a new white paper on whether data center development is coming at the expense of housing development.
A new report on home construction in Chicago finds that the practice of aldermanic privilege (where individual aldermen can veto projects in their district) is strangling development.
Sottovalutare Elly Schlein è un errore: potrà piacere o no, ma la segretaria del Pd non è una sprovveduta, come pensano alcuni grandi vecchi del suo partito. Schlein è una seria professionista della politica, brava a farsi scivolare addosso le feroci critiche che riceve dalla destra e a smontare i complotti orditi dentro casa, ma anche pronta a liquidare con una certa spregiudicatezza quel pezzo di partito insoddisfatto dell’addio alla vocazione maggioritaria del Pd.
All’assemblea nazionale di domenica, Schlein ha fatto le sue proposte su sanità, istruzione, ed economia, delineando di fatto il programma del governo di centrosinistra, astutamente senza mai fare cenno a Giuseppe Conte né ad altri fastidiosi ma ininfluenti alleati. La realtà però è leggermente diversa da come l’ha prospettata Schlein davanti ai compagni di partito, perché in questi anni la linea di Conte è stata più egemonica della sua, che al contrario è stata sempre gregaria perché concentrata a tenere insieme i cocci populisti e radicali dell’opposizione.
Alla Nuvola di Roma, Schlein è stata molto abile a trasformare l’improbabile coalizione che vorrebbe guidare fino a Palazzo Chigi in un’alternativa sociale a Giorgia Meloni. Ma non ha fugato i dubbi sulla difesa dell’Ucraina, come hanno sottolineato durante il dibattito Giorgio Gori e qualche altro riformista. Sono rimaste anche le ambiguità su Israele, come ha fatto notare Marco Pierini, così come l’ipocrisia furbetta e truffaldina del “no al riarmo nazionale” e del “sì a quello europeo” come se Schlein non sapesse che l’Europa è una confederazione di Stati e che la difesa (purtroppo) non è materia di competenza di Bruxelles, ma dei singoli paesi membri. Quindi dire di no all’aumento della spesa pubblica sulla difesa e di sì alla difesa comune europea, nel pieno di un attacco russo alle istituzioni democratiche europee, è un modo ingannevole e disonesto per cercare di salvare la rispettabilità europeista del Pd, lasciando però, come imposto dagli alleati di coalizione, che l’Europa resti in balìa delle mire imperialiste russe e degli umori dell’America trumpiana.
Questi dubbi, queste ambiguità, queste ipocrisie nei prossimi mesi dovranno poi confrontarsi con le istanze degli alleati che le alimenteranno ulteriormente, fino a spostare il posizionamento della coalizione di sinistra su territori molto lontani da quello originario e fondativo del Partito Democratico e del socialismo europeo.
È sbagliato sottovalutare Schlein, d’accordo, ma finora a dare le carte è sempre stato Conte, non lei.
Janeese Lewis George, a D.C. councilmember and the city's presumptive next mayor, has come out against pending legislation that would allow autonomous ride-share vehicles onto city streets, citing the technology's potential to eliminate the jobs of ride-share human drivers.
"DC is facing a jobs crisis. Rushing the legalization of autonomous vehicles is irresponsible given the anticipated AI-related job displacement and disruptions that put countless workers at risk," she said on X yesterday.
DC is facing a jobs crisis.
Rushing the legalization of autonomous vehicles is irresponsible given the anticipated AI-related job displacement and disruptions that put countless workers at risk.
In a follow-up post, she said that the D.C. Council should delay consideration of a pending bill that would allow Waymo, which is currently testing its technology with human safety operators on District streets, to offer autonomous rides to the public.
Ever since Lewis George won a commanding victory in D.C.'s Democratic mayoral primary earlier this year, pundits and wonks have been trying to read the tea leaves on how the Democratic Socialist will govern.
Lewis George's comments about Waymo suggest the mayor has a deeply mistaken view about the effects and benefits of technological innovation. Contrary to her contention, Waymo legalization is unlikely to exacerbate a "jobs crisis" for at least three reasons.
The first reason she's wrong is that very few D.C. residents work full-time as ride-share drivers. On her Capital Commonsense Substack, Ashley Schapitl reports that, by Lewis George's own estimate, there are only 200 District residents who work full-time as ride-share drivers.
For comparison's sake, the District has a labor force of roughly 400,000 people. So even if Waymo displaced all human drivers in the District, it would be a statistical nonevent.
Few headlines, for instance, reported that D.C.'s labor force shrank by 1,000 people between May and June. Neither did many outlets report that the labor force grew by roughly 600 people between July and August.
Yet here the mayor is talking about a "jobs crisis" over what would be an even smaller change in the number of employed workers in the city.
The second reason not to fear an exacerbated "jobs crisis" as a result of Waymo legalization is that autonomous vehicles (A.V.s) will not completely replace human rideshare drivers in the foreseeable future.
In the cities where Waymo has been active for years, A.V.s are still responsible for a minority of rideshare rides.
That's the case in Phoenix, where Waymo has been offering autonomous commercial service since 2020. In an article from April, Business Insider cites one study that put Waymo's market share at 16 percent of ride-share rides.
In other words, 84 percent of ride-share rides are still being performed by humans a full six years after A.V.s came onto the scene.
That isn't to say the impacts of A.V.s are necessarily positive for human drivers' earnings.
Another study by Gridwise from August 2025 found that A.V.s appeared to be marginally reducing drivers' hourly pay and number of trips per hour. That's evidence of the market for rides becoming more competitive, but it's not, as of yet, evidence of a job apocalypse.
Network design matters too. In places like Los Angeles and San Francisco, Waymo is a standalone competitor to traditional ride-share companies like Uber and Lyft. In Austin and Phoenix, Waymo partners with Uber to offer rides on hybrid human-and-A.V. networks.
A report by EnoTrans, funded by a grant from Lyft, found that the later cities' hybrid networks actually increased human drivers' trips per hour. Their pay-per-hour fell, albeit less steeply than in cities without hybrid networks.
All of that is to say that while Waymo, as a competitor to human-operated ride-share services, shouldn't be expected to have a positive impact on drivers' earnings. It shouldn't be expected to have a catastrophic impact on them either.
The third and final reason that Lewis George is wrong to think that Waymo will worsen a coming "jobs crisis" is that Waymo's employment impacts are not limited to its effect on competing human drivers.
If Waymo earns any market share at all, it'll be because it's offering some travelers a better transportation option than the ones that currently exist. Increased ease of travel within the city would be expected to raise employment levels, not lower them.
If Waymo makes it easier or cheaper for people to get from home to the office or from the office to their kids' school, they might be more willing to live in D.C. over Arlington or Silver Spring. If it's more convenient to get to the movies or dinner, residents will be more willing to patronize local businesses.
None of that even touches on the economic and human benefits of Waymo's likely positive impact on road safety.
The direct effects of Waymo on drivers' employment must be weighed against all the other economic activity that autonomous vehicles will facilitate.
In the long run, the economic effects of autonomous vehicles may well be revolutionary. In the foreseeable future, they'll make the market for for-hire rides slightly more competitive.
A reasonable assumption then is that Waymo will have a modest, but positive, impact on overall economic activity and employment in the District, even if it has a modest, but negative, impact on the small number of full-time ride-share drivers who live here.
If the new mayor can't even tolerate that level of economic disruption, that does not portend good things for D.C.'s economy under a Lewis George administration.
La dimostrazione eclatante che la posizione cosiddetta pacifista sulla guerra scatenata dalla Russia contro l’Ucraina è, quando va bene, ipocrita si è avuta in queste ore di ennesimo e vile attacco di Donald Trump e Elon Musk all’Ucraina, al suo presidente e al suo popolo.
Trump ha stretto un grottesco, inutile, e inapplicabile accordo con Vladimir Putin sul gasolio russo, in violazione delle leggi del suo Congresso e al solo fine propagandistico interno per scaricare sull’Ucraina, e non sulla guerra in Iran, le responsabilità del prezzo alto della benzina a poche settimane dal voto di metà mandato. Inoltre, da Mar-a-Lago, Trump ha ripreso a insultare e a minacciare Volodymyr Zelensky, dopo qualche mese di pausa, e ha smesso di passare agli ucraini parte delle informazioni di intelligence che servono ad anticipare la difesa della contraerea missilistica. Musk, invece, ha rallentato la connessione di Starlink in Ucraina e ha minacciato di staccare del tutto la spina, costringendo gli ucraini a rinunciare alle azioni belliche con i droni che così tanti danni hanno fatto alle infrastrutture offensive, energetiche e di approvvigionamento russe.
Il risultato della bravata del duo Trump-Musk è che i missili russi ora entrano nello spazio aereo ucraino indisturbati e poi colpiscono i civili ucraini come mai prima d’ora.
In linea generale, se le parole avessero un senso, un pacifista dovrebbe chiedere all’aggressore di fermare gli attacchi e non all’aggredito di smettere di difendersi, invece mai in quasi quattro anni abbondanti di guerra russa all’Ucraina ci sono state iniziative dei leader progressisti italiani o manifestazioni del fronte pacifista per chiedere alla Russia di fermare la guerra.
Ormai è diventato normale, malgrado sia un atteggiamento controintuitivo e moralmente osceno, che il sedicente pacifista italiano chieda all’Europa di non sostenere più l’aggredito, di non fornirgli le batterie antimissili che difendono la popolazione civile dall’attacco russo, e di inviare in Ucraina, anziché missili, un inviato di pace, come se fosse l’Ucraina a volere le guerra, al fine poi di intavolare una trattativa che la Russia non ha nessuna intenzione di intraprendere e che ogni giorno rigetta in tutte le lingue, a meno che la soluzione diplomatica sia la completa resa degli ucraini.
Questo è il teatrino dell’orrore cui assistiamo da oltre quattro anni, inscenato soprattutto da una parte della sinistra che si riempie la bocca della parola pace mentre con i fatti lavora per la continuazione della guerra russa.
Le ultimissime intemerate di Trump e Musk contro Zelensky e l’Ucraina scoperchiano però l’ipocrisia politica di quello che a buon diritto viene chiamato Campo Lavrov.
Qui non si tratta di cambiare linea politica sul “no alle armi” o sulla necessità di far terminare la guerra, né di mettere in difficoltà i leader dei partiti che provano a mantenere unita la coalizione elettorale. Qui ci sono i due più spudorati esponenti della destra nazionalista globale che, prendendosi una pausa dal gettare nel caos il mondo e dal sostenere tutti i movimenti neonazi del pianeta, minacciano l’aggredito, accarezzano l’aggressore cercando anche di fare affari personali, e mettono in pratica un piano di disimpegno per massimizzare le vittime civili ucraine.
Per i capi della sinistra “pacifista” non potrebbe esserci un’occasione più facile e doverosa di questa per criticare Trump e Musk e difendere le vittime innocenti della guerra, anche senza cambiare la linea politica sullo stop all’invio delle armi difensive.
Eppure non c’è stato nessun leader del Campo Largo o del fronte intellettuale pacifista che in queste ore abbia criticato Trump e Musk, dimostrando così in modo plastico l’impostura della posizione “pacifista”, ma anche la fine della gloriosa sinistra anti totalitaria, e la trasformazione del Campo Largo non solo in Campo Lavrov ma anche in Campo Mar-a-Largo.
Un fronte progressista che rifiuta di difendere l’aggredito, che non disturba mai l’aggressore, e che non riesce nemmeno a criticare i due più grandi fascistoni del pianeta impegnati a facilitare l’imperialismo russo può essere definito in qualsiasi modo, tranne che con l’aggettivo progressista.
Il più grande intellettuale della sinistra anti totalitaria, il compianto Christopher Hitchens, aveva svelato la vera natura dei pacifisti pro Saddam Hussein. Una lezione valida anche nel 2026. Oggi i pacifisti italiani non solo pretendono la resa degli aggrediti ucraini e non fanno niente per fermare l’aggressore russo, ma non trovano nemmeno il modo di censurare le mascalzonate di Trump e Musk contro l’Ucraina e l’Europa. Come scriveva Hitchens, questi non sono pacifisti, «non vogliono la pace, sono a favore della guerra, e tifano per gli avversari».
CAPE TOWN, South Africa — A steady stream of chacma baboons flows down the walking path in the beautiful wooded ravine that leads up to Admiral’s Kloof, on the slopes of Table Mountain National Park. The score of baboons (Papio ursinus) descending the ravine — half of the 44-strong Waterfall troop — are on their way to raid the naval barracks at the bottom, in the affluent suburb of Simon’s Town. A baboon monitor with a paintball gun slung over his shoulder stands and watches as a car marked “Shark Spotters”, the name of the NGO responsible for the monitors, pulls up to transport three of his colleagues to try and head them off. On this particular June morning, the effort is futile. The sound of the monitors’ paintball guns and the screeching of juvenile baboons fighting over choice morsels fills the air for 45 minutes, while the agile primates scale trees and buildings, and grab what looks like a bag of cereal from an unattended kitchen on the base. While the monitors manage to get some of the baboons out of the barracks, others move toward the surrounding suburb. Simon’s Town, the harbour, and the red brick walls of the Waterfall Barracks as seen from Admiral’s Kloof. Image by Barry Christianson for Mongabay. A WhatsApp group set up by the Cape Baboon Partnership to alert residents about the whereabouts of the troop, recorded 25 such raids between June 11 and July 11. Cape Town city officials are ready to…This article was originally published on Mongabay
We might wonder, though, how God can forgive sin and yet “not clear the guilty”? Isn’t that the nature of forgiveness: to clear guilt, to leave wrongs unpunished? This tension confronts us all throughout Scripture, as well as our experiences in life: How can God be both good and just? One answer is that in... Continue Reading
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