A deadly strike was a grim reminder that despite a rare local cease-fire around the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky, other communities remained under fire.

© Agence France-Presse, via Ukrainian Emergency Service

After the country’s second major rail disaster in a year, Spaniards were confronting questions about the safety of their once-vaunted rail system.

© Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty Images

After a high-speed collision near Toledo, Spain, killed at least 68 people, rail safety experts said the rough consensus that it is best to sit in the middle of a train has its limits.

© Oscar Del Pozo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Following partisan battles over political maps, nearly 35 million Americans will vote in congressional districts redrawn ahead of this year's midterms. As the nation marks its 250th anniversary, Judy Woodruff explores the origins of gerrymandering and why this centuries-old practice remains one of the most powerful tools in American politics. It's part of her series, Crossroads: America at 250.

The accident, the second in less than a year on the same busy rail line, was one of the deadliest in the country’s history.

© Manu Fernandez/Associated Press

With apparently nothing better to do this summer, the police charged Guy Carpenter with picking up roadkill – who even knew it was a crime? As they took him to court, that's when he knew English freedom had died.

The post When the Police Charged me for Picking up Roadkill I Knew English Freedom Had Died appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Fernando Seco, 62, said he and others moved at least a dozen wounded passengers from the crash site, using parts of the wreckage as makeshift stretchers.

© Ana Beltran/Reuters

• "Liberty Biberty" is a much-hated new yellow puppet mascot for Liberty Mutual, appearing in ads.
• People are so riled up that there was a protest at its Boston HQ. Its organizer called the mascot "a disgusting little creature."
• But this kind of cheeky "hate" might actually work in Liberty's favor, an ad expert says.

On Sunday, a small crowd took to the streets of Boston to protest, holding signs, chanting, with one person even appearing in full costume and face paint. The protest took place in front of the Back Bay headquarters of insurance company Liberty Mutual. The protest was not against some sort of corporate malfeasance, political, or even a social justice issue.

They were protesting the existence of Liberty Biberty, the new fuzzy yellow mascot that appears in the insurance giant's TV ads.

People, for some reason, really hate the Liberty Biberty puppet.

There's a Facebook page with over 40,000 people devoted to hating it. There's TikToks. Reddit threads. I even saw a ghastly tattoo depicting the spherical character being fed into a meat grinder. John Oliver did a segment about it on HBO's "Last Week Tonight" recently.

The concept of the ads is surreal and self-referential. Liberty Biberty is a yellow puppet who has appeared in a few TV ads so far. In one, he appears on someone's car and tells them about the benefits of auto insurance, and then is carried off by a hawk. In another, he chats to a bored bartender, and then meets the aforementioned hunky actor prone to malapropisms.

Liberty Mutual is well aware of the, ahem, passionate response.

"We're encouraged by how strongly people are engaging with him, whether they love him or feel differently," Jenna Lebel, Liberty Mutual's chief marketing officer for US retail markets, told Business Insider. "We've been encouraged by the early results, including independent testing that shows Biberty performing above average on attention and brand attribution."

Insurance companies' advertising strategies for the last decade or more has been focused on a series of recognizable characters like Flo from Progressive, Jake from State Farm, and "Mayhem" from Allstate. Let us not forget the forefather of them all, the Geico gecko. Liberty Mutual has also had Doug and the LiMu Emu, as well as a hunky actor prone to malapropisms — hence "biberty." (Don't worry: Doug and the LiMu Emu are still active, Liberty Mutual's PR person assured me. Some complaints about Biberty were that people thought it had replaced the popular human/avian duo.)

Young people are watching less and less linear television, and so see fewer traditional ads, with one big exception: sports. Most of the people I talked to mentioned seeing the Liberty Biberty ads during baseball or football games, week after week.

The repeated exposure to the ads seems to be getting under people's skin.

"I think Liberty Bibberty is just a disgusting little creature," Connor Harvey, the organizer of the protest in Boston, told me. The 19 year old content creator from New Hampshire said that he considers himself a "sucker for weird advertising," but that the fluffy yellow orb seems to be intentional ragebait — purposely meant to be annoying.

"The new Biberty campaign has definitely sparked a conversation, with a wide range of reaction and opinion. We're listening to all of it," Lebel said.

Zach Johnson, 40, manages a machine shop in North Carolina and was inspired to start the Facebook group "Liberty Biberty Hate" after seeing the ad multiple times while watching TV with his wife one night. "It's a terrible mascot. Plus, they have more mascots than I can think of," he said.

The over-the-top hate towards the mascot is certainly a bit tongue in cheek; although some people may find it genuinely annoying, it's not offensive or tone deaf like the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad.

That means all that hate may actually be a good thing for Liberty Mutual.

"I think there's a real opportunity right now to jump in and have fun with this moment in a way that, frankly, a lot of brands would absolutely die for," said Simon Bruyn, ad industry vet and co-founder of the marketing strategy firm Significant.

"For that Gen Z and younger culture, who might be starting to get into insurance decisions, you suddenly have a very clean crossover into an internet nascent brand that feels like something you could really, really have fun with and play and own that idea of faux outrage," Bruyn said.

Harvey, the protest organizer, isn't in the market for home or auto insurance — for now. "I'm on my mom's insurance," he told me.

My home state of Ohio has earned a not-so-nice distinction in the 2026 election: It is the site of "the ugliest" contest in the country. Nasty attack ads have been an ongoing feature of the governor's race between Republican Vivek Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton—piercing many a peaceful Hulu-watching session on my end with allegations that Acton is a pill-popping drunk and Ramaswamy a con man.

But the nastiness reached a whole new level in recent weeks, with the release of a Ramaswamy campaign ad implying that Acton lied about childhood sexual abuse by her stepfather.

Understandably, many Republicans bristled at being viewed as the party that defends accused child rapists. Not Trump. His only regret here is that he didn't get to run an ad like this, he said.

The ad features Acton's mother, Donna Arthur, from whom Acton has been estranged for decades for what seem like very good reasons. When Acton was 12, her mom took her stepfather's side when she accused him of sexually abusing her for years.

In 1978, Acton's stepfather, Cledith Arthur, was arrested and charged with child rape. Records from the case, obtained by Signal Statewide, "also contains a reference to a previous incest charge against Cledith Arthur from 1974…although it's not clear how that case was resolved."

Acton's mom lost custody of both Amy and her brother. But the stepfather was never tried, since he and Acton's mom fled the state. He remained a fugitive—and married to Amy's mother—until he died in 2004.

In the new Ramaswamy campaign ad, Acton calls her daughter a liar. "It's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar," says Arthur in the video. "She lies about her past.…She's lied her entire life. My daughter needs help."

Arthur doesn't outright say "she lied about being molested by her stepfather," but given the historical context here, the implication is pretty clear. In effect, the Ramaswamy campaign has helped Acton's mom accuse her daughter on a national scale of making it all up.

That's despicable, even by political campaigning standards.

And—providing us with some hope for humanity—it also backfired. People roundly condemned the ad and the Ramaswamy campaign for running it. Acton's brother, Philip Stearns, corroborated her story. Even many Republicans have objected to the ad.

There are still some lines you don't cross, public figures left and right seemed to agree.

Public figures except President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

Telling Republicans to "stop whining" about the ad, Vance said he was getting "a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America."

"Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar," Vance continued.

Trump went further, calling the ad "very powerful" and urging the Ramaswamy campaign to keep it up. Trump also criticized the current Ohio governor, Republican Mike DeWine, for calling the ad "deeply troubling."

DeWine is a moderate Republican who, for the most part, adheres to pre-Trump standards of decency. Their differing reactions here seem a perfect microcosm of pre-MAGA and post-MAGA standards for conduct and bounds of acceptability.

DeWine "probably wants a Dumocrat to win," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post last Thursday. "I suggested, on the other hand, that Vivek should keep it up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!"

Talking to reporters that same day, Trump just kept repeating that if an ad had been made with his mom calling him a liar, the press would love it. He stuck to that talking point again and again, acting clueless about the childhood sexual abuse allegations at the center of this whole controversy.

The idea that the president would passionately post about and answer questions about this without knowing the whole story is almost beyond belief. But even if Trump somehow didn't know the full context when he first started talking about it, he was made aware and then kept right on praising the ad.

Trump on Ramaswamy Ad: The mother is calling the daughter a terrible person and a liar. Why would you shield somebody from that? Why would we do that? So I told him, leave it up and say thank you God. I only wish I could have had an ad like that. pic.twitter.com/M2TYz3jhUy

— Acyn (@Acyn) October 23, 2026

At a campaign rally in Iowa last Thursday, he said, ​"I only wish I could have had an ad like that against somebody."

Ramaswamy has also defended the ad, saying, "Unfortunately, the person I'm running against does have serial problems with the truth" and that the ad highlights a "pattern" of the "people who are closest to her" telling Ohioans not to vote for her.

But this is no longer just about one candidate's mistake or one campaign's poor judgment. The response from Trump and Vance has raised Ramaswamy's ad into bigger and uglier territory.

​"It's actually kind of hard to find a prominent Republican who is defending the ad other than Vivek Ramaswamy himself, Vice President JD Vance and, quite fervently today, President Trump," noted CNN's Kaitlan Collins last Friday.

But Trump and Vance are the leaders of not just the Republican Party but the nation. And as we've seen again and again, Trump's responses tend to set the tone for what will become acceptable among conservatives by and large.

"Vance's acceptance of this campaign ad only breathes life into the disease that we should be seeking to cure," former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie told The Washington Post.

Do voters agree?

Whatever happens with Ramaswamy next Tuesday, it will be impossible to know how much of it is related to this ad campaign and how much of it is related to many other possible factors. But it's hard not to look at the Ohio gubernatorial election results now as something of a referendum on what type of political discourse is OK. Are voters over Trump-style belligerence and nastiness? Or do they accept the premise that politics is a war in which no low is too low if it helps you win?

---

In the News

Release the FISA Ruling: "Two Democratic senators who have long overseen US intelligence say the Trump administration is illegally withholding a secret court's findings from Congress until lawmakers renew a program that lets federal agents read Americans' communications without a warrant," reports Wired:

Seven months ago, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court objected to search filters that let intelligence analysts pull Americans' messages from intercepted data without the approvals, written justifications, or records the law requires. The court approved another year of surveillance anyway. The ruling has never been made public, and Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Adam Schiff of California say the administration's own deadline for releasing it passed in September.

"This opinion details serious abuses of Americans' rights under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and, by law, should have been released before September 13," wrote Wyden and Schiff in a letter to the director of national intelligence and the U.S. Attorney General. "Yet this opinion remains hidden over a month later, suggesting that the administration hopes to secure a renewal of Section 702 while keeping Congress and the public in the dark."

Wishful thinking from Flock. Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, told a conference of cops to believe him rather than what's right in front of their eyes. The backlash to Flock "is not real," he said at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference, per leaked audio obtained by 404 Media:

"Somebody was paying for [the social media posts and] stopped paying for it," Langley said about the many viral posts criticizing his company's technology. "Social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July. It went down 50 percent last week when Ukraine bombed a Russian data center with a drone. Literally 50 percent overnight. And so look, I'm the last person, my wife as well, she's like 'This is crazy, these people are getting paid to say these things,'" he added, repeating a disproven theory that Ukraine's strikes on Russian data centers had a significant impact on internet bot activity.

"It's anonymous bots, and so it is not real," he continued. "Inorganic activity has led to organic activity, but when I look at protests across the country, it is the same people with the same signs and the same message. That's not normal. That's not organic at all." Langley's comments echo another unsubstantiated theory that said opposition to Flock comes from a far-left network spreading propaganda at the behest of China.

Cute spin, but I don't think "Russian bots" can explain this congressional hearing, or Sen. Josh Hawley's (R–Mo.) Stop Flock Abuse Act, or this recent court ruling, or Connecticut's new restrictions, or canceled contracts, or all the charges that police officers are facing for abusing Flock, or poll results like these.

The backlash is widespread and multifaceted. Backlash to Flock "has just exploded, like no other issue that I have seen in my time at the ACLU," Becca Eastwood, deputy policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, told Reason recently.

---

On Substack

Techlash on the campaign trail. Democrats have been panning data centers in campaign ads, but artificial intelligence was the subject of only a small fraction of ads, notes the Blue Horizon Project, an initiative from Chamber of Progress "to restore tech optimism in the Democratic Party and reset the relationship between Democrats and the technology sector." And when Democrats have focused on AI and data centers, it's been more about economics than general anti-AI sentiment, Dave Vorland writes:

Data centers are the important exception to the lack of ads focused on AI and technology. In AdImpact's tables, they appear among the three leading Democratic advertising topics in 5 of the 21 Toss-Up House races. They are not politically irrelevant, and dismissing the local backlash would be a mistake.

But look more closely at what these ads actually argue. Using AdImpact's data on 2026 campaign spending, ads matching either a tax-language screen or energy message, or both, account for $69.76 million, or 76.2% of all data center advertising.

The race with the highest spending on data centers is the Ohio Senate race, where Democratic spending accounts for $32.10 million. AdImpact's data shows Sherrod Brown's campaign spent over $1.5 million to air a data center ad 3,100 times. The message shows that while he is willing to hit his opponent for the data center tax breaks, his solution is ensuring that data centers don't raise energy costs, an idea that could have been drawn directly from our Data Center Development Playbook.

Vorland points out that "AdImpact's data for 2026 Congressional spending shows that less than $2.5 million went to ads supporting a data-center construction pause, moratorium, ban, or stopping new construction, a minuscule portion of the Democratic ad buy."

Interesting that "let data centers build but don't subsidize them" is the implicit message here. It feels like at least somewhat of a good sign that Democratic candidates don't by-and-large think "ban new data centers" is a message that voters want to hear.

---

More Sex & Tech News

• An interesting essay in Works in Progress looks at "the rise of prudishness" and what demographics might have to do with it.

• "Technology has advanced for centuries, shuffling workers among occupations, industries, and regions without making human labor obsolete," writes Nathan Smith at Human Progress:

As machinery pushed millions of Americans away from farming over the past century, most workers moved to factories, towns, and cities. They ended up with more comfortable lives than their predecessors plowing the fields. The AI economy will likely follow the same path: destroying jobs while creating better ones.

• The New Jersey Assembly recently advanced a bill that would increase prostitution penalties, and several other prostitution-related criminal justice bills are pending in the Assembly and state Senate. Tara Burns has details.

• Florida's attorney general said he plans to introduce even more stringent social media regulation, even as the state's earlier restrictions on minors using social media are still being challenged in federal court.

• Sarah Hepola takes a stand against…vibrators?

• British tech regulator Ofcom says its Online Safety Act isn't actually stopping kids from seeing "harmful content" online. So it wants to do more of it. "Instead of suggesting to repeal the Online Safety Act because it does not seem to be working or because it imperils online freedom, Ofcom's report proposes to broaden the law's scope," writes Reason's Meagan O'Rourke.

NEW: The Online Safety Act has been a failure, according to a new report from Ofcom.

Ofcom have found "no significant change" in children encountering harmful content since the law came into effect last July. This is despite the signifigant threats to free speech and privacy.

— Matthew Lesh (@matthewlesh) October 22, 2026

• "Social media decentralized the information environment and weakened the influence of expert opinion. LLMs are likely to have the opposite effects," writes Dan Williams at Persuasion. "Whereas social media has been a democratizing technology, LLMs are a technocratizing force. They shift influence back towards expert opinion."

• Ten states have no birth centers and eight others only have one, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund. "Two dozen centers closed between 2023 and 2026, with some publicly blaming onerous regulations and steep increases in malpractice insurance," notes Ohio Capitol Journal.

The post Ramaswamy's Attack on Amy Acton Was Bad Enough. Trump and Vance Made It Worse. appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Jim Morrison has endured almost unimaginable loss—first his wife and two young children in a plane crash, then his partner and climbing companion Hilaree Nelson in a Himalayan avalanche. But rather than stepping back from danger, he kept pursuing ever more risky objectives, culminating in the first ski descent of Everest’s nearly unclimbable north face via the Super Direct route. This profile explores Morrison’s perseverance and shows how, for some people, a life defined by extreme risk can never be retreated from.

“It was a profound, transformational moment for me to know that when I found Hilaree, she wasn’t in her body,” Morrison told me. “I dug her out of the snow. I held her in my arms. I screamed, and I cried, but it was just her dead body. She was no longer there, and it was as clear as anything has been in my entire lifetime. I had been haunted so much by my wife and my children, and what state they were in when the plane crashed, and how they were recovered. I had been haunted by these visions of their half-burned corpses. Then contrast that with what I went through with Hilaree. There was so much more finality to it.” Morrison had her body cremated in Kathmandu, at a Buddhist temple.

• One of soccer's biggest stars is in hot water in China over joking about Chairman Mao Zedong.
• Kylian Mbappé referred to Mao as a "Chinese dictator" during a podcast talk about his favorite memes.
• Two Chinese brands ended deals with Mbappé, while shares in shoemaker On, which sponsors him, fell.

Chinese brands are cutting ties with Kylian Mbappé, one of the world's biggest soccer stars, after he joked about Mao Zedong on a podcast.

Mbappé, who plays for Real Madrid and captains the French national team, has been nicknamed "The Dictator" for his confidence and influence over the teams he plays for. The nickname has spawned countless memes, many of which compare him to historical leaders, including Mao.

The controversy was sparked by a clip circulating on social media from an interview with "The Bridge," a French podcast co-hosted by one of Mbappé's teammates.

In it, Mbappé said the meme that made him laugh the most was one where his face was superimposed onto that of "some guy — I think he's a Chinese dictator." The video then cuts to an image of Mao with Mbappé's face.

While millions died under Mao's leadership, he is still revered by the Chinese Communist Party for his role as the founding father of modern China. Jokes about him remain a social taboo in China and are considered disrespectful.

Dongpeng, a drinks company whose ads and packaging feature Mbappé, announced on Tuesday that it would no longer work with him.

"Our company firmly opposes and has zero tolerance for actions that hurt national feelings," it said in a statement. "Effective immediately, we are ending all cooperation with Kylian Mbappé."

Mengniu, the country's largest dairy producer, also released a similar statement: "Effective immediately, our company is ending all cooperation with Kylian Mbappé. Mengniu firmly opposes and has zero tolerance for any words or actions that hurt the feelings of the Chinese people."

Soon after it was posted, Dongpeng's statement became the top-trending topic on the Chinese social media site Weibo.

Mbappé apologized in a statement on Tuesday morning, calling the comment "ill-judged."

"I now understand that it hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world," he said in the statement, which was posted in English, French, and Mandarin.

"I apologize to everyone my words have upset. This was absolutely not my intention. I have deep respect for the Chinese people and their history, and I am sincerely sorry."

Mbappé is one of soccer's biggest stars. On Monday, he came second in voting for the prestigious Ballon d'Or and was the top scorer at this summer's World Cup.

In 2017, while still a teenager, he commanded a transfer fee of over $210 million, and he has since become one of the most marketable athletes in global sports.

In September, he became the face of Swiss shoemaker On's expanding soccer business, leaving behind a long-term deal as one of Nike's top ambassadors. On's share price was down more than 4% in early trading on Tuesday.

On top of that deal, Mbappé is the face of EA Sports' hugely popular FC game series, and has endorsement deals with brands like Swiss watchmaker Hublot and Oakley.

Soon after Dongpeng and Mengnui's statements, EFE Noticias, a Spanish news agency, reported that Chinese state TV has suspended broadcasts of La Liga — the top division of Spanish football where Mbappé plies his trade.

"We convey our respect to China, its institutions, and its people, and we deeply value the support of the millions of fans who follow us each week," La Liga said in a Tuesday X post, adding that it was working with partners in China to address the situation.

Leo Kim’s piece is an ambitious mix of race‑track reportage, personal reflection, and theory‑driven critique. It braids together one night at a small Indiana speedway, the rise and collapse of Anderson’s auto industry and unions, and an abstract meditation on tech, AI, and “speed.” It poses a compelling central question—whether every technology invents its own kind of disaster—but does demand close attention to follow its dense imagery.

The dust doesn’t bother me much. By this point in the night, the round-and-round whirling of cars, combined with the alchemical mixture of exhaust, burnt rubber, and patriotic beer, has lulled me into a Midwestern trance. It must be the flatness that makes this region such a perfect catalyst for this kind of delirium. When Baudrillard drove through the expanse of the US, he wrote about speed as an erasing force whose “only rule is to leave no trace behind.” He was right to sense speed as a primal impulse in this unfurling stretch of country. Movement in the Old World is slowed by its narrow roads, latticed cities, and contested borders; it struggles to overcome the glacial pace of History. Drive a hundred miles and you’re bound to run into something. Not so in the Midwest. Nothing here interrupts the flow. There are no mountains to break the wind, no densities of skyscrapers to bisect the sky, no ravines to stop the sprawl. Everything moves towards terminal velocity. It is a landscape built for vortices and accelerating feedback loops: for flows of capital, weather, ideology, and machinery to intersect and (r)evolve into novel forms.

When the White House rolled back tariffs on coffee, fruit, beef, and farm equipment, it was effectively an admission that the tariffs were raising prices—and that Americans, not foreigners, had been paying for them.

Now, in the closing stages of the midterm campaign, the White House is once again rolling back some of those import taxes—and once again making an awkward implicit admission.

President Donald Trump's tariffs have become politically toxic.

The administration announced late last week that it would lift the 50 percent tariffs on some Canadian imports, apparently in an attempt to help Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine) survive a tough reelection campaign in which the tariffs have played a significant role.

If this is indeed an attempt to sway voters in Maine, it is not a very convincing one. The Trump administration is removing tariffs on some agricultural and mechanical goods, as well as packaging and plywood, The Wall Street Journal reports. But Trump is also imposing new 50 percent tariffs on "other Canadian goods, including carpet, certain valves, and waste products."

Collins issued a statement thanking the White House for the changes. This is what members of the U.S. Senate have been reduced to—begging the president to cast his capricious, tariff-happy eyes toward products that will hurt people in other states more than in your own. (In fairness to Collons, she has voted repeatedly to roll back Trump's tariffs, but not enough of her fellow Republicans went along with it.)

Still, it's worth asking: What exactly is the pitch to voters here? Here's a tariff cut, now vote for Republicans so the president can continue to arbitrarily tax imports whenever the mood strikes?

It's easy to see why Trump's tariffs have become so unpopular. They are a huge and broad tax increase—the Tax Foundation estimates that 54 percent of imports are subject to Trump's tariffs, which are costing the average household about $1,000 annually—that was imposed without congressional authorization or popular support. They create more losers than winners, as downstream businesses and consumers pay the price for the protectionism offered to American manufacturers. Even the supposed "winners" of the tariff policy tend also to be "losers," since so much manufacturing depends on importing raw materials and intermediate goods.

Perhaps more surprising is how unwilling Republicans are to defend the president's signature economic policy. Or to even talk about it.

The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip crunched the numbers and found that House GOP candidates have not run a single ad talking about the tariffs during this election cycle.

Just such a fun chart here from @greg_ip. If only we could tease out some meaning. Ah, well, nevertheless. pic.twitter.com/1X4AWcWQMV

— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 23, 2026

That silence speaks volumes. Trump says "tariff" is "the most beautiful word in the dictionary." But it is now "one of the most hated words in politics," writes Ip.

The only Republicans to mention trade or tariffs in a campaign ad, as far as I've seen, is former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is now running for the Senate seat in Michigan (and thus was not included in Ip's analysis). And he's calling for an end to the "tariff war."

There is a lesson here that hopefully will linger beyond the next week: If you support a policy that deliberately and unlawfully raises taxes and prices, voters will not reward you for it.

It's a lesson that the Republican Party learned long ago, but apparently forgot.

Against economists' advice, a Republican-led government in 1930 implemented a huge tariff hike intended to protect American farms and factories at the start of the Great Depression. Instead, those tariffs worsened economic conditions and triggered foreign retaliation.

When voters went to the polls in 1930, the first midterm after the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were passed, they registered their displeasure. The GOP lost 52 seats in the House that year. Two years later, an even larger landslide would sweep Democrats into power in Congress and the White House, ushering in the New Deal era that reshaped the federal government forever. The two lawmakers who lent their names to the legislation were among those who lost their seats, fittingly.

The most notable difference this time around is that Congress didn't actually pass a tariff bill. The trade barriers were instead imposed directly by the executive. Voters don't seem to care. Republicans were too cowardly to stand up to Trump's unilateral power grab, and now they seem too ashamed to try to defend that policy (and their largely complicit response) on the campaign trail.

As they say, those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And "doomed" may be a fitting way to describe the Republican majority in Congress right now, thanks in no small part to Trump's tariffs.

The post Trump's Tariffs Are Politically Toxic appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Here are the most enviable necklaces, earrings, rings and bracelets from $30 to $13,000.

Ukraine's defense minister raised the urgent need for Patriot interceptors with Sweden on 22 October, the Defense Ministry reported. The same day, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned of more Russian ballistic strikes and blamed US supply cuts.

Patriots are Ukraine's main defense against Russian ballistic missiles, and their deliveries keep shrinking. Figures Zelenskyy released in August showed Patriot interceptor deliveries falling from 675 in 2023 to 364 in 2025, with 264 projected for 2026. Europe holds enough PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors for Ukraine's minimum winter needs, Zelenskyy told journalists on 16 October, but he did not yet know how many Europe would hand over, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Partners' stocks now, Ukraine's missiles later

Russia fired 21 ballistic missiles at Kyiv overnight on 22 October, Zelenskyy said. Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara told his Swedish counterpart, Pål Jonson, that Ukraine must counter ballistic threats as fast as possible, in particular with Patriot interceptors.

The ministry's readout says Ukraine has Patriot missiles under contract. It also says Kyiv asks partners to transfer interceptors from their stocks in exchange for future deliveries allocated to Ukraine.

Khmara made the same request at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting on 8 September. He said then that Ukraine was contracting about 1,000 Patriot missiles with partners' help and an EU loan, but they would arrive only in the coming years, LB reported. He asked allies for missiles from their stocks now, in exchange for future upgraded missiles under Ukraine's contracts.

"Only when the American side approves it"

Zelenskyy spoke to journalists before meeting Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Ukrinform reported. He said the Americans had reduced supplies and Russia would step up ballistic attacks.

"Europeans can provide the missiles only when the American side approves it," Zelenskyy said.

He said the US had sent most of its interceptors to the Middle East.

On 19 October, Zelenskyy told US senators that US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was not signing off on Patriot deliveries allies had already paid for. Axios obtained the call transcript from Ukrainian officials. A US government official told the Kyiv Independent that Ukrainian officials' claims that Hegseth was holding up the missiles were "not true."

Washington says nothing has changed. "We have our own needs, too," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on 20 October, but there is "nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine." Hegseth told reporters in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, that the US had not changed its posture toward Ukraine, "but certainly with things like interceptors, we want to make sure our guys have the most possible as well."

Doubt, idiocracy, baseball, meals, and fish. Find out why these five stories stood out.

Roman Spain had a network of official roadside stops for officials, soldiers and couriers, yet archaeologists know very few of them for certain. A new study may have added one. The building lies on the edge of Mellaria, a Roman town in the south of the country, on the road between the provincial capitals of […]

The campaign is in its final stretch and the attacks are getting increasingly personal. In Ohio, Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign is behind an ad featuring the estranged mother of his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, disputing Acton's account of her childhood. For analysis, Geoff Bennett spoke with Democratic strategist Faiz Shakir and Republican strategist Whit Ayres.

In this segment of Free Media, Reason Senior Editor Robby Soave and Daily Caller Editor in Chief Amber Duke discuss Vivek Ramaswamy's controversial attack ad against his opponent Amy Acton in Ohio's gubernatorial race. 

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Since transitioning, Lane Michael Stanley has struggled with his interactions with straight men—especially the classic ‘man-hug’: brief, side-angled, all back slaps and no stomach touching. As he navigates this new territory, he reflects on his other relationships and forms of physical intimacy, examining his life and gender norms from both sides of his transition.

Straight men are generally more standoffish with me than I remember them being before. They make less eye contact, they touch less, they smile less. Do I not know how to read their friendship cues? Maybe straight men befriend other men differently from how they befriend women: no more touch of the arm that they swear is innocent, no more questions they feel entitled to ask or basic facts they appoint themselves to explain. Maybe I should learn to read a curt nod as a sign of camaraderie from men now, replacing whatever a straight man’s sly smile was supposed to convey before.

Or are they more standoffish because they can tell I’m gay? Maybe straight men want to keep me at a distance. Maybe there is a reality to the coldness I read from them, a hostility they throw my way unconsciously. Most of the gay men I know are friends with other gay men, so I’m not sure how gay/straight male friendships function, or if they really exist. My partner (a cis gay man) did have a close straight male friend, but they went barhopping and ended up trading blow jobs, so that doesn’t really count anymore.