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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.
The post Vivek Ramaswamy, Elizabeth Holmes, and Jesus appeared first on Reason Magazine.
© Illustration: Fatima Ruiz
© Kenny Holston/The New York Times
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.
If you enjoy Free Media, come watch Robby debate at our upcoming Reason Versus in Washington, D.C. Tickets are available here.
The post Vivek Ramaswamy Is Defending Controversial Ad With Amy Acton's Mother appeared first on Reason Magazine.
As the Trump administration's short-lived Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project implemented its plan to downsize the federal workforce, there was much wailing from the liberal institutions in Washington, D.C.
Federal employee unions filed lawsuits to block the effort. NPR ran profiles of federal workers who, for the first time, faced the prospect of potentially not having absolute job security forever. The Brookings Institution wondered how many jobs the federal government could shed before it crashes.
The answer: plenty. The Trump administration has cut more than 10 percent of the federal workforce, and the government hasn't crashed. Indeed, it hasn't even shrunk—if you're counting by dollars spent instead of people employed.
In a new article for City Journal, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Judge Glock highlights the tremendous gap between the dire predictions about DOGE's cuts and the reality that has emerged, more than a year after DOGE was shut down. Despite having only a modest impact on spending, Glock writes, DOGE "had a massive impact on the federal civil service."
This is true—to a point, more on that in a moment—and notable. Aside from a modest downsizing in the 1990s, the number of people employed by the federal government has been steadily growing for decades. Reversing that trend is one of the few genuinely libertarian accomplishments by the Trump administration.
The cuts to the federal workforce prove that "DOGE worked," argues Glock.
Well, hold on.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (who departed the DOGE project before Trump's inauguration and is now running for governor of Ohio) set some very ambitious goals after being appointed DOGE co-chairs in late 2024. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in November 2024 where they promised "we won't just write reports or cut ribbons. We'll cut costs."
Musk repeatedly attached some rather absurd numbers to that promise. He said DOGE would cut $1 trillion or even $2 trillion in federal spending. In the end, it didn't come close. By DOGE's own (questionable) accounting, it cut $170 billion. Meanwhile, overall federal spending has increased in each of Trump's first two years in office, and the budget deficit has widened as well.
Yes, Musk and Ramaswamy also said they would reduce the federal workforce. But that was presented as a natural consequence of cutting spending, not as the primary goal.
Think about it like this. If I spent months promising my friends and family that I would lose 50 pounds on a new diet, and then didn't lose any weight, would it be fair to say the diet worked?
What if I reduced the number of donuts I eat every day, but still didn't lose any weight? Sure, that might be good for my health in some way—just like reducing unnecessary workers in the federal government is good for America's fiscal health—but it certainly wouldn't mean I had achieved the goal of losing weight.
Finally, even the claim that DOGE cut the federal workforce requires an asterisk. As Glock also notes in his report, the decline in federal workers has been offset by an increase in federal contractors.
It's not a one-for-one trade, of course. The new contractors are overwhelmingly concentrated in places like the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, while the cuts mostly targeted other areas, like the Department of Health and Human Services.
"Most of that increase came from the buildup in homeland-security and defense contracting, including purchases such as surveillance aircraft and tanks, rather than substitutes for government workers," Glock writes. "DOGE achieved real contract savings, but these were more than offset by higher spending elsewhere, reflecting a shift in priorities rather than an overall reduction in contracting."
So, the government is eating fewer donuts but more pizza.
There might be libertarian reasons to prefer contractors over government employees. They are less likely to hold those jobs for life, for one. But there's nothing inherently good about a government policy that cuts jobs in some areas just to create more room in the budget for poorly trained immigration enforcement agents and defense contractors. That may even be a negative outcome for liberty.
In the end, the DOGE project looks less like a meaningful attempt at cutting government spending or employment levels and more like a way to purge parts of the federal workforce likely to get in Trump's way during his second term. "As long as [Trump's] larger commitment is to extending his power rather than rolling back power itself, you shouldn't expect the government to stop growing," as Reason's Jesse Walker wrote last year in comparing DOGE to President Richard Nixon's attempted purge of the civil service.
Did DOGE work? Only if you grade it on a pretty dramatic curve.
Yes, it proved that a president can slash bureaucratic jobs—particularly the bloated managerial and administrative types—without doing much damage to the government's core responsibilities. That's a lesson future administrations should remember.
Maybe, someday, a president will try applying the same logic to government spending too.
The post DOGE Worked? Only If You Grade on a Curve. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
A Yemeni asylum seeker living in the Netherlands cannot rely on family reunification rules to bring over children from two additional marriages that Dutch law does not recognize, ruled the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The ECHR dismissed the migrant’s complaint on Tuesday, holding that Council of Europe states are not required to treat polygamous family arrangements as they would a monogamous household.
The man, 56, has three wives and 13 children from those unions. After arriving in the Netherlands in 2018 and receiving asylum, he was allowed to bring one wife and their eight children.
Dutch authorities refused entry to the five children born of his other two marriages, citing that “polygamy is prohibited in the Netherlands.”
He lost his challenges in the Dutch courts and then turned to Strasbourg, according to French newspaper Le Figaro. He argued the case was not about importing polygamy, because he was not seeking to bring the other two wives, only the remaining children. The court rejected the argument that the refusal violated his right to respect for family life.
If a European state “establishes an immigration policy that takes family ties into account,” it “cannot be obliged to recognize polygamous marriages that conflict with its own legal system,” the judges in Strasbourg ruled.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) April 28, 2026
A tale of two Germanys
The first Germany represents illiterate Syrian migrant Ahmad A. and his 2 wives and 6 children. The entire family received free housing and welfare thanks to German taxpayers.
"I would to thank Mommy Merkel very, very, very much," he told Spiegel… pic.twitter.com/dywvPx6m9K
The court also noted that he could have divorced the two other wives, as Dutch authorities had proposed, but declined to do so.
Notably, the second wife is already in the Netherlands with her children after she received asylum in June 2025. However, the fact that she entered the Netherlands did not change the ruling, the ECHR stated.
“The fact that polygamy is prohibited in all member states of the Council of Europe shows that there is a strong European consensus on this issue,” the judges noted. Under those circumstances, “Member States have considerable discretion as to whether or not to grant fathers and children born of polygamy the right to family reunification.”
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) December 4, 2025
In France, an Ivorian polygamist has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for torture, rape, and for imposing a hard-line Islamic regime on his 4 wives and 29 children.
The 45-year-old Ivorian migrant, held in pretrial detention since 2022, was said to have stripped the home… pic.twitter.com/1NVsbWmJcl
The ECHR, based in Strasbourg, oversees compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights by the member states of the Council of Europe.
The post Countries have no duty to admit 13 children from 3 marriages in Yemen, rules top human rights court appeared first on Remix News.
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