Happy Tuesday, and welcome to another edition of Rent Free. This week's newsletter includes stories on: 

• The Treasury Department's proposed rule for restricting large investor ownership of single-family housing. 
• The land use angle in the Texas Senate race. 
• Salt Lake's middle housing reforms.

The Populism-to-Paperwork Pipeline

Last Thursday, the U.S. Treasury issued a proposed rule that restricts large institutional investors from acquiring new single-family rental homes. 

The proposed regulations are intended to implement large investor restrictions passed by Congress as part of its bipartisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, that generally bans entities that already own 350 single-family rentals from buying new ones. 

As I covered last week, the new rule primarily proposes definitions left of the text of ROAD and adds additional details about when large corporate buyers' build-to-rent and renovate-to-rent projects are exempt from the new restrictions.

Wonks and interest groups are digging through the details of the sprawling proposed regulations, but there doesn't seem to be major new policy shifts in the rule. It's mostly a bunch of paperwork requirements.

That's not how the Trump administration has framed the new proposed rule. 

Hear Vice President J.D. Vance tout the new rules as saving the American dream of homeownership from "private equity barons."

The American Dream doesn't belong to Wall Street. It belongs to the American people.

Thanks to President Trump and Scott Bessent, families don't have to worry about getting out-bid on their dream homes by private equity barons. And we're making those same big investors give…

— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 22, 2026

Also chiming in was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), who had proposed much more sweeping restrictions on institutional investors when the ROAD Act was still working its way through Congress. 

Our bill to stop private equity from buying up homes is now law.

Despite Donald Trump's refusal to sign it, his Administration must now implement it.

We'll be watching closely to ensure it's done right. https://t.co/aQyqYdSViC

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 22, 2026

Despite the implication in Warren's post, Trump's decision to not sign the ROAD Act was not because of his apathy about the investor restrictions in it. On the contrary, the president had urged Congress to enact institutional investor ownership of single-family homes. 

(His decision had more to do with his displeasure at Congress not passing the SAVE Act.) 

As housing policy watchers will know, the backlash to corporate ownership of single-family rental housing has been a bipartisan populist concern for a while now. 

Both right-wing Republicans and left-wing Democrats have argued that Wall Street investors are a primary cause of high housing costs and low housing availability. They are allegedly outbidding individual owner-occupiers for homes, thus condemning ordinary families to a life of perpetual renting.

It was notable that perhaps the only thing that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Vance agreed on in their 2024 vice presidential debate was that "Wall Street" needed to be kept out of owning single-family homes. 

Criticisms of restricting institutional investor ownership of single-family rentals are legion. The arguments generally boil down to the assessment that they are a small but beneficial presence in the single-family market.

The vast majority of new home sales still go to owner-occupiers. Families that can't get, or don't want, a mortgage but do want to live in a single-family home have the option of renting from one of the big guys. And large investors also add to the housing stock through build-to-rent developments and their renovation of dilapidated existing units. 

Those arguments were convincing enough to get a much more sweeping institutional investor ban initially included in ROAD (which would have required investors to proactively sell off their portfolios and effectively kill the build-to-rent sector in the process) pared back into something far more modest. 

The final result is the paperwork requirements the Treasury released last Thursday. 

One can see that as a positive development. The housing market would have been made much worse if Congress had decided to kill build-to-rent housing. 

On the other hand, we're still left with a bunch of bureaucratic busywork requirements that will add compliance costs to the business of single-family rentals but don't make anyone better off. 

Populist backlashes typically target large, seemingly alien institutions that are allegedly crushing ordinary people, big bureaucracies, large capitalists, etc. 

It's a bit ironic then that the new investor restrictions informed by that populist backlash and outlined in the Treasury's proposed rule largely leave the capitalists and bureaucrats in place while requiring them to shuffle a lot of paperwork between themselves. 

The Data Center Angle in the Texas Senate Race

A long-time electoral advantage for the Texas GOP has been the state's status as a growth machine under its rule. 

Over the past three decades, Republicans have won every statewide race in the Lone Star State partially on the argument that they've delivered a remarkable degree of economic growth. 

Yet this year, in a political environment that's exceptionally bad for Republicans, Democrat James Talarico appears poised to best Republican Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate race and finally turn the state blue. 

There are a lot of reasons that could explain why the polls are giving Talarico a slight edge over Paxton. One that I explore in my new profile of Talarico (which was published today) is that a backlash to data center development is souring Texas voters on economic growth generally and the party that claims to have delivered it. 

There's not much about housing in the profile. But there are a couple of interesting housing-adjacent themes explored in it that Rent Free readers might find interesting. 

The first is that loose land use controls are a primary reason that Texas has become a major location for data center development. The second is that even places with very pro-growth political cultures and policy regimes can still experience sudden, sweeping anti-growth backlashes. 

Public support for "abundance" of new housing or new commercial development can't ever be taken for granted. 

Salt Lake City Waters Down Zoning Reforms

Last week, the City Council of Salt Lake City, Utah, proposed paring back a set of zoning reforms that are intended to allow more smaller homes to be built in existing single-family neighborhoods. 

Under the original proposal, property owners would have been allowed to add accessory dwelling units on more parcels. Relaxed lot size, height, and setback requirements would have also allowed builders to add smaller homes and duplexes in single-family neighborhoods. 

These are all pretty standard "middle housing" reforms. They provoked the standard criticism that quiet, tidy single-family neighborhoods would be swamped by out-of-scale development. 

Now the city council is considering pairing the zoning liberalization with an owner-occupancy requirement. Anyone attempting to use the reforms to build new housing would also have to live on-site.

Owner-occupancy requirements often act as a major "poison pill." They effectively exclude professional developers from buying up parcels and adding new housing on them. Instead, homeowners (most of whom are not professional builders) will be the only ones who can make use of the new rules. 

If the council does include an owner-occupancy requirement in its zoning reforms, it can expect a lot fewer units to be built.

Quick Links

• President Donald Trump has issued a new housing affordability executive order, which largely attempts to make mortgages obtained or secured by federal programs cheaper for borrowers. 
• Singer Stevie Wonder is attempting to evict a woman who's lived in a home he's owned rent-free for nearly 40 years. 
• D.C. Councilmember Robert White has proposed a pilot program that would have delinquent tenants go to mediation with their landlords if they owe less than three months of rent. 
• Americans for Prosperity has a new analysis of a Massachusetts ballot initiative that would allow homes to be built on smaller lots. 

The post The Populism-to-Paperwork Pipeline appeared first on Reason Magazine.

O artista visual e realizador de cinema cria no Guggenheim Bilbao, em Espanha, uma instalação incorpórea com as vozes de Nina Simone e David Bowie em ‘Wild Is the Wind’

É o nome de que se fala, embora ainda não esteja completamente assegurado que venha a ser ele o novo primeiro-ministro da Sérvia. O cardiologista e professor universitário liderou a revolta dos estudantes que provocou a queda de Aleksandar Vučić, pró-Rússia. Vem de uma cidade nas margens do rio Danúbio e é resultado do eixo cultural e científico de Novi Sad

Spain's anti-mass migration VOX party and the center-right People's Party (PP) on Monday announced a new electoral agreement to stop running against each other in several Senate races during the upcoming November 29 snap elections.

The post Spain: VOX and People’s Party Announce Senate Race Alliance to Defeat Socialists in November Snap Elections appeared first on Breitbart.

A series of messages published on social media Tuesday morning call for a wave of violent riots across Spain "inspired" by the recent chaotic events in France for Saturday, October 31, local outlets warned.

The post Reports: France-Inspired Violent Riots Are Being Urged in Spain for Halloween appeared first on Breitbart.

Texas might finally turn blue, and the man poised to do it is a mask-wearing, trans rights–supporting, Gnostic Gospel–quoting liberal from Austin. In an already tough year for Republicans, voter dissatisfaction at the state's data center boom is giving the Democrat an edge.

A few weeks out from the 2026 midterm elections, the polls have been giving state Rep. James Talarico (D–Austin) a small, steady edge over Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the race to fill the Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Sen. John Cornyn.

Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994. The chattering class's constantly misfiring prediction that the latest liberal challenger will beat the favored Republican has made "Texas turning blue" a mockable meme—the political equivalent of Charlie Brown winding up to kick the football.

But this year may be different. The national environment is very bad for Republicans. President Donald Trump's unpopular tariffs and unpopular war have made him, well, unpopular and given GOP candidates little to run on. Texas Republicans are also saddled with Paxton, who won a hotly contested primary despite having little natural charisma and a lot of scandals (both personal and political) to explain away.

Republicans' political headwinds have made Talarico, a 37-year-old legislator with a history that puts him solidly to the left of the median Texas voter, a surprisingly competitive candidate. Some of Talarico's edge can no doubt be chalked up to the candidate's own political skill and fundraising advantage. But he is also benefiting from a late-breaking development that few saw coming: the Lone Star's data center revolt.

For as long as Republicans have run Texas, they've been able to claim credit for the state's decades-long economic growth streak. But the grassroots groundswell of opposition to Texas' data center boom has helped to neutralize that traditional GOP advantage. In solidly red rural areas, large majorities are telling pollsters that they are opposed to the hundreds of data centers proposed in their backyard.

When Republicans thus talk about their economic stewardship today, it conjures up not positive feelings of persistent prosperity but dissatisfaction at all the ways the party has allowed an unpopular data center to be built next door. In a tight race, that might just be enough to give Talarico the last little push he needs to finally turn Texas blue.

Lab-Grown Liberals vs. the GOP Growth Machine

All the Texas Senate races of the past couple of decades have taken place within a growth machine. From 1998 through 2024, the Lone Star state posted the fourth-highest GDP growth rate, a period that roughly matches the GOP's unbroken record of statewide election wins. Not a day goes by, it seems, without a major corporation announcing a Texas megaproject or a billionaire relocating to booming Austin.

The state's frenetic growth rate has given the Texas GOP a good story to tell voters about why they should continue Republican rule: Under their low-tax, low-regulation regime, Texas has prospered. The jobs and businesses flooding into the state tend to be coming from states ruled by the Democrats trying to unseat them.

Those Texas Democrats whose bids for statewide office have managed to electrify liberals, meanwhile, have been ill-suited to convince voters that they'll keep the "Texas Miracle" going. There's an old joke that "Republicans fall in line, Democrats fall in love." In Texas, this hopeless romanticism has led to repeated heartbreak. In 2014, Wendy Davis inspired a national media buzz with her pro-abortion messaging while running for governor against Greg Abbott. Beto O'Rourke's style-over-substance challenge to Ted Cruz in 2018 produced a similar mania. Both lost. 

You might expect Talarico to meet a similar fate. The fresh-faced lawmaker seems almost grown in a lab to leave liberals giddy while making swing voters stick with the GOP. A former teacher, he first won elected office in 2018, when he flipped an open Texas House seat in the Austin suburbs from red to blue. At 29 years old, he was then the youngest member of the Texas Legislature.

Analyses of lawmakers' voting record put Talarico squarely in the ideological middle of his fellow Democrats, and well to the left of the state's political center. His national star began to rise among Democrats when he used religious arguments to challenge Texas Republicans' culture-war battles over education.

In 2021, Texas Republicans proposed a bill requiring K-12 athletes to play on girls' or boys' sports teams according to the sex listed on their birth certificates. Two years later, they introduced a measure that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, cited his liberal brand of Protestantism to oppose both bills. "Trans children are God's children, made in God's own image. There's nothing wrong with them. Nothing at all. They are perfect. They are beautiful, and they are sacred," he said in a floor speech opposing the sports bill. In a debate on the Ten Commandments bill, he declared the legislation "deeply un-Christian," citing Christ's instructions in the Gospel of Matthew to pray privately. (The sports bill eventually passed. The 2023 Ten Commandments bill failed, but a near-identical bill would pass in 2025.)

Conservative Christians would quibble with Talarico's progressive readings of the Bible. For national Democrats and liberal-leaning magazine writers, however, his penchant for reframing the Annunciation as a pro-abortion parable and his citations of the noncanonical Gospel of Thomas to support trans rights all served as proof that this "deeply religious" Democrat could effectively speak to Christian swing voters in their own terms.

Talarico has also taken many secular positions that might be hard sells in Texas. In May 2020, a couple of months into the COVID-19 pandemic and weeks before George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police, Talarico declared that racism was the real virus. At a 2022 animal welfare fundraiser, a mask-wearing Talarico said he was running a vegan campaign. The same year, he said in a public hearing, again wearing a mask, that "fossil fuels are destroying the planet."

In a state where oil, gas, and beef are champion industries, swing voters to not swoon ordinarily for race-critical, carbon-neutral veganism. Talarico himself seems to have conceded that point. He's dispelled rumors of his veganism by eating barbecue on camera and waved away his past wokisms as "cringey" and "miss[ing] the mark." Even so, Talarico's campaign platform remains stridently progressive. He wants to tax billionaires and raise the minimum wage. If it were up to him, he'd open up Medicare to everyone, regardless of age, and would codify abortion protections into law. He's pro–marijuana legalization and fanatically anti–school choice.

So why are polls showing Talarico maintaining a consistent two- to six-point edge over Paxton?

In one sense, his continued leftward lean is an electoral boon. In a race with a clear enthusiasm gap, some 91 percent of Democrats say they'll be supporting Talarico in the general election. Only 79 percent of Republicans say the same about their candidate. Talarico has also been blessed with a national environment that's shaping up to be a bloodbath for Republicans, who have to answer for the rising prices driven by Trump's tariffs and the Iran war.

But there is one final factor putting Talarico over the edge: a statewide data center revolt that's souring Texas voters on their state's growth machine and neutralizing the pro-growth message that has carried the GOP through so many other tough election cycles. 

It's the Data Centers, Stupid

In November 2025, on the heels of Google's decision to invest $40 billion in data center development in the state, Gov. Greg Abbott proudly declared, "Texas is the epicenter of AI development, where companies can pair innovation with expanding energy." Just a few months later, the governor was vowing to impose new regulations on data centers to "protect" Texans from the consequences of their rampant development.

The U.S. has experienced a rapid revolt against data centers this year, and in few places has that backlash been more sudden or more pronounced than in Texas. According to a 2025 poll by the University of Texas at Austin, nearly 60 percent of Texans were either supportive or neutral about a data center being built in their neighborhood. In August 2026, 57 percent said they would oppose a local data center project.

This backlash against data centers couldn't have come at a worse time for Texas Republicans, or, consequently, at a better time for Talarico. The policies the Texas GOP have long touted as the key to the state's economic success—loose land use and environmental regulations, no state income tax, and the cheap commercial energy prices created by its deregulated energy sector—are the same policies attracting data centers. When the most visible recent consequence of those pro-growth policies is a data center boom most Texans hate, the state's Republicans are having to run away from what were once their prime selling points.

The sudden negative turn in public opinion on data centers has "proven a catalyst for people raising questions about governance and the economy in the state," says James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Making matters worse, says Henson, is the geography of the data center backlash. Opposition to these projects is concentrated in rural areas that have long been Republican strongholds and in suburban areas where the party needs to stay competitive to win statewide elections.

As Abbott's pivot demonstrates, Texas Republicans feel acutely vulnerable on this issue and are scrambling to adopt policies that ensure these developments do not lead to higher electricity prices for residential consumers. Paxton himself has called for a raft of new regulations on these facilities' water and power use and for ending a sales tax exemption on data centers, as well as some more off-the-wall conservative-coded policies, such as holding data centers criminally liable for facilitating AI chatbots that "endanger" children.

Talarico's data center proposal isn't all that different. He too would require data centers to pay for the full costs of their power and would end the sales tax exemption they can currently claim on equipment purchases. He'd also give local communities veto power over data center projects. That makes him more moderate on data centers than fellow Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who is running for governor against Abbott. She's called for a moratorium on data center construction until the state Legislature can convene to discuss "protections" for Texans.

Talarico's moderation could be partly explained by the fact that data centers are more popular, relatively speaking, in heavily Democratic urban areas. He also represents a slice of Austin, which has become a booming tech town. Why risk upsetting one's base when long-ruling Republicans already have to own the data center boom they were so recently bragging about?

'Talafreako'

The 2026 midterm environment seems almost tailor-made to neutralize Republicans' long-time advantages in Texas. Nationally, they have to own higher prices. Locally, they have to own an unpopular data center boom. Waning voter concerns about illegal immigration have caused their favored red-meat issue to turn a dull brown.

The Texas GOP's only weapon left is personal attacks on the man they call "Talafreako"—some weirdo liberal who calls trans kids "perfect" and thinks racism is the real virus. Talarico's persistent lead in the polls and on the prediction markets (which, in late  October, put the chances of him winning at nearly 70 percent) suggest that these attacks are not working.

One could sense Republicans' desperation when right-wing influencers spun up a rumor that Talarico was absent from the campaign trail in early October because he was in a mental health facility in Ohio. (The hospital publicly denied ever treating Talarico. The candidate himself said he'd been recovering from the flu and said he'd never even visited Ohio.)

When Republicans call Talarico a freak, they mean to cast him as abnormal and off-putting: a "freak of nature." But freak has multiple usages. The word can also mean an unpredicted or unusual event: a "freak occurrence." Talarico succeeding in ending Republicans' three-decade run of statewide victories in Texas would fit the latter definition.

Rather than run from the Talafreako barb, Talarico's campaign has emblazoned merch with the intended insult. They at least seem to appreciate the irony of it all.

If Talarico is a freak, that will make his likely victory all the more freaky.

The post Will a Data Center Backlash Help James Talarico Turn Texas Blue? appeared first on Reason Magazine.

Is Nathan Fielder interested in making something innovative and great, or does he only really care about making money?

That's technically the question You Can See Everything, the new A24 documentary co-directed by Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, asks about its subject, Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and convicted fraudster currently in federal prison. 

As the documentary progresses, however, it's a question one increasingly asks about Fielder himself. 

You Can See Everything was billed as an intimate look at the day-to-day life of Holmes, her romantic partner Billy Evans, and their two children, in the days before she reports for her 11-year prison sentence.

In truth, that only describes the first half of the three-hour-long film, in which Fielder and his camera crews are embedded in Holmes and Evans' cramped San Diego beach house in the month preceding her incarceration.

In part one, we truly do see everything, from Holmes making breakfast for the kids and talking to lawyers about last-minute appeals to Evans showering naked. 

All the while, Fielder obsessively explores in his own meta-comedy style a question many have asked about Holmes: Were the lies she told about Theranos' diagnostic machines merely a scam to rip off investors? Or had she actually convinced herself that these falsehoods were at most white lies in the service of a great and revolutionary technology on the cusp of becoming a reality?

Then, after 90 minutes of this exploration, Holmes checks in to prison, and Fielder's primary subject disappears from the film. The focus then shifts to Evans and whether or not he's solely responsible for a new unethical scheme Holmes has found herself enmeshed in.

In a Fielderesque reenactment, it's revealed to the audience that Evans conditioned the documentary's access to him and Holmes on the couple being paid a percentage of the film's profits.

Any ethical documentarian would have to say no to this ask. 

Subjects being economically disinterested in the films they're appearing in is what separates real documentaries, which are supposed to accurately portray real life, from fictional films and public relations puff pieces. 

Incredibly, however, Fielder, Oppenheim, and A24 eventually agree to Evans' demand for a cut of the film's profits.

Once this crooked bargain is made, You Can See Everything then shifts to exploring whether Holmes was aware that she'd be profiting from the film or whether this was a deal the domineering Evans secured without her knowledge. 

Fielder tells us that he believes the answer will shed light on whether Holmes actually sees herself as a world-changing inventor or whether she really is just out for the money. 

Fielder eventually makes this point directly to Evans during an on-camera confrontation and in a reenactment of his unfilmed meeting with Holmes in prison. By accepting payment for the documentary, the two are undercutting their case that Holmes is more than a wealth-obsessed fraudster, he tells them.

And by forfeiting their rights to back-end profits, they can make the audience more sympathetic to their case that Holmes did have motivations beyond a paycheck. 

As a humble viewer, I confess I found this investigation somewhat boring. For starters, it seemed obvious to me that Holmes was in on the scheme to get paid for the documentary from the beginning.

Moreover, it's all kind of beside the point. Once the deal to pay Evans was inked, the documentary has been irrevocably changed into an elaborate rip-off. The only question remaining is whether the subjects or the audience will be the ultimate sucker. 

When Fielder pointedly pushes Evans and Holmes to surrender profits they're contractually entitled to, he's no longer a disinterested filmmaker exploring the couple's psyches. He's an economically interested party pressuring business partners to back out of money they've been contractually promised or else risk extreme embarrassment in the film he's making.

If Fielder fails to convince the couple to surrender their rights, moviegoers are left with the knowledge that a portion of their ticket revenue is benefiting a convicted fraudster. 

If the director does succeed in his pressure campaign, it means that there's more profit to go around for the makers of the film. 

A documentary about conmen itself becoming a con would not be an uncharacteristic Fielder bit.

His projects frequently feature a deliberate, escalating blurring of the lines between art and reality. See, for instance, the second season of his show The Rehearsal, in which an investigation into airline pilots' mental well-being culminates in Fielder becoming a licensed 737 pilot while waiting on an autism diagnosis. 

Something similar can be said for the connection between the themes in the documentary and co-director Oppenheim's recent feature film Primetime about the making of the reality show To Catch a Predator. That movie was also about how TV producers can script reality and invent crimes all for the benefit of a show that's allegedly meant to merely document them.

You Can See Everything pulls off something similar. Its investigation into Holmes' motives leaves one seriously questioning the filmmaker's probity. Perhaps that makes it a genius bit of meta commentary on the unreality of documentaries.

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. There's no getting around the fact that Fielder made a crooked bargain to get his documentary made and then used his power as a director who did, in fact, see everything to screw people out of money they had been promised. 

One can imagine that the victims of Holmes' Theranos scam will find You Can See Everything a frustrating film to watch. At the end of the day, this woman defrauded them of hundreds of millions of dollars. Her precise motives for doing so probably aren't all that interesting to them.

I certainly feel a similar way as a paying viewer of the unethical travesty that is You Can See Everything.

The post Nathan Fielder Made a Dishonest Movie appeared first on Reason Magazine.

C’è questa bizzarra teoria sulla pace in Ucraina secondo cui la guerra finirà soltanto smettendo di mandare agli ucraini le batterie antimissili che proteggono le città e i civili della nazione aggredita. Il corollario di questa stravagante teoria, che alcuni sostengono sia di sinistra, ma che in realtà è stata già messa in pratica da Donald Trump a maggior gloria di Vladimir Putin, è che dovremmo riprendere i rapporti commerciali, in particolare energetici, con la Russia, che, a quel punto, grazie a questi sedicenti pacifisti, non solo troverebbe i cieli e il terreno liberi per distruggere e avanzare come non gli è riuscito in quasi cinque anni sul campo di battaglia, ma questo avanzamento sarebbe addirittura finanziato dai paesi occidentali.

A dimostrazione che questi non sono pacifisti, ma guerrafondai pro-Russia (grazie, Christopher Hitchens, per la definizione), in effetti è probabile che, seguendo queste idee strampalate, la guerra finisca, ma con essa finirebbe anche l’Ucraina e la difesa dell’Europa (salvo che poi la guerra continuerebbe da qualche altra parte, nel Baltico, in Moldova, in Polonia o altrove, ma dai geopolitici alle vongole che infestano il discorso pubblico italiano non si può pretendere molto di più).

Poi ci sono gli ipocriti, per non dire altro, promotori della soluzione diplomatica e amareggiati per l’assenza dell’Europa in questo processo di pacificazione, i quali, però, dimenticano che la soluzione diplomatica e la presenza europea nel processo di pacificazione sono fallite più volte per il preciso rifiuto russo a partire dal 2014, ma in realtà anche da prima, almeno dal 2008, da quando la Russia ha invaso la Georgia. Il consenso generale, dall’America all’Europa, è stato quello di consentire a Putin di fare più o meno quello che gli piaceva.

Gli stolti, inoltre, dimenticano che ogni giorno, ogni maledetto giorno, da anni, i russi rifiutano tutte le ipotesi negoziali che non siano lo smembramento della nazione ucraina e della sua identità culturale, ancor prima della cessione dei territori contesi.

Dietro la richiesta di nuove iniziative diplomatiche, che i russi peraltro non accettano, c’è un gigantesco e insincero non detto: fin qui la Russia ha rigettato anche le più generose aperture trumpiane, presentategli sui tappeti rossi in Alaska e altrove, anche perché il Cremlino sa – e lavora intensamente affinché ciò accada – che a breve la linea Trump potrebbe prendere il sopravvento anche in Europa, con Marine Le Pen e Jean-Luc Mélenchon, entrambi filorussi e antieuropei, che a primavera potrebbero contendersi il ballottaggio francese e cambiare la rotta europeista di Emmanuel Macron, il quale peraltro aveva tentato in tutti i modi di far ragionare Putin, usando perfino la famigerata carta del «non umiliare la Russia».

C’è poi l’ascesa dei neonazi e dei rossobruni in Germania. Vedremo se ci sarà un’ondata nera in Spagna, per non parlare del Regno Unito. Arrivano buone notizie – e in controtendenza – dalla Serbia (come già dall’Ungheria e dalla Moldova), dove ieri il governo filorusso di Aleksandar Vučić ha perso le elezioni.

Infine c’è l’Italia, a offrire una grande speranza alla Russia per un 2027 glorioso. Siamo, come al solito, il paese guida della nuova ondata filorussa e rossobruna, con il vicepremier Matteo Salvini che, nel giorno dell’anniversario del patto politico della Lega col partito di Putin, è stato rieletto segretario, promettendo che in Consiglio dei ministri ora si batterà per fermare gli aiuti all’Ucraina.

Una posizione che trova qualche timida accoglienza nel partito del fu «lettone di Putin» e nelle file dei Fratelli d’Italia, minacciati ideologicamente dall’ex generale pro-russo Roberto Vannacci. Per ora, a parole, Giorgia Meloni resiste, anche se un po’ meno nei fatti, ma quanto potrà durare questa posizione sotto costante attacco di Salvini, Vannacci e del centrosinistra a vocazione contiana?

Dall’altra parte, le cose sono speculari e altrettanto deprimenti, con Giuseppe Conte che fece sfilare l’esercito russo lungo le strade italiane durante il Covid, alla guida di una setta anti-occidentale che organizzava viaggi nella Crimea occupata e partecipava festante ai congressi russi del partito unico di Putin.

Conte, come Salvini e Vannacci, con il quale, infatti, vota di conseguenza al Parlamento europeo, si batterà per fermare gli aiuti all’Ucraina assieme alla sinistra-sinistra di Avs e ad alcuni degli aspiranti centristi del campo largo, da Alessandro Onorato a Vincenzo De Luca.

Conte esercita un’egemonia deleteria sulla sinistra, o presunta tale, e costringe sempre più il Partito Democratico ad abbandonare la posizione sull’Ucraina che ha tenuto dal 2022 assieme alla famiglia politica socialista europea, in un’oscena e bizzarra spirale di resa al populismo e alla linea Trump.

Con questo scenario elettorale, che nel 2027 potrebbe smembrare l’Europa e dare il via libera alle mire imperialiste di Mosca, per quale motivo uno come Putin, che finora non ha avuto nessuna intenzione di fermare la guerra, dovrebbe farlo proprio ora, quando la Francia e l’Italia potrebbero facilitargli la strada verso Kyjiv che i suoi carri armati non sono riusciti a percorrere?

La guerra scatenata da Putin si può fermare soltanto in un modo: proteggendo gli ucraini e aiutandoli a respingere missili, droni e scarponi chiodati di Mosca, fino al punto da rendere insostenibile lo sforzo finanziario e umanitario per l’economia e la società russa.

Questa cosa, al momento, la capiscono soltanto i paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia, che a ogni elezione democratica spiegano al resto d’Europa di non voler tornare sotto il giogo russo; la Gran Bretagna; i rappresentanti dell’Unione europea; i liberali, i socialisti e i democratici europei; Giorgia Meloni, perfetta a parole, meno con i fatti; e il piccolo ma combattivo spazio politico occupato da Carlo Calenda, Pina Picierno (e in Francia da Raphaël Glucksmann), assieme alla minoranza sempre più martoriata e indebolita del Partito Democratico.

L'articolo Le strampalate teorie sulla pace in Ucraina, e il ventre molle italiano proviene da Linkiesta.it.

Milano–Cortina 2026 è stato un trionfo per l’Italia. Il record di 30 medaglie nell’edizione di casa resterà per sempre impresso nella storia dello sport azzurro. Tra i simboli del successo ci sono Federica Brignone e Francesca Lollobrigida, capaci di vincere due ori, Arianna Fontana, che ha stabilito il nuovo primato italiano di medaglie olimpiche con 14, e Federico Pellegrino, che ha regalato alle staffette dello sci di fondo due podi. Tutti atleti alla fine della loro carriera.

Pellegrino ha appeso gli sci al chiodo a marzo 2026, lasciando un vuoto nello sci di fondo, che ora è senza un leader, capace di nascondere le difficoltà del movimento. Anche Dorothea Wierer, regina del biathlon, che ha fatto uscire il suo sport dalla nicchia nel nostro Paese, raggiungendo trionfi mai visti prima, si è ritirata. Brignone, dopo il miracolo olimpico, è ancora alle prese con la riabilitazione dal grave infortunio dell’aprile 2025. In un’intervista a Eurosport, ha detto che non è più disposta a sciare con il dolore. L’intenzione di tornare c’è, ma vista l’età, 36 anni, e il recupero che dura da 1 anno e mezzo, ci vorrà tempo per rivederla in gara.

Lo stesso vale per Sofia Goggia, che ha patito un’infezione virale durante il ritiro in Sud America. La bergamasca potrebbe rientrare a inizio dicembre, ma non c’è una data certa. Fontana deve ancora svelare il suo futuro nello short track, non è chiaro se proseguirà e se la vedremo in gara questo inverno. Lollobrigida ha annunciato sui social la sua seconda gravidanza e per forza di cose salterà la stagione del pattinaggio di velocità. La campionessa olimpica di 3.000 e 5.000 metri, però, ha manifestato la volontà di puntare ai Giochi 2030 in Francia.

Della “vecchia guardia”, ossia coloro che già nei quadrienni precedenti avevano ottenuto medaglie olimpiche o mondiali, rimangono in piena attività solo Michela Moioli nello snowboard cross, Lisa Vittozzi nel biathlon e Dominik Paris nello sci alpino. Senza i suoi pilastri, l’Italia deve ricostruire il movimento in vista delle Olimpiadi 2030. Può sembrare un paradosso, ma con il ritiro e lo stop forzato di atleti che negli ultimi 15 anni hanno fatto la storia degli sport invernali l’unica via è ripartire. E bisogna farlo dai giovani. Tommaso Giacomel, al rientro dopo l’aritmia cardiaca che lo ha costretto a fermarsi durante la mass start olimpica, ha detto che è stata la sua estate peggiore e difficilmente potrà lottare per la classifica generale, ma è un talento su cui costruire il futuro del biathlon italiano, assieme a Vittozzi. Lo stesso vale per Flora Tabanelli nello sci freestyle. Post bronzo olimpico, la 18enne è stata operata al legamento crociato anteriore del ginocchio destro, fratturato a novembre 2025, e sta ultimando il recupero. Giovanni Franzoni è la grande speranza dello sci alpino. È esploso nella scorsa stagione, vincendo l’argento olimpico in discesa.

Da lui riparte il settore maschile, mentre al femminile punta su Laura Pirovano e Marta Bassino, che rientra nel gigante di Soelden dopo aver saltato l’intera scorsa stagione per infortunio. Tra i giovani talenti c’è anche Simone Deromedis, oro olimpico nello ski cross, che andrà a caccia della Coppa del Mondo generale, dopo aver chiuso secondo negli ultimi due anni. Lo slittino dovrà confermare i fasti di Milano Cortina 2026, dove ha vinto due ori e due bronzi. Tra gli atleti in rampa di lancio ci sono Riccardo Lorello nel pattinaggio di velocità, bronzo nei 5.000 ai Giochi, Elisa Confortola, Thomas Nadalini e Pietro Sighel nello short track. Le certezze restano Andrea Giovannini e Davide Ghiotto nello speed skating e lo snowboard italiano nel gigante parallelo.

Ad aprire il sipario sulla stagione invernale sono sci alpino, short track e pattinaggio di figura, cominciate nella notte. A seguire, il 13 novembre è fissata la prima tappa di Coppa del Mondo di pattinaggio di velocità. Il 21 e 22 novembre partono salto con gli sci, bob e skeleton. Sci di fondo, combinata nordica, freestyle, snowboard e biathlon scattano la settimana successiva; mentre slittino e sci alpinismo debuttano a inizio dicembre. L’Italia ha ancora frecce al suo arco, ma non ha più l’abbondanza che a Milano–Cortina 2026 ci ha consentito di salire sul podio in 12 discipline diverse. Per ritrovarla bisogna ripartire dai giovani, da quelli già affermati, ma soprattutto dagli altri, per mantenere la versatilità che negli ultimi anni ha contraddistinto gli sport invernali italiani e ci ha regalato le gioie a cinque cerchi.

L'articolo Una nuova era senza i veterani: così l’Italia degli sport invernali cerca di ripartire dopo Milano-Cortina proviene da Il Fatto Quotidiano.

Ever since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, a torrent of money has flowed into building out data centers to power the AI boom.

The efforts reached a fever pitch the day after Donald Trump’s second inauguration in 2025, when a bevy of AI luminaries including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Softbank founder Masayoshi Son crowded into the Oval Office to announce a $500 billion private investment in data centers.

But as the public has grown jittery about the impacts of AI on society and the job market — and story after story has landed about the downsides of hosting data centers in local communities — the buildout has emerged as a major political flashpoint and a key issue in the looming midterms.

The data industry’s headwinds aren’t just political, either. As the Financial Times reports, serious cracks are forming at the financial and logistical level, especially as serious AI revenue remains elusive.

Numbers cited by the paper are eye-popping. Drawing on data from regulatory intelligence outfit RegLayer, the FT reports that 47 large data center projects have already fallen through this year. Analysts at the equity research firm Bernstein only believe that about 35 percent of planned facilities are feasible.

All those canceled projects are due to a lot of factors, including local communities mobilizing against them, but it’s also macroeconomic. The buildout is taking place during a period of high interest rates and shaky bond markets, and people involved with the effort told the paper that the situation is “threatening their ambitions.”

Some of the plans were shaky to begin with. The FT reports that top labs like Anthropic and OpenAI have pushed so hard for the developments, believing them to be key to their success, that they’ve swallowed outsized costs and deemphasized due diligence. Investors are taking notice: stock in CoreWeave, a cloud provider closely linked to the AI data center industry, has fallen by more than 27 percent over the past month.

The really big question, though, is what happens to all these data center projects if the bottom starts to fall out of the AI industry financially, a situation that many economists have warned is a possibility over the past few years. For now, things are still chugging along — albeit much more slowly than anticipated.

“People aren’t just dropping their shorts for data centers anymore,” one unnamed executive told the FT. “It’s much harder today to finance a data center.”

Read full story here…

Before I walked into Milwaukee County Stadium in 1982, I had never been to a professional sporting event. I was 9 years old, and I can vividly recall being overwhelmed by the lights and the number of people there. The first-place Milwaukee Brewers were playing the Oakland A’s, and Rickey Henderson tied the record for most stolen bases in a season. The Brewers would go on to play in the World Series that year, losing to the St. Louis Cardinals in an epic seven-game series, and even though we didn’t get to celebrate a championship, I imagined a full life of cheering on a winning team.

It was the last time the Brewers would make the playoffs for 26 years. During that time, I grew hardened, believing I would die before I ever saw the Brewers return to the World Series. Bad personnel moves and a payroll that couldn’t match the league’s top-tier teams made winning seem like mere folly. Fans showed up at the games to cheer on the racing sausages more than the actual players on the field.

Yet when the Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays open the World Series on Friday, both teams’ highest-paid players will earn salaries rivaling the price of the animatronic bird that Kelly Clarkson so desperately desired. Neither franchise spends like a superpower. Neither plays in a media capital. And neither got here by doing what most of baseball has decided is the only way to win.

The Brewers won a franchise-record 103 games, then swept the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers — a hedge fund masquerading as a baseball team — in the National League Championship Series. Milwaukee is making its first World Series appearance since 1982. The Rays, meanwhile, went 98-64 for the best record in the American League. They did it on a payroll that ranks 25th in baseball and in what is arguably the sport’s toughest division.

It would be tempting to cast these two teams as rebels against the analytics nerds, a pair of stubborn traditionalists sticking it to the spreadsheet. It would also be wrong. The Rays are perhaps the most analytically obsessive organization in professional sports. They treat roster construction the way a quant treats arbitrage. The Brewers’ pitching staff finished second in baseball in strikeouts, because Milwaukee believes in velocity and spin rate as devoutly as anyone in Silicon Valley believes in disruption. Nobody here is burning copies of “Moneyball.”

What these teams have figured out is subtler and more interesting. Analytics is a tool, not a philosophy. And the data, read honestly, keeps pointing back to things your Little League coach told you for free.

Play

Baseball Hall of Famer Dave Winfield discusses his new memoir, ‘Touching All the Bases’ September 14, 2026 / 09:12

Look at how they score. Milwaukee and Tampa Bay finished first and second in the league in batting average. Both were top five in stolen bases. Both were top seven in ERA. The Brewers were tied for second-to-last in home runs, yet they finished second in all of baseball in runs scored. That last fact should be impossible in the modern game, where the prevailing theory holds that you swing as hard as you can, accept the strikeouts and wait for the three-run homer. Milwaukee kept putting the ball in play, taking the extra base and making the defense prove it could make a throw.

This is the real lesson of “Moneyball,” which was never entirely about on-base percentage. It was about finding what the market undervalues. In 2002, that was walks. In 2026, after a generation of front offices poured money into training hitters to focus on exit velocity and launch angles, the undervalued asset turns out to be the player who makes contact. Or the one who can play three positions. Or who goes first-to-third on a single. When every team bids up the same skill, the bargain bin overflows with fundamentals.

Call it situational hitting, tight defense and multidimensional players. Not long ago, that was just called “baseball.” It is also, not incidentally, more fun to watch. A ball in play is a play. A strikeout, a walk or a solo homer is an event the other eight fielders watch like spectators.

Contrast this with the New York Yankees, who have spent roughly the GDP of Lithuania assembling a lineup of lumbering sluggers. Their approach is built on the assumption that baseball is a home run derby with occasional defensive interruptions. It produces impressive highlight reels and October collapses in roughly equal measure.

A lesson here extends well beyond the diamond. American institutions have spent the last decade optimizing for the home run. In politics, the cable news haymaker, the floor speech engineered for clips, the fundraising email written in all caps are all big swings meant to circumvent the actual work of legislating. Both parties have come to treat governing as something staffers do between appearances: passing a budget on time, staffing an agency competently and filling the potholes are the sacrifice bunts of public life. Nobody makes a highlight package out of them, and so nobody gets paid to do them.

But the scoreboard does not care about the highlight package. Teams that strike out 1,600 times a year still lose in October to pitchers who can deliciously locate pitches on the corners. And governments that specialize in outrage still find, eventually, that outrage does not deliver the mail. Competence is unglamorous until it becomes the only thing that matters.

The Brewers and Rays have shown that you can use every modern tool available and still respect what the old tools were for. Data told them where the inefficiencies were. Discipline let them exploit those inefficiencies. That combination is rarer than it should be, in baseball and everywhere else.

So whichever team wins, the 2026 World Series will crown a franchise that refused to confuse flash with substance. In a culture that increasingly prefers entertainment to competence, that alone qualifies as a revolutionary act, even if it looks a lot like the game your grandfather used to watch.

The post Why the Brewers-Rays World Series matchup is a revolution for Major League Baseball appeared first on MS NOW.

When the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was still a work in progress, the Senate briefly inserted a ban on corporate ownership of single-family rental housing so sweeping that it might well have killed off the small but growing build-to-rent sector. 

After furious activism by the housing supply boosters, who had been the main advocates for the law's many other provisions, that investor ban was significantly pared back. 

The final version of ROAD, which became law in July, prohibits investors who own 350 single-family rental homes from buying new ones. But it also includes a long list of exemptions for large investor purchases of single-family rentals.

The primary exemptions include homes purchased as part of a build-to-rent project and dilapidated homes that the investor spends significant money renovating. 

The new restrictions go into effect this coming January. On Thursday, the Treasury Department released a proposed rule that would create definitions for terms that go undefined in the law and clarify the scope of "excepted purchases" of single-family housing that large investors can still make. 

Build-to-rent housing that large investors can still buy is defined as a new single-family home that's never been owned by an owner-occupier, is purchased within 18 months of the home receiving a certificate of occupancy, and is occupied by a renter. 

Protected "renovate-to-rent" homes are defined as homes that had major building code violations that were fixed by the large institutional buyer and for which the investor spent at least 15 percent of the home's purchase price on improvements. 

The rule also provides definitions for rental homes owned as part of a program to boost homeownership, which is another excepted purchase large institutional investors will be allowed to make. Those programs are generally defined as programs in which the renter has the right of first refusal to buy the home and where the rent receives financial support from the homeowner to purchase the home. 

Taken together, the clarified exceptions in the Treasury rule still leave a lot of room for large institutional ownership of single-family homes in keeping with the final text of the ROAD to Housing Act. They won't have to sell the homes they already own. They can still add to the supply of investor-owned rental housing through substantial rehabs and build-to-rent projects. 

Nevertheless, the Treasury rules will impose numerous paperwork burdens on investors who'll now have to track and report, for example, precisely how much money they've spent renovating a purchased rental house or else risk a huge fine. 

Large investors who purchase a single-family home in violation of ROAD are liable for a maximum civil penalty of $1 million per home purchase. 

The proposed Treasury rule highlights what a glaring exception the investor restrictions are to the overall spirit of ROAD. Through a variety of means, the law attempts to reduce the regulatory burden on new housing. Now, large investors will have to absorb significant compliance costs just to prove that they're adding new rental housing supply in precisely the right way. 

The post Under Proposed Treasury Rule, Corporate Homebuyers Who Don't Track Their Receipts Face $1 Million Fines appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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.

The post Vivek Ramaswamy, Elizabeth Holmes, and Jesus appeared first on Reason Magazine.

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 Globe reported 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. 

Quick Links

• Speaking of Massachusetts, the town of Marblehead (of "are we kind of being pricks?" fame) has at last had its rezoning plan, which allows apartments in more districts, accepted by state officials. 
• 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. 
• Single-family homebuilder confidence continues to drop. 
• 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. 

The post ADU Nihilism appeared first on Reason Magazine.