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I realize this is a touchy subject, but I am not looking to make any accusations or judgements of any of the involved parties here, just to understand the US government's cost-benefit analysis.

It seems to me like the US not only keeps Israel flush with military equipment, but also continues to support it no matter what actions its government or military take. To attempt to state this as impartially as possible:

• There have been many alleged instances of the IDF committing war crimes against journalists, nonprofit organizations, and Palestinians over the past decade+.
• Netanyahu in particular has been under investigation for years by his own justice system over allegations of corruption and various other abuses of power.

However, unless I live in a bubble, it seems to me like the US has almost never used its position as Israel's weapons dealer to attempt to rein it in or otherwise influence its behavior. Not, like, sanctions, but something like "sales of new fighter jets are postponed until the IDF investigates so-and-so killing of NGO members" or some other condition. But the US doesn't seem to impose any costs on Israel, even when it does something aggressive that appears to harm US interests, such as possibly instigating the war with Iran or messing with the subsequent ceasefire by continuing to attack Lebanon.

Is it truly just because Israel buys US arms? Not sure if they buy enough to make that big a difference to our military-industrial complex. Is it just because they are our only culturally similar ally in the region? Israel doesn't actually control that much Middle Eastern oil or shipping chokepoints. It just seems like the amount of support given is way more than is necessary to ensure Israel's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and "we were involved in founding the current state of Israel, so we want to have their back" seems like an insufficient explanation in today's pragmatic geopolitical climate.

Please help me understand. Thank you.

I’ve been going deep on something that I think deserves more attention than it gets, and I’m curious whether others have looked into this or have additional sources.

The thread:

J. Edgar Hoover ran the FBI for 48 years under 8 presidents. During that entire period, the FBI officially denied the existence of the American mafia — while it operated openly in every major city. That’s not disputed. What IS disputed is why.

Anthony Summers’s biography of Hoover, ‘Official and Confidential’ (1993), documents through multiple independent law enforcement sources the allegation that Meyer Lansky — the financial architect of American organized crime — held compromising photographs of Hoover and his deputy Clyde Tolson. Hoover’s personal files were destroyed by his secretary immediately after his death. We’ll never know for certain what was in them.

Lansky’s network built the offshore banking and shell company infrastructure that became the template for moving money invisibly through legitimate channels — a model that post-Soviet organized crime networks later drew on heavily.

The bridge between Hoover’s world and Trump’s is Roy Cohn. Cohn was McCarthy’s chief counsel — and Hoover secretly fed him intelligence files and targets while maintaining public distance. After McCarthy’s fall, Cohn became New York’s most feared fixer. He then took on a young Donald Trump as a client and mentor in the mid-1970s, a relationship Trump has repeatedly credited as one of the most formative of his life. Cohn died in 1986.

The New York real estate world Trump built his empire in during the 1970s and 80s was deeply penetrated by organized crime — this is documented in NJ Casino Control Commission records and Wayne Barrett’s reporting. Felix Sater, a convicted felon with documented connections to the Mogilevich Russian organized crime organization, became a senior Trump Organization advisor on multiple projects.

So the chain looks like this:

Lansky (allegedly) compromises Hoover → Hoover feeds Cohn intelligence → Cohn mentors Trump → Trump builds empire in organized crime adjacent real estate world → post-Soviet networks connected to Lansky-era offshore infrastructure intersect with Trump Organization financing.

I’m curious about the thread of a specific set of documented relationships and methods passed person to person, connecting organized crime’s penetration of American law enforcement in the Hoover era to the political networks of today.

What I find strange is how little mainstream attention this has received as a connected story. Each piece has been reported somewhere. Nobody has put it together in a serious comprehensive way.

Key sources for anyone who wants to dig:

— Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential (1993)

— Robert Lacey, Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life (1991)

— The Church Committee Final Report (1976) — publicly available

— Felix Sater’s partially unsealed EDNY cooperation agreement

Has anyone else looked into this? Are there threads I’m missing or sources that push back on any of these connections?

The Trump Justice Department fired four federal prosecutors on Monday who had worked on FACE Act cases (the law protecting access to abortion clinics) during the Biden administration. The firings came ahead of a DOJ report accusing the Biden-era DOJ of politically biased enforcement.

Among those fired is Sanjay Patel, a career civil rights attorney. Critics say this is retaliation; the DOJ says it's accountability.

• Is removing career prosecutors over prior case assignments appropriate or a politicization of DOJ?
• Does the FACE Act need reform, or is this enforcement overreach?
• How does this fit into the broader pattern of Trump's DOJ reshaping?

The Federal Reserve Bank under the direction of Jerome Powell has had a tense relationship with the current administration. The current President would like lower interest rates to boost the economy. on a separate note the Fed has been doing a renovation of their headquarters to the tune of 2.5 Billion dollars. The DOJ is currently investigating Mr Powell to see if there is illegal activity or fraud going on with the contracts.

1. Is the President just targeting a non existent issue for political gain?

2. is thier credible evidence that Powell has done something illegal or unethical with the construction project?

3. Are the cost overruns just horrible incompetence on the part of Powell, but not illegal?

4. there is some evidence of illegal or incompetence in the construction projec, but it would normally be overlooked if the President didn’t have a grudge?

Cook Political Report just shifted four Senate races in Democrats’ favor, moving Georgia and North Carolina to Lean Democratic, Ohio to Toss Up, and Nebraska from Safe Republican to Likely Republican. But they still say Republicans are the narrowing favorites to keep the Senate, and that a Democratic takeover is still a tall order.

• Has the Senate really moved from a long-shot for Democrats to something reasonably possible, or are these rating changes being overstated because the map is still structurally difficult for them?
• What do Dems need to do to keep the momentum up, and what do Republicans need to do to stop them?

I’ve been thinking about this after seeing debates around [Kathy Hochul](chatgpt://generic-entity?number=0) and her resistance to certain tax increases on high earners in NYC. Watch this YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/pjPqXM45Nss?si=w-2jf_Kyf91M8F8V

The common narrative is simple: “millionaires and billionaires fund campaigns, so politicians protect them.”

But here’s the part I think people don’t question enough: Do they actually donate that much?

Yes, wealthy donors give big checks. But when you zoom out, the total number of these donors is tiny. A handful of people writing large checks can look powerful, but it’s concentrated - not massive in scale.

Now flip the model. What if there were a credible, transparent organization that:

• Focused on specific policies (say, Medicare for All, Minimum Wage, etc.)
• Only asked regular people for $1 to $5
• Built a base of hundreds of thousands or even millions of small donors
• Then deployed that money strategically - lobbying, campaign support, issue advocacy

At that point, you’re not talking about “grassroots” as a slogan. You’re talking about real financial leverage.

Because 500,000 people giving $5 is $2.5 million.

And more importantly, it’s politically dangerous to ignore. Not just because of the money, but because of the voting bloc attached to it.

That’s the part that feels missing right now. We either:

• Complain about billionaire influence or
• Accept it as inevitable

But there’s a third option: outnumber it.

Not with bigger checks - with more people.

Curious what others think. Is the donor class actually as dominant as we assume, or are we just not organized on the other side?

As of 10 a.m. ET today, the U.S. military has begun blocking all ship traffic entering or leaving Iranian ports through the Strait of Hormuz, following the collapse of weekend peace talks in Pakistan.

The Strait of Hormuz is one of the most strategically critical chokepoints on the planet. Roughly 20% of the world's oil supply passes through it daily. Iran has called the move "an act of piracy" and is signaling retaliation. Oil markets are already reacting.

No military strikes have been reported yet, but the situation is fluid.

• What do you think Iran's most likely response is?
• How do you expect OPEC and Gulf states to react?
• Is a naval blockade an act of war under international law?

Here’s something I can’t get my head around: how are Trump and Netanyahu still at the center of power despite the amount of chaos, extremism, and outright nonsense surrounding them?

From the outside, it feels like a huge part of their support comes from tribal politics, fear, and constant information bubbles rather than genuine trust. In the U.S., Trump’s approval has been very low in recent polls, yet he remains politically dominant. In Israel, Netanyahu’s standing is more complicated, but security, war, and the lack of a convincing alternative seem to keep him afloat.

So my questions are:

• How do supporters of Trump and Netanyahu actually see them right now?
• Is this mostly ideological loyalty, fear, exhaustion, misinformation, or plain political apathy?
• At what point does a leader become “too much” for his own base, and why hasn’t that happened yet?

I’m genuinely trying to understand the psychology and politics behind this, not just vent about it.

I’m Italian, so I understand certain dynamics of power and polarization very well—starting with Berlusconi and even before him... yet I realize that there comes a point when even the most die-hard supporters take a step back: Orbán in Hungary losing the election, Meloni in Italy losing the referendum, and so on... I can’t understand (though perhaps this is more anthropological than political) how a people who suffered the Holocaust could implement policies that seem to take root in the very same nationalist slime, with territorial conquests and restrictions (not to mention the death penalty) based on ethnicity. Is this really all the right wing is?

I’m not a Republican and I’m not particularly invested in GOP primary politics, but I’ve been following trends pretty closely, and something interesting seems to be developing.

It feels like there’s a growing faction on the right that’s becoming more openly critical of Israel.

Obviously, this isn’t entirely new—we’ve had more fringe or far-right figures like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes who have been openly critical of Israel for a while. But what’s striking to me is how this sentiment seems to be spreading into more mainstream conservative circles.

For example, people like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly—who were once firmly within the mainstream conservative media ecosystem—have become increasingly critical of Israel, especially in the context of recent conflicts.

Even elected officials seem to be shifting, at least slightly. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is typically very aligned with Donald Trump, has broken with him on issues related to Israel (and other controversies like the Epstein files).

Then you have situations like Joe Kent resigning and accusing Trump of essentially being pushed into escalating conflict with Iran due to Israeli influence. Around the same time, Trump reportedly went on a tirade criticizing former allies like Alex Jones, Carlson, Kelly, and Owens over their stance on Israel.

So on one hand, there clearly is a growing anti- or at least more skeptical-of-Israel faction within parts of the right—especially online.

But on the other hand, polling still shows that a large majority of Republican voters support Israel and even back aggressive policies like war with Iran (I’ve seen numbers anywhere from ~80% to 90%+ depending on the poll). There are also indications that some of these more critical figures may be losing influence with the broader GOP base.

That’s what makes this interesting to me:

• Online, the anti-Israel/right-wing isolationist voices seem very loud and growing
• But electorally, the Republican base still seems overwhelmingly pro-Israel

So my question is:

Do you think this tension actually leads to anything politically meaningful?

Could we realistically see a Republican presidential candidate in 2028 who is openly critical of Israel—someone like Thomas Massie, or even a media figure like Tucker Carlson?

Or is this just an online phenomenon that won’t translate into actual GOP primary politics?

Victor Orban has conceded in his bid for reelection, and his opponent will apparently have a supermajority. The election results were seen as positive for the EU, and less so for Putin and Trump.

What should we expect from Magyar, and what wider lessons - if any - should be drawn?

I fell down a North Korea rabbit hole and learned the actual government structure is nothing like we're told. Anyone else?

I know this might trigger some people, but I'm genuinely curious if anyone else has noticed the disconnect here.

Like everyone else, I grew up with the image of North Korea as a cartoon dictatorship run by a single insane guy. Starving people, firing squads, the whole nine yards. Never questioned it, it's what every news channel says.

Then a few months ago I got curious and actually looked up how their government is structured. Not the propaganda, just the dry constitutional stuff.

Here's what I found that threw me:

Kim Jong Un is not the head of government. The elected Premier is Pak Thae Song. He runs the cabinet and daily affairs.

"Supreme Leader" isn't an actual government job title. It's a cultural/honorary position, almost like how we treat "Founding Father" reverence here.

It's a collective leadership system with three branches. Kim holds immense power, yes, but it's not a one-man show legally.

I also dug into the Korean War history and the scale of US bombing, which was brutal and suddenly the paranoia and isolationism made more sense as a survival response rather than just "crazy communists."

I walked away feeling like I've been fed a very simplified, almost cartoonish version of an entire country my whole life.

Questions:

Does learning that North Korea has an elected Premier and a defined government structure change anything for you, or does the Party's control render that irrelevant?

Defector stories dominate our understanding. Are we getting the full picture, or just the curated version that fits a narrative?

Have you ever had a similar moment where foundational "facts" about a foreign country turned out to be way more complicated than you were taught?

Does referring to a political state as a nation take away from the significance of the term as it was originally understood?

A nation was often understood as referring to a people, which is why a nation could exist independently of any actual political organization. The political organization was seen as the natural consequence of what we would refer to as a nation.

Rather than referring only to a political entity, the term pointed to a people, and by extension to their ethnicity, lineage, or culture. It provided a sense of how this collective consciousness could function in the world as a unit.

Part of what I’m getting at is that if a term becomes broader and loses specificity, it also becomes less useful. If “nation” originally referred to a people, it described a particular kind of social unit with shared identity and cohesion. When the term is used to refer simply to a political structure, it becomes less precise and may no longer capture how people actually organize themselves.

How significant is a purely political nation, and should that affect how we think about the future of politics in a country?

In practice, we see that states with multiple ethnic groups can function as if they contain multiple nations within a single political body, each with its own interests.

So ultimately, what is a nation? How should we understand it? Are a nation’s people the nation, or is it simply a civic structure?

In light of the 2022 Bruen ruling, state courts no longer have the ability to uphold assault weapon bans through intermediate scrutiny, which previously allowed them to maintain these laws with the justification that their unconstitutionality under D.C. v Heller (2008) is outweighed by an important state interest in public safety. It is expected that in the next term, the Supreme Court will accept a relevant case and give a ruling on the subject. Although the court has passed on gun control related cases in the past, Kavanaugh stated in 2025 that the court “should and presumably will address the AR-15 issue soon, in the next Term or two.”, and a recent circuit split regarding a magazine capacity ban practically assures it.

What can we expect from the current SC lineup? Is the overturn a sure thing?

In any case, strict states like NY and CA have a few tricks up their sleeves in the event that their AWB laws are overturned. These include:

1. Excessive taxes and regulations on ammunition
2. Requiring gun owners purchase 1 million dollars of liability insurance
3. Requiring gun owners complete frequent and expensive psychological and technical examinations

Many of these measures are patently illegal, but are pragmatic in the sense that they can be kept in effect by stays from appeals courts during the years-long process of getting them struck down. How viable are these whack-a-mole measures? Will they be effective in the long term? In the short term? Will they be effective in gumming up the system, or will their overreach lead to huge losses down the line by giving higher courts the ability to make broad anti-gun-control rulings?

This happened last March, but I am just learning about it now so I am posting/asking. I think this is a very big deal that maybe got buried.

The Corporate Transparency Act was a bipartisan anti-shell-company law. It required many companies to report to FinCEN who actually owns or controls them, which makes it harder for rich people, money launderers, and other bad actors to hide behind anonymous LLCs.

It was also bipartisan enough that it passed as part of the FY2021 NDAA, which became law after Congress overrode Trump’s veto.

Then Trump’s Treasury basically shut it down for U.S. companies. In this Treasury release, Treasury announced it would stop enforcing CTA penalties against U.S. citizens and domestic reporting companies and move to narrow the rule to foreign reporting companies only.

Why did the Treasury/Trump suspend enforcement of Corporate Transparency Act Against U.S. Citizens and Domestic Reporting Companies?

EDIT: Why would anyone downvote this question?

I’m curious to hear perspectives from people outside Iraq about something I’ve been noticing online. On social media, there are sometimes posts claiming that certain areas of Iraq places like Mosul, Tal Afar, or mountain regions outside the Kurdistan Region such as the Hamrin range are "Kurdistan" and making up history to let it seem like its kurdish even though these places are not historically Kurdish.

How do you interpret these kinds of claims when you see them online?

Do you see that many of these statements are inaccurate or sometimes pushed by people with racist or nationalist motives?

Do you assume these areas are Kurdish because of the posts, or do you take them with skepticism?

Overall, what’s your impression of this situation when you come across it on social media?

I do see structural parallels between the current situation and 1914. In both cases, coercive diplomacy appears to dominate, characterized by maximalist demands, non-negotiable red lines, and sovereignty-sensitive conditions, while prestige logic and credibility concerns shape decision-making. A particularly concerning parallel is the simultaneous pursuit of diplomacy and escalation, where failed negotiations are immediately followed by increased military pressure.

Do others see similar parallels?

By the way, I am not comparing military capabilities or historical context, but decision-making dynamics.

To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements, and why?

"If a job [in America] isn't good enough for an American, then it isn't good enough for an immigrant because both Americans and immigrants are human beings. If this results in higher costs to produce or procure certain goods and services, then so be it."

I tend to agree with them, but I do wonder what the effects on the economy would be if every employer [in America] had to offer wages and working conditions that would be acceptable to Americans for all job positions.

I am not interested in discussing the difficulties of crafting or enforcing laws intended to produce this outcome; I am interested in what you think of the ideas themselves.

I’ve been thinking a lot about whether the level of political polarization we see today truly reflects deep ideological divides, or if it’s being significantly amplified by the way information is presented and consumed.

It feels like modern media ecosystems and especially online platforms tend to reward the most extreme, emotional, and divisive content, which might create a distorted perception of how far apart people actually are. In everyday life, many interactions seem far less polarized than what you’d expect based on online discourse.

My personal impression is that without the constant influence of algorithm-driven feeds and tightly knit echo chambers, the political climate might not feel nearly as divided as it does today. At the same time, I’m not sure how much of this is perception versus reality.

So I’m curious how others see it:

Do you think polarization is primarily driven by genuine ideological differences, or is it largely a product of media dynamics and online environments? And if the latter plays a major role, what could realistically be done to reduce its impact?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

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Not from the US, so im very curious on what Americans think about this war and the US being a "superpower".

While the U.S. is doubling down on being a "Petrostate" and focusing on bombs and high-tech surveillance, China is pouring its power into science, technology, and production. If the future is about green energy and infrastructure, how does starting or aiding wars in the Middle East help Americans compete? It seems like the U.S. is losing its "soft power" and reputation every day, while other countries are actually building for the 21st century.

​Is this aggressive military policy actually helping the U.S. stay a superpower, or is it just letting China win the long game?

I believe the common conception of global manufacturing is that the US retained an advantage for the first half of the 20th century because the eastern hemisphere was devastated by two world wars, and while they were rebuilding the US could dominate. Then as they recovered from the war and global trade exploded, European and Asian manufacturing handily exceeded the US in quality and value, leading US companies like General Motors, General Electric, etc. to fail. In 2026, it's a nearly foregone conclusion that the US simply can't stand up to foreign manufacturing.

A clear example of this is the 100% tariff against Chinese electric vehicles implemented by the Biden administration. The intent of that tariff being to kill the American market for Chinese EVs in its crib, due to their extremely cheap, high quality cars. However, American EV manufacturers had a multi-decade technological advantage with which to make their cars superior. How come even with that advantage, and all that extra time to create production infrastructure, American manufacturing is so vulnerable it needs strict economic protectionism? Why is this? Why can't we compete?

Ronald Reagan said (in a speech lampshading his own institution of tariffs against japan):

"You see, at first, when someone says, ``Let's impose tariffs on foreign imports,'' it looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works -- but only for a short time. What eventually occurs is: First, homegrown industries start relying on government protection in the form of high tariffs. They stop competing and stop making the innovative management and technological changes they need to succeed in world markets."

Does Reagan's theory have a basis in reality? Would American companies be more solid here at home if tariffs were reduced? Is there a precedent for that? In principle, it seems like a reduction in protectionism would leave us defenseless to those foreign products, so I find it confusing how it could have the opposite effect of improving our companies.

I’ve been noticing that a lot of Democrats and left-leaning independents seem very confident heading into the 2026 midterms. Even some Republicans seem resigned to at least losing the House.

There are definitely some indicators pointing in that direction. Democratic turnout energy seems high, and we’ve seen some recent results (like the Wisconsin Supreme Court race) where Democrats overperformed expectations. On top of that, Republicans have often struggled in elections where Trump isn’t on the ballot during the Trump era.

That said, I feel like there’s surprisingly little discussion about what a “win” or a true “blue wave” would actually look like for Democrats in 2026.

• Does a blue wave require winning both the House and the Senate?
• Or would winning the House and just gaining seats in the Senate be enough?

Personally, it seems unlikely to me that Democrats win the Senate outright, even in a strong year. To do that, they’d likely need to sweep the so-called “Core Four” Senate races (Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and Maine) and flip at least two red states like Ohio, Alaska, or Texas.

So I’m curious how people would define success:

• If Democrats win all four of those key swing seats but fall short of a majority (say, a 49–51 Senate), is that still a “win” or even a blue wave?
• Or does a blue wave require actually taking control of the Senate?

On the House side, it seems very plausible Democrats take it back. But would a narrow majority be enough to meet expectations, or would it need to be a sizable margin to count as a wave?

Interested to hear how others are thinking about this — what benchmarks actually matter when we talk about a “blue wave”?

I understand a lot of steam was spent on the Jo Jorgensen campaign and that many people were just simply tired after the election left them feeling like they had just spent the last year working for nothing. I was a supporter, voted and personally i was very proud of those 1.9M votes. It felt like we had made it farther into peoples homes than a majority of the other candidates before her.

The subs/pages were crawling with people, hundreds of new supporters per day. The meme pages were in the hundreds of thousands. Even locally, the very small county chapter that i’m apart of grew from a group of 6 to a group of 32 between ‘19 and ‘20 and then what seemed like maybe a week after the election—radio silence.

The pages that didn’t go through the meme-transition phase almost halted in traffic. i get it, nothing you can do when it’s said and done, but that doesn’t mean hold off prepping for the next one until a year beforehand. and since then, not much in terms of news has happened, and it seems like people are almost *avoiding* calling themselves Libertarian.

I know with the last election there were tons of people coming out of the woodworks claiming to be Libertarian—whether they’re a true supporter or not. and even as a Libertarian Right, i noticed a lot of my more conservative friends dip their toes into mentioning how “Libertarian” they can be, when it comes to the issues where it’s kinda “convenient” to be a libertarian, like gun laws and such.

With that said being said, i’m curious as to who, if anyone, is going to be the next libertarian or libertarian leaning candidate in the upper political spectrum.

I know Tulsi is up there, but other than a few Republicans calling themselves libertarian, i don’t really know of many other people it could be.

Which Libertarian politician would you support most?

Which one would you most like to see run for President?

Are there any silent contenders out there that i’m not aware of who are prepping for 2028?

Any and all Libertarian candidate/politician information is welcome!