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This Strong Towns member-submitted article was originally published in the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ Florida-Puerto Rico Division newsletter. It is shared here with permission. In-line photos were provided by the writer.

In the past week or so, more precise contours have emerged in the legal contests over the lawfulness of the Trump regime's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and the mechanics of the regime's deportation Venezuelans to CECOT, a prison camp in El Salvador. One way or another these fights will culminate in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Three issues have gained prominence:

1. whether detained Venezuelans may have their habeas petitions handled via class action
2. whether the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) permits Trump to declare Tren de Aragua (TdA) a foreign invasionary force
3. what steps constitute due process for removal of alleged TdA members under the AEA

Courts have already taken positions on each of these, clearly splitting over the first two and just beginning to address the third. While I have firm views as to the proper legal answers to questions (1) and (2), the fact and ways that federal district courts are disagreeing over them highlights that the Supreme Court might side with the arguments I reject. My purpose in this post is to give a deeper sense of the issues and to sketch the positions courts have taken thus far.

I wrote about Proust once before. It was over a year ago, in February 2024, and I must have been midway through book 2 of Proust’s 7-volume epic In Search of Lost Time, also translated as Remembrance of Things Past. Now, I’m nearing the end of Volume 7, the last in the series. The final volumes have been a particular struggle to get through, as my health declined precipitously since the summer, leaving me homebound and mostly bedbound. I lost days and weeks to severe migraines, trying to relax beneath a silk eye mask beneath an icy cold cap direct from the freezer.

Eventually, I swallowed my pride and began listening to books on tape, something I discussed in this essay about learning to accept my need for mobility and accessibility aids. But by this time, my relationship with my gorgeous Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition novels was personal and emotional; I was fixated on finishing them the old-fashioned way. Slowly and steadily, I crawled through books five and six. I knew that, like me, Proust had been chronically ill, and I knew that, like me, he had been getting sicker as time went on.

I joked that reading the books while getting sicker, knowing that Proust was writing the semi-autobiographical books while getting sicker, made me feel like I was living in some warped Charlie Kaufman screenplay.

Kenin Spivak’s response to my piece, “Striking Iran Would Be a Mistake,” reflects a familiar but strategically short-sighted instinct within American foreign policy: the belief that forceful action against a dangerous regime, if justified morally or militarily, must also be wise geopolitically. But as I argued, and will expand upon here, the deeper question confronting the United States is not merely whether Iran goes nuclear, but whether the geopolitical structure of Eurasia becomes locked into a sinocentric configuration—one that fuses Iranian energy, Russian military-industrial depth, and Chinese strategic coordination into a single bloc capable of overturning the Western-led order.

The real catastrophe is not Iran’s enrichment centrifuges—it is China’s encirclement of the West.

Andrew F. Haughwout, Donghoon Lee, Daniel Mangrum, Joelle Scally, and Wilbert van der Klaauw

In the rapidly digitizing landscape of modern America, our homes, businesses, and national infrastructure are increasingly reliant on interconnected devices—collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT). These devices promise convenience and efficiency, but they also pose an unprecedented cybersecurity challenge. From smart thermostats to baby monitors, each device can become a potential gateway for cyberattacks. The Biden Administration’s development of the U.S. Cyber Trust Mark (CTM) attempted to meet this challenge. While we take issue with many elements of that administration’s broader regulatory agenda, the CTM represents a rare case of smart, market-aligned governance.

The CTM is a voluntary labeling program for consumer IoT products that allows manufacturers to demonstrate they meet certain cybersecurity standards. But its true innovation lies not in the sticker slapped on a product box—but in the market incentives it unleashes. Unlike heavy-handed federal mandates, the CTM respects consumer choice, empowers corporate accountability, and opens the door to a new kind of risk-based procurement that strengthens our national cybersecurity from the ground up.

Australia’s Vice Chancellors are among the highest paid in the world, at a time when the institutions they oversee are plummeting down international rankings.

The new analysis, which is now before a Senate Inquiry, recommends sweeping changes to the governance of Australian universities, to deliver better results for students, greater scrutiny of universities’ accounts and a significant increase in transparency within the higher education sector.

The first recommendation is a cap on Vice Chancellor salaries at $430,000 per year, which would more than halve the pay of those currently earning the most.

The submission is now before the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee’s Inquiry on Tertiary Education Legislation Amendment (There For Education, Not Profit) Bill 2025.

I have ended up taking a lot longer to write up my biggest picture thoughts on the dollar than I initially expected. Partially this is because things seem to have stabilized- for now- and thus I didn’t feel the pressure to rush a piece out. Just yesterday China and the United States announced a tariff agreement- at least for the next ninety days. But the other reason I haven’t put out a big picture piece on the dollar is I have struggled to put all my thoughts on this topic into one piece. Before the coronavirus pandemic- when I was in a very different place in my life- my goal was to go off to undertake a PhD in law in Europe where I would write a three chapter dissertation on the international law of money. My June 2018 talk which I published in the newsletter last month provides the rough skeleton of my thinking. How do you get all of that into one piece?

The 55 groups congratulate the Prime Minister on his resounding election victory, which they say has delivered a mandate for “optimistic and ambitious” action on climate change.

The letter – published in several newspapers today – points out that, as well as being an existential threat, climate change has intensified the cost-of-living crisis, pushing up energy, grocery and insurance prices.

The signatories call upon the re-elected Albanese government to commit to a fast and fair phase-out of fossil fuels, in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

“This is the opportunity of a lifetime for the Prime Minister,” said Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute.

“Anthony Albanese can be a leader who finally brings an end to Australia’s destructive fossil fuel addiction, while – at the same time – helping Australians through a cost-of-living crisis.

“The first and most important thing he can do right now is to stop the biggest, most destructive, most unnecessary fossil fuel project in the country: the expansion of the North West Shelf gas export terminal.

“This project would release more than four billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

“It would also allow the ongoing destruction of one of Australia’s and the world’s greatest cultural treasures – the 40,000-year-old Murujuga rock engravings. These are eight times older than the pyramids and are being ruined by acid gas emissions from the adjacent gas plant.

Nina Boyarchenko, Hyuntae Choi, and Leonardo Elias

The modern financial system is complex, with funding flowing not just from the financial sector to the real sector but within the financial sector through an intricate network of financial claims. While much of our work focuses on understanding the end result of these flows—credit provided to the real sector—we explore in this post how accounting for interlinkages across the financial sector changes our perception of who finances credit to the real sector.

On this episode of After America, Elizabeth Pancotti, economic policy specialist and former advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss what the second Trump administration is doing to the American economy.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 8 May 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Order ‘After America: Australia and the new world order’ or become a foundation subscriber to Vantage Point at australiainstitute.org.au/store.

Guest: Elizabeth Pancotti, Managing Director of Policy and Advocacy, Groundwork Collaborative // @ENPancotti

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

Trump’s tariffs won’t wreck Australia’s economy. But America’s could be cooked. Dollars & Sense (April 2025)

The Trump Administration’s plan to reorganize the State Department is the most ambitious effort of its kind since the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998. Announced on April 22, it calls for reducing State Department offices from 734 to 602, a 17% cut. While the plan outlines a 15% cut across all existing bureaus, so-called “functional” bureaus, as opposed to the traditional geographic bureaus that oversee specific parts of the world, would in particular be slimmed down, especially those grouped under “J”—for example, the Under Secretary of Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights.

“J” (which confusingly used to be called “G”) has been around for a few decades. The world of J includes offices such as the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (a white elephant created under Hillary Clinton), the Office of Global Criminal Justice, and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL), mocked internally as “Drool,” that would either be drastically cut back or eliminated altogether.

A considerable amount of the media’s drive-by criticism of the Trump reorganization plan takes at face value the name of an office or what it seems to be doing instead of asking if the work could be done elsewhere, or not at all. The names of these offices, however, have absolutely nothing to do with the work they actually do, much less the tangible value they provide in advancing an America First foreign policy.

Subways for stormwater:  Another subsidy for cars and contributor to high household costs.

In Seattle, cars and trucks; roads and parking lots are responsible for half of stormwater volumes, and contribute most to toxic runoff, but pay nothing for an extremely expensive subway to keep their waste from polluting sensitive waterways.

Instead, the cost of sewage subways gets build to urban households, many of whom don’t even drive.

Seattle’s putting the finishing touches on a new 2.7 mile subway connecting some of its hippest neighborhoods between Wallingford and Ballard.  Built at a cost of about $700 million, this shiny new 18 foot, 10 inch diameter tunnel is big enough for a standard single track urban train.  No, this isn’t unexpected progress on the region’s long delayed “Sound Transit 3” plan.  Alas, this tunnel will only carry waste-water.

Thank you, subscribers, for your thoughtful questions! I answered most and tried to address the main points of those I didn’t list. I apologize that I ran out of space!

I do these Q & As once a month. If you’d like to submit a question, become a paying subscriber. You can do that here:

Paying subscriptions are particularly appreciated right now. This newsletter is my main source of income for a family of four. Thank you for considering it!

And away we go…

What City Observatory Did This Week

Leave the car at home, take the income.  For years, City Observatory has calculated that Portland earns a billion dollar a year “green dividend” because it enables local residents to drive about 20 percent less than the typical urban American.  Portland’s Mayor effectively argued that the city can earn an even bigger green dividend if it further reduces the amount of driving in the region

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Why Dutton’s ‘one tune’ division and animosity didn’t work for Australians

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Monday 12th May 2025

Well, Dutton’s fear-based politics at least.

For the second election in a row, voters have delivered a progressive super-majority to Parliament and now the only thing standing in the way of Labor implementing its progressive platform is Labor.

Dutton has always been a political hardman. Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull once described him as a “thug” unsuited to being prime minister of a multicultural society like Australia.

After leading in the polls for months ahead of the election, Dutton hardly put a foot right during the campaign. Egged on and amplified by the Murdoch press and a host of right-wing lobby groups, Dutton’s instincts to announce Trump-like policies to sack half of Canberra’s federal public service, blame immigrants, delay climate action with his nuclear distraction and lean hard into the culture wars – decrying the need for Welcome to Country at Anzac Day, ‘wokeness’ in school curriculums and universities – led the Coalition to its worst defeat in decades.

Peter Dutton gave a gracious concession speech on election night. Several Liberal politicians remarked that those comments reflected the Peter Dutton they know in real life, with Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie calling Dutton a “good guy”.

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A rich country in a housing crisis?

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Sunday 11th May 2025

On this episode, Maiy Azize joins Paul Barclay to discuss the housing crisis, how the government stopped directly providing housing and started subsidising private investors, why immigration is not to blame, how the housing crisis is an inequality crisis, why ‘supply’ is not the main problem nor main solution, and why Australia needs to massively invest in social housing.

This discussion was recorded on 20 March 2025, and things may have changed since the recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Maiy Azize, national spokesperson, Everybody’s Home and deputy director, Anglicare Australia // @MaiyAzize

Host: Paul Barclay, Walkley Award winning journalist and broadcaster // @PaulBarclay

Show notes:  

Australia’s sick housing joke, Dollars & Sense (March 2025)

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You're Surrounded By Wind Turbines!

 — Organisation: Climate Town — Sunday 11th May 2025

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Just Answering Questions: I’m Back!

 — Author: Sarah Kendzior — Saturday 10th May 2025

UPDATE 5/11 AT 6:PM: I am closing questions because there are a lot! I’ll post my answers this week. The answers will be open to everyone to read — I don’t paywall in times of peril. But if you’d like to keep this newsletter going, consider becoming a paid subscriber:

Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I am back from a one-month, nine-city book tour for The Last American Road Trip — and I’m still hungry for questions! Welcome to the return of the monthly Q & A. We’ve got some catching up to do, but first, a few announcements:

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Comments on the previous article by Harry Chemay

 — Organisation: Economic Reform Australia (ERA) — Thursday 1st May 2025

Comments on the previous article by Harry Chemay Wayne McMillan In the previous article, Harry Chemay has faithfully kept to the findings and conclusions from…

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Statement: On the media narrative linking the Greens’ electoral losses to their stance on Palestine

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Saturday 10th May 2025

10 May 2025: In recent days, we’ve seen a wave of commentary linking the Greens’ electoral losses to their principled support for Palestinian human rights and pro-Palestine rallies. This narrative is not only inaccurate—it is irresponsible.

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Forgotten Americans No More

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Friday 9th May 2025

Mr. President, I rise today to engage in this great debate that is raging across our country. Turn on the TV, read the newspapers, or open your phone and you will be overwhelmed by the back-and-forth over tariffs, trade deficits, prices, and markets. We hear the talking heads say that America simply can’t afford President Trump’s insistence on more favorable trade policies. We hear much less about whether America can afford to continue down the road we have traveled these past 30 years.

That is not a question that people in this city are asking. For many, it is not a question that appears to have occurred to them at all. The debates right now are about the future and how President Trump’s policies will shape it. That is good. These are important debates that we should have. But, today, I rise because I want to speak about the past.

I am speaking as an American but, in particular, as a proud Missourian, a boy from Bridgeton. My folks—they weren’t wealthy. My grandfather was an infantryman in World War II and returned from the war with an eighth-grade education and some money he won playing craps on the Queen Elizabeth on his way home. All of his children worked in his butcher shop growing up. Later, I remember seeing my dad work seven days a week on the midnight shift to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. He worked hard and lived honestly. And, just one generation later, look where we are.

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Dallas Just Made It Easier to Build the Housing It Desperately Needs

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Friday 9th May 2025

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05/09/2025 Market Update

 — Organisation: Applied MMT — Friday 9th May 2025

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Less Talk, More Walk: Better Design Starts Outside, Not in the Conference Room

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Friday 9th May 2025

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