Last week the Pentagon, under “War Secretary” Pete Hegseth, carried out yet another military attack on a boat in the high seas that the Administration claims is smuggling drugs. That makes 23 boats blown up by the US military in the waters off Latin America – most near Venezuela – and nearly 100 persons killed.

To date the US government has provided no evidence to back up its claim that these boats are smuggling fentanyl and other dangerous drugs into the United States. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has reported that Venezuela neither manufactures nor transports fentanyl to the US. In fact, the DEA still concludes that Venezuela is barely a minor player in the drug game.

Is this really about drugs? Or is it about “regime change” for Venezuela?

When Adm. Alvin Holsey, the commander of US Southern Command, raised concerns about the legality of bombing boats on the high seas and extrajudicial killing, he was pushed out by Hegseth. His concerns were ignored.

When lawyers at the National Security Council, Pentagon, and Justice Department raised objections to the boat attacks they were reassigned or fired, according to press reports. Finally, President Trump’s own appointed lawyers at the Justice Department came up with a justification for killings. But it’s classified.

Last week the media reported on an incident from September where two survivors of the US strike were left clinging to the wreckage of their boat when the orders came to kill them too. It was clearly an illegal order, even according to the Pentagon’s own Laws of War manual.

Many Americans will not want to hear this, but this entire operation is illegal and immoral – from blowing up survivors to blowing up the boats in the first place. There is no legal justification to use military force against boats on the high sea that pose no imminent military threat to the United States.

Many supporters of this policy argue that the killings are “self-defense” because “narco-terrorists” are using narcotics as weapons against the American people. That is certainly what the Administration is claiming, having invented “narco-terrorist” as a new term to justify the killings.

Sadly, this shows how effective government war propaganda still is. It was used when both Republican and Democratic Administrations wanted to launch wars against Saddam Hussein, against Gaddafi, against Assad, and so on. New slogans are invented and a good deal of the public happily adopts them as their own. Anyone who challenges the new slogans is deemed unpatriotic or weak. When the war goes badly they pretend they were never fooled by government lies. Then it happens again and they repeat the new war slogans.

The “war on drugs” was launched by President Nixon a half century ago. It is obviously another failed government policy. Raising the stakes in a failed war is foolish and counterproductive. The solution to smuggling during alcohol prohibition was not to start bombing the bootleggers. It was to come to terms with basic economics: you cannot kill demand by killing supply.

More Americans die each year from alcohol use than from fentanyl use. Will strikes soon be launched against “alco-terrorists” who are killing Americans? Of course not…we hope. That is the danger of throwing away the laws of war: anything can happen next.

Congress has the authority to stop Secretary Hegseth from killing people on the high seas. It should do so without delay.

The government shutdown “proved an argument that conservatives have been making for 45 years: The U.S. Department of Education is mostly a pass-through for funds that are best managed by the states.” The most significant thing about this statement in a November 16 USA Today editorial is not its substance. As the editorial’s author points out, the argument presented is not new.

The most significant thing about the statement is that its author is Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Unlike many in DC, Secretary McMahon backs up her words with action. She is dismantling the Department of Education, fulfilling one of President Trump’s campaign promises.

Since President Trump and Secretary McMahon cannot close the department absent authorizing legislation — legislation that appears unlikely to pass in the current Congress, Secretary McMahon is gutting the department by transferring responsibility for most of its functions to other parts of the government. Secretary McMahon has moved to the Labor Department the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which administers 27 K-12 grant programs, and the office of Postsecondary Education, which administers 14 programs aimed at helping college students, as well as several other programs. The Interior Department will manage the Indian education program, while the State Department will manage the federal foreign language education program. The Department of Education will, for the time being, ensure schools are complying with federal civil rights laws.

Spreading education programs among several different departments may reduce spending. For example, it could spur Congress to stop wasting millions of dollars a year on public relations for the Education Department. However, it does not necessarily reduce federal involvement in education. Therefore, those of us committed to restoring control over education to local communities must continue to advocate for eliminating all federal education programs. The billions spent by the federal government on “improving” education have had the opposite effect. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, 72 percent of American eighth graders are below proficient in math and 70 percent are below proficient in reading.

America’s education system cannot be fixed by another No Child Left Behind style reform imposed on local schools by federal politicians and bureaucrats. Instead, the only way to “fix” American education is to restore control to local communities, school boards, and — most of all — parents.

This is why all who care about quality education should celebrate the continued growth of homeschooling. According to Angela R. Watson of the Institute for Education Policy at Johns Hopkins University, homeschooling in the 2024-25 school year “continued to grow across the United States, increasing at an average rate of 5.4 percent.”

Parents looking for a homeschooling curriculum incorporating the ideas of liberty should consider my online curriculum. My curriculum provides students with a solid education in history, literature, mathematics, and the sciences. It also gives students the opportunity to create their own websites and internet-based businesses. This provides students with “real world” entrepreneurial experience that will be useful no matter what career paths they choose.

The curriculum is designed to be self-taught, with students helping, and learning from, each other via online forums. Starting in the fourth grade, students are required to write at least one essay a week. Students also take a course in public speaking.

The curriculum emphasizes the history, philosophy, and economics of liberty, but it never substitutes indoctrination for education. The goal is to produce students with superior critical thinking skills. If you think my curriculum may meet the needs of your child, please visit www.RonPaulCurriculum.com for more information.

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election was due in large part to his promises to pursue an America First foreign policy and rein in inflation. One year later, prices remain high, and President Trump is more focused on overseas meddling than on the American people. This has helped enable Democrats to win governor races in Virginia and New Jersey, and self-described Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to win the New York City mayor race by running on “affordability.”

Since the election, President Trump has made a number of proposals to ease the burden of high prices. One of the president’s proposals is changing federal housing regulations to encourage lenders to offer 50-year mortgages. Though a 50-year mortgage in comparison to a 30-year mortgage could reduce monthly mortgage payments by over a hundred dollars for a median price home, it could also roughly double interest payments made over the life of the mortgage. So, while the longer mortgage may provide a short-term benefit, in the long run it is a losing proposition for potential homeowners.

President Trump also proposed using the revenue from his tariffs to give most Americans at least 2,000 dollars. This may provide some help for struggling Americans, but it does not compensate for the damage inflicted on the American economy by the tariffs.

President Trump has also announced plans to reduce tariffs on some countries in regard to coffee, bananas, and other agricultural products. This reduction in the tariffs has come with an admission from the Trump administration that the high tariffs have led to increased prices and thus harmed Americans. Hopefully, President Trump will provide more relief from his tariffs, including relief aimed at helping American manufacturers who rely on imports for raw materials and tools.

While Democrats talk about “affordability,” most are unwilling to support the free-market policies that produce abundance and affordability. Instead, they want more government interventions in the marketplace — even though history shows government interventions cause price increases and shortages. For example, New York City Mayor-elect Mamdani thinks the way to address housing costs in New York City is through new price controls on rent. He does not seem to understand that a reason housing costs are so high in New York City is because of the city’s existing rent control law.

Another example is congressional Democrats’ “solution” to the large increases in Obamacare premiums being to extend the 2021 “temporary” Obamacare subsidies enacted as part of covid relief legislation. Unfortunately, the Republican alternative appears to be to just send Americans money to use to pay medical costs.

Politicians with both parties ignore the real cause of price inflation: the Federal Reserve. When the Federal Reserve increases the money supply, it reduces the dollar’s value, thus increasing the average American’s cost of living. A major reason the Fed devalues the dollar is to monetize the ever-increasing federal debt by purchasing Treasury securities. Therefore, an important action the president and Congress could take to make America affordable again would be to reduce federal spending and start paying down the over 38 trillion dollars debt. Congress should also pass legislation forbidding the Federal Reserve from purchasing federal debt.

Congress should also pass the Audit the Fed bill, legislation exempting precious metals and cryptocurrencies from capital gains taxes, and a repeal of any other laws that prevent Americans from using alternative currencies. Auditing and ending the Federal Reserve is the true affordability agenda.

I recall when then-President Barack Obama was planning to send troops to enforce his “Assad must go” policy in Syria, many Republican US Senators passionately argued that the US President must come to Congress for approval before sending US troops into combat overseas. At the time, they portrayed themselves as brave defenders of the US Constitution.

Last week, when the Senate held a vote to remind President Trump that he is required to seek approval from the Legislative Branch before launching an attack on Venezuela, only two Republican Senators stood up to defend the Constitution. Why? Perhaps because a Republican President was now in office.

According to Politico, war-enthusiast Senator Lindsey Graham went so far as to say that Congress can’t “substitute our judgment” for the president’s when it comes to the decision to attack Venezuela.

The Senator needs a refresher course in high school civics. The US Constitution requires Congress, as the branch most directly accountable to the people, to substitute its judgement for the president’s when it comes to warmaking!

We fought a war against George III to negate the ability of a king to take the people to war on his whim. Now, Congress scrambles to abrogate that hard-fought achievement in the name of political expediency.

While the DC foreign policy blob – made up of both parties – is always pro-war, with each election we get a charade that one party or the other is standing up for the Constitution by challenging a president of the other party on war powers.

Why not stand up for the Constitution regardless of who the President may be?

The truth is, these days most Members of the House and Senate hold their heads down, follow their leadership, and enjoy that 97 percent incumbency reelection rate. After all, making waves by standing up for the Constitution can cost you your seat. You might even find yourself in a position where a President from your own party raises millions of dollars to try and get you ousted.

In an excellent recent essay in The American Conservative, George O’Neill Jr. recounts the current round of pro-war lies being bandied about to gin up support for a war on Venezuela. There are “narco-terrorists” threatening the US! Hezbollah is training in the Venezuelan jungles! Maduro is in league with Hamas!

We’ve heard it all before. The sinking of the USS Maine. The “domino theory.” Babies ripped from Kuwaiti incubators by Saddam’s stormtroopers. WMDs. Assad’s gas attacks. And so on.

All lies, and as O’Neill writes, the interventions they spawned have all turned out to be devastating, expensive failures. We’ve gone from six trillion dollars in debt at the beginning of the war on terror to 38 trillion dollars today. The global US military empire cannot continue if we want to keep our country.

Benjamin Franklin famously said “a republic if you can keep it” when asked what kind of government the Framers of our Constitution had created. But the Republic cannot be held together by magic or good luck. “If you can keep it,” means representation by men and women of good moral character who put the interests of their constituents and their country before their political party or the President. And it requires a population willing to stand up to propaganda and politics to elect such good people and hold them to account.

According to data collected by the research firm Statista, 29 percent of Americans cannot afford to take a vacation this year. A vacation is not the only thing Americans are struggling to afford. The failure of wages to keep up with price inflation is why household debt hit a record level of 18.4 trillion dollars this year, with the average household owing more than 100,000 dollars.

The Federal Reserve is responsible for the decline in American living standards and the rise in income inequality. The turning point in the people’s economic fortunes was on August 15, 1971. That is when then-President Richard Nixon closed the “gold window,” severing the last link between the dollar and gold. This left America with a purely fiat currency and no restraint on the Federal Reserve’s ability to create money.

When the Federal Reserve pumps money into the economy the new money is not equally distributed. It first goes to wealthy and well-connected individuals. These individuals benefit from having increased purchasing power before the new money has caused price increases.

The Fed also contributes to economic instability and inequality by creating bubbles that distort the signals sent by the market. This causes over-investment in some sectors. When bubbles burst, workers employed in certain sectors lose their jobs, while those at top often suffer at most a modest setback. The government bails out the “too big to fail” corporations, but the government never considers workers and homeowners too big to fail.

The Federal Reserve facilitates the growth of the welfare-warfare state by purchasing Treasury bonds, thus monetizing federal debt. The majority of government spending is on programs benefiting powerful special interests. This includes in large part the military-industrial complex that gobbles up more money from the government each year.

The Federal Reserve’s continued devaluation of the dollar to finance an empire abroad and a welfare state at home is the driving force behind the erosion of the people’s living standards. As the dollar loses purchasing power, demand for government assistance increases, leading to more government spending, more debt monetization, and a further decline in living standards.

The fact that almost a third of Americans cannot afford a vacation illustrates how fiat money harms average Americans. Continued growth of federal debt and Fed-created inflation will lead to a major economic crisis. This will either induce or be caused by a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status. The result will be a rise of demagogic authoritarians of both left and right and increased political violence, leading to an increase in government repression.

Those of us who know the truth must continue to explain that the solution to our problems is a vacation from the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system that facilitates government growth at the expense of the people’s standards of living and liberty. Limited government, free markets, and peaceful relations and free trade with as many nations as possible are components of the path to lasting peace and prosperity.