First things first: Pete Hegseth is facing impeachment not because he committed “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” but because all the Democrats’ wives have a secret crush on him.

Oh, sure, Hegseth is the most visible face of the administration’s engagement in what can reasonably be called an unpopular war, but the real reason they want Hegseth’s scalp is that he represents most everything today’s Democrats are insecure about. Hegseth embodies youth, strength, vigor, intelligence, conviction, toughness, presence, patriotism, and honorable military service. Name a single DC Democrat who brings those attributes to the Georgetown cocktail scene.

The eight articles of impeachment were brought yesterday by outgoing Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, an odd DC duck who used to caucus with the Republicans but who has, over time, morphed from principled Libertarian to Trump-deranged sore loser, a guy whose schtick ultimately grew old among his rock-ribbed Kentucky constituents, who sent him packing during primary season.

As the Washington Examiner reports , “Most of the eight articles outline Hegseth’s actions on recent military operations in Iran, Yemen, and Venezuela without prior congressional authorization. They argue that the secretary’s usurping of Congress’s will, as outlined in the War Powers Resolution of 1973, amounts to high crimes and misdemeanors.”

There’s a kitchen-sinkiness to these articles, though, as evidenced by one that focuses on the lethal and highly effective boat strikes conducted against Central- and South American drug runners, and by another that focuses on Hegseth’s ostensible mistreatment of Scummy Six Seditionist Mark Kelly, the Democrat senator and former Navy pilot who defiled himself and his military branch by participating in Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin’s despicable “illegal orders” psy-op video aimed at our warriors and our intelligence services.

This bouillabaisse of charges also reveals some disingenuousness in Massie’s rationale for having brought the articles. “The best target is Pete Hegseth,” as he put it yesterday near the steps of the Capitol. “One of the things that I really want out of this is to litigate whether Congress has war powers or not. Like, this is, I’ve got Republican colleagues who know I’m right on this.”

Like, if he really just wanted to litigate the War Powers Act, he would’ve delivered a more focused series of articles rather than going all Groucho Marx on us.

I’ll say this about Massie, though: He’s persistent. Massie first introduced these articles of impeachment back in September, but they didn’t get a vote at the time. Now, having become the darling of the Democrats, he thinks the time is right to drop an impeachment stink bomb before skedaddling out of town.

The Democrats are deeply grateful to Massie for having drawn up the articles because it lets them present the impeachment as a bipartisan effort. But it’ll only be truly bipartisan if Republican get all weak and wobbly — which I wouldn’t put past too many of them right now. As for the Democrats, I suspect they’ll bring the whole Signal snafu into evidence against Hegseth, if only to bloody him up a bit more.

The House is expected to take up Massie’s impeachment vote this afternoon, but a defiant Hegseth wasn’t about to just sit back and watch. Instead, the war secretary, who is one of Donald Trump’s most compelling communicators, held his first Pentagon presser in more than six months. Said Hegseth:

What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight. And it’s not accountability. It’s a political spectacle. ... It’s a farce, and it’s a stunt. And everybody knows it. ... No secretary of war or secretary of defense has ever been impeached for carrying out lawful military operations. And in our case, successful ones. ... None of these are high crimes or misdemeanors. They’re partisan policy disagreements from people who want to politicize our military. We will not apologize for putting American lives first. We will not apologize for stopping the flow of drugs that kill our citizens. We will not apologize for destroying the capabilities of a regime that chants, “Death to America.”

As Fox News’s Lucas Tomlinson noted, “Ahead of Veterans Day, Hegseth called the resolutions dishonorable to those serving in harm’s way and a message that their service was a crime.” Holding the White House to account for its overly optimistic prediction about the war, Tomlinson added, “The White House said at the beginning of the war it would last only four to six weeks, and it has now stretched for nearly nine months.”

Tomlinson asked the secretary if he agreed with Vice President JD Vance’s assessment that Iran was the reason for the Republicans’ drubbing on Election Day. Hegseth said he didn’t want to engage in any finger-pointing. Good for him. What the Democrats most want right now is for the Republicans to splinter into every-man-for-himself backbiting.

Still, as National Review’s Andrew McCarthy notes, there’s a good chance that one or more of these articles will be approved, if for no other reason than the Republicans’ razor-thin margins in the House. He writes , “In September, Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) adjourned the House early, in large part, to prevent Massie from forcing the Hegseth vote. And that was before last week’s midterm wipeout that has many Republicans enraged, including MAGA Republicans who blame the Iran war for the party’s demolition. Many of them see Hegseth, reportedly a strong war advocate, as the main culprit.”

McCarthy, though, also notes that the Framers put all executive power in the hands of a single individual, a president, so schlepping off responsibility to a subordinate is a dodge if that subordinate was simply carrying out the administration’s lawful policy.

“We’ve seen this show before,” Hegseth said. “They impeached President Trump over a perfect phone call. They impeached him again in his final weekend in office. Both times they failed. Both times he came back stronger. And the American people sent him back to the White House. Now they’re trying a third time, this time against a member of his cabinet. They will fail again.”

In Sunday’s “60 Minutes” interview, which I covered yesterday , President Donald Trump and his interviewer, Ross Douthat, used the word “deal” 35 times. The word “amnesty” was used zero times. Yet that’s the word now flooding the Internet as people digest what Trump said about immigration.

So what got everyone all worked up about amnesty?

As I detailed yesterday, Trump evaluated his immigration work, saying he “got an A+ for closing up the border” and “very high marks for getting the bad ones out.” But he also admitted, “I get hurt because ... there’s a large group of people [who] think that [landscapers and hotel workers] should be allowed to stay.”

Backing up to what prompted that comment, Douthat asked the president, “What is one thing you would like to work with a Democratic majority on?”

Immigration, answered Trump. “The deal would be we would work something out,” he explained. “Get the killers out. ... Get the rapists out. Get all the rough ones out. Get the drug dealers out. But let the people that are here, and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them, okay?”

“Some kind of legal status?” asked Douthat. “Yeah...” Trump responded.

Republican voters are used to this sort of talk being code for amnesty, so that’s where the conversation went. Many on the Right were apoplectic .

Amnesty is certainly where Florida Republican Representative Maria Salazar took things, though without using the word. “Well done, Mr. President!” she excitedly posted on X . “What you described on 60 Minutes is what the Dignity Act is all about.” The Dignity Act is effectively amnesty .

Note: Eight of the bill’s GOP cosponsors lost last Tuesday .

Amnesty was never part of Trump’s platform or appeal. It’s not what anyone who voted for him in 2024 expected. In fact, he promised “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country,” which almost by definition means it wouldn’t stop with “the worst of the worst.”

Still, while the visceral reaction to ICE was indeed strong (as Democrats planned and hoped), Trump has not been nearly as tough as he could have been. Since January 2025, there have been an estimated 1.2 million formal deportations, though self-deportations more than double that. His administration hasn’t done widespread workplace enforcement, so most landscapers and maids have been able to stay.

You could certainly argue that’s de facto amnesty.

That’s also a concession to practical and political reality. As I noted yesterday, most Americans hold a contradictory position on immigration. They think we needed to close the border but not do anything to the millions of people who crossed illegally. Stop committing the crime of illegally crossing the border , they say, but don’t deport anybody who already committed that crime .

Americans generally view this as compassion, but it invites border chaos — and other crimes, like tax evasion and identity theft. Sanctuary jurisdictions are far worse , deliberately protecting even violent criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans.

Perhaps Trump knew he stepped in it because, at a press conference on Monday, he insisted , “There’s no amnesty, no, no anything.”

As usual, this all depends on how you define amnesty.

“My policy hasn’t changed,” Trump added. That’s likely true because he just elevated immigration hardliner Stephen Miller to be chief of staff .

But his administration has also softened its rhetoric. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said on Monday, “If we want to have an immigration reform where we can look at DACA and figure out a way that these individuals can become maybe legal permanent citizens or something like this, that’ll be up to Congress to do that. I’ll be open to talk to anything.”

He added, “Amnesty is never going to be a solution. We’re never gonna allow amnesty to happen.”

What does he call “legal permanent citizens”?

Indeed, this is exactly what’s so exasperating about the amnesty conversation. Every Republican knows “amnesty” is a toxic word, so they avoid it and insist their policy won’t be that. But then they talk of deals and limited enforcement that... are amnesty.

In any case, Democrats are unlikely to make a deal with Trump. “There’s not going to be any opportunity, certainly, to work with Stephen Miller and what he represents,” declared soon-to-be Democrat House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. “We’re committed to forcefully pushing back against the extremism that they may try to continue to unleash on the American people.”

Speaking of unleashing extremism, here’s the Democratic Socialists of America platform : “End ICE detention and deportations and punish federal agents’ brutality. Legalize migration, grant amnesty for all immigrants regardless of status, provide a path to citizenship for all permanent residents, and end visa caps and quotas.”

Meanwhile, another migrant caravan is headed for the border , and all four border states will have Democrat governors in January.

On Friday, Susie Wiles wrote on her X account, “Today is my last day as White House Chief of Staff.” That same day, President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I am pleased to announce that Mr. Stephen Miller, the current Deputy Chief of Staff of the Trump Administration, and one of my most trusted advisors, will become the Chief of Staff starting Monday.”

Wiles, regarded as cool under pressure, had been lauded in her position as chief of staff. However, Friday’s abrupt staffing change has the public speculating. Did Wiles’s recent bout of breast cancer cause her to reevaluate her role in politics and yearn for a less flashy position so that she can spend more time with family? Or was she simply the scapegoat?

Unfortunately, Wiles failed to do her job. In January 2025, shortly after she was announced as Trump’s chief of staff (she had been his 2024 campaign manager), I wrote , “Now that the Trump team is about to transition into the White House, Wiles’s goals remain unchanged. On the campaign trail, her job was to help package Trump’s vision for the country and present it to voters. Now, as chief of staff, that remains her goal.” Wiles didn’t sell Trump’s vision and the importance of a conservative majority to the country, and it cost us the midterms.

Wiles is not the only person at fault, of course. However, she was a logical scapegoat for the blue tsunami. Even so, Trump — while praising her work — failed to explain his reasoning for the personnel rearrangement. “I think Susie’s done a very good job, great job,” he said . “But I just wanted to make [a change]. Stephen’s been great, and we got to make moves. Sometimes in life you have to make moves.”

Miller’s appointment sends a status quo signal not just to voters but to colleagues in Washington, DC. Miller is not a popular figure among Democrats or even among some Republicans since he fervently supports hardline immigration policy and sweeping deportations.

“There’s not going to be any opportunity, certainly, to work with Stephen Miller and what he represents,” declared soon-to-be Democrat Speaker of the House Hakeem Jeffries. “And we’re committed to forcefully pushing back against the extremism that they may try to continue to unleash on the American people.”

Even Indiana Republican Representative Marlin Stutzman said Miller is “not liked out here in the Midwest.”

Miller is seen as the voice in the White House egging on tougher ICE enforcement measures, which were a big issue for voters (particularly Latinos) in the midterms. Many have regarded the scope of this administration’s immigration policy as going “too far.” Trump even admitted as much on Sunday, saying in a “60 Minutes” interview, “I think it was too tough.” He continued, “For getting people out, I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out. But I get hurt because we also took people who had good jobs, who created one violation, or breaking the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally.”

Miller, like Trump, is a pugilist. Whichever way Trump decides to turn (or not turn) on his agenda, both will continue to fight with the dogged ruthlessness that has earned them many enemies. Let’s hope Miller’s ability to communicate fiercely will resonate and accomplish good work. Otherwise, it will be a long two years.

When the Democrats who won both chambers of Congress last Tuesday take office in January, they will get the gavels, every committee chair and broad investigative power. AIER's writer argues they will also inherit a fiscal problem that is already on the calendar: more than $40 trillion in national debt, $32.7 trillion of it held by the public, and a $41.1 trillion debt ceiling that the government is on pace to hit in the first half of 2027.

The warning signs are coming from lenders. In October the International Monetary Fund told heavily indebted governments to deal with their finances before they become unmanageable. Between February and September, the average 10-year government bond yield across the G7 rose by more than a full percentage point, to multidecade highs. For the United States in particular, the IMF found that long-term forward rates have become more sensitive to projected government debt. In the author's words, bond markets are beginning to lose patience.

The arithmetic is unforgiving. A one-point rise in yields on $32.7 trillion of publicly held debt eventually adds about $327 billion a year in interest, phased in as debt rolls over. That comes on top of the $1.05 trillion Washington already spent on interest in 2026. Another point would push the bill to roughly $1.37 trillion, and that assumes the debt stops growing. The Treasury paid an average of 1.6 percent on its debt in 2021 and pays 3.5 percent today. Because it has leaned on short-term bills, that average will keep rising. The author compares this to taking out an adjustable-rate mortgage you know will reset higher and still making only the minimum payment.

The incoming majority's early priorities point toward more spending, not less. Several members-elect who campaigned on affordability want to restore the Affordable Care Act subsidies first put in place during the pandemic. Those were billed as temporary, partly because a temporary program gets a lower cost estimate. The author quotes Milton Friedman: "there's nothing so permanent as a temporary government program." Reversing the Medicaid cuts would cost about $880 billion over ten years.

That brings calls for higher taxes. The IMF urges indebted countries to "strengthen tax systems," and some on the New Right talk about a "grand bargain" that pairs tax increases with promised spending cuts. The article raises two objections. First, Congress can set tax rates but not tax revenue. Since 1950 the top marginal income-tax rate has ranged from above 90 percent down to 28 percent, yet federal receipts have held near 17 percent of GDP, because people change how and when they take income when rates rise. Second, the money Congress collects is largely committed in advance to mandatory programs that sit outside the normal budget process and grow automatically unless benefits or eligibility are changed by law.

So why do governments keep borrowing when debt keeps getting more expensive? The author's answer is that it is good politics. Spending delivers visible benefits now to organized groups, while the cost of borrowing comes later and is spread thinly across taxpayers who barely notice each new issue.

The author expects a familiar script within months of the swearing-in. A Democratic Congress and a Republican president will fight over the debt limit, each casting the other as the villain, and then raise the ceiling without fixing anything. Real repair, he says, would take decades of sustained effort, which shows the problem is structural rather than technical.

It was not always this way. Until 1917, federal borrowing had to be tied to specific projects, such as the Louisiana Purchase and the Panama Canal, which let voters judge Congress's fiscal record directly. The debt limit began as a temporary World War I shortcut to speed approvals and has, the author argues, long outlived its purpose.

He concludes that the IMF and the bond market are saying the same thing: waiting makes stabilization more expensive. The new Congress can change the incentives that produced $40 trillion in debt, or it can wait for lenders to force the change.

Imagine buying George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm on your Kindle, only for Amazon to reach into your device and remove the two classic novels. It sounds unsettling, but it happened in 2009 when a third-party seller lost the rights to distribute the books. Customers got their money back, and Amazon acknowledged that it had handled the situation poorly. But the incident raised a troubling question: what does it actually mean to own something in the digital marketplace?

Had you bought those two books in hardcover, the retailer could not remotely remove them from bookshelf. But digital purchases can work differently. Consumers aren’t always buying a copy they can keep and control. Sometimes, they’re simply buying a license to access them for a certain amount of time and under certain conditions.

At first glance, this may not seem like a major economic issue. Both sides of a voluntary exchange expect to benefit from it. But digital rights create new information asymmetries that impede competition. Economists describe information asymmetry as a situation in which one party possesses relevant information that another lacks.

Say a consumer has two options for purchasing the same song or book for $15. Retailer A offers an independent downloadable file, while retailer B offers access through its digital platform, subject to certain licensing restrictions. Some consumers may prefer the convenience of retailer B, while others may value the greater control offered by retailer A. With clear information, consumer preferences would help determine which product succeeds. But when retailer B fails to adequately explain the limits of its license, consumers may not understand or may undervalue the additional rights retailer A offers, weakening competition on those terms.

Are consumers, then, well aware of the limits of their licenses when they make digital purchases? Research by Aaron Perzanowski and Chris Jay Hoofnagle suggests otherwise. In a 2017 article, the two researchers describe a survey of nearly 1,300 consumers involving a simulated digital marketplace. Among respondents presented with a “Buy Now” button, more than 83 percent believed they were purchasing ownership rights, while more than 86 percent believed they could keep the digital product indefinitely.

Perzanowski and Hoofnagle also tested a potential solution: giving shoppers a short explanation of their rights. In their study, 86 percent of respondents who saw the standard purchasing language believed they were buying ownership rights to an e-book, compared with 63 percent of those who received a clearer explanation.

Even among shoppers who received additional information, nearly two-thirds still believed they were buying ownership rights. Now, someone buying a movie to watch once may prefer a cheaper, temporary license (like renting from Amazon), while someone else would happily pay more for durable access. Both approaches are valid, as long as buyers can accurately distinguish between the two.

These ownership rights can matter greatly. With a physical good, a consumer might recover some of what she originally paid by selling a used copy to someone else. She could also lend it to a friend or donate it to charity. These options have value, and she might be willing to pay more upfront for a product that includes those rights than one that doesn’t.

Amazon’s Kindle controversy involved the removal of purchased files. A different vulnerability emerged when streaming service Funimation shut down in April 2024 and its operations were folded into Crunchyroll. Some consumers had purchased Funimation DVDs and Blu-rays that came with digital copies of the same shows. But Crunchyroll did not support those digital copies, so while customers could still enjoy their physical discs, they lost access to the digital component of their purchases.

The economics of intellectual property can cut either way. Licensing can expand access to creative works by allowing sellers to offer different prices, subscription models, and usage rights to consumers with different preferences. But goods can also be purchased, say, as independent, downloadable digital files rather than merely through access to some platform. Still, consumers may not always be aware of that option or understand how it differs from purchasing a license. With those differences made clear, we might reasonably expect competition to lead firms to differentiate their products on those terms.

Existing consumer protection laws already prohibit deceptive business practices, including misleading representations about what consumers are purchasing. But those laws don’t necessarily require digital retailers to clearly explain when a purchase provides only a license. Perzanowski and Hoofnagle’s proposal goes a step further by calling for clearer disclosures of consumers’ rights. In other words, companies should say “License” when they mean it, rather than leaving customers to assume they’re buying full ownership.

One version of this proposal has already become law. California’s Assembly Bill 2426 took effect on January 1, 2025, and, subject to certain exceptions, requires disclosures (or a consumer acknowledgment of those terms) when certain digital goods are licensed but advertised as purchases. Rather than prescribing ownership rights for digital goods, AB 2426 focuses on disclosure, leaving sellers free to compete over the rights they offer. That distinction matters when businesses are competing to offer consumers different ownership rights.

Rather than legislating ownership rights for all digital goods, AB 2426 focuses on disclosure, allowing digital sellers to compete over which sort of rights to offer. But disclosure could go further by addressing an important feature of a digital purchase: is it a standalone digital good that can be stored independently on my device, or is it only accessible as long as I have access to the retailer’s platform?

Including this distinction in existing deceptive trade practices laws, or laws like AB 2426, could better equip consumers to choose the digital goods they prefer. After all, how can consumers reward businesses for offering better ownership rights if they don’t know what they’re buying?