36 Hours

Plus: Inside the DOGE disputes, Day 1 analysis with Mike Pesca, fleeing San Francisco, and more...

Ross Ulbricht walks free: It took President Donald Trump more like 36 hours than his promised 24, but we'll gladly let it slide. Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, who had been serving double life sentences plus 40 years without the possibility of parole, walked out of prison a free man last night thanks to a pardon from Trump after serving 11 years.

FREEDOM!!!! pic.twitter.com/itRuuyFAxe

— Free_Ross (@Free_Ross) January 22, 2025

"I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbright [sic] to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross," wrote Trump on Truth Social. "The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me. He was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!"

Trump was fulfilling a promise made at the Libertarian National Convention in May last year, deftly brokered in part by current party Chair Angela McArdle, who is wasting no time taking a victory lap on X. But credit is also surely due to Ulbricht's mother, Lyn, who, following her son's conviction and imprisonment, devoted the last decade of her life to publicizing his case, especially possible malfeasance and corruption by the prosecutors who worked on it. Lyn turned her life upside down, moving to Colorado to be able to visit her son in prison (before he was transferred to Tucson) and becoming a passionate advocate for criminal justice reform. The Ulbricht family's love for Ross has always been so clear, I hope they get to spend the coming weeks and months making up for lost time.

Silk Road, of course, earned the ire of the feds because it was an early example of how bitcoin would enable greater financial anonymity than ever before. "Silk Road's innovative mail order using bitcoin, combined with user reviews of sellers, imposed some real market discipline on dealers, kept buyers from the occasional dangers of physically obtaining drugs, and allowed people not violating others' lives and property to buy and sell drugs with less (but not zero) legal risk," writes Reason's Brian Doherty.

And if you go deep down the rabbit hole into all the issues with the case, and the judge presiding over it, oh, and how your favorite libertarian magazine was targeted by the government for our commentariat's creative expression, well…you might just want to crawl into a wood chipper. Full Reason archive here, rich with a decade-plus of Ross coverage.

Double life for making a marketplace is insane, but this detail makes it even more sinister. So glad this evil act has been undone, but Ross can't get the years back. https://t.co/SInGHjHFNX

— nic golden age carter (@nic__carter) January 22, 2025

More on Ulbricht's story from Zach Weissmueller:

For what it's worth, I think this is a way better use of the pardon power than, ahem, Joe Biden's preemptive excusing of Anthony Fauci. God bless Ross, may he live out the rest of his days as a free man, never setting foot inside of a prison again.

Getting the hell outta DOGE: Vivek Ramaswamy was not long for the world of DOGE, reports Politico. Ramaswamy, famed for his appearance on the popular podcast Just Asking Questions (and also, I suppose, running for president), has decided to exit the Department of Government Efficiency and instead run for governor of Ohio.

Though I like that DOGE is already making cuts, it does seem rather odd for the Ramaswamy/Musk team to be touted by Trump for several weeks then quickly scrapped. What happened?

"Musk, the tech tycoon and Donald Trump confidant, made it known that he wanted Ramaswamy out of DOGE in recent days, according to three people familiar with Musk's preferences who, like others for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss them," reports Politico. "An ill-received holiday rant on X by Ramaswamy about H-1B visas apparently hastened his demise."

DEI, time to DIE: "Officials overseeing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across federal agencies were expected to be placed on leave on Wednesday after the Trump administration ordered their offices to be closed," weeps The New York Times. For the time being, the leave is paid, but agencies have been directed to draw up plans within the next week for staff reductions.

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order aimed at immediately dismantling all federal government DEI programs, calling them "radical" and "wasteful". Now, "the Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Performance and Personnel Management will coordinate on changing hiring practices, ending equity-focused programs and grants and terminating 'chief diversity officer' positions designated during the Biden administration," reports the Times.

Such policies "undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system," reads a related executive order. "We will forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based," Trump said in his Monday inaugural address.

"This is another win for Americans of all races, religions, and creeds. Promises made, promises kept," said press secretary Karoline Leavitt yesterday.

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Scenes from New York: "A new proposal to ease New York City's housing crisis would make way for nearly 10,000 apartments in parts of Midtown Manhattan that do not currently allow new residential construction, a shift officials hope will reinvigorate an area that has come to represent economic challenge," reports The New York Times. "The plan, which city officials introduced at a Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday, seeks to change the zoning for 42 blocks of the neighborhood. That would allow for some 9,700 additional homes, including 2,900 designed to be affordable for moderate- or lower-income New Yorkers."

I'm sorry, but this will do very little to wind down the cost of living. The issue is rent stabilization and rent control, in addition to too few units; mandating that developers set aside a certain number to rent at a lower rate just means they'll compensate elsewhere when setting prices. And, all these issues aside, 10,000 is just too few!

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QUICK HITS

• Seriously, please subscribe to JUST ASKING QUESTIONS. Our episode yesterday featured the one and only Mike Pesca and was full of spicy thoughts on Trump's Day 1 in office. We have only good things planned for the coming year, and we're so close to 5,000 YouTube subscribers (at which point we have a special episode planned).
• "I remember that Donald Trump had only one good line during his first (and only) debate against Joe Biden—primarily because he needed do nothing else but remain functional while Biden melted like a wax candle beside him—and it was his point that Biden had never fired anyone for poor performance, not even once in a presidential term that all voters could agree was wrought with massive, avoidable, personally accountable failures," writes Jeffrey Blehar at National Review. "Why not? I flagged it back then (even amidst the chaos of Biden's meltdown) because I felt that it subtly got to the point that Trump, in that debate, was not expecting to deal with: Biden's presidency had been a sham from its very first day, a project managed by a group of advisers rather than an actual president, and that cabal couldn't fire anyone who might reveal the secret. It really boils down to that: We were stuck with the useless administration Biden announced on Day One, because, on Day One, Biden was already mentally unfit for office."
• "Americans should consciously consider who we want to be as a society. Do we want to be the freest country in the world, or the country that imprisons its own people the most and the hardest," writes Dave Smith on X in a post related to the pardon of Ross Ulbricht. "You can't be both and the choice should be obvious."

• "Democratic attorneys general on Tuesday filed lawsuits in Massachusetts and Washington state seeking to block President Donald Trump's attempt to revoke the right to automatic birthright citizenship," reports NBC News. "The proposal faces an uphill battle and strong opposition from not just the 23 Democratic attorneys general but also civil rights groups, who have already filed their own lawsuit."

• A good take (though I think the Musk gesture was fine):

That Musk salute sure seems kind of fascisty, but in fairness so does a mob of masked campus cretins marching through the Upper East Side chanting death to Jews

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) January 21, 2025

• Tough but fair:

The San Francisco housing shortage is finally starting to turn around, but for the worst possible reason: a lot of people are finally giving up and moving away. pic.twitter.com/ZzZqnNCC8c

— M. Nolan Gray ???? (@mnolangray) January 21, 2025