Reader’s note: after running The Liberty Lookout for a couple of weeks, I realized, there’s not enough daily news to be worth reporting on. At some point it just becomes noise. Plus, I really want The Liberty Lookout to encourage people to exit & build as the proper solution to the collapsing system around us, not be glued to the screens looking at news feeds - and a daily news roundup is kind of counter-productive in that regard. We want people to be informed, not distracted.
So I’ve changed my approach. I’m going to do a single weekly recap on Monday mornings that goes over everything important that’s happened over the past week. I’m still going to send out a daily newsletter, but it’ll be focused on deep dives on topics like prepping, homesteading, the psychology of power, specific important news events (if appropriate), profiles of people who are exiting and building - that kind of thing. Let me know what you think of the updated format!
And now, for the news…
175 Children, One Missile, and a Government That Says It Didn’t Happen
A newly verified video shows a US Tomahawk cruise missile striking a girls’ school compound in Minab, Iran on February 28, killing 175 people, most of them children. The Washington Post, NYT, and NPR have independently geolocated and verified the footage. The Guardian published a visual reconstruction using satellite imagery, verified video, and interviews. The Trump administration continues to deny US involvement.
This is the worst single mass casualty event of a war that has now killed over 1,255 people in Iran according to Al Jazeera’s tracker, along with 8 US service members and at least 14 in Gulf states. Week two brought strikes on oil refineries and fuel depots across four Gulf nations. Toxic black rain is now falling on Tehran from burning oil infrastructure. The Strait of Hormuz is effectively shut down, with maritime traffic down 80% after Iran hit four tankers with drones. Oil blew past $100 per barrel for the first time since 2022 (WTI gained 35% in a single week, the biggest surge since futures trading began in 1983). An explosion hit the US Embassy in Oslo on Sunday in what Norwegian police called a probable “targeted attack” linked to the Middle East conflict.
Meanwhile, Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the assassinated Supreme Leader, was named Iran’s new supreme leader today, signaling hardline continuity. Both chambers of Congress voted to reject War Powers resolutions that would have required presidential authorization. Polymarket bettors put the chance of a ceasefire by March 31 at just 22.5%, with nearly $4 million in volume. No authorization, no oversight, no end in sight.
If Trump really cared about the price of gas like he said he did, he wouldn’t have started this war.
“We Can Get to You Whenever We Want”
The Department of Homeland Security is using administrative subpoenas to unmask anonymous Americans who criticize immigration enforcement online. DHS issues thousands of these subpoenas to tech companies like Google and Meta, demanding personal information behind anonymous social media accounts. No warrant. No judge. Just a bureaucratic form letter.
ICE agents in Minneapolis addressed a civilian observer by name during a confrontation, then recited her home address. In Portland, agents photographed observers’ faces and license plates. The ACLU is suing over First Amendment violations affecting more than 30 people who described similar encounters under oath. Meanwhile, Palantir built ICE an app called ELITE that pulls home addresses from Medicaid records to pinpoint neighborhoods for raids. The health data you surrendered to qualify for government benefits is now a targeting tool.
The FBI Left the Back Door Open
Chinese hackers breached an internal FBI computer network that stores information related to domestic surveillance orders, including FISA data. The FBI noticed abnormal log activity on February 17 and notified Congress this week. Remediation is still ongoing.
The FBI demands backdoors into encryption, collects warrantless surveillance data on Americans through Section 702, and builds sprawling databases of domestic communications. Then it can’t secure its own systems. The agency that insists it needs to read your messages left the door open for a foreign government to read its files on you. The timing is poetic: the FISA Section 702 reauthorization fight is approaching, with the current authority expiring next month.
The Jobs Number the Government Can’t Spin
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the US economy lost 92,000 jobs in February, against expectations of a 50,000 gain. The official unemployment rate rose to 4.4%. The BLS also quietly revised January’s figure down from 130,000 to 126,000, and December from a gain of 50,000 to a contraction of 17,000. That means 2025 recorded five months of job losses, the most since 2010.
Labor force participation fell to 62%, the lowest in years. Truflation’s real-time index puts inflation at just 0.87% year-over-year, sharply below the BLS official figure of 2.40%. But that was before oil blew past $100 on the Iran war. With energy costs surging, the word nobody in Washington wants to say is “stagflation”: rising prices, falling employment, and a government that just launched a war to make both worse. (NBC News, CNBC)
Actually I've unsubscribed from your daily updates because I don't want any more doom and gloom.
So I'm totally with you. The most important thing is to focus on solutions.
Exit & build!