Is it OK to punch a Nazi?

It was a hotly debated question for months after video of white nationalist Richard Spencer getting punched in the middle of an interview on the day of Donald Trump's inauguration went viral and inspired countless remixes.

But the question was never really just about Nazis. It is about the acceptability of political violence. And in the following year the question came up and again and again as several high-profile political protests turn violent, including at UC Berkeley, often considered the birthplace of the free speech movement in the 60s.

We visited Berkeley about a year after that protest-turned-riot to ask students whether punching Nazis, or other deplorables, is ever OK.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller and Justin Monticello.

Camera by Paul Detrick and Monticello.

Music by Krackatoa, Kai Engel, and Teehoteeho available at http://freemusicarchive.org.

Donald Trump tends to call whatever he dislikes "fake news," from inconvenient facts to unfavorable reporting. Even though the President himself is less a font of truth and more a spigot of self-serving exaggeration and insults.

But Trump isn't all wrong when he labels reporting against him as fictitious or slanted. Reporters have become so enraged with the President that in their hurry to lambast him, they sometimes forget about fact checking and standard quality controls.

The result is that actual "fake news" is slipping into major news outlets. When hit pieces turn out to be false, they bolster Trump's claims about the media and discredit journalists in the eyes of his supporters.

In the latest "Mostly Weekly" Andrew Heaton explains the relationship between "Trump Derangement Syndrome," fake news, and a solution for the media.

Congress is "spending us into oblivion," Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said in a blistering speech on the senate floor yesterday.

This morning, President Trump signed a massive new spending bill that will increase the discretionary budget by about $400 billion.

In memoriam: The GOP once actually pretended to care about fiscal restraint.

Produced by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg.

In 2015, Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the massively popular comic strip Dilbert, boldly predicted that Donald Trump would win the 2016 presidential election.

Adams sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie in front of a live audience in San Francisco to talk about his book, his "extreme liberal" views, the popularity of his live broadcasts with followers via Twitter, and why Trump is a "master persuader."

Edited by Ian Keyser.

"Gun control is not dead, gun control is undead," explains Cody Wilson, the director of Defense Distributed. "We just keep killing it but it keeps coming back."

Wilson, a crypto-anarchist and serial "troublemaker," helped launch the age of the digital gun when he published files showing how to make the Liberator, a 3D-printed pistol, in 2013. It set off a panic in the media and in anti-gun political circles, and the State Department demanded Defense Distributed remove the files from their website.

But five years after the Liberator debut, the technological limitations of homemade firearms have started disappearing. In late 2017, Defense Distributed released files that allow the Ghost Gunner to mill out unfinished metal handgun frames. Wilson says the new focus on handguns is in part a legal strategy based on the 2008 supreme court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, that affirmed the right to own a handgun for self defense.

Produced and edited by Mark McDaniel. Additional footage by Todd Krainin.

Music by Kai Engel and Nine Inch Nails.

"Trump is a refreshing reminder that the guy that's in the White House is another human being," says Louis Rossetto, the co-founder of Wired and author of the new book Change Is Good: A Story of the Heroic Era of the Internet.

In 2013, Rossetto was the co-recipient of Reason's very first Lanny Friedlander Prize, an award named after the magazine's founder that's handed out annually to an individual or group who has created a publication, medium, or distribution platform that vastly expands human freedom.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Rossetto to talk about his new book (the paper version was lavishly designed and crowdfunded on Kickstarter), the 1990s tech boom, and why Trump "diminishes the power of the state" in our heads.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Ian Keyser. Cameras by Paul Detrick, Justin Monticello, Zach Weissmueller.

Machinery by Kai Engel is used under a Creative Commons license.

Libertarians want to shrink the government, but a shutdown is little cause for celebration. Hitting a giant "pause" button on federal agencies won't end the drug war or reform entitlements. A government shutdown doesn't even save money. Back pay to furloughed federal employees ensures that taxpayers pay just as much as they would have if the government had proceeded as normal. But during a shutdown taxpayers don't receive the government services they're paying for, and the economy takes a hit from the disruption.

In the latest "Mostly Weekly," Andrew Heaton explains why libertarians should be against the next government shutdown.

Mostly Weekly is hosted by Andrew Heaton with headwriter Sarah Rose Siskind. Special appearance by Brian Sack.

Script by Andrew Heaton with writing assistance from Sarah Rose Siskind and Brian Sack

Edited by Austin Bragg and Sarah Rose Siskind.

Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.

Theme Song: "Frozen" by Surfer Blood.

New York City is home to some of the world's worst public schools for children with special needs, places that warehouse students in chaotic and unsupportive environments. A growing number of affluent families have successfully sued the city on the grounds that these schools are so bad that taxpayers should pay to send their learning-disabled children to elite private institutions instead. It's a de facto private voucher system that is largely inaccessible to poor families.

What if the city were to provide all families with school choice, so that even disabled kids from poor homes could get an excellent education?

Written, produced, shot, and edited by Jim Epstein. Production assistance from Ian Keyser.

It's school choice week!

What's that? It's a week about giving parents and kids a choice of schools, so they aren't stuck in failing, government-run schools.

John Stossel says amazing things happen at some of these alternatives. He visited one school where the kids like learning. Reading is "rockin' awesome," one kid tells John.

That school was created by Eva Moskowitz. Her "Success Academy" now runs 46 charter schools that teach more than 15,000 students. As a charter, she has more freedom to innovate.

"It's absolutely true that school makes people show up, sit down, shut up and that these are useful skills for people to have in adulthood, " says Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, who blogs at EconLog, and is the author of the new book The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. "So the real question is if all we're trying to do is prepare people for a job, why not prepare them with a job?"

Caplan argues that schools are not only overpriced, but that traditional education fails to prepare students with job skills that reflect the needs of the labor market.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Caplan to make the case that the government needs to spend so much on education if it isn't relevant to our success in getting a job and earning higher wages.

Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Alexis Garcia.