Source: Informed Comment
by Alex Poppe

“As the midterms draw near, I’ve been thinking about the role art plays in catalyzing political change. On September 12, the documentary film NAZA, which interrogates the systems used by the Israel government to target and calculate Palestinian civilian casualities in Gaza, was awarded the Special Jury Prize at the Venice International Film Festival after receiving a 25-minute standing ovation.” (10/08/26)

https://www.juancole.com/2026/10/palestine-third-democratic.html

Source: Show-Me Institute
by Avery Frank

“Private electricity grids, also known as consumer-regulated electricity (CRE), are a free-market policy idea that allows private entities to meet the demand of new large-load users like data centers entirely off the ratepayer-supported grid. Private electricity grids can benefit average ratepayers, developers, and government institutions like the Missouri Public Service Commission (MPSC) by shifting some of the risk and need for new electricity onto private investors, while also giving those investors the benefit of reduced regulation and quicker speed to operation. This has been an idea I have been beating the drum on for a long time. But recently, private electricity grids have started to be used in practice.” (10/07/26)

https://showmeinstitute.org/article/economy/private-electricity-grids-meeting-the-data-center-moment/

Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead

“Donald Trump promised to shrink the federal government. But what if Trump’s pledge to cut the federal work force wasn’t really about eliminating government bureaucracy but outsourcing it to the AI tech sector? What if Trump, with the backing of a self-serving industry eager to automate government, is instead helping to build a government that no longer needs as many human beings to operate it? Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are disappearing from the government payroll at the same time that Washington is racing to automate the work they once performed with artificial intelligence. … What we are watching unfold is the construction of a government that requires fewer human beings to carry out its will, fewer human beings to question its orders, and fewer human beings to stand in the way when efficiency collides with legality, morality or constitutional restraint.” (10/07/26)

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/ai_authoritarianism_a_government_without_constitutional_brakes

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Richard M Ebeling

“Americans celebrate the 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. They hail being a free people. They thank veterans and active military personnel for their service in keeping America free. But are we any more free in terms of the pervasive presence of government oversight, control, regulation, and planning of virtually every corner of everyday life than those Germans thought of themselves as free in the 1930s? Yes, we are not a dictatorship, but if both major political parties advocate and insist upon the same political paternalism, with the only difference being the forms and extent of it, how far is it, in fact, from living in a one-party state?” (10/07/26)

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/they-thought-they-were-free-are-we/