Source: Reuters
“The US military carried out a third night of strikes against Iran after President Donald Trump said he is reinstating its blockade of Iranian shipping. The United Arab Emirates says at least two tankers came under Iranian fire in the Strait of Hormuz that Iran insists it has the right to control. Trump earlier declared the United States would ensure the Hormuz strait is open and said it would charge a 20% fee. Bahrain and Jordan say they have intercepted new Iranian attacks on Tuesday as Tehran retaliates with missiles and drones across the Gulf.” (07/14/26)
https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-war-live-us-launches-new-strikes-iran-more-tankers-attacked-hormuz-2026-07-14/
Source: Liberalism.org
by Michael C Munger
“British philosopher Gilbert Ryle famously mocked Descartes’s notion of mind/body dualism, dubbing it ‘the ghost in the machine.’ The mind is in the body, but it’s not of the body. The mind controls the body, independently, ‘everywhere yet nowhere.’ There is a related problem in identifying a ‘will’ in the state: is the state the sort of thing that can have an active, separate will? Or is the will of the state simply the aggregate of individual goals, actions, and votes? The branch of political theory I inhabit, public choice, holds that ghosts don’t exist, because a foundational assumption is methodological individualism. But many people have argued for a romantic, collectivist approach.” (07/13/26)
https://www.liberalism.org/p/the-ghost-in-the-state
Source: Reason
“Did Lindsey Graham Push Trump Toward War?” (07/13/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/07/13/did-lindsey-graham-push-trump-toward-war/
Source: The Hill
“A federal judge Monday voided President Trump’s settlement with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), finding that the lawsuit that served as the hook for the $1.776 billion so-called Anti-Weaponization fund amounted to collusion as the two parties were never truly averse. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams comes after she was asked to reopen the case [by] intervenors who said a settlement to create an ‘anti-weaponization’ fund tainted the case. … Williams found that Trump’s $10 billion case against the IRS was ‘brought for an improper purpose—to gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.”’ As part of the order, the judge also referred Trump’s lawyer Alejandro Brito to the Florida bar for consideration of disciplinary action after finding that sanctions were warranted.” (07/13/26)
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5966060-trump-irs-settlement-voided-federal-judge
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“With the death of 71-year-old U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham and the hospitalization of 84-year-old U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, not to mention the 80-year-old President Trump, some commentators are questioning whether it’s a good thing that the federal government has so many senior citizens working in it. … The problem America faces, however, is not the old age of its federal officials but rather the dysfunctional systems that 20th-century and 21st-century Americans have grafted onto the federal government. Those systems have brought failure, death, and destruction of liberty and privacy. The result would be no different if the federal government were being run by people with an average age of 45.” (07/13/26)
https://www.fff.org/2026/07/13/the-problem-isnt-old-public-officials/
Source: ABC News
“Hungary’s Parliament voted Monday to pass a constitutional amendment aimed at removing President Tamás Sulyok, part of an effort by the country’s new leadership to dismantle the autocratic political system of former prime minister Viktor Orbán. After winning in a landslide election in April, Prime Minister Péter Magyar and his pro-European, center-right Tisza party hold a two-thirds majority in Parliament, allowing them to make constitutional changes and roll back many of the policies Orbán implemented during his 16 years in power. The constitutional amendment, which had the stated purpose of ‘restoring rule-of-law democracy,’ passed with 139 votes for and six against. Tisza lawmakers held a standing ovation after the vote, while lawmakers from Orbán’s far-right Fidesz party boycotted the parliamentary session.” (07/13/26)
https://abcnews.com/International/wireStory/hungary-passes-constitutional-amendment-remove-orbn-era-president-134720264
Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye
“Ayn Rand captured the moral bankruptcy of racism better than almost anyone when she wrote that it is ‘the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.’ She understood that racism reduces human beings to representatives of a group, assigning moral, social, and political significance to ancestry rather than treating people as individuals. That’s why phrases like ‘heritage American’ bother me. The phrase is deliberately vague. … Every American has a heritage. The descendants of enslaved people have one. The descendants of Ellis Island immigrants have one. The children of Vietnamese refugees have one. Native Americans certainly have one. Heritage isn’t the distinguishing feature. The phrase only makes sense if ‘heritage’ refers to a particular ancestry that some people believe is more authentically American than others.” (07/13/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/hiding-racism-and-nativism-behind
Source: NBC News
“South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster on Monday appointed Darline Graham Nordone, the sister of Sen. Lindsey Graham, to serve the remainder of the late Republican senator’s term, which ends in early January. … Graham Nordone will finish her brother’s six-year term, which ends Jan. 3. The senator died Saturday at the age of 71 of what was preliminarily diagnosed as a rupture of his aorta due to a hardening of his arteries, his office said Sunday. … It’s unclear if Graham Nordone would want to run for her brother’s seat. Graham had been seeking a fifth term in the Senate in this year’s midterm elections after defeating a wealthy GOP challenger in his state’s Republican primary last month.” (07/13/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/trump-lindsey-graham-sister-darline-mcmaster-appoint-senate-term-rcna587302
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“The government is watching. It watches where you go, whom you meet, where you worship, what medical offices you visit, what political rallies you attend, what protests you join, what books you read, what websites you visit and what causes you support. It watches through your phone, your car, your doorbell, your appliances, your purchases, your social media accounts and the cameras positioned along the roads you travel every day. This is how freedom dies in the digital police state: not always through dramatic declarations of martial law or soldiers stationed on every street corner, but through the gradual construction of a technological dragnet—an electronic concentration camp—so pervasive that privacy becomes impossible and anonymity becomes suspicious.” (07/13/26)
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/while_the_political_circus_distracts_us_flock_builds_the_digital_police_state
Source: The Guardian [UK]
“Previously withheld evidence regarding the [murders] of Renée Good and Alex Pretti is now in the hands of Minnesota prosecutors, helping the state gain clarity on the [murders] that occurred earlier this year during protests against a federal immigration crackdown. ‘Through the cooperation of our federal partners, we have obtained hard drives of previously withheld evidence in the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, and the shooting of Julio Sosa-Celis,’ the Hennepin county attorney, Mary Moriarty, said in a video statement posted on social media. The newly obtained evidence includes Good’s car, statements, police body-camera video and other evidence that federal officials had previously withheld in the [murders].” (07/13/26)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/13/renee-good-alex-pretti-minnesota-evidence
