“When I left the Army in 2013 I had a terrible experience with the VA. Despite having a simple profile and a graduate degree, it took me years to navigate the system after a comedy of administrative errors. I lived the dysfunction that was in all the headlines in 2014. Yet years later, whenever I re-engage, it’s a transformed experience for the better. Things just seem to work and I go back about my life. When government services work, they stop feeling remarkable.” (07/15/26)
“President Donald Trump’s holding company took a $2 million payment last year from a top investor in a South Korean aluminum firm as the company was fighting a trade case before Trump’s Commerce Department, highlighting the president’s business ties to companies with business before his administration. The payment from Base Co. LTD was part of a ‘letter of intent’ and a ‘nonrefundable development fee,’ according to the president’s latest financial disclosure. The New York Times first reported the transaction. Base Group is a key shareholder in Korea Aluminium, one of several companies that the Commerce Department has accused of circumventing duties imposed on Chinese aluminum. The company has also had a years-long business relationship with the Trump family business, selling Trump-branded wine in South Korea.” (07/14/26)
“A new report from Unleash Prosperity, a free-market policy group, makes a bold and welcome claim: reforming the FDA could unlock trillions of dollars. The authors’ biggest target isn’t safety testing. It’s the years the FDA spends proving a drug actually works. Trim one year off that process, they estimate, and we generate more than $10 trillion in value to patients and producers. Trim six years, and the figure climbs past $60 trillion. … It takes roughly a decade for a new drug to clear the agency. Most of that time isn’t spent proving the drug is safe. It’s spent proving it works. Developing one now costs nearly $880 million on average, closer to $1.2 billion for cancer and eye treatments, and about 90 percent of trials fail. Meanwhile, the report notes, China has cut its lab-to-trial timelines by 50 to 70 percent and runs clinical trials 50 to 60 percent cheaper than we do.” (07/14/26)
“Zohran Mamdani wants to be a knight in shining armor, coming to save New Yorkers from … their streaming subscriptions. The mayor’s office has announced a new city rule that promises to make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up for one. Do New Yorkers seriously need the government to step in and save them from their streaming subscription after a free trial renews? Let’s be adults here. This new rule, touted by the administration as a pillar of ‘Mayor Mamdani’s affordability agenda,’ is part of the larger phenomenon that propelled him into office: pandering to the entitled. For too many Mamdani supporters, the affordability crisis isn’t about the price of eggs. It’s about their inability to exercise the most basic requirements of fiscal responsibility without the government swooping in to hold their hand through the process.” (07/14/26)
“President Donald Trump said Tuesday the United States no longer believes it needs a military presence in Iraq, arguing Iran has been weakened enough for Baghdad to stand on its own as the U.S.-led coalition mission approaches its planned Sept. 30 conclusion. … Trump said the U.S. partnership with Iraq would shift away from military cooperation toward investment and energy development, while [Iraqi Prime Minister Ali] al-Zaidi said: ‘The 30th of September, the U.S. forces would be out of Iraq. While U.S. companies will be inside Iraq.'” (07/14/26)
“The most consequential thing that the war between the United States and Iran revealed has nothing to do with missiles or centrifuges. The war has shown just how much of the world’s economy now turns on the unchecked decisions of individual men: an American president who could start the war without asking Congress, and a Tehran regime that could respond by putting a fifth of the world’s oil beyond anyone’s reach. … The largest oil and gas supply disruption in history is far from over, but its strongest legacy might well end the dominance of fossil fuels.” (07/14/26)
“British counterterrorism police on Tuesday said Ann Widdecombe, a right-wing politician who was killed last week, had been the victim of a ‘targeted attack.’ Widdecombe, 78, was found dead at her home in Haytor, in Devon, southwestern England, on Thursday, having sustained serious injuries. A 28-year-old British man from Rotherham, a town in northern England around 270 miles away from the crime scene, was arrested on suspicion of murder on Saturday. On Monday, the police said they were also holding him ‘on suspicion of commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.'” (07/14/26)
