Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Harry Phibbs
“Like the United States, the United Kingdom has a first-past-the-post voting system. This tends to entrench a two-party system. It takes a lot for other rivals to break through. The resulting culture of complacency and entitlement by the main parties is certainly less than ideal. In the UK, politics has been dominated by the Conservative and Labour Parties for the last century. In 1922, Labour overtook the Liberal Party. By 1924, the Liberal Party’s support had collapsed. Our opinion polling suggests that just over a hundred years later, British politics is having another shake-up. An insurgent party called Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, a friend of Donald Trump’s, has a commanding lead in the polls, and has done so since the end of April last year.” (01/28/26)
“In principle, extremists primarily seek to harm people who do not share their race, religion, or nationality. In practice, they often harm the very people they claim to serve and protect, people with whom they share some supposedly sacred demographic. Consider Minnesota, currently under siege by anti-immigrant extremists in the employ of the federal government, with ICE and CBP at the forefront. Immigrants have indisputably suffered the most from this program of harm, but we have seen a recent turn toward harming non-immigrants.” (01/28/26)
“The group behind the nationwide ‘No Kings’ protests are planning their fourth demonstration of President Donald Trump’s second term — and are anticipating even greater turnout than their earlier rallies. Ezra Levin, a rally organizer and the co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, said in an interview that the planned third ‘No Kings’ protest on March 28 is in response to a ‘secret police force terrorizing American communities.’ … Indivisible estimated 3 million protesters turned out for its ‘Hands Off’ rally in April 2025, while 5 million showed up in June as part of the first ‘No Kings’ protest and 7 million for the second ‘No Kings’ demonstration in October. Organizers said they are aiming for nearly 9 million people to turn out in March.” (01/28/26)
“Protein-folding models are the success story in AI for science. In the late 2010s, researchers from Google DeepMind used machine learning to predict the three-dimensional shape of proteins. AlphaFold 2, announced in 2020, was so good that its creators shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry with an outside academic. Yet many academics have had mixed feelings about DeepMind’s advances.” (01/28/26)
“You’re a government official and you have just learned that some of your employees have shot and killed a civilian. You don’t have all the facts, and there are discrepancies in the initial accounts. What do you do? For most of us, I presume, the answer is to call the victim’s family to express condolences and then to promise the public a full investigation followed by whatever consequences the results warrant. That’s how previous administrations, regardless of party, would have responded. But the Trump administration views such niceties as weakness. Looking weak, giving an inch to the critics, must be avoided at all costs. … If the administration were consciously pursuing a strategy optimized for producing confrontation rather than for bringing down the number of illegal immigrants, it would be proceeding just as it has been.” (01/28/26)
Source: Popular Information
by Judd Legum & Noel Sims
“After ICU nurse Alex Pretti was fatally shot by federal officers at point-blank range, legacy media outlets reported that President Trump made significant changes to his immigration crackdown in Minnesota. … But what, exactly, has changed about Trump’s policy in Minnesota? The immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis area will continue indefinitely. Trump has made no announcement to end — or even suspend — the operation. Nor will any of the leaders who have been overseeing the operation that resulted in the death of Pretti and another U.S. citizen, Renee Good, be held accountable.” (01/28/26)
“Turkish authorities have arrested six people, including an Iranian national, on suspicion of spying for Iran, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Wednesday. The arrests followed coordinated operations carried out by Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization and counterterrorism police across five provinces. The suspects are believed to have been in contact with members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and are accused of gathering information on military bases and other sensitive sites in Turkey, Anadolu reported. They allegedly conducted surveillance of NATO’s Incirlik air base in southern Turkey.” (01/28/26)
“Ted Cruz is reportedly planning on running for president. But which version? The Tea Party Republican senator who once called the Iraq war a mistake, tried to appeal to non-interventionist Ron Paul libertarians, questioned Barack Obama’s authority to strike Syria, warned against U.S. military adventurism, who was also once the favored alternative to Donald Trump in the 2016 GOP presidential primary only to eventually capitulate to MAGA even after Trump insulted his wife? No. This Cruz will be neocon. But without calling it that, or even appearing to rebrand to Trump voters, while also, in actuality, rebranding.” (01/28/26)
