Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Reason
by Damon Root

“President Donald Trump failed in his efforts to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court into upholding his executive order on birthright citizenship, which would have stripped that constitutional guarantee from millions of babies born on U.S. soil. Now a Republican lawmaker is hoping to effectively overrule that Supreme Court decision with a proposed bill that would resurrect Trump’s unlawful order and place it in the federal statute books. As The Hill reports, ‘Indiana Republican Sen. Jim Banks on Monday introduced a bill that would codify President Trump’s Day 1 executive order reshaping the definition of birthright citizenship in the U.S.’ There’s just one problem with Banks'[s] scheme: Trump lost the birthright citizenship case Trump v. Barbara on constitutional grounds, which means that any federal law repeating Trump’s already rejected position would be equally unconstitutional under the very Supreme Court precedent that Banks is now hoping to evade.” (07/16/26)

https://reason.com/2026/07/16/no-congress-cant-just-overrule-the-supreme-court-on-birthright-citizenship/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Sarah Gustafson

“A Chinese writer uses Alexis de Tocqueville to defend the CCP.” (07/16/26)

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/freedom-with-chinese-characteristics/

Source: The American Conservative
by Anthony J Constantini

“Some have also argued that America’s presence in Europe allows for power projection into the Middle East. Leaving aside the question of whether facilitating our involvement in that region’s interminable conflicts is itself desirable, the recent kerfuffle with Italy over the use of our bases for Operation Epic Fury suggests that even this is not guaranteed. By appearing to condition U.S. commitments on European defense spending, Trump is ultimately giving our allies a measure of control over our foreign policy. They themselves recognize this: during the summit, one NATO diplomat said NATO leaders increasingly viewed Trump as ‘the boy who cried wolf.’ Indeed, the playbook for future NATO summits—if the alliance keeps up the practice—has already been written.” (07/16/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/bring-the-troops-home-mr-president/

Source: Tenth Amendment Center
by Michael Boldin

“Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr. -.along with the rest of the founders and old revolutionaries – knew that freedom cannot exist with a government that doesn’t have strict rules. A clear line in the sand that it’s not allowed to cross. In other words – when government determines the extent of its own power. The lessons they learned in the American Revolution gave birth to the written constitution. But what they told us are the reasons for it – are completely ignored by the government-run ‘education’ system.” (07/16/26)

https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2026/07/16/the-reasons-the-constitution-exists/

Source: Liberalism.org

“A new nation needs many things. A way of ordering its political life. A way of protecting itself. A way of sustaining its population. But a nation also needs something far less practical. It needs a story to tell itself about itself. These kinds of origin stories have often been told in the form of poetry. … One of the most prolific—but now most forgotten—poetic mythmakers was the editor of Philadelphia’s National Gazette, friend of James Madison, critic of the Federalists, sea captain, and abolitionist Philip Freneau (1752–1832). One could pull nearly any poem from his list of works and find something interesting to say about American identity and the revolutionary era.” (07/15/26)

https://www.liberalism.org/p/philip-freneau-the-poet-we-need-right-now