“In an attempt before American mid-term elections to shift blame for high U.S. fuel prices from his unnecessary and now counterproductive attack on Iran, President Donald Trump recently called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to ask him to quit targeting Russia’s oil refineries in retaliation for Russia’s aggressive war on his country. … The problem with Trump’s blame game is that it would be much easier for him to end his war with Iran to reduce pain at the pump for U.S. voters and the world than it would be for Ukraine to stop its air attacks on Russia, as long as Russian dictator Vladimir Putin fails to end his potential existential air attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilian targets. And as winter nears, Putin is unlikely to stop the onslaught and pass up another chance to freeze Ukrainians as the weather turns colder.” (09/29/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Tyler Coward
“Yesterday, the Department of Education formally repealed the Biden administration’s 2024 Title IX regulations and restored the 2020 rule promulgated during the first Trump administration. The repeal does little to change the status quo; federal courts already vacated the unlawful 2024 rule nationwide and ED has enforced the 2020 regulation for over a year and a half now. But the move does remove the last source of ambiguity by making the Code of Federal Regulations match the rule that is actually in force. For civil liberties advocates, this development is welcome news.” (09/29/26)
“Federal prosecutors in Texas announced charges Tuesday against Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, a Venezuelan delivery driver shot and seriously wounded by an ICE officer in Austin this month. The charges came a day before he was set to appear in court to challenge the legality of his immigration detention. Garcés Pérez, 28, was charged with one count of assaulting, resisting and impeding a federal officer, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Garcés Pérez was wounded by an ICE officer in the upper part of his back on Sept. 20 while he was in his car making DoorDash deliveries.” (09/29/26)
“Economist and historian Lawrence W. (‘Larry’) Reed, President Emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education, discusses his book Born of Ideas: How Principles, Faith, and Courage Forged America, where he traces the founding of America from the Mayflower Compact in 1620 through the Bill of Rights.” (09/29/26)
“Cartels, we are told in our high school (and college) history and social study classes, were outlawed by Congress way back in 1890. That is 136 years ago. But that obviously applies to our situation today. We have a governmental cartel, from DC right down to the tiniest village and special district governing board, the smallest county, and everything in between. It is a cartel that consists of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Two wings of the same vulture seeking out the next corpse to feast on.” (09/29/26)
“The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday extended by six months the mandate of an international security force in Haiti intended to fight powerful armed groups that have taken control of much of the country. Twelve nations voted to renew the mandate of the Gang Suppression Force (GSF) and none voted against. Three nations, however, abstained: China, Russia and Pakistan, whose representatives cited concerns over insufficient funds, personnel and efficacy. The extension is intended to provide security ahead of Haiti’s first election in a decade in December. Armed groups continue to control large parts of the Caribbean nation despite successive international deployments, and the force has struggled to deploy enough troops to carry out its mandate.” (09/29/26)
Source: Chris’s Substack
by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
“Before Russian Radical, both critics and fans of Rand viewed her work strictly as a reaction against her Russian background. Russian Radical fundamentally shifted the interpretive matrix in its focus on those aspects of the Russian context that Rand absorbed. In fairness, then, it’s not as if Russian Radical’s theses were uniquely rejected or ignored by Rand’s critics; many, if not most of her admirers who saw Rand as sui generis, repudiated its theses as well. But in doing so, both the critics and the admirers have bracketed out some of the most sophisticated aspects of Rand’s thought. They are ill-equipped to understand Rand’s historical roots and dialectical sensibilities.” (09/29/26)
“The US Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted restrictions on the deportations of immigrants to countries that are not their own, while agreeing to hear the issue on its merits in December. The conservative-dominated high court granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to suspend a lower court ruling that restricted, but did not outright ban, so-called ‘third-country removals.’ The lower court had said that people targeted with deportation must be given effective notice ahead of time about where they are being sent to allow them to raise concerns about potential persecution. The three liberal [sic] justices on the nine-member panel said they would not have granted the Trump administration’s request.” (09/29/26)
“[W]hat happens when every insurance company gets told that, by law, it must pay for this or that kind of genetic screening? In four words, everyone’s healthcare costs go up. … all of us get to pay for testing we may or may not ever want or need. In a free and open healthcare market, many insurers might cover these tests as part of their normal policies, or offer them as cheap add-on options to those most likely to want them. After all, testing for ovarian cancer is much cheaper than treating ovarian cancer. However, we live in the opposite of a free and open healthcare market.” (09/29/26)
