“More Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, but layoffs are still rare and jobless claims remain at historically low levels. The Labor Department reported Thursday filings for benefits ticked up to 206,000 last week from a revised 204,000 the week before. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week volatility, rose modestly to 207,250 last week. Claims for jobless benefits are a proxy for layoffs, and economists watch them because they can be a sign of where the job market is headed. For the past year, claims have mostly stayed within a historically low range of 200,000 to 230,000 a week.” (09/03/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“For the life of me, I just cannot understand why anyone would choose serfdom over freedom. After all, we’ve been given only one life to live. Wouldn’t it be better to live that one life in freedom rather than serfdom? The answer seems self-evident to me. It goes without saying that both conservatives and progressives accepted the serfdom society a long time ago. Today, both of them are enthusiastic supporters of it. However, unfortunately there is also a large number of libertarians who have chosen serfdom over freedom. That just makes no sense to me. Libertarianism is about freedom, not serfdom.” (09/03/26)
“Renewed fighting erupted early Thursday between government forces and militias on the outskirts of Somalia’s southwestern city of Baidoa, with reports of heavy gunfire and civilians fleeing their homes. Somalia’s Defense Ministry said government forces responded to an attack by fighters loyal to former South West state President Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen and the al-Qaida-linked extremist group al-Shabab. The clashes are the latest escalation in a political and security dispute between Somalia’s federal government and Laftagareen over control of South West state. Federal forces took control of Baidoa on March 30, after which Laftagareen resigned. He had governed the state since 2018.” (09/03/26)
“Thirty-three Democrats in the U.S. House joined nearly all Republicans to pass a bill Thursday that would require colleges and universities to certify that they are not engaged in a ‘nonexpressive commercial boycott’ of Israel in order to receive federal funding. The legislation was endorsed by pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, while most liberal Jewish groups, including J Street and Democratic leadership, opposed the measure. The Republican-majority chamber voted 237-169 in favor of the ‘Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act,’ which would have to pass the Senate to become law.” (09/03/26)
“This summer the Pentagon handed NATO members a questionnaire asking whether they support in part, ‘U.S. foreign policy priorities.’ Dubbed a ‘loyalty test’ in the press, it was seen by many Europeans as the most recent sign that the alliance is coming apart because of American petulance. Yet what is actually happening is that the U.S. is putting stress on an inherently flawed and now exhausted form of alliance politics. The roots of the present discord were planted not in the 2024 reelection of President Donald Trump, but in the moment of NATO’s Cold War triumph thirty years earlier. Indeed, one of the more puzzling developments after the dissolution of both the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact was the conviction of Western leaders that the time was ripe for new, grand projects of expansion and integration.” (09/03/26)
