Author: Thomas L. Knapp

Source: Libertarian Institute
by Ted Snider

“Last week, on the sidelines of the NATO summit, Volodymyr Zelensky repeated his demand that Ukraine be invited to join NATO, which was bold, considering that Ukraine’s president wasn’t even invited to the NATO summit. Zelensky attended a leaders dinner but was not invited to speak at, or even attend, the summit’s meetings. This year, Zelensky’s argument for NATO membership took a new direction. While the Ankara Summit Declaration, released at the end of the summit, renewed NATO’s ‘unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its freedom, sovereignty, and territorial integrity,’ it did not repeat the pledge made at earlier summits that Ukraine would become a member of NATO.” (07/14/26)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/zelenskys-strange-trip-to-the-nato-summit

Source: The Bulwark
by Jonathan V Last

“Yesterday the president of the United States made an announcement that changed the face of the world order. He declared that, starting immediately, the United States would charge a 20 percent toll on the shipping of all goods through the Strait of Hormuz. We should be clear: This was never going to happen. The U.S. Navy will not keep a fleet of ships in the region permanently. Neither China, India, Japan, Australia, nor any other country will pay 20 percent tariffs to the United States on cargo moving through the strait. This was make-believe. The president of the United States was issuing proclamations utterly detached from reality, like a late-stage Saddam Hussein. You can tell that Trump’s plan is make-believe because of the non-reaction from the rest of the world.” (07/15/26)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-emperors-tollbooth-strait-hormuz-toll-trump-iran

Source: Exiled Policy
by Nick Gambill

“The network of ALPRs that is expanding across the country is rife with abuse and raises serious concerns about grand promises of greater security at the expense of serious encroachments on Americans’ civil liberties. The explosion of ALPRs along American roadways has given law enforcement considerable access to data on American motorists and their behavior. That these tools are marketed to agencies in heavily populated areas and constructed along our busiest roads is no coincidence.” (07/14/26)

https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/small-cameras-can-create-a-big-problem

Source: The American Prospect
by Harold Meyerson

“There’s a long history of federal government intervention in the internal affairs of unions. The grounds for such interventions have usually run the gamut from ideology and politics (e.g., the Taft-Hartley Act’s purge of Communists from the ranks of union leaders) to corruption (the control of various unions by organized crime, e.g., much of the Teamsters until roughly 1990). But the personal pique of a government official was never really the reason behind any such intervention—until today. In the past three weeks, the federal monitor charged with overseeing the United Auto Workers has become, in effect, the most significant supporter of UAW Vice President Rich Boyer’s campaign to unseat UAW President Shawn Fain in the union’s upcoming quadrennial election, to be decided by a vote of the rank and file in the next few months.” (07/14/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/07/14/monitor-amok-uaw-shawn-fain-investigation/

Source: The Realist Review
by Martin Sieff

“[Lindsey] Graham’s supposed transformation into the Apostle of Trump on his personal road to Damascus should have come as no surprise, for it was completely consistent with his entire career of living out one lie after another. As Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman, every word Graham ever uttered was a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’ Indeed, everything about Graham was a lie – just as are all the sickly sweet, sentimentalized tears now pouring forth at his passing.” (07/14/26)

https://therealistreview.substack.com/p/requiem-for-a-chickenhawk