“Ukrainian drones attacked a refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region early Thursday, hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a brief truce spurned by Moscow was over amid deepening tensions with Washington. The drone strike started a fire at the refinery about 300 kilometers (180 miles) southeast of Moscow, Russia’s Defense Ministry and Ryazan Gov. Pavel Malkov said. Russia’s Astra online news outlet posted what it said was a photograph of the blaze. A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that Ukraine had hit the refinery. … Three people were killed and six others injured after the Kirovohrad region of central Ukraine came under a Russian drone attack lasting more than 10 hours, Ukraine’s Emergency Services said Thursday.” (10/15/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“During my entire life, there have been crises and chaos along the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s because of America’s immigration-control program, which has been in existence for more than 100 years. This program is based on the socialist principle of central planning, whereby government officials centrally plan the movements of millions of people who seek entry into the United States. Rather than rely on free-market principles, including the law of supply and demand, the central planners determine how many total immigrants will be permitted to enter the country over the course of each year, how many will be allocated to different countries, and what their credentials will be. It simply cannot be done, at least not without continuous, never-ending chaos and crisis.” (10/15/26)
“President Trump on Wednesday said he was canceling the livestream of the [killing] of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former U.S. Army major who killed 13 people in the 2009 attack on Fort Hood. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had said the [killing] would be livestreamed, a decision that had come under substantial criticism, including from GOP senators who said it would bring the U.S. to the level of terrorist groups who broadcast [killings]. Trump in his statement said he had heard that criticism, and he said that while Hasan deserved to be [killed], it would not be livestreamed. He also argued the livestream might have deterred terrorists.” (10/15/26)
“The federal government just closed fiscal year 2026 with a deficit of nearly $2 trillion, according to figures the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released last Thursday. Only the two pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 were worse. Today, though, there is no recession and no emergency. These enormous budget deficits are the new normal. The usual response to a deficit warning is that the government just needs more money. It doesn’t. Thanks to the remarkable strength of the private sector, federal revenue rose by 3 percent, to more than $5.4 trillion, over the fiscal year. But spending rose by 6 percent, reaching $7.4 trillion.” (10/15/26)
“The former leader of [British-occupied] Ireland’s main pro-British party, Jeffrey Donaldson, received a 15-year prison sentence Thursday for sexually abusing two schoolgirls. Donaldson, 63, kept his hands clasped together but offered no visible reaction as Judge Paul Ramsey said the former Democratic Unionist Party leader must serve an 11-year sentence for raping one girl and a further 4-year term for sexually abusing another. … Donaldson was an MP representing Lagan Valley from 1997 to 2024, first for the moderate Ulster Unionist Party and then — after belatedly breaking with the party over its support for the Good Friday peace accord of 1998 — as a member of the hard-line DUP. Donaldson became DUP leader in 2021, when he oversaw the collapse of [occupied] Ireland’s power-sharing government in a bitter dispute over the region’s peculiar post-Brexit trade rules.” (10/15/26)
“A government that claims the authority to kill persons after they have been subdued, disarmed, tried, convicted and confined in prison has made a startling claim about the nature of political power. It claims not merely the authority to protect the innocent from violence, but the authority to inflict violence when no immediate threat exists. It claims that the taking of human life, which it rightly condemns when committed by private individuals, somehow becomes morally permissible when committed by government agents. This is the fundamental contradiction of the death penalty: Government killing the helpless protects the living. The Declaration of Independence offers a radically different understanding of government.” (10/15/26)
“A list obtained by The Washington Post reveals all the major donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project, including previously undisclosed contributors who have benefited from regulatory decisions, government contracts and, in one case, a pardon for a family member. Tech giants Nvidia and Apple each committed $25 million, the top contribution amount, the list shows. The Adelson family, one of the GOP’s largest donor dynasties, committed that sum as well, as did billionaire Charles Ergen, co-founder and chairman of telecommunications company Dish Network. Absent from the list is Trump himself, who has said that he is helping to pay for the project.” (10/15/26)
“Everyone claims to believe in free speech – until someone says something they dislike. That produces a censorious tit-for-tat cancel culture, not just on the left but increasingly on the right. Instead, we must uphold free speech as a principle for all. And we need to start exercising our free-speech muscles that risk atrophying in an era of progressive censorship. That is why the Battle of Ideas, the original free-speech festival, matters.” (10/15/26)
