“The Trump administration sent Congress its civil nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. Asked what the deal permits, the president wrote: There will be no enrichment of material. His own Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, has said the opposite. The agreement gives Riyadh a pathway to enrich uranium on its own soil, and in doing so the potential for a Saudi nuclear Bomb. To placate fears Wright has put enrichment years down the road but not in doubt. Wright is describing the document. Trump is describing a country he is at war with to prevent from doing exactly this.” (09/08/260
“An online petition calling for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s exclusion from the 9/11 remembrance ceremony later this week has crossed 100,000 signatures amid a similar push made by several prominent Republican leaders from the state, including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Gov. George Pataki. … The petition says the organizers oppose Mamdani’s attendance because of various ‘public positions, associations, and responses to rhetoric’ that are hostile to their values. The petition then outlines eight grievances against the New York Mayor, including allegations of support or association with people who are ‘dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies.'” (09/08/26)
“According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, the military interventions we collectively know as the Global War on Terror (GWOT) led to the deaths of over 900,000 people and cost the United States more than $8 trillion. Afghanistan and Iraq ended in failure. Most Americans (at least, those not named Marc Thiessen or Bill Kristol) believe that the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East were a mistake. Indeed, this was a major part of Donald Trump’s initial appeal: ‘They lied,’ he said of the GWOT’s architects in 2016. We are now a quarter of a century on from the horrific events of September 11. And looking back, it is more important than ever to understand what caused them, and why bin Laden seemed to have gotten what he wanted out of the attacks.” (09/08/26)
“The number of ships sailing through the Panama Canal could be cut further due to drought caused by the El Nino weather pattern, the new administrator of the waterway said on Monday. Panama has declared a nationwide emergency over El Nino, a phenomenon developing over the Pacific Ocean that is affecting worldwide weather patterns and pushing up global temperatures. This year’s El Nino is expected to be the strongest since record-keeping began four decades ago. Panama’s restrictions come even as use of the canal has risen …. Each ship requires about 200 million litres of water, which is then discharged into the sea. In 2023, El Nino forced a reduction in daily transits from 38 to 22 due to the dramatic reduction in reservoir levels.” (09/08/26)
“Labor Day is a great time to remember that we can make workers vastly better off by empowering more of them to vote with their feet, both within countries and through international migration.” (09/07/26)
