“FIFA dropped Friday a plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors after severe backlash from worldwide soccer confederations. President Gianni Infantino had revealed earlier this week a plan to create FIFA Forward Enterprise, which would have offered a 20% stake to private investors in the $20 billion venture. … Finding investors for FFE would have been handled by Thrive Eternal — an investment firm owned by Joshua Kushner, who is the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. But the move was widely panned. The Union of European Football Associations said its 55 national teams would boycott all upcoming FIFA competitions ‘so long as these proposals remain alive.'” (07/31/26)
“Jacob expands on his recent article ‘The Housewives Underground,’ which is about the new book The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery by Kaitlyn Tiffany.” (07/31/26)
“Somewhere in the thousand-plus pages of America’s annual National Defense Authorization Act sits a provision that started out as Section 224 and later became Section 219 in the House version. On paper it looks straightforward: expand technological and defense cooperation between the United States and Israel. In practice it has turned into one of the more revealing fights in current U.S. politics. The reactions on both sides make clear that this is not really about joint research projects or sharing a few more technical papers. It has become a proxy for bigger arguments about how far American security commitments should go, what role Israel should play in Washington’s strategy, and where the Republican Party is headed on foreign policy.” (07/31/26)
“Flight attendants at Canada’s second-largest airline WestJet have gone on strike during one of the busiest summer holiday weekends in the country. As of early Sunday morning, 309 flights have been cancelled, according to the airline. The industrial action centres on issues related to pay, specifically compensation for work they do when the plane has yet to take off – known as ground pay in the airline industry. … Flight attendants and WestJet have been engaged in contract negotiations since September 2025.” (08/02/26)
“Andrew Day and Joseph Addington talk to William LeoGrande about the Trump administration’s regime change plans, some risks of war, and the best path forward for U.S.-Cuba relations.” (07/31/26)
“President Donald Trump is appealing a federal judge’s decision to continue investigating whether his lawsuit against the IRS was part of a greater scheme to mislead the court. Trump filed his notice to appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams, who ruled earlier this month that her court had the authority to continue probing a $10 billion lawsuit Trump, his family and businesses filed against the IRS for failing to safeguard his tax return information from leaks. The parties announced a controversial out-of-court agreement in May in which the Justice Department — representing the IRS — would create a nearly $1.8 billion ‘anti-weaponization fund’ …. In a blistering order July 13, Williams accused Trump of filing the lawsuit to ‘gain the imprimatur of judicial legitimacy for a ‘settlement’ that had no viable basis in law or fact.’ She also said exempting Trump from audits would violate a federal law that prohibits the White House from directing IRS investigations.” (07/31/26)
“The long-run trend has been this: necessities and an array of luxuries (which have become necessities) are spectacularly cheap by historical standards. This is seen clearly in terms of the time price of goods. Governments, of course, have kept the trendline from being smooth. In a thousand ways, politicians and bureaucrats impede the general fall in prices.” (07/31/26)
