“The purpose of political events these days isn’t so much retail public engagement as it is the production of sound bites for campaign use that’s more controlled and enjoys more reach than a huddle with a few citizens at a high school auditorium. But the main reason for real, physical, local ‘town hall aversion’ is the possibility of embarrassing confrontations with the angry sector of the public in question. And there’s ALWAYS an angry sector of the public, no matter which party the politician in question affiliates with or what policy positions that politician takes. We’ve all seen it on TV. In fact, it’s generally the only part of a ‘town hall’ event we ever DO see on TV outside of actual campaign ads.” (08/11/26)
“A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down a Biden administration-era rule setting efficiency standards for gas and electric stoves and ovens, saying the agency improperly bypassed public comment procedures. In a 3-0 decision, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in favor of seven Republican-led states — Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas and Utah — that challenged the Department of Energy’s ‘direct final rule’ for consumer-grade stoves and ovens. The August 2024 rule was intended to limit how much energy consumers use in kitchen appliances, and to ban an older technology known as linear power supplies. Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham said the Energy Department should not have fast-tracked the rule, knowing that numerous states opposed a 2023 attempt to enact similar efficiency standards.” (08/11/26)
“Washington has long debated individual interventions while paying less attention to the expanding presidential authority that made them possible. Trump did not create this system; he inherited it. His presidency, however, exposed how much war-making power has accumulated in the executive branch and how far the country has moved from the constitutional balance the founders envisioned. The Constitution’s principle is clear: decisions about war should not rest with one person. The president is commander in chief, but Congress received the authority to declare war because the framers feared concentrated power.” (08/11/26)
“Volodymyr Zelensky revealed on Tuesday that Kyiv has delivered fresh proposals to American negotiators aimed at ending the four-year war with Russia. US-mediated talks have been on ice since the war in Iran broke out in February. Efforts to bring Ukraine and Russia back to the table have not produced any material results since. But even with the war in the Middle East no closer to being resolved, the Ukrainian president said in his nightly address: ‘We have conveyed our proposals to the American side.'” (08/11/26)
Source: The Daily Economy
by Alex Tokarev, Gabriel F. Benzecry, & Kristin Tokarev
“ou’ve no doubt heard the horrifying stories of dictators who abused their people for personal gain or sheer cruelty. Stalin’s Great Purge, Mao’s engineered famine, and Pinochet’s brutal torture of dissidents are just a few notorious examples. If all dictatorships are hell, a difficult question remains: which offers the better odds of survival, or even prosperity? Is it a dictatorship that tolerates some free-market capitalism, or one built on socialism?” (08/11/26)
“Four leading human rights groups have launched a new lawsuit against the Trump administration’s campaign against the International Criminal Court. The new lawsuit filed on Tuesday charges that the administration’s wide-ranging sanctions against the international tribunal and organisations that cooperate with it risk treading on the constitutional rights of US citizens and groups. It adds to several previous legal challenges making similar claims. The four US-based groups – The American Friends Service Committee, the Centre for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the Open Society Institute – charge the sanctions ‘force them to curtail a wide range of human rights and legal work’. That, in turn, violates their constitutional rights, including their freedom of speech and their right to due process.” (08/11/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Sarah McLaughlin
“Late last year, the United Kingdom, France, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and dozens more nations signed the United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime, a treaty ostensibly intended to improve global cooperation to fight crimes taking place over computer systems. Canada joined them this summer. The United States remains a notable exception and says it is still reviewing the treaty. Three nations have since ratified it, and the treaty will enter into force 90 days after 40 states do so. As FIRE has long warned, the treaty opens the door to greater violations of free expression online — and new cybercrime bills popping up around the world show why.” (08/11/26)
“Unrelenting heat waves across the United States in July helped push the nation to its warmest month, breaking a 132-year-old record, federal officials say. The 76.9-degree average was 3.3 degrees above the 20th century average, according to the July climate summary released Aug. 10 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which tracks the nation’s weather and long-term climate. That temperature was a fraction warmer than records set in July 1936 and July 2012. Though daytime temperatures were blazing hot and disrupted many of the festivities around the nation’s 250th anniversary, it was the overnight temperatures that proved most extreme, soaring above the record set in July 2022 by 0.7 degrees. The U.S. records mirror a pattern seen across many parts of the world in July.” (08/11/26)
“The Federal Bureau of Investigations launched Sentinel in 2005 with an expanded budget and intensified project management discipline. With the active involvement of at least 18 concurrent oversight and governance bodies — the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, and numerous congressional committees among them — what could go wrong? Turns out, quite a lot. Sentinel rapidly degraded into an unusable product that threatened to waste hundreds of millions of dollars.” (08/11/26)
