“The Supreme Court ruling that upholds states’ rights to ban transgender athletes from competing in girls and women’ sports provoked wailing from the usual suspects. New York Attorney General Letitia James denounced what she called ‘cruel and discriminatory laws targeting the trans community’, and accused the court of deciding to continue on a ‘dangerous and harmful path’. Oh, please.” (06/30/26)
“Italy on Tuesday put on display one of the best known examples of Etruscan painting, panels from a tomb that it acquired for 15 million euros ($17 million) in the Culture Ministry’s buying spree of big-ticket pieces of the country’s cultural heritage. The ministry announced in May that it had acquired the fresco panels, dating from the 4th century, from members of the Torlonia family, one of Italy’s ancient noble families whose vast collection of antiquity has long been kept out of the public domain. The Francois Tomb was discovered in 1857 by the French archaeologist Alessandro Francois in Vulci, on land owned by the Torlonia family. The frescoes were detached from the necropolis in 1863 and became part of the Torlonia private collection, while the contents of the tomb were divided up among Francois, colleagues and the family.” (06/30/26)
“When Congress passed the Sherman Act in 1890, John Sherman told the Senate, ‘If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life’. The act intended to keep concentrated private power from becoming a sovereign authority unto itself. It lasted five years before the Supreme Court took it apart. In United States v. E.C. Knight (1895), the Court held that manufacturing was not commerce and therefore lay beyond the reach of federal antitrust law. The case concerned the American Sugar Refining Company, which by acquisition controlled more than 90 percent of the nation’s sugar refining capacity. The Court drew its commerce line precisely where the largest industrial concentration in the country sat, and the trust walked free.” (07/01/26)
“On the advent of America’s 250th anniversary, the conventional narrative is that our country is deeply divided. Typical takes on the state of disunity in the United States include this headline from a guest op-ed that recently appeared in USA Today, ‘America celebrated together at 200. We won’t at 250’, and ‘We still had a sense of oneness then. We no longer do’. In a related news article, the publication cited major national surveys that ‘consistently show an anxious nation’ and ‘a divisive president’. These observations aren’t wrong, but the divisions they cite (partisan politics, old vs. young, racial polarization, bitter disagreements over social issues) are missing the biggest source of alienation of all, which is diminished economic opportunity. Fully half of American households report living paycheck to paycheck.” (07/01/26)
“It was the deadliest reported strike in the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, and most of the victims were children. Yet over four months since a U.S. missile struck an Iranian primary school, there is no final accounting of what happened. The Trump administration has not directly accepted the blame, though the military possessed evidence almost immediately that the site had been struck, a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation, speaking anonymously to discuss an ongoing investigation. told The Associated Press. Drawing from interviews with U.S. officials, human rights workers and Iranians in direct contact with rescuers and families of victims, the AP reconstructed the strike and its aftermath to reveal new details of what happened. Most requested anonymity for fear of retribution against them and their sources.” (07/01/26)
“A Wisconsin high school graduate is alleging religious discrimination after school officials barred her from including a Bible verse in a graduation ceremony slideshow due to the district’s neutrality policy. Sarianne Beronja, a 2026 graduate of Arrowhead High School in Waukesha County, said she submitted Proverbs 3:6 as her personal message to appear beside her photo in a slideshow playing during the commencement ceremony. The verse reads: ‘In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path’. Beronja said that less than 24 hours before the ceremony, an associate principal told her she could not use the verse because religious messages are prohibited. The student said school officials also told her she could not share an alternative message thanking God for being ‘beside me through these last four years’.” (07/01/26)
“This summer, a seismic wave ripped through the foundations of an ossified Democratic establishment as a swell of left-wing challengers channeled disgust at party elites to jolt the entire political system. On June 23, a slate of candidates emerged victorious with endorsements and support from the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. They toppled longtime incumbents and added fuel to the economic populist electoral movement that has been sweeping the country. Union organizer Claire Valdez won a race for an open seat in New York’s 7th District, encompassing swaths of Brooklyn and Queens, by more than 20 points while community activist Darializa Avila Chevalier took out Adriano Espaillat in NY-13, in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, and former comptroller Brad Lander (endorsed by Mamdani but not DSA) beat out Rep. Dan Goldman in NY-10, in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, by more than 30 points.” (06/30/26)
“The song ‘Right Here, Right Now’ by Jesus Jones opens with the line, ‘A woman on the radio talks about revolution, when it’s already passed her by’. There are some people who peaked in high school and never got over it – never changing their hair or general style from when they were at the pinnacle of popularity. It’s sad, really, not that the person seems frozen in the midst of good memories from long ago, but that they haven’t continued to advance since then. Life has lapped them; passed them by and left them in the dust. In many ways, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is like that person who hasn’t moved forward, having been lapped by events and left behind by the ‘revolution’ she was the spokesmodel for.” (06/30/26)
“GPT-5.3-Codex, 5.5 Pro, and 5.6 Family. Gemini 3.1 Family and 3.5 Flash. DeepSeek-V4-Pro and Flash. Claude Opus 4.8, Fable 5, and Mythos 5. Voxtral TTS and Realtime … This hodgepodge of names and numbers captures only some of the many new or upgraded artificial intelligence models released in the first six months of 2026. The technology, it’s clear, is moving by leaps and bounds. In parallel, AI firms are taking smaller but arguably just as significant steps to incorporate core principles of ethics and moral and religious reasoning into model development. Some companies are embedding in-house ‘philosophers’ to help with complex questions surrounding design ethics at the human-AI interface. Google DeepMind reportedly has 10 such individuals on staff, hiring two from Cambridge and Carnegie Mellon universities this year. And Anthropic’s Amanda Askell has been featured in multiple media reports.” (06/29/26)
“Win some blue-state and blue-city races, and the cocky new socialist Jacobins believe that they have either already taken over the Democratic Party or will soon absorb it. And in reaction to these new swarms, an increasingly terrified and ossified old Democrat guard either limps away from the hive or invites them in to take over more. It is fascinating but ultimately depressing to watch old-style Democrats say or do anything to avoid the new mob of Robespierres. Democrat candidates who recently begged for a Schumer/Pelosi/Jeffries endorsement now are telling them to get in line at the guillotine. Jewish American Democrats are terrified that what happened to the primaried and defeated Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, an arch-Trump hater, could befall them. Goldman’s obnoxious showboating hatred of Trump and championing of neo-socialist agendas offered no defense against the Jacobins’ antisemitism and hatred of Israel.” (06/30/26)
