“Hakeem Jeffries is rolling out the welcome mat for the people who want his head mounted on their trophy wall. The House minority leader offered a hearty “welcome aboard” to state Assembly members Claire Valdez and Micah Lasher as well as congressional candidates Darializa Avila Chevalier and Brad Lander, both progressive Democrats associated with the Democratic Socialists of America. All but Lasher were backed by slick DSA kingmaker Mayor Zohran Mamdani. ‘Congratulations to our newest members of the NYC congressional delegation,’ he wrote on X. ‘From public servants to union organizers to community activists, the path is different but the work is the same. We must decisively address the affordability crisis and crush far-right extremism!’ Never mind that Dems would classify immigration enforcement and strong borders as ‘far-right extremism’.” (07/05/26)
“We’re celebrating 250 years since the founding of the United States of America. Yes, celebrating, and I hope you did, too. I know this moment brings up so many conflicting emotions. On the one hand, this country is our home. Some of us have no other place to go. Some of us have chosen to make this our home, and some of us are still grappling with the centuries of injustice that brought us here. Whatever this landmark celebration means to you, I hope you take time to reflect, as I have, on what brought us here, and find ways to take lessons from those who found reasons to fight to build a better future in this country, across the many injustices that wound our nation’s journey. In doing so, these courageous women and men made a way for us to be here today.” (07/06/26)
“Huge crowds have lined the streets of Tehran for the funeral procession of Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the first day of the war with the US and Israel. Footage from Iranian state TV showed many tens of thousands of mourners gathered to watch Khamenei’s flag-draped coffin being transported by a lorry along a 10km (6-mile) route that passed through the capital’s landmark Enghelab Square. The procession took place after his body lay in state for two days at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla mosque. Three of Khamenei’s sons prayed beside his coffin there on Sunday. But Mojtaba, the son who succeeded him as supreme leader, did not make an appearance. He has not been seen in public since reporting being seriously wounded in the same Israeli air strike in Tehran on 28 February that killed his father and his wife.” (07/06/26)
“Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has finally reached his Terry Malloy moment. In the classic movie ‘On the Waterfront’, the character tells his brother of losing it all; his shot to be a champion and a person of respect: ‘You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could’ve been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.’ Shapiro decided to deliver his defining moment on MS NOW’s ‘Morning Joe’ when he abandoned all principle and decided to join other Democratic establishment leaders in offering up the Supreme Court to the radical left. Shapiro used the common coded reference to court packing, calling for ‘radical reform of the court’. The only ‘radical’ reform being seriously discussed is packing the institution with an immediate liberal majority to reverse a series of recent decisions and to greenlight an equally radical agenda for changes to our political system.” (07/05/26)
“UK fighter jets intercepted a Russian maritime patrol aircraft after it “repeatedly approached” a carrier strike group in the Norwegian Sea, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said. The Russian Bear-F plane passed at low altitude and ‘unnecessarily close’ to the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier and is believed to have dropped 10 sonobuoys into the water on Thursday, the MoD added. The MoD said Moscow’s activity in the Norwegian Sea was ‘unsafe and unprofessional’. It comes weeks after Royal Marines boarded a Russian shadow fleet oil tanker in the English Channel, while the head of the military has warned the risks and threats facing the UK are greater now than at any time since the Cold War. The UK’s Carrier Strike Group is currently deployed off Iceland under Nato command, with 1,500 British personnel on board.” (07/06/26)
“The following invented interview has been edited for clarity and length: Norman Solomon: You’ve downplayed the importance of the individual in history. But the United States now has as president an individual who transformed power relations and the political landscape. Karl Marx: I can assure you that he did not do that by himself. Power relations are class relations. And by the way, I never said individuals are irrelevant to history. I exhorted individuals to get involved in changing history. NS: President Trump has rolled back gains from the last hundred years and more. Also, he’s mentally unstable, to put it mildly. KM: The basics still hold. As I wrote in 1869 about a situation in France where a cult existed around a tyrant, the class struggle ‘created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part’.” (07/06/26)
“As someone born in Michigan, and whose family all still live there, you never really fully leave your home state, even when you live somewhere else. As such, I’ve been watching the Senate race there with keen interest. I have to wonder: are Democrats about to nominate a terrorist sympathizing anti-Semite? I know that doesn’t really narrow the field much when dealing with Democrats, as this seems to be about half their candidates these days. But in this case I’m thinking of Abdul El-Sayed. Abdul is allegedly a doctor, though I’m not sure he’s ever really practiced medicine, or at least that much. He’s mostly been a left-wing bureaucrat for Democrats – a diversity box-checker who happily will do whatever the ‘progressive’ wing of the party demands. Like most people in that basket, he would’ve made a great Nazi – following orders without question.” (07/06/26)
“The Indian government has directed Meta to immediately disable advertisements and content on Instagram that promote or facilitate child sexual abuse material, a senior official said. It comes after a BBC Eye investigation found that Instagram has been running paid adverts promoting child sexual abuse material in India, some of which linked users to Telegram channels where the material was offered for sale. The government has also sought an explanation within a week on how advertisements containing such material were allowed on the platform, the official said. Meta has said it has a zero-tolerance policy on child sexual abuse material and is continuing to strengthen its detection and defences. Telegram said it had removed more than 274,000 groups and channels related to child sexual abuse material in 2026.” (07/06/26)
“Sometimes, the confluence of disparate events unexpectedly illuminates ideas and ideals that have universal and enduring resonance. Three occasions that come to mind this July Fourth, fittingly, revolve around the essential nature of Americanness, of what it is to be American: the weekend celebrations of 250 years of independence, the Supreme Court ruling this week on birthright citizenship, and the annual recognition of ‘Great Immigrants, Great Americans’. The thread of citizen rights and responsibilities weaves through each of these, uniting evolving conceptions of freedom, self-government, and individual achievement from the nation’s past through to its present. In their 1776 Declaration of Independence from British rule, the Founding Fathers claimed for all future Americans the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. In Tuesday’s court ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts affirmed that all individuals born on U.S. soil have a constitutional right to citizenship, which he described as ‘the right to have rights – to freely participate in our political community’.” (07/04/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Emma Ashford & Will Smith
“At Davos in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney surprised the audience with his open call for ‘middle powers’ to band together and resist pressure from the great powers. His implication that these states need to resist both China and the United States was somewhat shocking to hear in a policy speech, but it nonetheless reflected a growing consensus that, as the world moves toward multipolarity, middle powers will become more important, especially if they can figure out how to free themselves from the whims of the great powers. For some of the most prominent middle powers, however, the war in Iran has shown the limits of their agency in global affairs — and the difficulties they face when confronted with an intransigent great power.” (07/06/26)
