Source: The American Prospect
by Naomi Bethune & Ryan Cooper
“Thursday was a decision day at the Supreme Court, and the American people got to enjoy the familiar experience of waiting on tenterhooks yet again to see which rights were going to be deleted this time. The answer was residency rights for hundreds of thousands of nonwhite immigrants. The most important of Thursday’s decisions was also the worst one: Mullin v. Doe, which overturned a lower-court order barring the Trump regime from removing Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from hundreds of thousands of nonwhite refugees. For months now, Haitian and Syrian recipients of the TPS program have been in limbo, with their legal status being held up by fragile pauses in lower-court rulings.” [editor’s note: shrewd commentary or whining nonsense? You be the judge – SAT] (06/26/26)
“By statute, the approval process of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is to determine the safety and effectiveness of a new drug. If both requirements are met, the new drug is approved. The process usually takes roughly a decade. Most people would reasonably assume the lengthy approval process is due to the need to prove a new drug is safe for use by patients. But the years-long lag between a drug’s submission for approval and its arrival on the market often stems from the process of assessing its effectiveness. The easiest way to think about it is this: determining safety protects patients; determining effectiveness protects consumers.” (06/27/26)
“‘I urge you guys to freeze the rent, because we want our students to succeed.’ That was the appeal Alyssa Wright made to the nine members of New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) earlier this month, a little more than halfway through a packed, four-hour hearing in the Bronx on whether to freeze rents in the city’s some 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. Wright serves as a campus supervisor for a pilot program connecting City University of New York (CUNY) students with housing, healthcare and food resources. It’s a challenging role: Just that week, Wright said in her testimony, she had counseled five students facing eviction. Some 38% of CUNY’s 240,000 students experience housing insecurity, a condition that makes them twice as likely to withdraw or be placed on academic probation, according to a 2025 study based on a representative sample of students.” (06/26/26)
“Some more thoughts from the Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville: 1.) This first statement is brilliant and perceptive beyond description. America, 2026: ‘When the taste for physical gratifications among [men] has grown more rapidly than their education … the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint.’ God said to Moses that when the Israelites ‘have eaten and filled themselves and grown fat, then they will turn to other gods and serve them.’ When the desire for physical gratification outruns our wisdom and moral education, then people will be ‘carried away and lose all self-restraint.’ … There is no doubt in my mind that the desire for physical pleasure in America today has far outpaced our wisdom and moral education, and the results are plainly manifest in the massive amounts of promiscuity, corruption, fraud, decadence, selfishness, and licentiousness that plague our nation.” (06/25/26)
“For the past couple of years, American politicians on the left and right have competed to define a political buzzword: affordability. Does it mean increasing individual resources to meet everyday costs? Or raising the output of goods and services to lower prices? Or both? On Tuesday, Congress did the country a favor by passing a bill – in a rare case of broad bipartisanship – that helps give common meaning to the word. The measure puts a stamp of approval on an often unescapable law: that supply will rise to meet demand when free to do so. The bill, which still awaits the president’s approval, mandates a range of initiatives aimed mainly at raising the nation’s housing stock. It would reduce production bottlenecks rather than raise subsidies for home purchases. The number of parts in the legislation itself reflects how much lawmakers endorse a supply-positive approach.” (06/24/26)
“There’s vastly too much hand-wringing over President Trump’s diplomacy and potential dealmaking with Iran, and it’s coming from friends and foes alike. I think it has more to do with America’s crumbling political infrastructure, than it does regarding the merits of Mr. Trump’s efforts. First of all, the so-called memorandum of understanding is a nonbinding political document which simply outlines topics to be covered in the months ahead for some kind of final deal. Some people are taking parts of this MOU completely out of context for their own political gain. Let’s step back for a moment.” [editor’s note: Yes, let’s step back and watch Larry Kudlow try to explain away the loss of an illegal and entirely optional war – TLK] (06/25/26)
“Clarence Thomas went more than 10 years without asking a single substantive question from the bench. His silence between 2006 and 2016 prompted commentators to call his courtroom quietude embarrassing, a sign of fatigue and a lack of intellectual candlepower. Even earlier in his career, he had earned the nickname of ‘Scalia’s Puppet’ for his habit of joining majority opinions written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the outspoken and reactionary ‘originalist’ who shared the dais with him until his death in 2016. But the characterization of Thomas as an inattentive echo of Scalia is wrong. Thomas has always been more extreme and dangerous than Scalia, and his influence has never been greater.” (06/25/26)
“The Democratic Socialist Party (DSA) in America is anti-West, anti-American, anti-Israel and antisemitic. It is also on the march across deep blue America. Tuesday night’s sweep by far-left candidates for Congress in New York City, all backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, underscored just how rapidly the DSA is ascending within the shell of the fractured and frazzled Democratic Party. Traditional Democrats who pay attention to their national brand are astonished by what has happened to their party as it goes full ‘Thelma and Louise’ off the far left cliff of American politics. This is the third act in a three-act tragedy.” (06/25/26)
“The price of oil has fallen to levels not seen since before the Iran war as traffic through the key Strait of Hormuz shipping route gradually resumes. Global benchmark Brent crude briefly fell below $72.48 (£55) a barrel, the price it was at the day before the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran on 28 February, before edging up to $73.23. Energy prices have been on a wild ride since Iran responded to the strikes by effectively closing the strait, a critical waterway for oil and gas shipments. The cost of crude has been moving sharply lower since the US and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on 17 June which set out a 60-day period for negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear programme and other measures to end the war.” (06/25/26)
“The Democratic Party is trying to get born again. For forty years it didn’t want to be. Since Reagan, the Democrats stopped fighting the world he built and started managing it. Bill Clinton signed NAFTA and sent the factories south. He signed the crime bill Joe Biden wrote and helped fill the prisons. He ended welfare and called it reform. He tore down the wall between the banks and your money, and a few years later the banks lost your money and got bailed out for it. Obama bailed them out, let the houses go, deported people by the millions, and kept the drone war and the surveillance state running without missing a step. On the things that decide who holds power, money and war and the police and the spying, our party and theirs were one party. That was never where they fought.” (06/25/26)
