“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)
“In early May, hundreds of Interior Department employees began receiving emails informing them they’d been reassigned to different jobs. Park Service communicators were moved under the Bureau of Land Management support staff. Longtime BLM staff were transferred to similar roles in vastly different agencies like the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or the Bureau of Reclamation. Co-workers sharing an office were placed on remote teams working on new projects. According to DOI, these changes were meant to boost efficiency and balance workloads across its agencies. But to five DOI employees who spoke with SFGATE on the condition of anonymity, because they are afraid of losing their jobs, the changes were baffling. ‘It’s like they put us into a bingo roller cage and plucked us out with zero care about individual wishes,’ said one employee.” (07/06/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Eleanor Davis-Diver
“In a bombshell financial disclosure report released last week, Donald Trump revealed he brought in $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures in the first year of his second term. A Reuters analysis last month found that, since the 2024 election, the Trump family generated more profit from crypto than any other crypto firm listed in the United States. While raking in this cash from the family business, Trump oversaw the passage of the GENIUS Act, unleashing barely regulated stablecoin onto the American financial system. And Congress, with the administration’s support, is currently working to pass the CLARITY Act, which would strip investor protections and hand over crypto regulation to an overmatched, historically ineffective agency under Trump’s control.” [editor’s note: Dramacrats got a lot of nerve … ignore the insider trading and other corruption that makes them rich, while fighting to keep someone with actual ongoing businesses (in blind trusts) from any further success – SAT] (07/06/26)
“The world (at least by choice) is not going back to the horse and buggy age. We live in technologically advanced societies that have given us many wonderful inventions that make our lives far more convenient, if not always simpler. We credit ‘science’ with these advances, and frankly, that is both good and bad. The good, of course, are the medical breakthroughs, etc. that have aided mankind to enjoy this existence longer and more comfortably. We all should rejoice and be thankful for this. But unfortunately, that has led some people, too many people, to elevate science as ‘God’. Thus, 1776, in all ways and thoughts, is ancient, outmoded history, to be abandoned and forgotten …” (07/04/26)
