Source: Quillette
by D Marshall
“American conservatives show no interest in understanding their country’s greatest geopolitical foe. The consequences of this incuriosity could be disastrous.” (07/28/25)
https://quillette.com/2025/07/28/getting-china-wrong-sun-tzu-trump-vance/
Source: Common Dreams
by Tom Gallagher
“I have no doubt that Zohran Mamdani, upset winner over the heavily favored former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, would have greatly preferred that his much better financed opponent would graciously accept the will of his party’s voters, thereby allowing the Democratic nominee (Mamdani) to sail on through the final election in November as is generally the case. And so would we, his supporters, all. Instead, he finds himself actively opposed by elements of just about every significant anti-democratic, anti-working class faction in American politics. As the Talking Heads song put it, this race ‘ain’t no disco; this ain’t no fooling around.'” [editor’s note: Even with the perfect Talking Heads quote, this pundit is delulu defined – SAT]” (07/27/25)
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“‘The FBI began surveilling a Catholic priest in 2023,’ wrote James Lynch last week, ‘after the clergyman refused to divulge details about a recently arrested parishioner who was converting to Catholicism and seeking spiritual guidance.’ … ‘The FBI attempted to violate the priest-penitent privilege,’ the report continues, ‘on the faulty reasoning that the Richmond subject under investigation seeking spiritual guidance had not been baptized or completed catechism.’ You may be asking yourself, is the FBI out of its mind?” (07/28/25)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/07/28/what-does-the-fbi-do/
Source: The American Conservative
by James P Pinkerton
“Perhaps Democrats could swap pro-growth policies for foreign aid.” (07/28/25)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-grand-bargain-on-foreign-aid/
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Ilya Somin
“Trump has reached a trade deal with the European Union, which follows previous deals with the UK, Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Some might view these deals as vindication of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, and other tariff hikes. But the truth is that these deals leave us worse off than before. In each case, tariff rates under the deals are vastly higher than they were before Trump started his trade war. For example, the new tariff on most EU goods will be 15%, compared to an average rate of 1.47% before Trump’s second term …. As a result, Americans will face much higher prices than before on many goods, and there will be other severe economic damage, as well.” (07/27/25)
https://reason.com/volokh/2025/07/27/trumps-trade-deals-wont-end-the-harm-caused-by-his-tariffs/
Source: New York Post
by staff
“President Trump is pulling America out of UNESCO for the third time. Maybe this time it’ll be for good. Once lauded for its work in preserving important cultural sites, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization became a platform for miseducation by every tinpot tyrant trying to score points by defaming America and its allies. It also adopted a full-on woke agenda, backing divisive DEI and social justice causes that, as a Team Trump aide explained, conflicted with American values. ‘Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,’ the State Department declared. The agency’s focus on the UN’s ‘Sustainable Development Goals,’ for example, follows the Paris Climate Accords program of deindustrializing the developed world, while paying the Third World to help it catch up.” (07/27/25)
https://nypost.com/2025/07/27/opinion/us-out-of-unesco-finally/
Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid
“What is the definition of a gang? I would generally argue that this word is a contrived label used by rich people to describe any group of poor people organized around using force to acquire wealth like rich people without a state to hide behind. However, an even better definition may ironically come from United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement who describes a gang on their website as ‘An association of three or more individuals whose members collectively identify themselves by adopting a group identity, which they use to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.’ I say ‘ironically,’ in fact quite painfully so, because these self-righteous pig fuckers, better known as ICE, seem to have essentially described themselves to a T.” (07/27/25)
https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2025/07/no-use-crying-over-spilt-ice-gang-on.html
Source: Brownstone Institute
by Ian Miller
“In what we now understand were completely theatrical attempts to control the Covid-19 pandemic, experts demanded and politicians mandated all sorts of intrusive policies. Mask mandates were one of the most obvious. School closures. Lockdowns. Curfews. Capacity limits. Fear campaigns. The list is and was endless. And unfortunately the public willingly complied with all of them. On and on they went, for years in some cases. But in their discussions of those useless policies, one thing they always, without fail, ignored was the ancillary cost.” (07/27/25)
https://brownstone.org/articles/covid-lockdowns-devastated-an-entire-generation-of-children/
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Peter Jacobsen
“In March 2020, President Donald Trump announced a pause on federal student loan payments. The economy was about to shut down (mostly due to government policy), so it seemed fair to suspend the obligation on the part of students to repay the government. Nobody imagined that this would last as long as five years for some borrowers. During the Biden administration, generosity toward student loan holders expanded. One major addition was the SAVE Plan — a very generous repayment plan which capped interest and offered payments as low as $0 per month. … For most borrowers, interest forgiveness continued for about three and a half years, with interest accumulation restarting around September 2023. However, borrowers were given another year without penalties for non-payment (except for the interest accumulation). Borrowers on the SAVE Plan, however, were allowed to remain in interest-free forbearance, where they still are, until next month.” (07/27/25)
https://fee.org/articles/the-student-loan-interest-pause-finally-ends/
Source: The American Prospect
by Ryan Cooper
“One of the most grisly humanitarian crises in history is happening right now in Gaza. The Israeli military has reduced the enclave to ruins with constant bombing — killing perhaps 59,000 people in the process, at least three-quarters of them civilians, and 18,000 of them children. Gaza’s economy is buried in the rubble, and it is desperately short of food, water, and medicine. Thousands of tons of aid are sitting just miles away from Gaza’s border, but the Israeli government refuses to let most of it through. On the contrary, at the handful of aid stations that remain, Israeli troops are routinely massacring dozens of people queueing for food. A total of 1,000 people have been killed seeking food since May, according to the United Nations, mostly near sites operated by the shady American contractor Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has taken over aid distribution from the U.N.” (07/27/25)
https://prospect.org/world/2025-07-25-israels-endgame-obliterating-palestine/