“Last month, the Supreme Court held in Monsanto v. Durnell that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, in tandem with the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, bars a state jury from punishing the maker of Roundup for omitting a cancer warning the EPA has repeatedly refused to require. The decision was right on the law. The reason has less to do with weedkiller than with who, in a country of 50 states and one federal regulator, gets to write the label.” (07/10/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“John F Kennedy was correct when he said ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable’. That’s why police robots are being aggressively normalized today. The empire managers want to make sure violent revolution is impossible, too. The New York Times’[s] sports department The Athletic has a creepy new article out titled ‘The ‘Robodogs’ on World Cup patrol in Mexico’ about how wonderful and awesome it is that the international soccer tournament is being patrolled by surveillance robots. The article is functionally a PR piece for police robots, gushing about how ‘cute’ and ‘cool’ onlookers find the dystopian technology.” (07/11/26)
“Every political tradition faces the question of what constitutes a good life. But only liberalism struggles so visibly to offer a straightforward answer. Authoritarians promise order and national greatness. Socialists promise equality. Post-liberal writers promise meaning and belonging through restored religious and civilizational authority—a life ordered to faith, family, and place. Liberalism alone points nowhere in particular. Its answer—freedom—tells you what to protect, not what to do with it. Yet that silence is not emptiness. It reflects a wise limit: no one can know in advance the forms a flourishing life will take.” (07/10/26)
“Many moons ago, while serving in Congress, I heard a senior member of the GOP House leadership offer this assessment of the Democrats’ strategy on a particular issue: ‘The Democrats always overplay their hand’. Heading into the 2026 midterm elections, however, it seems less a case of the Democrat minority overplaying its hand than of revealing it. Everyone is well-versed in the historical fact that a president’s party usually loses seats in a midterm election. As this is President Trump’s second midterm election, early projections suggest it will prove as disastrous for the GOP as the first one was in 2018.” (07/11/26)
“Private fortunes outlive their owners. The gardens, architecture, ideas, and institutions they finance often become part of the public inheritance.” (07/10/26)
“Iran, Iraq, Irate. What a world! It couldn’t be much stranger, could it? And by the way, what is it about the Middle East? Since the Gulf War of 1990-1991, it’s just never really ended, has it? Who cares that the region is halfway around the world from Washington, DC? Yes, the US fought Iraq there from 2003 to 2008. And recently, of course, President Donald Trump has gone after Iran. If you want to spread out just a bit more, you could toss in this country’s relatively brief war in Libya and its almost endless one this century in Afghanistan. And don’t blame me if I left something out. After all, I’m almost 82 years old and starting to forget a few things. I mean, Iran makes particular sense, right? After all, it’s a mere 6,000-odd miles from this country.” (07/11/26)
“In 2026, the world’s first trillionaire—following the recent stock debut of SpaceX—Elon Musk has remained one of the most influential figures in American politics. After campaigning for Donald Trump in 2024 and initially playing a leading role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk has remained a constant presence in the headlines. One of his latest political clashes came with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) over the impact of DOGE’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Citing a 2025 Lancet study, Khanna argued the reductions were ‘potentially a death sentence for an estimated 4.5 million children around the world.’ … its projection of fourteen million additional deaths by 2030 assumes that other governments, NGOs, private charities, and international organizations would be unable to meaningfully fill the gap left by USAID. That distinction matters.” (07/10/26)
“The fragile ceasefire between Iran and the United States has been broken once again. The United States has been bombing Iran, claiming that its attacks are in retaliation for Iran attacking three vessels near Straight of Hormuz, which it considers as violation of the Islamabad agreement, officially known as the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two nations. But it is in fact the United States that has been violating the MoU because its interpretation of Article 5 of the MoU is simply false.” (07/10/26)
“Moderation and centrism are not necessarily virtuous: A man should not be moderately honest or split the difference between virtue and vice. But in the realm of electoral politics—and, especially, in this time of populist demagoguery—bipartisanship and moderation have real practical value. We do not want our elected officials to be easily carried away by ideological enthusiasm and passion—especially in the Senate, which is meant to be a brake to the House’s accelerator. And because we have a big election every two years, the only sure path to creating a stable policy environment (and there are many cases in which an imperfect stable policy is preferable to an improved but unstable policy) is bipartisanship. Sen. Collins also provides a reminder that more than a few supposed conservatives in our time need: To be conservative is not the same thing as to be a right-wing revolutionist.” (07/10/26)
“Kudos to the State Department for putting the kibosh on city International Affairs Commissioner Ana María Archila’s bid to meet with Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, even as America and Iran are at war — but the affair poses a challenge to Mayor Zohran Mamdani: Does he have the grit to break with the openly anti-American factions of the Democratic Socialists of America? Mamdani’s tried to downplay the disgraceful episode, insisting Archila had no clearance to do such outreach, yet he’s not firing her or imposing any discipline. Nor even saying outright how very wrong she was. Which raises the question of whether he prefers the theocratic regime in Tehran to the United States government.” (07/11/26)
