“Though smaller than most U.S. states, the landlocked nation of Armenia plays a key geopolitical role at the continental crossroads of Eurasia. With few natural resources, it is aiming to recalibrate regional and global relations and become a hub for international tech, finance, and transport services. So, its parliamentary elections Sunday have been of interest not just to next-door Azerbaijan and Turkey, but also to Iran, Russia, Europe, and the distant United States. The ruling Civil Contract party garnered 49.8% of the vote, Reuters reported, while the two main opposition parties together took in 33.1%. The degree to which both sides can find some common ground will determine how fast and how far this former Soviet republic can move out of history’s long shadow of ethnic conflict and external interference into an era of regional cooperation and progress.” (06/08/26)
Source: Niskanen Center
by Lawson Mansell & Jonathan Wolfson
“Nearly 15 million Californians live in communities with too few primary care doctors. In many communities, patients face long waits for appointments, struggle to find a physician accepting new patients, or must travel significant distances for routine care. The shortage is especially acute in rural communities, the Inland Empire, and the San Joaquin Valley, where access to healthcare often depends on a patient’s ZIP code rather than their medical needs. The California Senate now has an opportunity to address part of that challenge.” (06/09/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Kerry McDonald
“When Santana Cruz graduates from high school this spring, she will have over 100 college credits and two associate degrees. A public school student in Bristol, Virginia, that sits along the Tennessee border, Cruz began accumulating college credits as a 14-year-old freshman when she took her first College-Level Examination Program or CLEP exam. The program enables students of any age to demonstrate mastery in 34 subject areas, ranging from American government to world languages.” (06/09/26)
“Nearly 1,200 people registered to vote at a homeless shelter on Skid Row with 132 beds. 185 people registered at a homeless drop-in center — with no beds at all. That is likely illegal, and it is likely a key to the story of how socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman overtook Palisades Fire victim Spencer Pratt for second place in the LA mayoral race. Under California law, homeless people can register to vote, even though they do not have a fixed residence. They can use their last fixed address as their voting domicile; they can even specify a geographic location, as long as it is where they live, or where they intend to return. If they do not return there within a year, it is no longer their voting domicile.” (06/09/26)
“I am not going to get into some of these more recent twists and turns, but I do want to shatter the mythos that the word ‘non-profit’ is somehow equivalent to ‘charitable’ or ‘well-intentioned.’ I know of many non-profits that do good work and for whom we should be grateful, but many many more do very little that is positive and are able to draft off the reputations of the ones who do. I want to describe what I call the original non-profit abuse, one that goes back to the very beginnings of the income tax system. I went to a private school in the 70’s and an Ivy League University in the 80’s and have seen what I am about to describe many times with my own eyes.” (06/09/26)
“The case of a young child at Texas Children’s Hospital following a near-drowning incident has reignited a debate that medicine has struggled with for more than half a century. According to multiple media reports, the family sought judicial intervention to obtain additional time, explore transfer options, and investigate alternative therapeutic approaches before any final determination regarding brain death would foreclose those possibilities. As so often happens in the modern United States of America, the story quickly moved beyond the walls of the hospital. Lawyers became involved. … this is not an argument against brain death. Nor is it an attempt to overturn decades of neurological science. The neurological criteria for death emerged from legitimate clinical challenges and remain accepted by most physicians, hospitals, and courts. Rather, this is a reflection on what happens when medicine becomes so confident in its conclusions that it stops listening to those most affected by them.” (06/09/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Today the Twitter algorithm served me up a bunch of Zionist tweets from accounts I’ve never followed, right at the top of my ‘For You’ feed. Elon and company decided on my behalf that this is the kind of information I need to be consuming, so they’ve taken it upon themselves to shove it down my throat without my permission. As Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation gets more and more aggressive in force-feeding us the official narrative of the day, we have to get a bit clever in making sure we see the information our rulers don’t want us to see. I like to use Twitter Lists for this, because for all its flaws Twitter is still where the journalists hang out and remains a great place for staying on top of the news if you can figure out how to cut through all the bullshit.” (06/09/26)
“In our present moment of global upheaval, it’s becoming fashionable to invoke parallels to previous episodes of global crisis. Commentators routinely compare the United States’ political situation to the late Roman Republic just before its slide into Caesarism. Others suggest 1920s Weimar Germany is a more apt comparison with its violent factionalism and loose morals. At the international level, one can find as many comparisons to the Cold War as one can to nineteenth-century Europe. Some, however, are now suggesting that the international situation bears a more striking resemblance to the years preceding the First World War.” (06/09/26)
“In his new book ‘Recession,’ economist Tyler Goodspeed argues that economic downturns are caused by real shocks, not predictable business cycles.” (06/09/26)
