“Witch hunt tactics aside, US Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) performed a valuable public service by releasing excerpts from Fauci’s diaries. I’ve been browsing those excerpts for a couple of days now; they run to several hundred pages so I haven’t had time to do a thorough beginning-to-end read. They unmask (pun entirely intended) Fauci as a not very likable bureaucrat, flattered by attention and susceptible to that flattery, constantly butthurt by any attack on or even public disagreement with his pronouncements, and laser-focused not on ‘public health’ as such nearly so much as on maintaining his position and reputation as America’s top ‘public health authority.'” (07/30/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“We have been ambushed. We should be talking about the dangerous, destabilizing things being done to this country. … Instead, we are trapped in a vicious loop of nonsense, mania, political demagoguery and manufactured spectacle while the country goes to hell in a handbasket. Every day—sometimes every hour—brings another outrage, another threat, another vulgar display of power, another self-glorifying meme, another political provocation and another distraction demanding our attention. Before we can fully comprehend one assault on the Republic, another takes its place. That is not merely the chaos surrounding this government. It is one of the ways this government maintains power.” (07/30/26)
“We’ve reached a point where Bill Kristol can be a featured speaker at a ‘liberal’ conference. It’s hard, in this context, to know which way is up, yet we can see clearly that all ways now point rightward. Kristol is far from alone; this cottage industry includes a who’s who of bloody-handed, Bush-era conservatives who now pretend to care about the rule of law, when their whole careers were spent writing thin apologies for the many constitutional violations of the post-9/11 years. … What the good-faith liberals aligning themselves with this reanimated corpse of the neoconservative right seem not to understand is that these dynamics, migrating the entire acceptable political spectrum firmly into the right, will long outlast Donald Trump. In the end, Trump will have had two terms as president. But the range of politically feasible options could remain bolted down on the far right for many decades or even longer.” (07/30/26)
“Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh pulled back the curtain this week on an economy making more progress than people feel. Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index stood at minus 31 in July, and two-thirds of people said conditions were getting worse. Yet consumers continue to spend, workers are holding on to their jobs, and businesses are investing heavily in the technology and productive capacity that will shape what comes next. People may feel uncertain, but they are not acting defeated. Warsh called the economy’s resilience ‘impressive’ after the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady. He pointed to solid growth, job gains keeping pace with the workforce, and an unemployment rate that has changed little, even as inflation remains above the Fed’s 2% goal.” (07/30/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Before the government can give money away, it must first have money. … This is what socialists fail to realize when they advocate socialism. The reason they don’t consider it is because there is already wealth that has been built up in society that they want to seize and redistribute. They see all that wealth and simply take it for granted. Why not have the government seize part of that wealth and use to to help the poor, needy, and disadvantaged as well as seniors? But there are two important points here. One, socialists never ask: What was it that brought that wealth into existence? They just see it and want to grab it. And, two, by interrupting the process of wealth creation, they don’t realize that their seizure of wealth results in lower standards of living for everyone, especially the poor.” (07/30/26)
“There’s a new MAGA personality on the scene: Savanna Cannon. Parroting talking points about wacko liberals and often wearing a Charlie Kirk–style ‘Freedom’ shirt, Cannon looks and sounds like she came straight out of the Turning Point USA or PragerU conservative influencer pipelines. ‘People who don’t like what I say are, more than likely, braindead,’ Cannon declared in one video last week that sums up her facts-don’t-care-about-your-feelings style. But Cannon has one big advantage over her rival conservative commentators: she sits in an unusual way. Cannon typically records her videos leaning back in a chair while wearing yoga pants, with her legs pulled up on either side of her. It’s a pose that highlights everything a more prurient viewer might hope to see: her bare feet and—forgive me, I am only reporting the facts here—the faint outline of her genitals.” (07/30/26)
“Appearing increasingly isolated and weakened, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu travelled to Washington this week, where he had a face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump – his eighth of the US president’s second term. Netanyahu is desperate to revive his image as the closest ally of the most powerful man in the world, but his star has fallen dramatically in Washington since his last trip. The US president has problems of his own, so he clearly had little appetite for a photo opportunity with a deeply unpopular Israeli leader widely blamed for convincing him to launch an unwinnable war against a state few Americans saw as a serious threat.” (07/30/26)
“A formidable enemy of free speech on college campuses is self-censorship. Much has been said about how to make students more willing to voice their opinions, but proposed solutions often overlook the people best positioned to change the culture where self-censorship frequently occurs: professors. Professors shape many of the environments where students decide whether speaking candidly is worth the risk. In a FIRE student survey conducted in 2025, 72% of students said they self-censor at least occasionally either when speaking in class or with a professor. Yet despite their direct influence over students’ willingness to speak, professors — and the classroom techniques they employ — remain underused in efforts to address the problem.” (07/30/26)
Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Mark D Guilfoyle & Andrew J Vandiver
“Reasonable people can disagree about education policy. They can disagree about charter schools, vouchers, and the proper role of government in education. But House Bill 1 is different from many of those debates.” (07/30/26)
“Last September, the U.S. military fired the first of 63 strikes against 67 small fishing boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean. The spate of killings in Operation Southern Spear has claimed 221 lives so far, according to the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights organization. In April, President Donald Trump boasted about the effectiveness of his extrajudicial maritime strikes against alleged drug traffickers, claiming his methods had stopped 98.2 percent of all drugs coming into the country by ocean or sea. However, new evidence from those inside the Trump administration shows the strikes have not slowed the flow of drugs coming into the country.” (07/30/26)
