Category: Opinion

Source: Washington Post
by David Ignatius

“Hold off on those announcements of the dawn of the Chinese century.” (05/21/26)

https://archive.is/vcmOO

Source: Liberal Currents
by Matthew Downhour

“Dragging NATO into Iran, or making American participation in NATO contingent on action in Iran, threatens to erode the basics that make NATO functional in the first place. And European NATO states (and Canada) would be foolish to give in to this petulance — there is no formal understanding, ethical motivation, or even pragmatic consideration that would obligate or even argue in favor of Europe joining this American misadventure. If the Iran war is a test for NATO, it is a test of whether the alliance can retain a defined mission, or whether it will be subjected to perpetual mission creep. In the latter case, it cannot possibly survive.” (05/21/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/nato-should-stay-out-of-iran/

Source: USA Today
by Dace Potas

“This is a fund with no congressional oversight resolving grievances outside the normal judicial process. Everyone involved in its creation ultimately works for Trump, either in his capacity as president or as a private citizen. Despite the Justice Department’s claims otherwise, it is difficult to imagine this becoming anything other than a partisan mess. Even if Trump or members of his family never directly receive money from the fund, it is impossible to separate his interests from the arrangement.” (05/21/26)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2026/05/21/trump-irs-settlement-fund-doj-lawfare/90162669007/

Source: Reason
by CJ Ciaramella

“An armed IRS agent roaming the streets should send shivers down the spine of any freedom-loving American.” (for publication 06/26)

https://reason.com/2026/05/21/beware-the-blob-of-federal-police/

Source: The Dispatch
by Steven Weber

“For more than three years, public debate about the risk-benefit balance around artificial intelligence has been dysfunctional bordering on ridiculous, hostage to a binary so crude it would embarrass a freshman seminar. On one side are the ‘doomers,’ who are portrayed as insisting that frontier AI is an existential threat requiring immediate radical constraint. On the other are the ‘boomers,’ who treat any suggestion of oversight as a sci-fi-coded slowdown that would hand American technological supremacy to China. Each camp has its prophets, forums, think tanks, and a remarkable capacity to mistake assertion for argument. But the world just changed, and that dialogue is ready to end. That’s good news for amplifying the upside potential of AI.” (05/21/26)

https://thedispatch.com/article/artificial-intelligence-mythos-regulation-innovation/

Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen

“President Donald Trump’s recent two-day summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded much as anticipated. In an article written ahead of the trip, I noted that expectations for substantive breakthroughs in the fraught Sino-American relationship were likely to be disappointed. The events of the visit bore this out. While the tone was notably, and welcomely, warmer than in recent years and both sides touted ‘fantastic trade deals,’ the core structural tensions — trade imbalances, technology restrictions, Taiwan, and regional security — remain largely unaddressed.” (05/21/26)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/trumps-beijing-visit-shows-the-limits-of-diplomacy

Source: The American Prospect
by Gabrielle Gurley

“After the Supreme Court gutted voting rights in Louisiana v. Callais, it was all over but the shouting. This week in South Carolina, state lawmakers are proceeding with the Great Erasure of African American voters without the legal hindrances of the Voting Rights Act, that now timeworn relic of the late Great Society. Their goal? To create a congressional dream team of seven GOP House members by zeroing out Rep. James Clyburn, a longtimer with 33 years in Congress, and the only Black Democrat to represent South Carolina in the House in state history. Indeed, Clyburn is the ninth Black person to represent the state in Congress; the first eight were all Republicans elected during Reconstruction in the late 19th century, before Jim Crow ended Black voting in the South, and when the parties had opposite views on civil rights compared to today.” (05/21/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/05/21/is-chaos-the-point-south-carolina-congress-redistricting-clyburn/

Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker

‘As we all wait for reality, and/or China, to catch up with the Silicon Valley AI boys, it might be a good time to go back in time a bit and see what it looked like in the past when our bubbles burst, specifically the tech bubble in 2001 and the housing bubble in 2008. Fortunately, it is easy to find the key data.” (05/21/26)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/21/waiting-for-the-ai-bubble-to-burst-great-collapses-of-the-past/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Michael Corbin

“The US has a choice between managing what is a shift away from US backed currency using military and economic restraint, or accelerating it.” (05/21/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/petrodollar-death-exaggerated/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Ilya Shapiro

“Timothy Sandefur’s book reminds us of the promise and brilliance of the Declaration.” (05/21/260

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/independence-explained-like-it-matters-again/