“Like a mad king of old, President Donald Trump spends hours wandering his palace, developing plans to better display his wealth and glory to an increasingly skeptical and antagonistic world. Occasionally he remembers his royal responsibilities and implements the right policy, though even then often for the wrong reason. Such as reducing the number of U.S. troops in Germany. At least it’s a start, though resulting from a fit of pique, since Berlin, like virtually every other government on earth, criticized his lawless, reckless attack on Iran, which is disrupting the global economy. He is threatening to do the same to Italy and Spain, whose political leaders also have denounced Trump’s bungled aggression, openly conducted on behalf of the Israeli government rather than the American people.” (05/07/26)
“In the months leading up to the USA’s 250th birthday party, some debris from its 200th is making headlines. The New York Times‘s Jennifer Schuessler finds conspicuously ‘much less investment and enthusiasm overall’ for this year’s semiquincentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence than the 1976 bicentennial, itself diminished by jaded jeers charging that ‘‘Buy-centennial’ huckersterism had sold out the true radical spirit of ’76’ (‘How a Historian Saved the Schlock of ’76,’ May 5). Schuessler chronicles plenty of ‘hats, mugs, playing cards and pickleball paddles’ currently being hawked under the aegis of Donald Trump, but compared to such bicentennial-branded excrescences of ‘unapologetic 1976-style schlock’ as toilet paper, diapers and condoms, even the output of a coauthor of Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life can be described on the pages of the Gray Lady as ‘tasteful.'” (05/07/26)
Source: The UnPopulist
by Nathan Goodman and Molly Rovinski
“When legal pathways to immigration are closed, migrants don’t stop coming — they turn to smugglers. Smugglers must pay cartels to move people through their territory. The more aggressively the United States restricts legal entry and patrols traditional crossing routes, the more dangerous those crossings become, and the more indispensable smugglers — and the cartels behind them — become. The result is a perverse inversion of the stated goal: the harder Trump and Miller push to seal the border, the more they enrich the organizations they claim to be fighting.” (05/07/26)
“For more than a century, the Jones Act has survived on purported economic and security grounds. Its waiver by the Trump administration for Operation Epic Fury reveals serious flaws in both rationales. Section 27 of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, as it’s formally known, requires that goods shipped between US ports travel on vessels that are US-built, US-flagged, US-owned, and crewed predominantly by US citizens. Because of this legally-enforced domestic shipping monopoly, building and operating ships in America today costs far more than doing so abroad, and domestic coastwise shipping is effectively non-existent outside the few places that have no choice, such as Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Rather than bolstering US commercial shipping capacity and the merchant marine, the Jones Act has presided over the steady degradation of both.” (05/07/26)
“President Trump recently described the U.S. naval blockade of Iran as ‘a very friendly blockade.’ There is no such thing. A blockade is an act of war, using armed forces to restrict another nation’s movement, commerce and access to the sea. It does not become peaceful because no one challenges it on a particular day. Trump’s administration says the ceasefire with Iran means he no longer has to seek congressional authorization to continue the war beyond 60 days, even though federal law requires it. A ceasefire may pause the shooting. It does not make an ongoing act of war disappear. The president can argue that the blockade is necessary. He cannot honestly argue that the war is effectively over while keeping the blockade in place. More dangerous than Trump’s word choice is Congress’[s] silence.” (05/07/26)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“Richard Dawkins is currently the subject of much laughter and ridicule over his recent article for UnHerd admitting that a highly sycophantic chatbot had convinced him that it might be conscious. I’m seeing the question ‘How can you be confident that AIs aren’t conscious?’ pop up a lot in response to the controversy. Speaking for myself, I would say I am confident the chatbots aren’t conscious in the same way I’m confident the animatronics at Disneyland aren’t conscious. I know humans constructed them to mimic the behavior of a sentient person. We know this for a fact. Nobody’s pretending otherwise. I am infinitely more likely to believe an animal is conscious than that an LLM is, because nobody programmed them to respond to things like pain and social stimulus in ways that are similar to humans.” (05/07/26)
“A core premise of science is that research should be replicable. If one scientist creates an experiment to measure a physical constant like the speed of light, and they document their experiment well enough, other scientists should be able to perform the same experiment and find the same result. If one lab’s results can’t be replicated anywhere else, then like cold fusion, they probably aren’t real. Outside of hard sciences like physics we don’t expect to get the same precision. Perhaps one trial finds a drug reduces heart attacks by 17%, while another finds 14%. But for research to usefully inform our actions, it needs to be at least somewhat replicable.” (05/07/26)
“Since early March 2026, the average American household has been spending 50 percent more to fill their tank than just one month earlier. The Trump administration and its Israel-first ideologues blamed market forces for the spike, framing it as short-term pain for long-term gain. What they will not say, what they are never permitted to say in Washington, is that Americans have been living the ‘pain’ of the Israeli oil surcharge tax for more than half a century. The bill keeps growing, but no longer only financially. The U.S. is also paying with something harder to rebuild than a budget, its moral standing in the world.” (05/07/26)
“A recent analysis from the Tax Foundation argues that the US federal income tax system remains solidly progressive. Citing new Internal Revenue Service data for tax year 2023, the group is emphasizing that high-income taxpayers pay the highest average tax rates and account for a large share of total income taxes paid. On its face, that claim sounds reassuring—a sign that our tax code must surely be doing its job. But this framing leaves out a critical part of the story. Yes, the wealthy pay more in taxes than everyone else. The real question: whether they’re paying enough, their fair share relative to their rapidly growing share of our nation’s income and wealth. By that measure, the answer must be a clear no. The US tax system, the underlying data show, remains far less progressive than it once was — and far less effective at counteracting inequality than it needs to be.” (05/07/26)
