“he Trump administration’s 13 nights of strikes on Iran, including on bridges and energy infrastructure, have been followed by three nights of calm. The Iranians, however, clearly do not trust Trump to halt his war of aggression on their country for very long, especially with the visit to Washington, D. C. this week of Trump Whisperer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Even Trump is complaining about Netanyahu’s loud campaign to have Trump bomb specific targets in Iran. To show what they thought about Netanyahu’s warmongering against them, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders sent a barrage of missiles against covert US bases in Jordan early on Wednesday local time.” (07/29/26)
“Acoustic gunshot detection (AGD) systems are designed to detect and report gunfire to law enforcement. Promoted as a high-tech solution to urban gun violence, AGD has been widely adopted by police departments across the United States, with California a leader in the number of cities that use the technology. To be considered a successful public safety innovation, a technology would be able to demonstrate effectiveness in assisting law enforcement in reducing violence and solving crimes and do so in a cost-efficient manner. However, AGD does not meet these criteria and constitutes a costly failure that undermines effective policing.” (07/29/26)
“In the 1960s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came to landowners across the Midwest, including the farmer who previously owned my land, with a deal. The government wanted an easement on part of the property to protect wetlands that provide habitats for ducks and other waterfowl. The agency did not offer much money. It paid about $630 for rights across roughly 328 acres of land I now own. The easement document explicitly states that farmers could continue ‘normal farming practices.’ Farmers across the northern Great Plains signed these deals. … When my family bought farmland in LaMoure County‚ the property had one of these easements on it. If the government had stuck to the agreement, the easement would not have been a big obstacle to our land management practices. But in 2024, the Fish and Wildlife Service reinterpreted the scope of the wetland easements and updated the restrictions applied to prairie potholes.” (07/29/26)
“[E]ven as fierce criticism of Israel reaches the very apex of American politics, a profound, schizophrenic rupture divides Washington. While the American public, influential media personalities, and top-tier politicians are openly turning against Israel’s unbridled violence, the traditional power structures continue to toe the line. This is explicitly evident in Congress, where establishment politicians remain busy acting as defense contractors for Tel Aviv. … To believe this subservience is a recent phenomenon is to misunderstand history.” (07/29/26)
Source: Niskanen Center
by Robin Allen & Zachary Norris
“Dramatically expanding the high-voltage grid is a top priority to address surging demand from data centers, industrial growth, and electrification. In the U.S., most high-voltage projects are decided through transmission planning processes. Particularly in the wake of FERC’s Order 1000, the transmission planning policy discussions have often centered on longstanding disagreements over competition versus incumbent utility control. The debate has intensified with two recent FERC filings — one urging FERC to suspend or scale back market competition; the other to expand it.” [editor’s note: “The grid” should be abandoned (in favor of local/decentralized generation and delivery), not expanded – TLK] (07/28/26)
“For 45 years, the Department of Education has claimed to speak for the nation’s teachers. This month in Dallas, the secretary running it sat in a ballroom full of them and let them speak for themselves. Linda McMahon came to the Teacher Freedom Summit to argue that the best decisions in education are made closest to the child, and that the department she leads should hand its authority back to the states. She made the case, then spent the afternoon in roundtables asking classroom teachers what that shift would mean for their students. The willingness to ask is itself the news. An institution built in teachers’ name spent four decades deciding what teachers needed without much bothering to consult them.” (07/28/26)
“Although the House passed the budget resolution, the Senate hasn’t moved on it. There’s a real possibility that the Senate doesn’t do anything with it. Why? Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) doesn’t have the votes to move H.Con.Res. 113. Instead, Thune, who is in his first term as majority leader, is more interested in moving a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the federal government open. The House passed a CR, H.R. 9770, before the recess. However, the House-passed CR doesn’t include the anomalies requested by the White House, which include $1 billion for procurement of materials to build a new battleship.” (07/28/26)
“In the opening chapter of his book Ghosts of My Life, the Marxist theorist Mark Fisher argues that capitalism has destroyed creativity. That art—and he’s talking mostly about music in the book—has stagnated, that it’s no longer dynamic, but is instead endlessly remixing the past. I’ve always found this passage fascinating, because he’s very much onto something, even if not to quite the degree he imagines, but then he pins the blame in the wrong place. To the extent that we’ve lost the creative spark, in the way Fisher presents it, the culprit really isn’t capitalism. Or neoliberalism. It’s instead, to a rather blameworthy degree, NIMBYism.” (07/29/26)
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it’s almost like the GOP is secretly promoting the Democratic Socialists of America, which is now producing a lot of the energy and excitement within the Democratic and Republican parties. The DSA champions many views that exist wildly outside the mainstream of American politics, including the abolition of the police, prisons, the Pentagon and the U.S. Senate. This is all, to borrow a term from social science, bat guano insane. … but I’m not too worried, even if the GOP fails to weaponize the Red Menace. If you tune out the noise and simply look at the more mainstream question of socialism’s alleged rise in popularity, fears of a socialist takeover of America are absurdly overblown.” (07/29/26)
