“Donald Trump is not the first president to unleash the terror of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers on immigrant communities across the United States. But he’s the most blatant in his use of a federal armed unit as a tool of terror, fulfilling multiple goals at once: to reinforce white supremacy, to undermine his political opponents, to uphold policing as a means of order, and to wield raw, unchecked power. Before June 2025, analysts were warning against the slide into fascism. Now, full-blown fascism is here. And, it’s not only Trump’s doing, but also a result of our society’s constant reliance on armed agents of state power as a means of control. If we want to end ICE terror and reverse the fascist tide, we need to rethink policing altogether.” (06/26/25)
“As a candidate, [Donald Trump] promised new tariffs. He won. He imposed those tariffs. Americans didn’t like them. As a candidate, he warned that Iran couldn’t be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. He won. He bombed Iran’s nuclear program. Americans didn’t like it. As a candidate, he vowed to deport illegal immigrants en masse. He won. He’s begun raiding workplaces to round up those immigrants. Americans didn’t like it. Here’s who Americans are. They’re a population that wants the budget balanced without cutting entitlements, that wants jobs repatriated without protectionism, that wants Iran disarmed without military force, and that wants illegal immigrants removed without any rough stuff. One free lunch after another, as far as the eye can see.” (06/26/25)
“The mid-20th century was the golden age of nurture. Psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and the spirit of the ‘60s convinced most experts that parents, peers, and propaganda were the most important causes of adult personality. Starting in the 1970s, the pendulum swung the other way. Twin studies shocked the world by demonstrating that most behavioral traits — especially socially relevant traits like IQ — were substantially genetic. Typical estimates for adult IQ found it was about 60% genetic, 40% unpredictable, and barely related at all to parenting or family environment. By the early 2000s, genetic science reached a point where scientists could start pinpointing the particular genes behind any given trait.” (06/26/25)
Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by Sara Sutherland, Tate Watkins, & Stephen Newbold
“Each year, more than four million people visit Yellowstone to see geysers, wildlife, and the otherworldly beauty of America’s first national park. This level of visitation, while a testament to Yellowstone’s enduring appeal, comes with significant costs. Restrooms overflow. Trails erode under heavy foot traffic. Roads buckle under constant vehicle use. Campgrounds, parking lots, and boardwalks fill to capacity. Wastewater systems are pushed beyond their limits. Rangers are stretched thin responding to medical calls, traffic incidents, and wildlife conflicts. And historic sites and fragile geothermal features face mounting pressure from overuse. Yet despite increased visitation over recent years, the additional interest and enthusiasm for Yellowstone has not translated into the financial resources needed to adequately operate and maintain the park.” (06/26/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Tanya Goudsouzian
“What person or what organizations are ready to govern the day after, and is there a viable roadmap for what comes next? The answer, according to leading Iran scholars and analysts, is bleak. ‘Absolutely no one,’ says Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies at Columbia University. ‘The monarchists and the Mojahedin are positively despised by the overwhelming majority of the Iranian population with no grassroots support,’ he adds. ‘Despite a significant opposition to the ruling regime, it is still widely and passionately popular among many others.’ The vacuum left by the regime’s collapse would not be filled by democratic forces, but likely by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the military organization dedicated to regime control and survival, or violent power struggles. And yet, external promoters of regime change — from exiled elites to Western think tanks — continue to push a fantasy of democratization-by-collapse.” (06/26/25)
“President Trump and other White House officials are suggesting that questioning the decision and efficacy of bombing Iran shows a lack of patriotism and disparages American troops. These claims harken back to the Iraq War when supporters of the policy insisted that critics or skeptics were simply anti-American or didn’t support the troops. … As a strategy to rebuff challenges to its claims of ‘mission accomplished,’ the Trump administration is sprinkling in suggestions that those who don’t trust the administration’s judgment are un-American or are somehow insulting the pilots who ran the mission themselves. But this isn’t new.” (06/26/25)
“Politicians and bureaucrats love to grab other people’s property, under cover of ‘the public interest.’ But their ‘public interest’ is nothing more than a thin disguise for helping some individuals (often contributors to politicians’ campaigns) at the expense of others.” (06/26/25)
“Mostly, in politics, good things don’t happen. Let’s be honest. Most of the time, the candidates are dishonest, and the issues are distractions, and the person with the most money wins. Sometimes, though, there is a reason for inspiration. And — even more rarely — there is a reason to believe that things are changing. You can feel the gears of history moving. You can feel the tectonic plates of normalcy begin to quaver and slip. The previous, unsustainable arrangement of the world is beginning to slip. The future holds something different. Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Muslim democratic socialist, just won the New York City Democratic primary for mayor. When the results came in Tuesday night, I was inside a Democratic Socialists of America watch party in the Brooklyn Masonic Temple, a sprawling space with the look of a crumbling high school auditorium, and the sweat-drenched young crowd of Zohran volunteers was approaching ecstasy.” (06/25/25)
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by Kurt Shillinger
“In late January, an armed rebel group backed by Rwanda swept through the city of Goma on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The humanitarian toll since then has been grim. In early June, Human Rights Watch reported that the group, M23, ‘has created a climate of fear … to solidify their control by whatever means necessary.’ But when reporter Sophie Neiman traveled to Goma in April for a series of stories featured in this week’s cover package, she found another mindset among its residents that even the rebels have had to acknowledge. ‘All over Congo today, people are expecting us to come because they want change,’ M23 leader Corneille Nangaa told Sophie. ‘They want good governance. … They want development.’ Uniformed militants patrol the city in armored cars, but they have also reopened schools and restored some water and electricity.” (06/26/25)
