“Daylight saving time ends at 2:00 a.m. on Nov. 1. This summer, the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2025, which would make it permanent year-round. The 308-117 vote drew support from across the aisle. This is the first bill to pass in Congress since the Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act of 2021 with unanimous consent. Yet if Congress falls back into legislative inertia after the midterms, the 2025 bill may never become law, giving false hope for some and wasting the American people’s time once again. Given the similarities between the two bills, the 2025 version should in theory have no problem passing in the Senate. But the 2021 Senate bill was passed during a sparsely attended session, with some members expressing concern after the fact.” (10/21/26)
“Cornell University has long been an example of an academic echo chamber where conservative and libertarian faculty have been largely purged from departmental ranks. For example, a study by The College Fix found that Democrats outnumber Republicans 98 to 1 among Cornell professors across six of the humanities departments. Cornell professors disrupt events, launch campaigns to fire the remaining conservative faculty, and foster a cancel campaign culture on campus. However, the faculty recently decided to review its own record and found … wait for it! … that there really are no concrete measures needed to address their own overwhelming ideological bias. According to a 238-page faculty report from the Committee on the Future of the American University, there was no consensus on ideological bias or how to handle it.” (10/21/26)
“The number of civic institutes, centers, and schools at public universities has increased significantly since the first one, the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership (SCETL) at Arizona State University, emerged in 2017. Beginning in 2021, nineteen new centers and institutes have been established. Although many institutions have launched initiatives to enhance civic education, here I focus on the phenomenon of centers independent of any existing academic department but which are established by legislative or trustee action.” (10/21/26)
“These days, barely a week goes by in Europe without a drone sighting, a fire or a power outage being blamed on Russia. We’re told that these incidents are all part of a relentless, and escalating, ‘hybrid war’ that Moscow is waging against the continent. Tensions escalated dramatically last month after Germany formally attributed to Moscow a ‘failed’ drone attack on Leipzig/Halle airport. But does the evidence support Western claims that Russia is engaged in a systematic hybrid war against Europe?” (10/21/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Lesson One: Gun-control laws do not stop people who are determined to commit murder. … Lesson Two: Concealed-carry laws protect people. … Lesson Three: This lesson will be the controversial one, especially for people who worship, admire, and adore the U.S. national-security establishment and its policy of foreign interventionism.” (10/21/26)
“One meaning of the free part of free markets is that the market is free to enter. Anyone, with whatever idea, is free to set up shop and try it out. This is what is being misunderstood here: ‘In a move nobody outside of boardrooms asked for, Target has become the first fashion retailer in Australia to make its products available to order via the Uber Eats app as of September. …’ Technology changes over time. There is always some new set of possibilities among the things that can be done therefore. We don’t know whether people would like those new things done. The only way we’ve got of finding out is to do the new thing then see. No, just asking people doesn’t work, there’s always a difference between expressed and revealed preferences. This is, in the jargon, the function of the entrepreneur.” (10/21/26)
Source: American Institute for Economic Research
by David Hebert
“This explainer will lay out the federal budget relay race process that takes a proposed spending plan from a wishlist to an actual check while operating under rules designed to keep total spending in line.” (10/21/26)
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe
“As some have pointed out, the size of the diesel export agreed to in this supposed deal, and the scale of the sanctions that are being waived, are really quite small. This move is unlikely to have a meaningful impact on the pain Americans are feeling because of the artificially high diesel prices or change Russia’s posture in the war. But the waiver is interesting for a different reason. Because it is, in many ways, an admission that those of us who oppose Washington’s reflexive use of economic sanctions are right. It is remarkably well-documented that sanctions are atrociously bad at doing what we’re told they’re supposed to do—weaken and delegitimize a regime in the eyes of their domestic population to the point where they’re either overthrown or forced to change course by their revolting citizens.” (10/21/26)
“In Oct. 17, the North African nation of Tunisia saw one of its largest protests in years. In the capital, Tunis, thousands of demonstrators chanted slogans like ‘The people above all else’ and ‘Work, freedom, national dignity’ – despite fears of being arrested. In recent years worldwide, such anti-government protests have surged. So why should this one stand out? Because Tunisia was the spark for the Arab Spring of 2011. … Tunisia was also the most successful Arab country to plant a democracy after 2011. That is, until 2021-2022, when a duly elected president, Kais Saied, took advantage of public frustrations over economic opportunities and canceled much of democracy, including an independent judiciary. Many democratic activists now sit in prison.” (10/20/26)
“The Emancipation Proclamation, the defeat of the Confederacy and the adoption of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments prohibiting slavery and promising equal protection and the right to vote for the recently emancipated Black population seemed to fulfill Douglass’ life’s mission as an abolitionist and human rights defender. Yet over the following decades, Douglass’[s] joy at emancipation was mixed with bitter disappointment at the stark contrast between the fine principles enshrined in these documents and their practical nullification through oppressive laws, racist terror and mob action in the South.” (10/21/26)
