“There was a time when the arms dealer waited in the corridor. He financed the campaign, endowed the think tank, took the general to dinner, and hoped the man inside the office would remember him when the contract came up. The wall between the money and the decision was thin, often corrupt, but it was there. Someone held the public trust, and someone else tried to buy it, and you could at least tell the two apart. That wall is gone. The financier no longer waits in the corridor. He holds the office. He signs the checks. He is the buyer and the seller, the regulator and the regulated, the public interest and the private portfolio, fused into a single man in a single suit, and the arrangement is entirely legal, which is the whole problem.” (07/09/26)
Source: Niskanen Center
by imberly Burnett, Rohan Aras, & Andrew Justus
“For a break with past practices on housing affordability, it’ll be hard to beat the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, newly passed by Congress with overwhelming bipartisan majorities. In a single package, the act rethinks a century-old approach to zoning that has contributed to the housing shortage; makes an offer of federal housing funds for communities actually allowing housing to be built; and strips away an outdated regulation that has put the American dream of homeownership out of reach for far too many families.” (07/08/26)
“Back in 2018, when I was with the Washington Post, I put together a collection of academic studies, media reports and investigations, and other resources on racism in the criminal justice system. The idea, which the paper supported at the time, was to post all of this data in one place and keep it updated as a one-stop resource and repository. In the years since, I’ve heard from academics, journalists, policymakers, and teachers who have relied on the collection in their research, reporting, and class assignments. I’ve also received requests to take it out from behind the paywall. I was never able to convince the Post to do that. … So I’m going to reproduce it here at The Watch.” (07/08/26)
“The American economy grew by 2 percent during the first three months of 2026, hardly the picture of collapse that critics of the Trump administration keep promising is just around the corner. The country has not tanked under Donald Trump, not even with tariffs in place. Trump has been accused of putting black women out of work by cutting positions in the federal government, and it is true that federal cuts have hit black women disproportionately since they have historically been overrepresented in the federal workforce. But the federal government is not, and was never meant to be, a jobs program for any single demographic, and many of the positions eliminated were not economically viable in the first place. Despite this favorable record, The Washington Post published a feature on Black America to tarnish Trump’s image.” (07/09/26)
“I am not an expert in AI, but I have seen a lot of waves software-based productivity innovations in my lifetime, and have developed some intuition as to how fast or slow they can penetrate corporate America. I think the impact of AI over the next 5 years, particularly on productivity, has been exaggerated. Which should be no surprise as the impact of PC’s and later the Internet also undershot their productivity expectations for the first 5 years.” (07/08/26)
“There is a crisis of trust in America’s governing institutions. We see it in the numbers. In 1964, for example, 77 percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. Today, that number is 17 percent. The trust deficit represents more than dissatisfaction with policies or leaders. Democratic governance is increasingly experienced as something done to people by faraway elites, rather than something done for and by the people. Public remedies too often fail to address citizens’ concerns, or worse, inhibit their ability to act, adapt, and solve problems on their own. As trust erodes, respect for democratic norms wanes, and strongman politics gains ground. And all this creates the conditions in which a polarized media stokes the flames that have Americans actively fearing and hating one another.” (07/08/26)
“Five Weapons. One Target: Your Freedom. Washington, Webster, Paine, Madison, and more – they saw every one of them coming and warned us, but ‘we the people’ didn’t listen. It’s the top tools of tyrants: what they use against us and what’s self-inflicted.” (07/08/26)
“I’m usually suspicious of business-government partnerships. But some occasional and low-level efforts are inevitable and at worst anodyne. Take the Great American State Fair in the District of Columbia.” (07/08/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“President Trump has no problem criticizing, condemning, insulting, demonizing and threatening those who refuse to fall in line. He has branded political opponents ‘communists,’ denounced critics as anti-American, lashed out at NATO allies, threatened to cut off trade with Spain, and referred to Iran’s leaders as ‘scum’ amid the ongoing war. In Trump’s America, the president is free to call other nations bad actors, label his opponents dangerous, and treat disagreement as betrayal. But dare to criticize Trump, his administration, ICE, the police state, the war machine, the surveillance state, or the government’s steady assault on the Constitution, and you may find yourself treated as the threat. This is the hypocrisy of the moment: those in power claim an unlimited right to criticize everyone else, while increasingly denying the people the right to criticize them.” (07/08/26)
