Source: Exiled Policy
by Jason Pye
“Congress can’t come close to balancing the budget by eliminating fraud in federal programs.” (06/08/26)
https://exiledpolicy.substack.com/p/the-white-house-deputy-chief-of-staff
Source: Foreign Policy
by John Haltiwanger
“U.S. President Donald Trump has become a passenger in the Iran war, despite insisting that he remains behind the wheel after months of failed efforts to reach a peace deal. And by attempting to portray himself as in control and denying complex realities on the ground, he has only made it more difficult to reach an agreement.” (06/08/26)
Source: Big Head Press
by Scott Bieser
Cartoon. (06/08/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“TLast week, the flesh-eating parasite known as the New World screwworm was found in a calf in Texas; a second case was identified about five miles away shortly thereafter. (A third case was found in a dog.) Screwworm flies lay their eggs in the live tissue of warm-blooded animals, from livestock to pets to humans. These larvae ‘screw’ into the animal’s flesh, and while they are not very harmful to humans, in that the horrifying effects of maggots chewing into your skin are relatively easy to notice and address, they can kill a livestock host if not treated. In a widespread infestation, one of the last resorts would be mass culling, which would obviously have huge impacts on a diminished U.S. cattle herd.” (06/09/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/06/09/why-that-next-hamburger-is-going-to-cost-you-new-world-screwworm/
Source: Quillette
by Kevin Mahnken
“The #CancelColbert saga in 2014 established the paradigm for countless hashtag controversies that followed.” (06/08/26)
https://quillette.com/2026/06/08/colbert-and-cancellation-cbs-trump-suey-park/
Source: Show-Me Institute
by James V Shuls
“Life comes at you in waves. You graduate high school, watch friends start careers, get married, and have kids. Then social media shows you their children repeating the cycle. As a member of the Pacific High School Class of 1999, I didn’t expect to reach the retirement wave so soon. Yet a recent post stopped me: a high school classmate, still in his mid-40s, announced his retirement after 25 years in Missouri public schools. … He is retiring at exactly the age when most professionals hit their career peak—when experience, leadership, and judgment are most valuable. And that’s the problem. Missouri’s Public School Retirement System (PSRS) is pushing talented educators out of the classroom at the very moment students and schools need them most.” (06/08/26)
Source: The UnPopulist
by Marlene Laruelle
Interview with Shikha Dalmia. Dalmia: “My break with libertarianism happened when Trump arrived on the scene. I was working at Reason magazine at that time and, the minute Trump came down the golden escalator, it was clear to me that he was a different kind of politician: he was a demagogue and an authoritarian, he didn’t really understand liberalism, and he didn’t understand America’s core commitments. … It is not that libertarians were completely unconcerned about Trump; it’s that they were just not taking the threat seriously. They were treating him as a normal politician, just bad in a different kind of way and, at best, maybe a corrective to the excesses of the left. This chasm between me and libertarian circles just kept growing, and it was getting hard to get my point of view taken seriously.” (06/08/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/how-the-libertarian-movement-missed
Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Professor Paul Finkelman
“The Trump administration recently announced that it is removing about 180 religions from those recognized by the Pentagon. This is an obvious violation of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty. In essence, the Administration has ‘established’ 31 religions as acceptable to the U.S. government and denied religious freedom to members of many other faiths. … The message of the administration is that some faiths matter, and many do not. There seems to be some politics involved here. The ‘liberal’ Unitarian/Universalist Church, which is as old as the nation itself, is no longer officially a church. Nor are churches tied to minorities, such as the Native American Church or the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME).” (06/08/26)
Source: Persuasion
by Sam Kahn
“With all the bravado that tends to accompany Donald Trump, something else has been striking me recently—when faced with major decisions, there’s a way in which he carries himself like a wise fool in a Shakespeare play, bemused by all the tumult that’s going on around him. In a revealing moment, on March 17, when asked to explain why the United States was at war with Iran, Trump said, ‘You could say we did it out of habit’ — as if the war was just a bit of noise going on in the background and had nothing really to do with him. … what is this storm that sweeps Trump along, this force that he can only bemusedly watch? I would argue that it’s political realism — the doctrine that’s taken over the second Trump administration, maybe not entirely with Trump willing it, but which marks a fundamentally different era in international relations.” (06/08/26)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/trump-misunderstands-realism
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Connor Echols
“Amid a rapid escalation between Israel and Iran, Yemen’s Houthis have rejoined the Iran war, launching a volley of missiles at Israel and pledging to implement ‘a complete and total ban’ of Israeli shipping in the Red Sea. It’s safe to say that the tenuous ceasefire in the Middle East is now unraveling. President Donald Trump demanded that all parties deescalate, writing on Truth Social Monday morning that ‘Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding’ so long as ‘ignorance or stupidity’ don’t get in their way. But the latest developments suggest that the United States has limited control over the path of the conflict, which is now entering its fourth month.” (06/08/26)