“Donald Trump entered office promising to end America’s endless wars. Instead, he chose a war openly aimed at regime change in Iran that has predictably become a quagmire, trapping the United States in an open-ended cycle of tit-for-tat strikes, economic blockades, and escalating confrontation over the Strait of Hormuz, with no plausible military path to victory. The immediate crisis is dangerous enough. The larger problem is that Washington is once again doubling down on a decades-long strategic obsession with Iran that has repeatedly produced the opposite of what American policymakers sought to achieve.” (07/15/26)
“In their second fatal shooting of the wrong person in just days – and as his three-year-old daughter watched – ICE thugs murdered a young Colombian husband and father legally working in Biddeford, ME for simply trying to driving away. … [US Senator Susan] Collins, forever on the wrong and bloody side of history and drunken rapists, was the deciding vote last month to approve the extra, mind-boggling $75 billion in ICE funding, though most Mainers want to see it abolished. Last year, after the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, she voted against both language seeking to curtail further violence and funding for mandatory body cameras, which most thugs are clearly not wearing anyway.” (07/14/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jennifer Greenburg & William Hartung
“There is a growing disconnect between how American voters think about safety and how Washington spends money in the name of national security. In a recent poll conducted by ReThink Media and the Costs of War Project at Brown University, when voters were asked what contributes to safety in daily life, they were more likely to point to friends and family or first responders than to the U.S. military. Social policies and public services, such as healthcare, education, and housing, also had significant support, with 68% of respondents stating these contributed somewhat or greatly to everyday safety. Yet at the very moment voters describe safety in these broad social terms, the Trump administration is proposing a $1.5 trillion national security budget and arguing that domestic priorities must take a back seat to military spending.” (07/15/26)
“For a variety of reasons, humans often resort to killing each other. Instead of resolving their differences peacefully, they arm themselves and kill each other until one of them wins the conflict, that is, he has killed most of his opponents. This deadly tradition survives and thrives to this day – in 2026.” (07/15/26)
“The latest U.S. strikes on Iran have put one of Donald Trump’s defining promises under pressure. He returned to the White House insisting that America could no longer keep paying for other countries’ wars. During the campaign, he pointed to trillions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan while roads, factories, and communities at home were neglected. A long conflict with Iran would make that promise difficult to keep. The question is not whether the United States can defeat Iran conventionally. It can. The harder question is whether Washington can contain the fallout, absorb the cost, and keep a limited operation from widening. Presidents rarely stumble because their forces cannot win a battle. Trouble begins when war grows, bills rise, and its purpose becomes harder to explain.” (07/15/26)
“When I left the Army in 2013 I had a terrible experience with the VA. Despite having a simple profile and a graduate degree, it took me years to navigate the system after a comedy of administrative errors. I lived the dysfunction that was in all the headlines in 2014. Yet years later, whenever I re-engage, it’s a transformed experience for the better. Things just seem to work and I go back about my life. When government services work, they stop feeling remarkable.” (07/15/26)
“A new report from Unleash Prosperity, a free-market policy group, makes a bold and welcome claim: reforming the FDA could unlock trillions of dollars. The authors’ biggest target isn’t safety testing. It’s the years the FDA spends proving a drug actually works. Trim one year off that process, they estimate, and we generate more than $10 trillion in value to patients and producers. Trim six years, and the figure climbs past $60 trillion. … It takes roughly a decade for a new drug to clear the agency. Most of that time isn’t spent proving the drug is safe. It’s spent proving it works. Developing one now costs nearly $880 million on average, closer to $1.2 billion for cancer and eye treatments, and about 90 percent of trials fail. Meanwhile, the report notes, China has cut its lab-to-trial timelines by 50 to 70 percent and runs clinical trials 50 to 60 percent cheaper than we do.” (07/14/26)
“Zohran Mamdani wants to be a knight in shining armor, coming to save New Yorkers from … their streaming subscriptions. The mayor’s office has announced a new city rule that promises to make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up for one. Do New Yorkers seriously need the government to step in and save them from their streaming subscription after a free trial renews? Let’s be adults here. This new rule, touted by the administration as a pillar of ‘Mayor Mamdani’s affordability agenda,’ is part of the larger phenomenon that propelled him into office: pandering to the entitled. For too many Mamdani supporters, the affordability crisis isn’t about the price of eggs. It’s about their inability to exercise the most basic requirements of fiscal responsibility without the government swooping in to hold their hand through the process.” (07/14/26)
“The most consequential thing that the war between the United States and Iran revealed has nothing to do with missiles or centrifuges. The war has shown just how much of the world’s economy now turns on the unchecked decisions of individual men: an American president who could start the war without asking Congress, and a Tehran regime that could respond by putting a fifth of the world’s oil beyond anyone’s reach. … The largest oil and gas supply disruption in history is far from over, but its strongest legacy might well end the dominance of fossil fuels.” (07/14/26)
