“With the first ballots for the 2026 midterm election set to be mailed out this week, it seems we’re diving back into the sheer havoc the Trump administration is trying to wreak as voters decide who will control the House and the Senate in the 120th Congress. North Carolina election officials are scheduled to begin mailing absentee ballots to voters who requested them on Friday. Ordinarily, that would be a routine milestone in the election calendar. This year, it comes as the Trump administration is trying to force states to overhaul how they distribute mail ballots, only two months before Election Day. … The danger isn’t limited to administrative inconvenience or additional costs. If a state failed to comply, USPS could refuse to deliver ballots to voters who have a right to receive them under state law.” (09/02/26)
“Google has been found liable for monopolization by federal judges twice now. Both times, however, the judges have allowed the company’s monopoly to remain intact. The rather dire message this sends to would-be monopolists is that their business model will be protected even if they are found to have broken the law. It’s an ominous development as the tech industry seeks to shift its dominance into artificial intelligence, even as enforcers find more ways that platforms are abusing their power. We don’t yet know everything about the latest ruling because it will be under seal for a couple of weeks. But we know the important thing: Google will be allowed to continue to run all sides of the advertising technology stack, including the ‘sell side’ where advertisers make bids, the ‘buy side’ where publishers offer inventory on their websites, and the ‘ad exchange’ where both sides come together in real-time auctions.” (09/03/26)
“The Texas campaign is not simply discrimination against Muslims; more fundamentally, it is a demonstration of a mechanism that, once normalized, threatens the religious liberty of every American. Put simply: Once Texan officials or any other anti-Muslim agitator hands government a power liberal constitutionalism was built to deny—the power to decide which religion counts as ‘religion’—that power can be used against Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion.” (09/02/26)
Source: Rutherford Institute
by John & Nisha Whitehead
“For years, we have been warning that the U.S. Supreme Court would not save us from the American police state. That warning has not grown less urgent. It has simply become more complicated. The danger today is not merely that courts will favor order and procedure over freedom. It is that by the time justice makes an appearance, it will arrive so narrowly, so procedurally and so late that the government will already have prevailed. …The building is already gone. The troops are already deployed. The surveillance system is already operating. The people are already detained. The agency is already dismantled. The data is already collected. The war is already underway. And whatever constitutional principle eventually emerges from the litigation arrives too late to undo the damage.” (09/02/26)
“Albert Einstein is credited with saying, ‘the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ Whether he actually said it or not, the definition stands. This definition also very well describes the Trump Administration’s war with Iran. According to media reports, President Trump was cajoled by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that this would be an ‘easy war,’ like Venezuela. Just assassinate the Iranian leadership, he promised, and the regime change would bring in a pro-America regime in Iran. The CIA disagreed with the assessment, but Trump went with Netanyahu and the rest is history.” (09/02/26)
“I don’t want or need to be governed, but I still want a few of the things people claim government does or provides. The difference is, I want these things provided voluntarily, without taxation or other forms of coercion. If something isn’t essential enough for people to chip in and fund, it needs to go away. Forever, or until enough people decide to pay for it without being forced.” (09/02/26)
“Property rights were central to the origins of the liberal political tradition. And, in our time especially, they should be central once again. In addition to their inherent value as a vital element of liberty and autonomy, bolstering them is essential to uplifting the poor and disadvantaged and boosting prosperity and innovation. The right to private property can also help protect a variety of other important rights.” (09/02/26)
“In the summer of 1798, Congress gave the president the power to expel any foreigner he personally judged dangerous. Though the president never used the Alien Friends Act, and it expired two years later, it had its intended result. French printers, teachers, and booksellers sold their belongings and took ship out of Philadelphia, rather than wait to find out if the president had them in mind. Thomas Jefferson later argued that to put such power in the hands of one person is the very definition of despotism. Last Friday, a federal court in California reminded us of this in Stanford Daily v. Rubio, in which Judge Noël Wise held the government cannot deport people for their opinions.” (09/02/26)
“In a recent interview with Time Magazine, [Sam] Altman said he knows most people hate the technology that he and his fellow tech plutocrats are imposing upon our civilization. ‘Clearly, people hate data centers — right now, at least. People are pretty negative on AI,’ Altman said. Indeed, a recent survey conducted by CNBC‘s Generation Labs found that the public is very negative on AI in general and on its CEOs in particular. … They know we hate them and what they’re doing to us as a society. And yet they’re doing it anyway. They’re going to keep pushing this technology on us which is stealing our jobs, plunging our society further and further into a tech surveillance dystopia patrolled by militarized drones and police robots, and turning everyone into stupid, artless emotional infants who can’t do anything for ourselves.” (09/02/26)
