Source: Bluegrass Institute
by Joseph Verruni & Travis Fisher
“Kentuckians are right to worry that data centers will drive up their electric bills. When a single facility demands as much power as Owensboro, someone pays for the new plants and wires that serve it. The General Assembly is still arguing over how to make sure that someone isn’t the residential ratepayer. There is a simple answer, and Kentucky law currently forbids it: let large consumers build their own grid.” (07/28/26)
“In 1992, Congress created what’s commonly known as the 340B program in order to help safety-net hospitals and clinics stretch limited resources to serve low-income and uninsured patients. By requiring pharmaceutical manufacturers to sell prescription drugs at steep discounts to qualifying hospitals and clinics, the logic went, the 340B program aimed to keep medications accessible and affordable in underserved communities. Nearly 35 years later, however, the program bears little resemblance to what Congress had in mind, and there’s no reliable way to know whether patients still benefit from its growth.” (07/28/26)
“The proper delineation of authority between the federal government and the states has often been the subject of controversy in the debate over AI policy. Proponents of both approaches reference the constitutional clauses that support their claim. The reality is that this issue, as with many things in AI, is not a neat list of discrete policy matters. Instead, there is a clear mix of AI policy issues that require national attention—those that are the exclusive domain of the states and the issues that can be taken on by both the federal government and the states (or a collection of states).” [editor’s note: Or, you know, all governments could keep their grubby hands off – TLK] (07/28/26)
It’s one of the worst jobs in Washington: Elbridge Colby, the under secretary of defense for policy, is tasked with explaining Donald Trump’s erratic foreign policy to the public. But you could just as easily say he volunteered to launder Trump’s bellicose, bizarre acts by finding an intellectual coherence that isn’t there. The 46-year-old grandson of former CIA Director William Colby and graduate of Harvard and Yale is a born-and-bred courtier to the powerful. He boosted lies about the 2020 election and spent the subsequent four years angling for a position in the next Republican administration. He seems to have convinced himself that Trump would be a vehicle for executing his grand vision of focusing American foreign policy on China while distancing the United States from, in his view, parasitic European allies and a hopelessly troubled Middle East.” (07/28/26)
“All this innovation that’s being poured into finding new ways to conduct mass military slaughter, to surveil and control our entire society, to restrict and manipulate the flow of information, to create artificial scarcity for products that people need, to create artificial demand for products that people do not need, to compete with rival corporations in order to turn billionaires into trillionaires — none of that needs to be happening. Humanity could be using its creativity and cleverness to make the world a better place instead.” (07/28/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“Maybe some good will come from these military murders. Maybe the American people will finally come to the realization that the drug war is nothing more than a decades-old, ongoing, never-ending deadly, destructive, and corrupt racket that has brought nothing but death and the destruction of liberty and privacy, while making the federal government ever more powerful. Maybe — just maybe — Americans will finally, after decades of drug-war failure, pressure U.S. officials to terminate the abomination of the drug war.” (07/28/26)
“Until recently, Lanyia Brooks worked as a custodian in a data center, where she spent her days maintaining the facility while watching tech professionals build the infrastructure around her. Brooks said that perspective changed completely when a data center technician noticed her work ethic and remarked that she ‘worked too hard to be just working as a custodian,’ and sent her a link to a specialized career training program. Despite waiting two anxious months to hear back, Brooks was accepted, conquering her fears to take her very first airplane flight to Indianapolis for the opportunity.” (07/28/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Keli‘i Akina
“Like many local business owners, Hawaii’s farmers and ranchers have to deal with rules and regulations that often make it harder to run a successful enterprise. They also share the same concerns about the high cost of housing and how it affects their ability to attract and retain employees. This year, with encouragement from my colleagues at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii, the state Legislature took steps in the right direction to help.” (07/28/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by CJ Polychroniou & Alexandra Boutri
“The US is the richest country in the world, yet an international outlier on many measures. Among industrialized nations, the US spends a lower percentage of its GDP on public social expenditure, has no universal healthcare system, union density is at an all-time low, and the average American’s standard of living is in decline, as ‘nearly half of US households can’t make ends meet.’ Of course, delusional President Donald Trump continues to say that the US is the ‘hottest country in the world.’ Is the US, however, ready for radical change?” (07/28/26)
“On July 14, the House of Representatives passed the Sunshine Protection Act by a vote of 308 to 117. The bill would impose Daylight Saving Time year-round, nationwide, and President Donald Trump has promised to sign it. It now sits in the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune has voiced misgivings about a federal mandate, and Senator Tom Cotton has asked that it never reach the floor. The ensuing debate has been conducted entirely in terms of policy: circadian health versus evening commerce, school-bus-stop safety versus after-work golf. Those are pertinent questions, and they have a clear answer. But there is an antecedent question that no one in Congress appears to have asked: where, exactly, does the federal government get the power to legislate noon away from the sun?” (07/28/26)
