“President Donald Trump failed in his efforts to persuade the U.S. Supreme Court into upholding his executive order on birthright citizenship, which would have stripped that constitutional guarantee from millions of babies born on U.S. soil. Now a Republican lawmaker is hoping to effectively overrule that Supreme Court decision with a proposed bill that would resurrect Trump’s unlawful order and place it in the federal statute books. As The Hill reports, ‘Indiana Republican Sen. Jim Banks on Monday introduced a bill that would codify President Trump’s Day 1 executive order reshaping the definition of birthright citizenship in the U.S.’ There’s just one problem with Banks'[s] scheme: Trump lost the birthright citizenship case Trump v. Barbara on constitutional grounds, which means that any federal law repeating Trump’s already rejected position would be equally unconstitutional under the very Supreme Court precedent that Banks is now hoping to evade.” (07/16/26)
Source: The American Conservative
by Anthony J Constantini
“Some have also argued that America’s presence in Europe allows for power projection into the Middle East. Leaving aside the question of whether facilitating our involvement in that region’s interminable conflicts is itself desirable, the recent kerfuffle with Italy over the use of our bases for Operation Epic Fury suggests that even this is not guaranteed. By appearing to condition U.S. commitments on European defense spending, Trump is ultimately giving our allies a measure of control over our foreign policy. They themselves recognize this: during the summit, one NATO diplomat said NATO leaders increasingly viewed Trump as ‘the boy who cried wolf.’ Indeed, the playbook for future NATO summits—if the alliance keeps up the practice—has already been written.” (07/16/26)
“Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr. -.along with the rest of the founders and old revolutionaries – knew that freedom cannot exist with a government that doesn’t have strict rules. A clear line in the sand that it’s not allowed to cross. In other words – when government determines the extent of its own power. The lessons they learned in the American Revolution gave birth to the written constitution. But what they told us are the reasons for it – are completely ignored by the government-run ‘education’ system.” (07/16/26)
“A new nation needs many things. A way of ordering its political life. A way of protecting itself. A way of sustaining its population. But a nation also needs something far less practical. It needs a story to tell itself about itself. These kinds of origin stories have often been told in the form of poetry. … One of the most prolific—but now most forgotten—poetic mythmakers was the editor of Philadelphia’s National Gazette, friend of James Madison, critic of the Federalists, sea captain, and abolitionist Philip Freneau (1752–1832). One could pull nearly any poem from his list of works and find something interesting to say about American identity and the revolutionary era.” (07/15/26)
“The Department of Justice recently charged 455 defendants with $6.5 billion in healthcare fraud, one of a spate of recent revelations of fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA) tied to government programs. The insight of Nobel Laureate economist Gary Becker, the experience of America’s Framers, and the wisdom of an ancient guru from India reveal that the route forward entails a combination of tighter auditing and greater punishment. People, even the most virtuous ones, drawn to public service, respond to incentives. Good governance recognizes that universal truth and deliberately constructs incentive systems designed to catch and punish wrongdoers. The mere establishment of well-designed incentive systems stops most FWA in its tracks by creating an expectation that crime will not pay.” (07/15/26)
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by the Monitor’s Editorial Board
“Individual and institutional confidence in the credibility of official data from the United States, the world’s largest economy, is the grease that helps keep the engines of global productivity and commerce humming. And, as with most engines, a timely tuneup helps ensure smooth and predictable functioning, avoiding hiccups or holdups.” (07/15/26)
“Last month, after Abdul El-Sayed and I wrapped up our interview in the Detroit suburbs, I mentioned the ongoing effort by centrist Democrats to link him to Graham Platner. The candidate laughed. El-Sayed rose on his strength during short TV hits, where he would talk about his issues — ‘Medicare for All,’ no more wars — and the interviewer would ask about newsy topics like Platner, who used some of the same consultants as him. El-Sayed liked to joke that he was already running for Senate as a Muslim with the middle name Muhammad, ‘and now I have to carry that guy?’ If centrists have their way: Yes, he does.” (07/15/26)
“Casinos compete with online prediction markets. One way to compete is just to compete. If some of your casino customers are drifting to online betting, find ways to make the in-person experience more appealing. Improve advertising. Jigger the odds ever-so-slightly more in favor of players. Increase the dollar value of wins. Etc. We might call this the economic means of competition. The other way to compete? Deploy the political means: cajole government to bludgeon competitors. Thus the American Gaming Association, which represents casinos, would like the federal government to do something to impede online prediction markets — the trading of contracts about what’s going to happen in sports and otherwise on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.” (07/15/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“My novel Salamander is a fantasy in which some mages are truthtellers. I did not put as much thought as I should have into the question of how a society would be different if it was possible to tell when someone was (subjectively) lying, a question relevant to fictional worlds but also to possible futures. A better understanding of how the mind works might produce a real lie detector, one that reliably reported whether a speaker believed that what he said was true. What effects would it have on our society, assuming the lie detector was inexpensive and available to almost everyone?” (07/15/26)
