“For decades, Americans overwhelmingly aligned with Israel. This was not merely ideological; it was instructional. The public was told – repeatedly – that Israel reflected ‘American values’: democracy, civility, modernity. Palestinians and Arabs, by contrast, were framed as perpetual antagonists, initiators of violence, and ‘obstacles to peace.’ Some Americans embraced this framing on religious or ideological grounds. But for the majority, the pro-Israel position became a default – an inherited conclusion rooted in limited access to alternative information. Israel was ‘good,’ Arabs were ‘bad.’ The narrative was simple, binary, and rarely challenged. With mainstream media as the primary source of information, this perception hardened over time. Support for Palestine, and for broader Arab causes, remained confined to academic spaces and activist circles – often informed by anti-colonial and anti-imperialist frameworks, but numerically marginal and politically contained. The mainstream remained locked in place. But that lock has been broken.” (04/21/26)
“Kevin Warsh is scheduled to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday. The vote on his confirmation as Federal Reserve chairman may hinge on the Justice Department’s dropping its inquiry into whether the current chairman, Jerome Powell, testified inaccurately about cost overruns in renovating Fed headquarters. It would be a pity if we have to wait. The U.S. dollar would benefit from new thinking at the Fed. Lawmakers should be much more focused on the damage that Fed policies are inflicting on the soundness of America’s money. It’s also time that Congress, which is charged with ensuring a trustworthy currency, recognized that outsourcing this responsibility to the Fed is a big part of the problem.” (04/20/26)
“Beneath the weather of the daily headlines, slow tectonic shifts are changing America’s political landscape. Demographic developments are moving voters (and congressional seats, and electoral votes) from blue states to red ones. Trust in the traditional media (routinely in the tank for Democrats) has plummeted. And the entire education industry, a key pillar of the leftist establishment, is crumbling, too. The long decline of higher education (the subject of my 2012 book The Higher Education Bubble) has been slowly accelerating for over a decade, driven by sky-high tuition and shrinking employment prospects for recent college grads. When Hampshire College in Massachusetts announced its plans to close last week, it became the latest private college to fall victim to the ruin.” (04/21/26)
Source: The Bleeding Heart Libertarian
by Matt Zwolinski
“If you had asked me in 2015 to describe the core commitments of American libertarianism, I could have done it in about a minute. Free markets, limited government, individual rights, skepticism of state power, free trade, open or liberal immigration, some version of non-interventionism abroad, a strong preference for constitutional constraints on executive authority. There would have been edge cases and internal disputes, sure, but the center of gravity was clear enough that you could gesture at it. Try to do the same today, ten years later, and you run into trouble almost immediately. In the public-facing, movement-adjacent side of libertarianism — the one that reaches audiences through podcasts, YouTube, X, and the tech-intellectual networks of the last few years — the center of gravity has shifted in ways that would have seemed inconceivable a decade ago.” (04/20/26)
“Private electricity grids could be key to opening the energy sector up to testing and innovation—something that is difficult on a ratepayer-supported grid. Due to mountains of regulation, public fear, and high costs, there has been little recent experience in constructing nuclear power plants, as only seven of the 94 operating reactors in the United States were built after 1990. While continued regulatory reforms are absolutely imperative, opening the sector to specialists to gain expertise would be significant.” (04/20/26)
“A reasonable rule is that once you begin making an argument ad Hitlerum — comparing some malevolent politician to Hitler or some malignant movement to the Nazis, or declaring a brutal (but non-eliminationist) war a genocide comparable to the Holocaust — you have lost the plot. The facile but extreme analogy is the first resort of the unimaginative alarmist. To this we should now add the argument ad Orbánum, namely, the view that the Trump administration is just like that of the creeping, well-nigh unstoppable, and irreversible corrupt authoritarian ruler Viktor Orbán.” (04/20/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by Cindy Cohn & Betty Gedlu
“For years, EFF has pushed technology companies to make real human rights commitments—and to live up to them. In response to growing evidence that Palantir’s tools help power abusive immigration enforcement by ICE, we sent the company a detailed letter asking how the promises in its own human rights framework extends to that work. This post explains what we asked, how Palantir responded, and why we believe those responses fall short.” (04/20/26)
“When we had shipping expert Sal Mercogliano on our Organized Money podcast, he said that for every day the Strait of Hormuz is shut down to traffic, it’ll take a week to untangle the problem afterward. Yesterday was day 52 of the crisis, so that’s a year on the back end, even if it ended imminently. So get used to more from us at Aftermath, as we detail the consequences before the fighting even stops. Tell your friends and scroll through previous editions at prospect.org/aftermath. We are [still at war]. My colleague Bob Kuttner ran down the latest as of yesterday afternoon. The fundamental problem is that this war turned the Strait of Hormuz into a bargaining chip, and both sides want to use that chip by closing the strait, which continues to punish the global economy with price spikes and shortages.” (04/21/26)
“In recent weeks, a growing number of Democrats and progressives have called on federal officials to invoke the 25th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to remove President Donald Trump from office. Even some of Trump’s most stalwart onetime allies are joining in. While it may feel good to wishcast about booting Trump from the presidency, the 25th Amendment is perhaps the most unlikely strategy possible.” (04/20/26)
