Source: Washington Monthly
by Bill Scher
“New polling shows not so much ideological division among Democrats but a lack of consensus about where the party should go.” (05/22/26)
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/05/22/the-democratic-party-is-divided-but-not-how-you-think/
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“William Niskanen, in a book published many years ago, proposed a simple model of government bureaucracy. The more money a bureaucrat controls the more important he is, so bureaucrats want to maximize their budgets. The legislature knows how much any level of output from a bureau is worth to it. The bureaucracy knows — and the legislature does not — what a government bureau can do at what cost. So the rational bureau finds the largest level of output that it can produce at a cost below the value of that level of output to the legislature and exaggerates the cost of any lower level of output by enough to make it higher than its value, thus tricking the legislature into giving it the largest possible budget. When I first read the argument it struck me as implausible.” (05/22/26)
Source: Grist
by Tik Root
“High gas prices are driving EV growth in other parts of the world — but American drivers are favoring hybrids.” (05/22/26)
https://grist.org/solutions/why-hybrids-not-evs-are-winning-over-u-s-consumers/
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“Nowadays, any Revolution extolled on campus might best be symbolized not by fife and drum or quill on parchment, but by a raised red fist.” (05/22/26)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2026/05/22/welcome-the-revolutionaries/
Source: New York Post
by Miranda Devine
“Everyone’s angry with Donald Trump. It’s true that things are getting ragged with just over five months left until the midterms. The president’s agenda is being stymied in the courts and in Congress by bloody-minded Democratic obstructionism, and by a handful of lily-livered naysayers in his own bare-majority party. His poll numbers are as bad as they’ve ever been, apart from a rough patch in the aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021. The war with Iran has hit gas prices and exacerbated the cost of living. It may be heading to some sort of deal, but cheerleaders are thin on the ground. His enemies at home are desperate for Trump to fail, even if it means America is dealt a savage blow.” (05/24/26)
Source: Freedom and Flourishing
by Geoff Edwards
“Opposition leader Angus Taylor said a government he led would stop targeting net zero greenhouse emissions. It would increase use of fossil fuels, running coal-fired power generators ‘as long and as hard as possible.’ Mr Taylor wants ‘cheap energy.’ He blamed the renewables push and the energy bureaucracy for high energy prices. The reality is that the impact of high world prices for oil, gas and coal on electricity costs are also relevant. There is a certain irony in Mr Taylor’s rejection of net zero 2050. It was he as Energy and Climate Minister with then Prime Minister Scott Morrison who, in October 2021, first announced Australia’s commitment to net zero. Subsequently, in opposition, the Liberal Party followed its smaller coalition partner, the Nationals, in walking away from net zero 2050.” (05/22/26)
https://www.freedomandflourishing.com/2026/05/are-there-no-policies-worth-retaining.html
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Thomas Karat
“On an evening at the end of December 2025, a woman in Switzerland opened a grocery-delivery app on her phone. She filled a basket and typed in a delivery address in Brussels — a flat she had visited many times, whose owner could no longer leave Belgium and could no longer pay for anything from within it. She entered her Swiss card at checkout. The payment declined. She tried again. It declined again. The man waiting for the groceries is Jacques Baud, seventy years old, a retired colonel of the Swiss Army and a former officer of the Federal Intelligence Service who had worked in Brussels for NATO. On December 15, 2025, fifteen days before the blocked delivery, the Council of the European Union had placed him on a list.” (05/22/26)
Source: American Greatness
by Stephen Soukup
“For most Americans—or at least most Americans with even a remedial education in civics—the phrase ‘separation of powers’ usually explains the tripartite nature of the federal government. The Founders, in their wisdom, divided that government into branches: the legislative branch, which debates and enacts laws; the executive branch, which enforces the laws; and the judicial branch, which interprets the laws and ensures that they are compliant with one another and with constitutional principles. It’s a nice, clean, simple, and, above all, effective system for limiting the power of the federal polity. … People (understandably) tend to forget that the Founders’ separation of powers referred not only to the construction of the federal government but also to the construction of the federal republic.” (05/25/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/25/the-progressive-senate-and-its-discontents/
Source: The Daily Economy
by Jeffrey L Degner
“Americans now experience war more as an economic abstraction than a human catastrophe. Amid endless debt-financed conflict, have we forgotten war’s tragic cost?” (05/22/26)
Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander
“One popular objection to AI concerns is to declare that LLMs can never be AGI. You need a ‘new paradigm.’ Therefore, AGI is so far in the future that it’s not worth worrying about. A common counterargument is to claim that no, LLMs can become AGI. But even without that counterargument, I think the ‘therefore’ fails on its own terms. The key question is: how much of a new paradigm do we need?” (05/22/26)
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/new-paradigms-wont-save-you