“Of course, no one wants an overbearing church, like the 12th-century papacy, locked in a bloody struggle with secular authorities. We are not calling for heavies to chase after archbishops, or Keir Starmer, like Henry II, to be whipped by monks through the streets of Canterbury in his underclothes for his manifold offences (the prime minister would surely find such a prospect displeasing). But spats like that between Trump and Leo show that the church is contributing to political debate in a way that other actors are not able to manage. The frequent fury directed towards the church and Christian advocates demonstrates that their messages – even in this apparently post-Christian age – are still able to pique the conscience.” (04/21/26)
“In 2020, news of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin swept the nation. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which had been formed seven years earlier in response to the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, saw a massive re-emergence. Protests were held across the country, including in conservative and rural areas. Governments were faced with calls to “defund the police,” re-evaluate policing strategies, and hold police officers and departments accountable. That year, the Boston Police Department (BPD) saw $12 million of its funding reallocated to community programs and police reforms. This of course was a drop in the bucket of the department’s $404 million (now over $430 million) in overall funding at the time. In addition, Boston officials created the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, which was supposed to receive and investigate reports of police misconduct. But this project has seen little success.” (04/22/26)
“Over ninety years ago, muckraking author Upton Sinclair ran a failed campaign to become California’s governor in 1934. He later recounted the experience in his very forgettable book, except for one quote, ‘I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked.’ The one quote that stands out in Sinclair’s account of his campaign stumping is this one: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!’ There is perhaps no better quote to understand California’s politicians.” (04/21/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Nancy Gallagher, Clay Ramsay, & Samuel Hickey
“Nobody should be surprised that the war launched on February 28 did not accelerate anti-government protests in Iran. The survey we fielded soon after the Twelve-Day War showed signs it had a rally-around-the-flag effect. Trump also had pre-war warnings from the intelligence community that his assumptions about the Iranian public’s response were flawed. After weeks of bombing, Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence saw no imminent regime collapse. CISSM’s polling consistently finds real discontent in Iran. But Iranian discontent is not America’s to command. The favorable minority in our polling is more outward-looking, more skeptical of the domestic order, more favorable toward American people, and more interested in diplomacy than the rest of the public. But it is not a regime-change base waiting for Washington’s signal.” (04/21/26)
“No hijackings. No bombings. No ‘national security’ related hostage situations. Just life, as usual, minus paying out big bucks for a useless bureaucracy that we got along just fine without from 1789 through 2002 … and can clearly get along just fine without now. Even starting a war with Iran wasn’t enough to give DHS anything visibly productive to do. Political and media hysteria over supposed ‘Iranian sleeper cells’ quickly dissipated after it turned out that those cells either don’t exist or didn’t set their alarm clocks. Any sane policy discussion, at this point, should center around how quickly DHS can be defunded permanently and abolished entirely.” (04/21/26)
“Escalation is unfortunately quite likely because the president and his allies don’t understand how to do anything else. Whenever they encounter resistance, they assume that the answer is always more pressure, more threats, more attacks. It never occurs to them that they are destroying any incentive that the Iranians might have to compromise. Like every mindless hawk before them, they believe that they will win if they just inflict more pain. They can’t fathom that other nations might value their dignity and independence highly enough that surrender is not an option. It is the same morally and stategically bankrupt approach that has failed the U.S. many times before, and it will fail again here.” (04/21/26)
“[T]he stunning electoral defeat of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Hungary raises the question: Has the market for autocratic strongmen peaked? One might see this event as an isolated incident, because Hungary is a small country (with a total population only slightly larger than New York City) and because every nation has its own peculiar political dynamics. Orban’s defeat stemmed from deep dissatisfaction with the consequences of his rule, however, and there are reasons to think that today’s strongmen — and yes, they are all men — are facing a rockier future for much the same reason. Most of them have done a poor job of governing, and for reasons that highlight the limitations of letting a single strong leader determine national policy.” (04/21/26)
“[US House leadership] spent nearly all of Wednesday and Thursday pressuring reform-minded Republicans to get in line on an amended [FISA renewal] bill that would include a ‘warrant requirement.’ The thing is, the amended bill didn’t really include a warrant requirement. The amendment says two main things. First, it says the government can’t use Section 702 to intentionally target the communications of a U.S. person. If the government wants to surveil an American directly, it has to use the legal authorities that already exist for that purpose, such as traditional FISA surveillance or a criminal warrant supported by probable cause. That’s not reform; that’s literally current law, which already says that the government cannot target U.S. persons under 702 and must use existing authorities under Title I of FISA or traditional criminal warrants if it wants to surveil an American directly.” (04/21/26)
“For at least a decade, Americans have wrestled with growing questions and doubts about their institutions of higher education and the value of a traditional four-year degree. The declining confidence has been driven by concerns over escalating costs and growing student indebtedness, uneven job prospects, and on-campus political polarization. These concerns have fed into calls by the current administration for changes to accreditation procedures and transparency in admissions processes, especially among elite institutions. There are indications, however, that the downward trend in Americans’ trust in higher education and its outcomes is not irreversible.” (04/20/26)
“In 1895, Greek journalist Vlasis Gavriilidis traveled to Cambridge University seeking advice from three leading economists — Alfred Marshall, Henry Sidgwick, and John Neville Keynes — on the most urgent economic problem facing his country: a collapsing market for currants (Corinthian raisins), which then accounted for roughly half of all Greek exports. \Overproduction, fueled by earlier government policies and a temporary export boom, threatened widespread rural unemployment and poverty. The economists offered divided counsel. That ambiguity gave organized currant growers the opening they needed to lobby successfully for a price-support system — a ‘temporary’ intervention that promised stable incomes for growers while shifting costs onto taxpayers and distorting the broader economy. … The measure was anything but temporary.” (04/21/26)
