‘Candidates in tight midterm races are trying to distance themselves from the president and his Middle East mess, citing — you guessed it — the economy.” (09/24/26)
“A Peruvian man threatened with removal to the Central African Republic is safe for now after an appeals court reiterated late Wednesday night that its decision last week overturning the Trump administration’s third-country removal policy was effective immediately. But hours after that decision came down, flight data shows an ICE charter jet landed in two known third-country removal ‘host’ countries in Africa, while another appeared to be heading toward the continent, raising the possibility that other immigrants may have been or are about to be removed unlawfully. The Peruvian man, identified in court filings as ‘John Doe,’ has judicial protections from deportation to Peru and has been held in ICE custody in Massachusetts since July, one of his attorneys previously told the Prospect.” (09/24/26)
“In America right now, the people are shouting, ‘Gas prices! Food prices! Health care costs!’ And the Republican Party, six weeks out from the midterm elections, is responding: ‘What’s that? You want us to fight with the media? Or how about we get mad about this issue nobody has ever heard of because it’s something we made up?’ It’s as if the words ‘read the room’ never entered the GOP’s lexicon.” (09/24/26)
“President Trump might not look smaller, but he is. At home and abroad, among a significant majority of Americans that includes increasing numbers of Republicans, as well as in the eyes of foreign leaders, the president of the United States is shrinking by the day into a hapless peacock, a cartoon figure posting comic word balloons at all hours on the falsely labeled Truth Social network or bloviating for the (fewer and fewer) cameras by day. Consider Trump’s losses and humiliations just over the past week …” (09/24/26)
“This week, thousands of excited children in Gaza took part in a ritual seen as normal in much of the world: going back to school. Instead of being in classrooms with whiteboards and desks, however, most sat on the floor in makeshift structures or tents. School supplies were scarce and costly. Teachers were few. Nearly three years of a war between Hamas and Israel have devastated most school buildings and staff. Nevertheless, to many in Gaza, the fact that the schools even opened was testament to every child’s desire to be inspired, curious, and skilled for a life of progress. An estimated 540,000 children – the most since the war began – returned to in-person schooling. Working together, Gaza’s residents and international aid agencies upheld the ideal of maintaining a decent life for children, in part because they are the most innocent in any war.” (09/23/26)
“Among the many theories of constitutional interpretation that swirl through American politics, the Unitary Executive Theory (UET) is the most important one circulating today. … To be taken seriously—in an era when the original meaning of the Constitution is the ostensible lodestar of interpretation—a theory of executive power this robust should be strongly grounded in historical sources. In fact, the advocates of the UET presume what they need to prove: that the adopters of the Constitution held a coherent and consensual view of presidential power that could be stretched so far. The more closely one surveys this historical foundation, the more tenuous the theory becomes.” (09/24/26)
“For more than 50 years, the federal government shamelessly pretended that marijuana had no recognized medical use. Last December 18, President Trump signed an executive order entitled, ‘Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research.’ Trump ordered the Attorney General and the Drug Enforcement Administration to speed up rule-making to finally enable far more medical research on the benefits of marijuana. … Of course, libertarians want to see all federal restrictions on marijuana abolished. The nearly 100-year federal war on the loco weed has been a disgrace and a failure from the start. But the long history of federal persecution of marijuana users, researchers, and growers provides a high-potency kick on the perils of federal intervention to purportedly protect Americans’ health.” (09/23/26)
“Six years ago, the rise of the ‘Bernie bros’ supporting avowed socialist candidate Bernie Sanders (I-VT) raised the question of whether decades of soft indoctrination about the ‘horrors’ of capitalism by the Democrat-media complex and the oft-promised but never delivered benefits of socialism had finally produced enough voters willing to elect their way out of free enterprise. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. However, in 2026 the evidence supporting that question is harder to wave away. A self-described democratic socialist now runs City Hall in the nation’s largest city, and a slate of Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidates is on ballots nationwide for Congress, statehouses, and mayor’s offices. The question is no longer academic.” (09/24/26)