Source: The Daily Economy
by Corey A DeAngelis
“Should taxpayers be required to subsidize unions’ lobbying for more taxpayer subsidies? Three states say ‘no, spend our money on students.'” (07/01/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/teachers-unions-are-losing-one-of-their-government-perks/
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“Speaking Sunday night at the Trump Kennedy Center, where he was receiving the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Bill Maher offered an excellent bit of advice for politicians who do not wish to be mocked: ‘Stop being funny.’ It is a simple thing, and a not-so-simple thing. When politicians are being ridiculous, Maher said, ‘I put them in jokes—jokes that work.’ Jokes that work is the key thing. It is axiomatic in comedy that the way to kill a joke is to explain it, but it is worth thinking about why and how Maher’s jokes, and other jokes about politicians, work. If politicians are to stop being funny, then they will need to answer the question: When are politicians funny? … Naked dishonesty in politicians is funny. So is incompetence. So is howling demagoguery. Quiet, unshowy competence is not very funny.” (07/01/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/bill-maher-politicians-humor/
Source: The American Prospect
by Sean M Flaim
“When Congress passed the Sherman Act in 1890, John Sherman told the Senate, ‘If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life’. The act intended to keep concentrated private power from becoming a sovereign authority unto itself. It lasted five years before the Supreme Court took it apart. In United States v. E.C. Knight (1895), the Court held that manufacturing was not commerce and therefore lay beyond the reach of federal antitrust law. The case concerned the American Sugar Refining Company, which by acquisition controlled more than 90 percent of the nation’s sugar refining capacity. The Court drew its commerce line precisely where the largest industrial concentration in the country sat, and the trust walked free.” (07/01/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/07/01/supreme-court-assault-on-congress-anti-monopoly-solution/
Source: Washington Monthly
by Anne Kim
“The right-wing organization blames ‘feminism’ for falling fertility rates. Not surprisingly, its ‘solutions’ are hostile to women.” (07/01/26)
Source: Antiwar.com
by M Reza Behnam
“The February 2026 Iran war cannot be understood as an isolated event; but rather the outcome of over four decades of coordinated American and Israeli efforts to contain and topple the Islamic Republic. Similarly, Iran’s ability to withstand the military onslaught and emerge victorious must also be situated within that historical context. After weeks of U.S-Israeli bombardment, Iran has shown not only that it has been able to withstand an assault by the world’s strongest militaries, but that it could successfully exact substantial military, geopolitical and economic costs on its adversaries. Despite suffering significant damage, and the martyrdom of senior military commanders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the state survived. Tehran’s ability to maintain institutional continuity and operational resilience despite intense pressures could ultimately reshape the geopolitical landscape of West Asia.” (07/01/26)
Source: CounterPunch
by Binoy Kampmark
“Former US national security advisor John Bolton and President Donald J. Trump share traits neither probably knew they had. The latter, for one, is far more war-mongering than he let on to American voters, evidenced by his recently failed, disastrous foray into attacking Iran. Bolton, on the other hand, has been a consistent war addict …. That other commonly shared trait between the two is a rather sketchy approach to handling classified documents.” (07/01/26)
Source: spiked
by James Dixon
“The UK’s landmark Tobacco and Vapes Act, which became law in April this year (and has since been buried by a typically, and very modern, frenetic news cycle), was hailed as a triumph for public health. By permanently phasing out the legal sale of cigarettes to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009, it promises to create the world’s first ‘smoke-free generation’. It’s difficult (though not impossible) to object to this from a medical perspective. … But it’s important to look beyond the medical perspective to what this legislation represents. It is, perhaps, the clearest expression yet of the creeping sanitisation of Britain that has been underway over the past two to three decades.” (07/01/26)
Source: Reason
by Paul Shapiro
“Critics of the growing plant-based meat business say that unless a burger began with a heartbeat, it has no right to be called ‘meat.’ … More than a century ago, another incumbent industry tried to defend its turf by insisting that a new technology could imitate nature but never deserve nature’s name. The product was ice. America’s lucrative natural ice industry was being disrupted by a cheaper, cleaner, more reliable competitor: manufactured ice, or as its detractors insisted it be called, artificial ice. The incumbent industry fought back with a message that sounds remarkably familiar today: the new thing was an imitation, an artificial product masquerading as nature’s own.” (06/30/26)
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Erwin Chemerinsky
“This should have been an easy case for the Supreme Court. When the Constitution was penned in 1787, the founders followed English law and determined that everyone born in the country was deemed a citizen. This was followed until the Supreme Court’s tragic 1857 decision in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, which held that enslaved individuals were property of their owners and that they were not U.S. citizens, even if they had been born in the country. The first sentence of the first section of the 14th Amendment, adopted in 1868, was meant to expressly and unquestionably overrule this decision.” (06/30/26)
Source: American Greatness
by Edward Ring
“On the advent of America’s 250th anniversary, the conventional narrative is that our country is deeply divided. Typical takes on the state of disunity in the United States include this headline from a guest op-ed that recently appeared in USA Today, ‘America celebrated together at 200. We won’t at 250’, and ‘We still had a sense of oneness then. We no longer do’. In a related news article, the publication cited major national surveys that ‘consistently show an anxious nation’ and ‘a divisive president’. These observations aren’t wrong, but the divisions they cite (partisan politics, old vs. young, racial polarization, bitter disagreements over social issues) are missing the biggest source of alienation of all, which is diminished economic opportunity. Fully half of American households report living paycheck to paycheck.” (07/01/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/01/the-economics-of-reconciliation-on-americas-250th-birthday/