“What’s in a name? For global aid groups hit hard last year when the world’s largest donor – the United States – slashed its humanitarian and development budget, a name change can bring a refreshing change in how to view poor, unwell, and homeless people. On March 18, Mercy Corps, which once directly helped about 37 million people in 35 countries, announced it would soon call itself Prosper Global, after a major downsizing of the Oregon-based organization. ‘We believe strongly that what these communities need is prosperity, not mercy,’ chief development officer Mary Stata told Axios. The rebranding reflects a view that ‘participants’ in programs are leaders, not ‘passive recipients of humanitarian aid,’ as Ms. Stata explained.” (03/20/26)
“As the Iran War has metastasized, a number of conservative intellectuals who strongly supported President Trump have started jumping ship. … A common thread is the comparison of the Iran war to George W. Bush’s war on Iraq, and a belief that, by pursuing a similar war of choice for regime change in the Middle East, Trump is betraying the intellectual foundations and the clear and specific policy goals of the movement he started. I rejoice when any public intellectual admits error, something that happens far less often than it ought to do. But I’m not sure they’ve identified their error correctly, because their analogy isn’t quite right. The Iran War isn’t the right event to analogize to the Iraq War. Rather, Trump himself, and the whole idea of using him as a vehicle for transforming America from the top down, is what is analogous to the Iraq War, and was from the beginning.” (03/20/26)
“The case against the Iran war is not the $200 billion that Secretary of Don’t You Dare Call It a War Pete Hegseth is asking for to fund U.S. operations in Iran. … Nor should we be persuaded by sentimentality about the loss of the lives of U.S. troops. … the entire military enterprise is based on the assumption that lives will be lost. … The case against this war is that it is illegal — whatever Secretary Jägerbomb has to say about it, this is a war, and it is being conducted with no congressional authorization in a haphazard, chaotic, ad hoc way by a president who is profoundly corrupt, nearly 80 years old, and unable to write an ordinary English sentence, surrounded by a constellation of grifters, addicts, and incompetents unrivaled by anything in Washington since the days of Franklin Pierce.” (03/20/26)
“There is a word for being perpetually behind. A little slow. Not quick on the uptake. As a society, we have largely decided that it’s not one that civilized people should use: it’s cruel and denigrates the genuinely vulnerable among us. But what else can you call it when it has only just dawned on certain people that something might be a little off with this Trump guy?” (03/20/26)
“In the intricate standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic over the use of AI in weaponry, it was easy to be distracted by the strange bedfellows-aspect of the struggle – with OpenAI becoming a willing partner of the Pentagon even while Anthropic established itself as a darling of the #Resistance. But, more importantly, the standoff represents a significant turn of the wheel in how the debate around AI has entered into cultural space. It’s no longer Big Tech behemoths one-upping each other with upgrades. It’s about the vibes, man. And the future of AI may well be a kind of extended ELIZA effect — with consumers and contractors choosing between different AIs sort of as if they were sports teams, with the competing AIs corresponding to different sides in the culture wars.” (03/20/26)
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
by David Greene
“EFF joined other digital rights and civil liberties organizations in calling out the unconstitutionality of Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s recent threats to punish broadcasters for airing statements he disagrees with. Carr’s recent threats, like his past threats, are unconstitutional efforts to coerce news coverage that favors President Donald Trump. He wrongly claims that the FCC’s ‘public interest’ standard allows him and the commission to revoke the licenses of broadcasters who publish news that is unflattering to the government is anathema to our country’s core constitutional values.” (03/20/26)
Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Current communication technology is often immediately public, as in that example. An email message is private when it is sent but copies remain in the possession of sender, receiver, and possibly others, who may be compelled to release them if sender, receiver, or the employer of either becomes involved in a law suit or criminal prosecution. What are the consequences? One is to make communication more difficult; if you are corresponding via a public medium, arguing with someone on Facebook, it is prudent to avoid making any argument that could be quoted out of context to make you look bad. If you don’t you are likely to regret it. You may even find it prudent to avoid arguing for unpopular positions that you believe in …. Another effect is to make company executives more guarded in internal correspondence.” (03/20/26)
“Much hay has been made of voting laws in Tennessee and across the country lately. You’ve probably heard about the SAVE Act at the federal level, and maybe some proposed laws at the state level too. The Banner wrote about some of the proposals at the state-level yesterday, but focusing so narrowly on ‘disparate impact’ type bills, they missed the Big Kahuna. There’s a proposal moving through the General Assembly right now that could change how local elections work in Nashville. The bill, sponsored by Scott Cepicky in the House and Joey Hensley in the Senate, would move the date of city elections to line up with the August primary or November general election. In other words, the off-cycle August 2027 Metro elections would get pushed to November 2028, landing on the same ballot as the presidential race every four years.” (03/20/26)
“It is a great tribute to the profundity of Flannery O’Connor’s work that it continues to generate quality secondary literature many years after her death. Lately the conversation has taken a philosophical turn, exploring O’Connor’s relevance to some of the defining debates within modern philosophy. An excellent example of this kind of work is Ann Hartle’s Flannery O’Connor and Blaise Pascal: Recovering the Incarnation for the Modern Mind.” (03/20/26)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Sarah Leah Whitson
“After years of flouting the UN and Geneva Conventions Israel suddenly has an attack of legal propriety now that it is on the receiving end.” (03/20/26)
