“Claiming a right to control a geographical place that is not yours is analogous to the claim that one has a right to one’s customers against competing suppliers. For example, domestic workers would have a right to the patronage of their domestic customers and could thus to forbid them, through tariffs or bans, to purchase from foreign (or non-local) suppliers. This sort of theory is either incoherent or authoritarian. Having a right to one’s customers implies that the latter do not have a right to choose their suppliers, just like having a right to one’s own Venice implies that other Venetians don’t have a right to their own Venice. Enforcing one’s right then implies controlling what other Venetians can import or export. (Remember that tourism is an export.)” (07/02/25)
“Sixty years ago this summer, Congress enacted the nation-transforming Voting Rights Act. Soon, however, Congress and a deferential Supreme Court, by reverse alchemy, turned the gold of the VRA into the lead of today’s racial distribution of representation. Last Friday, the Supreme Court delayed, pending reargument next term, deciding a case that could reverse the VRA’s tarnishment. On the final day of the 2024-2025 term, the court issued 404 pages of decisions, concurrences and dissents in six cases. Singularly important, however, were the six pages of Justice Clarence Thomas’s dissent from the court’s decision not to decide the case concerning the patent racial gerrymandering in Louisiana’s redistricting map.” (07/02/25)
“The Russian war in Ukraine took a telling turn June 9. A drone strike damaged St. Sophia Cathedral in the capital, Kyiv. The white-walled church is the country’s spiritual center, a symbol of the arrival of Christianity a millennium ago. Its gold dome, green cupolas, and Byzantine art are seen as the cultural core of Ukrainian identity – something Russian President Vladimir Putin claims does not exist. How did Ukraine react to the attack? Within days, work began to repair the eastern facade of the 11th-century landmark. The quick restoration is essential to sustaining the morale and resilience of Ukrainians during a war in which Russian forces have deliberately damaged or destroyed more than 2,000 religious and cultural structures.” (07/01/25)
Source: Center for a Stateless Society
by Kevin Carson
“Although he does so in the course of arguing against right-libertarians, [Joseph] Heath takes at face value the right-libertarian framing of the 19th century United States as characterized by a ‘minimal state.’ He responds that the economy of the late 19th century, in which the state mostly just enforced property rights and contracts, spent as much time in recession as in expansion. But by pretending that this was a ‘laissez-faire’ or ‘minimal state’ era, he neglects not only the massive role of the state in setting up capitalism and the wage system in the first place — like right-libertarians, Heath ignores the role of the state in creating what he calls ‘private property rights’ — but in creating the structure of the Gilded Age economy after the Civil War.” (07/02/25)
“If you pay attention to public policy discussions, you know that people have proposed a Basic Income Guarantee or a Universal Basic Income as one option among many to deal with technological unemployment or the distributional consequences of new technologies like generative AI. You might not know that the idea of a Basic Income is nothing new, and it has a long and interesting history. That’s what the historian Anton Jäger and the historical sociologist Daniel Zamora explore in Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income.” (07/02/25)
“What does Washington’s dominant ‘America First’ mood mean for BRICS? As its leaders gather in Rio de Janeiro this weekend, the omens are not propitious. U.S. President Donald Trump has taken direct aim at the 10-nation grouping, threatening to impose a 100 percent tariff on its member states should they try to dethrone the U.S. dollar from its globally dominant role. Washington has also stepped up a trade and tariff war across the world, including against almost all BRICS states. And a BRICS member state, Iran, recently came under a ferocious military assault from the United States. Can BRICS survive this onslaught, and what must it do to stay relevant in a new world?” (07/02/25)
“Three years ago, I remember exactly where I was when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. My stomach sank. As an OB/GYN PA with more than a decade in reproductive care, I knew this wasn’t just devastating—it was going to reshape the healthcare landscape completely. The conversations I’d been having with patients for years (about abortion, birth control, miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pain) were about to get harder, more complicated, and more dangerous. I had the honor of joining over 100 incredible storytellers in Washington, D.C. for the Our Voices, Our Stories, Our Future: Free & Just Storyteller Summit, to mark three years since the deadly Dobbs decision. In emergencies, minutes matter. I’ve been in those rooms. And I can tell you: When someone is crashing in front of you, the last thing you should be doing is calling legal.” (07/02/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jennifer Kavanagh
“Last week, Russian military forces seized a valuable lithium field in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, the latest success of Moscow’s grinding summer offensive. The lithium deposit in question is considered rather small by industry analysts, but is said to be a desirable prize nonetheless due to the concentration and high-quality of its ore. In other words, it is just the kind of asset that the Trump administration seemed eager to exploit when it signed its much heralded minerals agreement with Ukraine earlier this year. The response from Washington? Crickets.” (07/02/25)
“As Steven Wilson argues in his new book, The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America, ‘central to a liberal education is the pursuit of truth, however elusive.’ Indeed, the quest for truth, and knowledge of it, is enshrined in the slogans of most universities, including my own — the University of Chicago — as a reminder of our purpose. For scientists, that purpose is scientific truth, knowledge of the natural world. For historians, it’s historical truth, an accurate account of history. By definition, every academic discipline, and every scholar and student, presupposes the existence of some objective truth worth pursuing. It seems absurd to suggest otherwise, to propose educating students in anything but rationality, logic, and ultimately, truth — at least to Wilson.” (07/02/25)
“Most Americans now disapprove of Donald Trump’s erratic, authoritarian and incompetent leadership, which has transformed the Republican Party into a cult of personality that rejects traditional Republican policies. Our country is suffering because of Trump’s failures. … The president has made big government even bigger by stretching the power of the executive branch to control our economy, interfere in our lives and limit our freedom of speech and other rights.” (07/02/25)
