“After President Donald Trump’s first year back in office — marked by battered institutions, executive overreach and contempt for basic constraints on presidential power — Democrats would be wise to unify around an alternative message rooted in competence, restraint, affordability and institutional repair. There is no shortage of voters uneasy with Trump’s behavior and eager for a credible counterweight. And yet, the party’s loudest message is an aggressive push for confiscation camouflaged by the rhetoric of moral clarity and fiscal responsibility. Democrats may have something to offer to voters caught in the middle, but how many will notice with large states like New York, Virginia and California pushing to punish the wealthy?” (02/10/26)
“Tariffs and other trade barriers hampered the free flow of goods and services and investments across political boundary lines around the world after 1945. However, they almost seem mild and ‘enlightened’ compared to the current crop of protectionist weeds and their policy effects, particularly over the past year during Donald Trump’s second presidency. With autocratic caprice, arrogance, crudeness, and rudeness, Trump has assumed the powers of a near absolute monarch to decide when, why, and against whom he will arbitrarily raise and lower and raise again tariffs on the importation of goods into the United States from all the other countries on the planet.” (02/10/26)
“How high is your risk of developing pancreatic cancer or suffering a heart attack in the next 20 years? A new generative artificial intelligence system called Delphi-2M aims to answer that question and offer personalized forecasts of your long-term health trajectory. Developed by a team of European biomedical researchers and detailed in a September 2025 Nature article, Delphi-2M represents one of the most ambitious efforts yet to apply AI to predictive medicine. Large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots such as ChatGPT trained on massive amounts of text data to predict the next word in a sentence. Delphi-2M trained on a vast amount of medical data to predict the next stage in a person’s health.” (02/26)
“Yes, there is. You might have to look hard to find it, but it’s there. Actually, the best news is right before our eyes, but most people refuse to look at it. I confess, as I have before, to being a bit of a cynic (no, a lot of a cynic, not terribly optimistic). That may partly come from the clinical depression I fight every day of my life, but it also comes from history, Bible study, and current events. How can a person not be somewhat of a cynic when viewing the modern, evil, putrid Democratic Party? I look at the NFL now and want to barf; I used to be a devoted fan of the league, but then they left me with their woke, racist, anti-American, promiscuous-promoting pig slop, and I haven’t watched an NFL game in years (or MLB or NBA, either).” (02/10/25)
“Because black holes emit no light, scientists cannot see them with telescopes. Instead, they confirm their existence by observing signs, such as the extreme distortions they cause in the visible matter around them or by watching stars orbit a void. And if you refuse to observe these signs, adopting willful blindness, you cannot detect black holes. It’s a valid question to ask whether law enforcement agencies monitored any U.S. laws, rules, or regulations that apply to Little St. James, a 71-acre island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.” (02/10/26)
“The Guardian is very concerned about mining: ‘The Guardian view on the scramble for critical minerals: while powers vie for access, labourers die …. A mining disaster in the Democratic Republic of Congo underscores the human cost of extraction. Intensified competition for resources isn’t helping.’ It’s fair to be worried about this. Hundreds have died just recently in a series of flood driven cave-ins at one area of mining in DR Congo, just as the one example. The problem is, of course, the absence of capitalism. For these mines are what are known as ‘artisanal’ mines. This means mines being dug and operated by the literally dirt poor locals with pick and shovel. … The problem is the economy around the mines, not the mines themselves.” (02/10/26)
“[O]fficials maintained that ICE agents were under attack in communities like Minnesota’s Twin Cities, claiming without evidence that ‘paid agitators’ were actively trying to stop enforcement. Federal agents have been heavily armed during attacks, arrests, and removal of residents, while protesters have been overwhelmingly peaceful. As my colleague Noah Lanard wrote in October, ICE agents are objectively not in danger: Reviewing ICE’s own data, he found that none of its agents have been killed by an immigrant in its more than two-decade history. The overwhelmingly leading cause of death was Covid-19, followed by cancers linked to the September 11 attacks.” (02/10/26)
“Last week, the US government announced it would be sending $6 million in aid to Cuba, on top of the $3 million it sent in January after Hurricane Melissa. This aid package might appear contrary to the significant escalation of the 66-year-long US criminal blockade, which has expanded to an all-out fuel blockade since December, with attacks on Venezuela, but it is in fact a core tenet of it. This maneuver seeks to exploit the US-manufactured energy and fuel crisis to bolster opposition groups, substantiate propaganda against the Cuban government and revolution, and force the island into total dependency and submission to the United States. This frankly genocidal strategy closely mirrors that of the US and Israeli ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,’ and the weaponization of starvation and aid for colonial and imperialist ends.” (02/10/25)
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Adam Ratzlaff & Lucia Gonzalez Camelo
“On January 7, the White House announced its plans to withdraw from 66 international bodies whose work it had deemed inconsistent with U.S. national interests. While many of these organizations were international in nature, three of them were specific to the Americas — the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, and the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. The decision came on the heels of the Dominican Republic postponing the X Summit of the Americas last year following disagreements over who would be invited and ensuing boycotts. These parallel developments raise important questions about how the region and the United States view their relationship.” (02/10/26)
