“In 2014 the French bank BNP Paribas pleaded guilty to processing transactions for Iran, Cuba, and Sudan and paid an $8.9 billion settlement, its dollar-clearing business barred for a year. No French court convicted it. No French statute was broken. A European institution was fined nearly nine billion dollars by a foreign government for conduct that was legal where it occurred. Every treasurer in every bank outside the United States understood the message, and has behaved accordingly ever since. It was not meant to be this. When the dollar emerged from the last world war as the axis of global settlement, its dominance was a matter of commercial convenience—the currency everyone happened to hold because everyone else held it too. Convenience hardened into infrastructure, and infrastructure, in the hands of a state that noticed what it possessed, hardened into leverage.” (08/26/26)
“Strip away the diplomatic briefings, Congressional hearings and the endless cable news loops about centrifuges, regional proxies and cyber attacks, and you hit a raw unvarnished nerve. What truly disturbs the United States about the Islamic Republic is not its policies, its rhetoric or even its nuclear ambitions. It is Iran’s audacity to exist completely outside the American orbit; and make it work.” (08/26/26)
“Can communism come to America? Until recently, most Americans would have dismissed the question as alarmist, even absurd. The United States has enjoyed constitutional government for nearly 250 years. Its citizens are accustomed to elections, private property, free speech, independent courts, and a press that openly challenges those in power. Surely, many assume, a people raised in freedom would never tolerate dictatorship. The rapid rise of Democratic Socialism has made the question less theoretical. The movement draws strength from the same seductive promise that has accompanied every socialist and communist experiment: government can eliminate inequality by taking greater control over economic life and redistributing wealth more justly. Anyone with even limited knowledge of communist history knows what follows. Equality is promised, but scarcity is delivered. The old upper class is denounced, but a new political class emerges with privileges unavailable to ordinary citizens.” (08/26/26)
“The average voter, from personal experience or attempted avoidance thereof, is probably aware that excessive debt is bad, but he or she may be less clear about its deleterious national economic consequences. Even less obvious are the national security ramifications.” (08/25/26)
“The Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday allowing President Trump’s executive order on mail voting to go forward is stunningly insensitive to the context: Trump is trying to exercise control over elections when he has absolutely no authority to do so. In one sense, the justices decided nothing, simply saying it was too soon for federal courts to get involved. But in a more important way, the court could have and should have put an emphatic end to the president’s efforts to try to regulate voting operations that are legally the domain of state governments.” (08/25/26)
“Not all concerns about data centers are so crazy or even unreasonable. They do use a lot of water, though not nearly as much as some claim. They can cause electricity rates to go up. They’re ugly. And, if you’re freaking out about what AI will do to your job or to American society, taking it out on data centers makes a certain amount of sense. Politicians, as a class, tend to indulge moral panics. Which is why it’s no surprise that Republicans and Democrats alike are racing to get on the ‘right’ side of the issue.” (08/26/26)
“A few weeks ago, the City of St. Louis issued a proposal that would require new data center developments to use renewable energy for their operations, among many other requirements. There is now a conditional waiver process to sidestep the renewable requirement if the developer can prove they and Ameren can’t meet it, which is a slight improvement. From a free-market perspective, the flaws of the proposal are clear. The city would be selecting certain types of energy (in this case solar and wind) in the name of ‘clean air’ while excluding from consideration not only energy from coal and natural gas, but even nuclear energy, which also has zero emissions.” (08/25/26)
Source: The American Prospect
by Eleanor Davis-Diver
“‘In casinos, the house always wins. With Kalshi, there is no house. We don’t win when our customers lose,’ the nation’s leading prediction market states on its FAQ page, differentiating itself from traditional sports betting. According to its proponents, prediction markets operate on a ‘peer-to-peer’ structure where, instead of a house, the ‘counterparty’ on a bet is another regular person, just like you or me. ‘Unlike sportsbooks Kalshi doesn’t set the odds, other users do’, claims an ad spot currently playing across television and digital platforms, featuring the world’s longest sandwich. These other ‘users’ are known as market makers, a common feature of financial markets, who continuously quote prices for everyone else to ensure consistent liquidity and smooth trading. But contrary to what the advertisement implies, most market makers are not ordinary people but highly advanced trading institutions.” (08/26/26)
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Isabelle Brito
“Parents and community members have every right to criticize what their schools make available and ask officials to reconsider particular books. That’s free speech, too. The problem arises when one individual or group’s political views determine which ideas students can explore in their school library. Massachusetts’ Freedom to Read Law offers a promising solution, one that FIRE has long called for: due process for books. That means fair and clear procedures for reviewing challenged library materials.” (08/25/26)
