Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Jorge Heine
“Countries across the region have strong economic incentives for working with Beijing. Washington should try to compete rather than coerce.” (05/27/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Pelican Institute for Public Policy
“At the April meeting of the Louisiana Public Service Commission, Commissioner JP Coussan directed staff to open a rulemaking docket evaluating ‘private use electrical networks’ — a move that could fundamentally reshape how large-scale energy projects are powered in Louisiana. The directive comes at a pivotal moment for the state. Louisiana is rapidly emerging as a national hub for artificial intelligence infrastructure, hyperscale data centers, advanced manufacturing, and industrial expansion. But meeting that demand will require something the current regulatory structure struggles to deliver: dramatically more electricity production at market speed.” (05/27/26)
https://fee.org/articles/louisiana-explores-new-energy-options/
Source: Libertarian Institute
by Matt Wolfson
“American political successions in recent years happen counterintuitively: implicit hand-offs between two nominally opposing sides. This strange reality is where we derive our notion of ‘the uniparty’ and the media its notion of ‘partisanship.’ Through the ‘partisan’ lens favored by media, our politics appears divided between a party, the Republicans, in hock to Israel, the ‘big five’ weapons contractors, real estate, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley; and a party, the Democrats, in hock to powerful ‘progressive’ or ‘Left’ nonprofits like ActBlue, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for American Progress, and the Open Society Foundations. But the ‘uniparty’ theory of the case shared by many politically disenfranchised Americans is a more accurate read of our political reality.” (05/27/26)
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/empire-with-a-humanitarian-face-democrats-rebrand
Source: Liberal Currents
by Nathan Goldwag
“Israel acts like any other apartheid state, but receives a level of deference from the American government and press and public quite unlike any other.” (05/27/26)
Source: The Dispatch
by Mike Nelson
“The president who sold his leadership as a unitary executive seems frustrated by the results of trying to fight a war that way.” (05/27/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-iran-quagmire-allies-voters-congress/
Source: Common Dreams
by Marv Waterstone
“‘The Republicans go for the jugular; the Democrats go for the capillaries’ — Kevin Phillips … With the recent release of the long-withheld, but little anticipated Democratic National Committee ‘autopsy’ of the 2024 presidential electoral loss, we’re back to the perennial questions of which issues should receive priority; how should messaging and narrative around those issues be crafted; which wing(s) of the party should be amputated before their rot infects the entire organism, suburban soccer moms or inner city youth; and on and on. All good questions, but ultimately, in present circumstances, unanswerable except in the most platitudinous, hand-waving ways. The most fundamental dilemma resides in the Faustian bargain the party entered beginning in the 1970s, and the result of that bargain is neatly captured in Sheldon Wolin’s 2010 coinage ‘the inauthentic opposition.'” (05/27/26)
Source: spiked
by Stefano Gujon
“As ‘safe spaces’ on Western university campuses continue to multiply, it has become clear that institutions designed to defend free thought are now breeding grounds for illiberal conformism. Higher education no longer trains students to grapple with dissent. It teaches them to avoid intellectual conflict at all costs. This conformism has not been limited to the lecture hall. It has spread outwards into companies, the media space and public life.” (05/27/26)
Source: Aaron Ross Powell’s Blog
by Aaron Ross Powell
“For most Americans—and particularly for the culturally reactionary ones who form Trump’s MAGA base—American history isn’t really history. It’s not a series of actual events to be studied objectively and probed thoughtfully. It is instead American lore. Like learning everything there is to know about Star Wars or about Warhammer 40,000 or about the endless variety of heroes who make up the Avengers, American lore is a comprehensive story any new event can fit into. And that you, if you’re American, can fit yourself into, too.” (05/26/26)
Source: Antiwar.com
by Travis Lynch
“When Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that any agreement with Iran must be ‘great and meaningful,’ or there would be no agreement at all, he appeared to be drawing a wall between himself and Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. He wanted to make clear that even if negotiations were underway, they would be Trumpian negotiations: tougher, more forceful, and the ‘exact opposite’ of an agreement he had spent years denouncing as a symbol of weakness. But that statement revealed less strength than contradiction. A president who once treated Obama’s diplomacy with Iran as appeasement now has to sell his own diplomacy as victory.” (05/27/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/travis_lynch/2026/05/26/trumps-pottery-barn-war
Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker
“Around 200 economists work for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, and roughly 200 more work for the 12 district banks around the country. The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, could assign some of the Fed economists to assess whether the current valuation of the stock market is consistent with the Fed’s projections for the future growth of GDP and profits. Unless their arithmetic is very different than the stuff the rest of us use, they will have to conclude that stock valuations are not consistent, unless today’s crop of stockholders expect very low future returns. That seems unlikely, but that is the alternative to saying that the market is in a bubble.” (05/27/26)