Source: Macroeconomic Policy Nexus
by David Beckworth & Kaleb Nygaard
“This week’s Supreme Court arguments over President Trump’s attempt to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook have put an unusually bright spotlight on a question most people rarely stop to consider: what, exactly, is the Federal Reserve as an institution and how did its internal governance come to look the way it does? While the headlines focus on removal protections and presidential power, the deeper issue is the Fed’s evolving architecture: who sits at the table, who doesn’t, and how those patterns have changed over time.” (01/23/26)
“[T]he U.S. has a severe shortage of merchant marines. The Navy has had to sideline 17 support ships because of the shortage. The decline in merchant mariners has been dramatic: in 1960, there were 50,000, but now there are only 13,000. America needs more sailors and cheaper sailors. Many proposed solutions to the shortage would increase funding, promotion, and recruitment for merchant marine schools. While increased promotion and funding may modestly increase recruitment, they are unlikely to solve the shortage.” (01/23/26)
“Who could have predicted that hiring thousands of agents with no background checks, giving them barely any training, sending them into communities where they’re not wanted, and making it extremely clear to them that they would never be held accountable for any violence they perpetrate would lead to them escalating from hurting people with no remorse to increasingly murdering folks, in cold blood, on camera? Indeed, who would have thought that allowing Jonathan Ross to murder Renee Good in broad daylight, on camera, with zero consequences, would have emboldened other ICE officers to murder more innocent people in broad daylight on camera? … I just think it bears repeating, at this time and always, that illegal immigration was never an actual problem. Illegal aliens commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans, on average. They create more jobs and boost native-born wages, on average.” (01/24/26)
“The forecast is grim for New York City school kids. On Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that, no matter how many inches of the white stuff drop during Sunday’s looming storm, there will be no snow day to start the week. ‘I know to the disappointment of any student that’s watching this right now, Monday is either going to be a remote learning day or it’s going to be an in-person school day,’ Mamdani said on NY1. ‘It’s not going to be a traditional snow day. That is a determination we’ve made.’ Give these kids a damn break. Remote learning — a horrifically ineffective holdover from the Covid lockdown era — has essentially wiped out the glorious snow day, a rite of passage for so many American kids, including right here in the Northeast.” (01/23/25)
“I really don’t know what to write. The first month of 2026 has provided a series of events that have simply broken my heart as well as my brain. Sure, I knew this was possible; I predicted it ten years ago. The word I came up with in the week before the 2016 election to describe a Trump presidency, when I saw it coming, was ‘abyss.’ Why that word? ‘To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, we live in a republic, if we can keep it. And yet, more than two centuries later, we are openly contemplating throwing it up in the air and seeing where it might land.’ An abyss is being in mid-air in this rupture in our civilization.” (01/23/26)
“Accepting the Russian offer to abide by treaty limits for another year is obviously the right thing to do. It is extremely easy, it costs the U.S. nothing, and the U.S. and Russia continue to derive benefits from the treaty despite its official expiration next month. Adhering to the treaty limits for another year doesn’t solve the problem that there is no replacement treaty anywhere on the horizon, but it buys a little more time. It is not surprising that this administration has failed to seize the opportunity.” (01/23/26)
“In The History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides, the Athenian historian and general, wrote: ‘What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear that this caused in Sparta.’ Thankfully, war is never inevitable, but historically, the circumstances Thucydides described have often proved dangerous. A great power that is past its prime, that senses its further decline, and targets the upcoming powers, creates a predicament that requires careful handling by all parties. But this is beyond the capacity of today’s Western rulers. … A key symptom of the West’s geopolitical fecklessness is that America’s relative decline – and its global implications – has not been properly grasped by most transatlantic governments.” (01/24/26)
Source: Common Dreams
by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas JS Davies
“At the opening ceremony for Donald Trump’s so-called Board of Peace in Davos, Jared Kushner unveiled glossy images of his vision for a ‘new Gaza’: shining apartment towers, luxury developments, and sweeping views of the Mediterranean. There were no Palestinians at the ceremony — and none on the Board of Peace itself. In Kushner’s fantasy, Palestinians appear only as an absence, buried beneath the rubble of the real Gaza. But how, exactly, are Palestinians to be ‘demilitarized’ and pacified to make way for this Riviera of the Middle East? The assassination of Gaza’s Khan Younis police chief in a drive-by shooting this January offers a chilling clue. It was not an isolated act of lawlessness, but an ominous signal of what lies ahead.” (01/23/25)
“Modern medicine is often portrayed as the culmination of rational progress. We refer to evidence-based care, standardized pathways, and algorithm-driven decisions as if they represent the highest achievement of scientific advancement. However, a recent meta-analysis of over 150 studies found that while 80% of protocols improve specific outcomes, only 45% lead to long-term health benefits. This discrepancy underscores the complexity of protocol effectiveness. The prevailing assumption is that protocols exist and persist solely because they are effective and have demonstrated their value. This assumption is fundamentally flawed.” (01/23/26)
“As our great nation celebrates its 250th anniversary in a time of angry division, when we are wondering who we are as a people and what we stand for, the Grateful Dead’s legacy offers useful ways to think about such questions. Like the best ideas, they didn’t insist on answers but pushed us to consider possibilities. The band was quintessentially American because it gave equal play to the great forces of our society – rugged individualism and community – resolving the tension between ideas that our politics too often cast as conflicting. Or, as the group’s first-among-equals, Jerry Garcia, would have put it, every yin depends on a yang.” (01/23/26)
