“Kennedy facilitated important changes in U.S.-Soviet relations. Less than two months later, the two nations and Great Britain signed the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited weapons testing in the atmosphere and in the water. The signatories agreed to work toward ending the arms race and, ultimately, complete disarmament. The treaty didn’t succeed — but that doesn’t mean it didn’t matter. Kennedy’s efforts showed how bitter rivals could nevertheless work toward a common goal. Though he wouldn’t live to see them, future diplomatic efforts enabled even the most ideologically opposed regimes to build institutions that constrained humanity’s worst impulses.” (06/09/26)
“The American Revolution was revolutionary. That’s the deceptively simple claim to which Gordon Wood, the historian who was tragically killed at the age of 92 on Sunday, devoted his career. The Revolution, of course, overthrew a monarchy — but the freedoms it advanced were unequally enjoyed, and the Founders left a great deal undone. But Wood insisted that, even so, we not lose sight of its fundamental character.” ()6/09/26)
“‘Block by Block,’ Zohran Mamdani’s ‘sweeping blueprint’ to reduce housing prices in New York City, comes with a dangerous promise. ‘When necessary,’ the mayor said on May 26, ‘we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers’ and transfer ownership to ‘responsible stewards.’ The problem: The proposal is an unconstitutional power grab that would exacerbate the city’s housing crisis. … The mayor’s proposal doesn’t just violate the federal and state constitutions, which have nearly identical restrictions on takings. It would also make the city’s shortages worse. Faced with the prospect of potential expropriation, many owners would likely withdraw properties from the market or not list them in the first place.” (06/09/26)
“Birth rates have been declining in the United States for decades, and there is little indication that the trend will reverse anytime soon. This poses challenges for many of our institutions that were built on the implicit assumption of continued population growth. Social Security is the most prominent example. Because the program relies on taxes paid by current workers to fund benefits for retirees, it depends on a steady influx of younger workers. Social Security is in trouble, and its day of reckoning is not far off. More quietly, schools across the United States are struggling with declining enrollment. After decades of needing more — more buildings, more teachers, more staff — we’re entering an era where we will need less of all these things.” (06/09/26)
“College athletics, particularly in the South, has long been one of the great institutions of this country. While the terminally anti-social may be quick to dismiss popular sports as ‘sportsball’ and the latter half of ‘bread and circuses,’ the reality is that popular sports have long served as an important connection in civil society, creating multi-generational stories of success and defeat, and providing valuable lessons about grit, hard work, and determination. Unfortunately, college sports have been under constant assault from political institutions, serving as a striking example of the devastation that can be wrought by anarcho-tyranny — the state-driven phenomenon of criminalizing the enforcement of basic civic norms while increasingly restricting the liberties of law-abiding citizens.” (06/09/26)
“Bill de Blasio appeared on NewsNation on June 2 and was asked to comment on Spencer Pratt’s campaign. De Blasio smugly described Pratt’s ads as ‘inappropriate’ and wondered, ‘Who is behind them?’ If de Blasio hadn’t actively participated in the decline of New York City during his disastrous eight years as its mayor, his arrogance might just be dismissed as unwarranted and clueless. But de Blasio is part of a machine that profits from urban decline. Behind his arrogance is a grasping, cynical hypocrite delighted that the machine on the West Coast is as potent as the one that elevated his own mayoral tenure and now supports Zohran Mamdani. And so way out west, the machine has struck again.” (06/10/26)
“While teaching and conducting research can be wonderful experiences, working conditions in higher education have become increasingly horrible. In the United States, massive state disinvestment coinciding with 50 years of neoliberalism has resulted in both soaring tuition costs for students and large-scale budget cuts to universities. As a result, faculty teaching loads have increased while wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, university administrators across the country have replaced full-time and permanent faculty with insecure, part-time positions, and rarely replaced faculty who retired or moved. Whereas in the 1970s, more than half of U.S. faculty were tenured or on the tenure-track, today that figure stands at just over one quarter. Students suffer because their professors have far less availability and are far more stressed. Faculty are forced to hustle, often taking on additional jobs, and are left with less time for teaching and research, thereby undermining the mission of universities.” (06/09/26)
“Whatever one’s opinion on President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement that carried him to office, it’s impossible to deny that they have transformed the United States. The simple description of what’s driving that change, says senior defense analyst Brynn Tannehill, is ‘fascism.’ But as she elaborates, three psychological concepts are underpinning that autocratic impulse: social dominance orientation, the Dunning-Kruger Effect, and Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity.” (06/09/26)
“Researchers of President Kennedy’s assassination have long been familiar with an FBI memorandum dated Nov. 29, 1963, referring to ‘Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency.’ … the CIA faced a barrage of questions concerning Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush’s history with the Agency. The Republican National Convention, at which Bush (nicknamed ‘Poppy’) would receive his party’s nomination for president, was less than a month away. Having once served as a U.S. congressman and ambassador to the United Nations, Bush had also briefly held the directorship of the CIA. Had the GOP nominee concealed not only a longer professional affiliation with the Agency but a link to the murder of a Democratic predecessor 25 years earlier as well? Now, a witness from the night of Nov. 23, 1963, also mentioned in the FBI memorandum, has contacted the Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) to try to lend clarity to the mystery with a signed statement.” (06/09/26)
“‘This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,’ US president Donald Trump claimed the day after an armed would-be assassin attempted to charge through a security barricade at the Washington Hilton. ‘“It cannot be built fast enough!’ US Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) agreed: ‘America has a problem. That problem is, it is very difficult to have a bunch of important people in the same place unless it is really, really secure.’ … Trump clearly didn’t believe his own claims concerning presidential security, or he wouldn’t have decided to catch 40 winks in front of thousands of angry basketball fans.” (06/09/26)
