“If, once most of the results are in, Democrats seem set to eke out a House majority by just a few seats, perhaps committed Trump allies in positions of power could make trouble in a handful of the closest districts. … This could create chaos on January 3, when the new House gathers for the first time: What happens if the contested seats are enough to deny the should-be-majority party the votes it needs to select a new speaker and take control of the chamber? Although this isn’t a foolproof trick for stealing control of the House, such a play could make things very precarious very quickly. But the bigger the majority secured by Democrats, the more difficult it would be for Trump to shave that majority down—the more clerks to convince, warrants to secure, and court rulings to dodge, all over the country.” (10/28/26)
“The month was January 2021, only a few weeks into the mass rollout of the injection called a vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had outsourced its collection of data from the VAERS system – designed to monitor vaccine safety – to General Dynamics Information Technology. GDIT wrote the CDC a memo dated January 15. ‘The number of incoming COVID-19 reports has significantly exceeded the estimated maximum of 1,000 reports per day,’ the memo to the CDC said. ‘As a result, GDIT is unable to meet processing and other timeframes (data processing, telephone inquiries, clinical inquiries, etc.).’ … The five-alarm fire should have been obvious. At that very instant, if not long before, the shots should have been pulled.” (10/28/26)
“Recently, Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, warned that Pyongyang could take strong retaliatory measures if Seoul continues activities it considers provocative. To casual observers, this may appear to be just another routine exchange of verbal threats between the two Koreas. However, a closer examination of the current situation suggests that something unusually significant may be unfolding on the Korean Peninsula.” (10/28/26)
Source: Liberal Currents
by Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis
“There is no shortage of agreement that liberalism, in the face of fascist authoritarianism and reactionary backslide, is in crisis. And there has been no end of rationalizations, responses, and reactions to this crisis, both from within and from without. These range from the reactionaries themselves, who (at least the more articulate ones) claim that liberalism has produced atomization, social decay, and national disintegration, to the farther left, who claim that liberalism has been a destabilizing economic force that has placed economic efficiency over human flourishing, and to those within liberalism itself, where some argue that liberalism has prioritized identity or self-expression over promoting a unified vision of the good life. While the quality and veracity of those critiques vary, I do believe that liberalism, as a political program, has not been good enough at answering them.” (10/28/26)
“A new ad running to support Democrat senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan has been widely denounced as anti-Semitic for suggesting that Jews are taking food from Americans. The ad is the work of Rebellion PAC, a political action committee co-founded by The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur. Uygur has now struck out at CNN over a panel discussion that trashed the segment and called it clearly defamatory. For a torts teacher, the claim popped this story to the top of my pile, and I thought it was worthy of addressing. The CNN segment is manifestly not defamatory. Whatever grievance that he may have with the network, it is not a legal one.” (10/28/26)
“Proposition 40, in California, calls itself — in the title — a one-time tax. But does anyone truly believe that? … The Democratic Socialists of America have endorsed it, not just because it’s a tax targeted against the rich — but because they want it to be much more than a one-time thing. Those who love total government are insatiable in their lust for other people’s money.” (10/27/260
“Just three decades ago, Serbia was the most warmongering place in Europe. On Sunday night, its capital, Belgrade, was the scene of a celebration of peace and joy after parliamentary elections turned out an autocratic ruling party, in a win for a student movement that has no leader and largely put up nonstudent candidates. Most of the student movement’s winning candidates hold doctorate degrees, of whom 44% are women. The Student List, as it’s called, now faces the task of bringing transparency and accountability to a government soaked in crony corruption. Its success in better governance could ricochet across the Balkan states after centuries of violent ethnic rivalries. ‘Serbia is a normal country again,’ Andjela Markovic, a nurse from Belgrade, told the London-based Financial Times. ‘We proved that we can be just like any other nation, where people love their country and love each other even when they disagree.'” (10/27/26)
“Customs and Border Protection (CBP) insists that it has the right to search Americans’ private data without a warrant when entering the country. But ordered to explain one of these searches by a judge, the agency is now trying to wiggle out from under the microscope, invoking its own data privacy. On Friday, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in the Eastern District of Virginia ordered CBP to explain the seizure of a local psychiatric nurse’s phone and laptop at Washington Dulles International Airport. CBP argued that the court should seal this information from both the public and the nurse himself in order to protect ‘privileged law enforcement information.’ Brinkema initially agreed …. After reading the filings, the judge declared on Tuesday afternoon ‘that most of the redacted information is not privileged law enforcement information and should not be sealed.'” (10/27/26)
“At a campaign rally over the weekend, President Trump dismissed Americans’ concerns over high oil and gas prices, claiming that it’s a small price to pay for the hundreds of billions of dollars ‘we’ are making from these higher prices. ‘We’re making a fortune,’ he said. ‘Hundreds of billions of dollars. Trillions of dollars.’ People are paying a little bit more for gas, he explained, but it doesn’t matter because ‘we’ are making so much money. The question is, ‘Who is ‘we’?’ We know it is not the American people.” (10/27/26)
