“Mayor Zohran Mamdani boasted Tuesday that he plugged the city’s multibillion-dollar budget gap for the coming fiscal year — but it’s only ‘balanced’ with gimmicks that guarantee oceans more red ink in the years ahead. With a late assist from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s own flim-flammery, the new, $124.7 billion Mamdani spending plan relies on one-time cash infusions, postponed payments and dubious calculations of future tax windfalls and theoretical savings. The day began with Hochul boldly announcing yet another of her trademark cave-ins: After weeks of insisting she’d given the mayor as much help as she could, the gov magically found another $4 billion for him just hours before he presented his plan. Yet half the windfall comes down to new debt, much of the rest is pretty vaporous — and all of it amounts to just telling the spending addict he can keep on shooting up.” (05/13/26)
“With the introduction of the Supporting Newborn Parents Act, Reps. David Valadao (R-CA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Blake Moore (R-UT), and Debbie Dingell (D-MI) have put forward a powerful piece of pro-family legislation. The proposed newborn credit would give nearly all families celebrating the birth of a child another reason to celebrate: a refundable tax credit of $2,000 shortly after their baby is born. This timely payment would help parents navigate the financial shocks that tend to come in baby’s first year.” (05/13/26)
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger
“For decades, conservatives have condemned the socialist-communist regime in Venezuela. They have called it evil, immoral, deadly, and destructive. In fact, conservatives even came to describe the Venezuelan regime as a ‘narco-terrorist’ regime. Why, they have even supported unsuccessful regime-change efforts within the country. … What’s the situation today? It’s hard to believe. The U.S. government, led by President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA, is actively partnering with the very socialist-communist, narco-terrorist regime that conservatives have long criticized and condemned.” (05/13/26)
“The war in Ukraine has been defined by periodic bursts of certainty that Russia is on the back foot, if not close to collapse, and that Ukraine, conversely, is inches away from victory. We appear to be in the middle of one of these moments of euphoria now. Finnish President Alexander Stubb has declared that Ukraine is ‘on top’ and ‘in a much better place than it has been at any stage in this horrific war’, charging that Russia is unable to recruit enough soldiers to make up for those it’s losing. Ukrainians have ‘a growing self-confidence’ on account of the territory they have supposedly retaken, as one former U.S. ambassador put it, and their growing confidence over military advances ‘is strikingly higher today than a year ago’, charged another. A spate of reports have it that the walls are closing in on Russian President Vladimir Putin.” (05/13/26)
“The United States has reached a milestone, and unfortunately, it’s not one to celebrate. For the first time outside a genuine crisis, America’s national debt now exceeds the size of its entire economy. There is nothing magical about the 100% line; it’s more of a psychological threshold than a hard cliff. Indeed, debt hawks have sounded alarms for years, and the economy has not yet collapsed. But the absence of collapse is not the same as the absence of consequences. Like other developed nations that have drifted into high debt territory, cracks in the American economy are beginning to show, structurally and with compounding force.” (05/13/26)
“An illegal auction of stolen Palestinian land at an elite Upper East Side synagogue, and the swift condemnations from groups like J Street launched against New Yorkers who attempted to protest it, reveal the Zionist rot at the heart of the American Jewish elite establishment that is bastardizing and corrupting the religion from within, and why liberal Zionist groups present only an impotent challenge to it. … J Street’s response to those protests – condemning both the protesters and the land sales in equal measure – is indicative of the balancing act the organization has attempted to manage, one that is unstable and contradictory, with its guiding (or rather, mis-guiding) principle that Zionism can ultimately be reformed …. and that the American Jewish elite institutions which have funded settlement expansion, armed soldiers to ethnically cleanse Gaza, and laundered Israel’s atrocity propaganda bears no meaningful responsibility for what Israel does.” (05/13/26)
“Ron Rosenbaum’s latest book, Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed, is not a biography. It is instead a ‘kind of biography’ — which is a distinction with a difference. It is, in keeping with Rosenbaum’s long record of fine-tuned literary analysis mixed with historical and, yes, biographical detail, a study of Dylan’s songwriting and a reckoning with his moral, philosophical, and religious imagery and fixations. ‘Dylan has remade American speech, American thought, American attitude,’ Rosenbaum writes. Bob Dylan: Things Have Changed is an examination of how he remade those things, with a particular emphasis on ‘theodicy’ and what Rosenbaum calls Dylan’s ‘argument with god.’ Steering clear of the usual cloud of hagiography that hovers above most writing about Dylan, it’s a book that instead focuses on what makes him unique. ” (05/13/26)
Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman
“The late 19th century was a dismal time in American politics. Corruption ran rampant. Congress was governed by staunch partisan loyalties and nail-biting majorities. And redistricting, instead of being confined to after the census every 10 years, was a tool of manipulation and partisan hardball. ‘From 1872 to 1896,’ a political scientist reports, ‘at least one state redrew its congressional districts each year.’ Of course, that era was marred by another phenomenon — one too familiar to us today. It saw a swift rollback in voting rights and representation for the newly freed Black population of the South. In 1875, after the Civil War and the adoption of the 15th Amendment, seven Black men served in the House, and one sat as a senator. Terrorism, political cowardice, and racial backlash ended Reconstruction. By 1902, Congress was once again all white.” (05/13/26)
Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Arman Sidhu
“For a small-scale gold miner in Uganda, the question of where to sell has just been answered for him. Gold has surpassed coffee as Uganda’s largest export, and as of last month, the country’s central bank is positioning itself as the dominant legal buyer for nearly all of it. Late in April, the Bank of Uganda launched a three-year gold-buying program that registers it as a gold dealer purchasing directly from licensed Ugandan miners through contracts with two refiners.” (05/13/26)
