“AConstitution that divides power among three branches and between the federal government and the states needs an umpire. Politicians, responding either to their own interest in expanding their authority or to public passions, will frequently overstep constitutional boundaries. Through judicial review, the Supreme Court therefore serves as a neutral arbiter charged with maintaining the Constitution’s boundaries. But the Court itself is an institution that must respect its own boundaries. Thus, in every constitutional case, the preliminary question is whether the Court can reach and resolve the constitutional issue in a manner consistent with the proper limits on its own power. This term, in two of its most notable cases, Trump v. Barbara and Trump v. Cook, the Court transgressed those constraints.” (07/23/26)
“The key to understanding the difference is the noun. In social democracy, the priority is democracy. Under democratic socialism, the emphasis is on socialism, with democracy reduced to a mere modifier. Social democrats want to remediate some of the injustice and unfairness that comes with unfettered capitalism. I get it: After all, I lived through the Russia of the 1990s. Ultimately, whatever disagreements I have with social democrats, we share common ground as democrats. The same cannot be said for many socialists.” (07/23/26)
Source: Christian Science Monitor
by the Editorial Board
“The rule of law across Europe is on a ‘broadly positive trajectory,’ according to the just-released 2026 European Commission Rule of Law Report. Reforms that bolster independent justice systems and align anti-corruption rules to continentwide principles are part of this arc. In a global context, where democratic norms appear to be on the back foot and several governments are flexing authoritarian muscles, this is good news. But in a note of caution, the same document also points to uneven progress – particularly among Eastern and Central European countries.” (07/22/26)
Source: Popular Information
by Judd Legum, Rebecca Crosby, & Noel Sims
“On Wednesday, the Trump administration signed a 30-year nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia that paves the way for the kingdom to enrich its own uranium. The Saudi government has been aggressively seeking such a deal for years, eager to gain an edge over regional rivals. The agreement lacks safeguards that previous administrations, and many independent foreign policy analysts, viewed as essential to prevent nuclear proliferation. The deal comes after the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) invested $2 billion in Jared Kushner’s private equity fund, Affinity Partners. Since 2021, Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has collected over $110 million from the Saudi government in management fees.” (07/23/26)
“Freedom of speech is an integral aspect of authentic freedom, grounded in the distinctively human capacity to adhere to truth through persuasion rather than imposition. While truth is objective and independent of the knowing subject, it can only be received by the subject freely. We can contrast this with a thinly grounded notion of freedom as merely a pragmatic expedient to ‘get along’ in a pluralistic society in which we assume that truth is more or less unattainable. In this thin form of liberalism, when it no longer appears the optimal empirical solution to maintain social comity or stability, freedom of speech will be easily abandoned. We have seen this dynamic play out in Western societies in the past decade, where elites now frequently insist that censorship is necessary to ‘protect democracy’ from the populist rabble.” (07/23/26)
“When we imagine a threat to free speech, we picture a ban — a law forbidding certain words, a prosecutor charging a dissenter, an official with a censor’s stamp. That picture is increasingly obsolete. The gravest threats to expression today rarely announce themselves as censorship. They take the form of ordinary administration turned to punishment — a grant frozen in reprisal, a clearance revoked over a dissenting view and, most insidiously, a damaging official label affixed to a company for the positions it has taken. The designation does quietly what the censor’s order once did openly.” (07/23/26)
“Keynes saw centralized economic direction as an improvement on market coordination. This provided cover to later corporatist authoritarians who wanted to control every aspect of life.” (07/23/26)
“According to President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, you may be a member of a criminal conspiracy if you have done any of the following: worn black to a demonstration, given face masks to protesters, joined a book club, distributed a zine. Recently, federal prosecutors have cited these actions as evidence that activists protesting Trump’s deportation machine are part of an organized criminal enterprise. Call it antifa, domestic terrorism, the radical left—in Trump’s eyes, dissent is never organic. It’s all just part of one big ‘conspiracy.’ … Trump has stoked this deep state paranoia to further his own agenda. His winks at Pizzagate and QAnon have grown into an outright embrace of the people promoting the conspiracy theories. And he’s scapegoated minorities by linking them to alleged plots perpetrated by powerful Democratic institutions: Thanks to the liberal elite, immigrants are eating your pets, and trans people in prison are taking your tax dollars.” (07/23/26)
