“The federal government just closed fiscal year 2026 with a deficit of nearly $2 trillion, according to figures the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released last Thursday. Only the two pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 were worse. Today, though, there is no recession and no emergency. These enormous budget deficits are the new normal. The usual response to a deficit warning is that the government just needs more money. It doesn’t. Thanks to the remarkable strength of the private sector, federal revenue rose by 3 percent, to more than $5.4 trillion, over the fiscal year. But spending rose by 6 percent, reaching $7.4 trillion.” (10/15/26)
“A government that claims the authority to kill persons after they have been subdued, disarmed, tried, convicted and confined in prison has made a startling claim about the nature of political power. It claims not merely the authority to protect the innocent from violence, but the authority to inflict violence when no immediate threat exists. It claims that the taking of human life, which it rightly condemns when committed by private individuals, somehow becomes morally permissible when committed by government agents. This is the fundamental contradiction of the death penalty: Government killing the helpless protects the living. The Declaration of Independence offers a radically different understanding of government.” (10/15/26)
“Nearly every week, another psychodrama arises between the United States and its NATO partners. Europeans blame the Trump administration for the usual things—a lack of cordiality and bombastic threats. But two truths, rarely spoken, characterize all these spats. One is hypocrisy; the other is insecurity. Take Trump’s recent demand that Ukraine cease attacks on Russian diesel refineries. Given the midterms and the critical issue of fuel prices, it was understandable that Trump might request an energy ‘ceasefire’. So both Russia and Ukraine were asked to stop their attacks on refineries to calm jittery global diesel markets and help stabilize sky-high prices. But the American Left, the Ukrainians, and the Europeans went ballistic – given that the aggressor, Russia, is blanketing Ukrainian skies with missiles and drones, while Russia’s critical refining industry remains vulnerable to retaliatory Ukrainian drone attacks.” (10/15/26)
“Everyone claims to believe in free speech – until someone says something they dislike. That produces a censorious tit-for-tat cancel culture, not just on the left but increasingly on the right. Instead, we must uphold free speech as a principle for all. And we need to start exercising our free-speech muscles that risk atrophying in an era of progressive censorship. That is why the Battle of Ideas, the original free-speech festival, matters.” (10/15/26)
“Would it be possible, given the growing divide between the Red and Blue States from coast to coast, to go back more than 200 years, and come up with a new version of the Articles of Confederation? That was, after all, what the men in Philadelphia were supposed to do. Not replace the Articles with a ‘Constitution’ but improve them. Address the issues that were keeping things in an uproar? Today, we find that in the last 237 years, we’ve come up with a lot of ideas, techniques, that would let us address those issues while still restoring the full sovereignty that the 12 States had.” (10/15/26)
Source: Independent Institute
by Jennifer Hernandez & Kristian Fors
“This report analyzes 498 appellate court decisions involving the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) from 2013 to 2023, finding that housing remains the leading target of CEQA litigation. It explores how CEQA has become a major obstacle to development in California and how various interest groups exploit the law to obstruct projects. It also offers recommendations for reform aimed at removing barriers to development, encouraging economic growth, and promoting greater prosperity in the Golden State.” (10/15/26)
“Executions open to the public, once a popular spectacle in early America, began to lose whatever moral purpose they once had nearly two centuries ago. The last legally sanctioned public execution in the United States was in 1936. And, as a sign of how sentiments have shifted, a monument was erected in Massachusetts just nine years ago to mark the site of the most famous public hangings: 19 people accused of witchcraft in 1692 Salem. This week, three TV news networks reported that the Trump White House is leaning against a plan by the Pentagon to livestream an execution – by firing squad on Dec. 3 – of an ex-Army major convicted of killing 13 people at a Texas military facility in 2009. Not only has airing such an official and gruesome act ignited bipartisan backlash in Congress, but House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance also say they would not watch the broadcast.” (10/14/26)
“China is not run as a centrally planned economy. It’s run like a fascist state, with party members working within businesses, only occasionally taking full control and ousting (even executing) owners and entrepreneurs and ‘uncooperative’ managers … when the State requires. Just as did the National Socialist Party during Germany’s ‘Third Reich’ period. As Peter Drucker sagely noticed, ‘Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.'” (10/15/26)
“Shortly after taking office in 2025, Trump claimed to have discovered a previously unnoticed delegation of extensive tariff authority in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that does not mention import taxes and had never been used to impose them. That claim was rejected by every court that considered it. Last February, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs at all. But Trump had a backup plan: Hours after that decision, he announced another sweeping set of tariffs, this time relying on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that the new tariffs were illegal …. Trump then switched to Plan C, invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act …” (10/15/26)
“Across the country, a curious trend is taking hold in the Democratic Party: The left has found God in politics. As Politico noted most recently, Democrats are running for Congress by leaning on their Christian bona fides. Democrats hope they have found the key to political salvation in states like Texas. However, as Democratic candidates like Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico campaign on their religious credentials, the result has been to insert faith into the broader political debate, which now includes questions ranging from the gender of God to whether Christians have to believe that Jesus actually existed. The rival views on Christianity by Talarico and his Republican opponent for the U.S. Senate, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, are now being debated by voters. Republicans have long emphasized faith-based politics, and the new Democratic shift has created arguably the most religious-themed election season in modern history.” (10/15/26)
