Source: The American Prospect
by Naomi Bethune

“In 2020, news of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin swept the nation. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, which had been formed seven years earlier in response to the police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, saw a massive re-emergence. Protests were held across the country, including in conservative and rural areas. Governments were faced with calls to “defund the police,” re-evaluate policing strategies, and hold police officers and departments accountable. That year, the Boston Police Department (BPD) saw $12 million of its funding reallocated to community programs and police reforms. This of course was a drop in the bucket of the department’s $404 million (now over $430 million) in overall funding at the time. In addition, Boston officials created the Office of Police Accountability and Transparency, which was supposed to receive and investigate reports of police misconduct. But this project has seen little success.” (04/22/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/04/22/boston-police-killing-black-man-stephenson-king/

Source: Independent Institute
by Craig Eyermann

“Over ninety years ago, muckraking author Upton Sinclair ran a failed campaign to become California’s governor in 1934. He later recounted the experience in his very forgettable book, except for one quote, ‘I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked.’ The one quote that stands out in Sinclair’s account of his campaign stumping is this one: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!’ There is perhaps no better quote to understand California’s politicians.” (04/21/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/04/21/whos-gouging-california-drivers/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Nancy Gallagher, Clay Ramsay, & Samuel Hickey

“Nobody should be surprised that the war launched on February 28 did not accelerate anti-government protests in Iran. The survey we fielded soon after the Twelve-Day War showed signs it had a rally-around-the-flag effect. Trump also had pre-war warnings from the intelligence community that his assumptions about the Iranian public’s response were flawed. After weeks of bombing, Reuters reported that U.S. intelligence saw no imminent regime collapse. CISSM’s polling consistently finds real discontent in Iran. But Iranian discontent is not America’s to command. The favorable minority in our polling is more outward-looking, more skeptical of the domestic order, more favorable toward American people, and more interested in diplomacy than the rest of the public. But it is not a regime-change base waiting for Washington’s signal.” (04/21/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-regime-change-iran/

Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp

“No hijackings. No bombings. No ‘national security’ related hostage situations. Just life, as usual, minus paying out big bucks for a useless bureaucracy that we got along just fine without from 1789 through 2002 … and can clearly get along just fine without now. Even starting a war with Iran wasn’t enough to give DHS anything visibly productive to do. Political and media hysteria over supposed ‘Iranian sleeper cells’ quickly dissipated after it turned out that those cells either don’t exist or didn’t set their alarm clocks. Any sane policy discussion, at this point, should center around how quickly DHS can be defunded permanently and abolished entirely.” (04/21/26)

https://thegarrisoncenter.org/archives/20548