Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille

“President Donald Trump’s decision to ‘substantially reduce’ joint military exercises between the armed forces of the United States and those of South Korea captures the distilled essence of the nation’s current chief executive in its combination of petulance and affection for autocrats. On the one hand, he wants to punish our allies in the Republic of Korea for withholding support for the U.S. war with Iran. Especially, though, he wants to avoid offending the communist dictator of North Korea by training alongside our democratic and relatively free allies on the Korean peninsula. … Unfortunately, Trump has a history of turning against our friends and maintaining a soft spot for those hostile to American values.” (08/19/26)

https://reason.com/2026/08/19/trumps-dictator-envy-is-once-again-on-display-in-tiff-with-south-korea/

Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff

“Public acceptance of gambling has fallen among Americans, a shift best illustrated by the number of recent victories by states to curb the burgeoning industry of prediction markets, the practice of wagering on the outcomes of future events. Last week, for example, a judge in Washington state cited the online platform Kalshi for deceptive marketing of ‘illegal gambling activities’. The company is now blocked from offering ‘event contracts’ to consumers who wager on predictions in ‘sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, tech and science’. The ruling was pretty easy, as the state defines gambling as ‘staking or risking something of value upon the outcome of a contest of chance or a future contingent event not under the person’s control or influence’. It follows other successful efforts in several states against operators of prediction markets.” (08/18/26)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0818/Prediction-markets-at-odds-with-US-mood-on-gambling

Source: The UnPopulist
by Francis Fukuyama

“As we move toward the end of the Trump era, we need to reckon with the changes his administration has wrought in the American system of government. The most significant is the enormous concentration of power, not just in the executive branch as a whole, but in the office of the president. Any successor administration, Republican or Democratic, will inherit these powers, and will have to decide how it wants to define the limits of executive authority in the future.” (08/19/26)

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/what-will-come-of-trumps-radical

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“Benjamin Franklin pointed out a truth that should be highly discomforting to 21st-century Americans: ‘Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.’ Why discomforting? Because that’s exactly what both 20th-century and 21st-century Americans have done.” (08/19/26)

https://www.fff.org/2026/08/19/americans-dont-deserve-liberty-or-safety/

Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“Today in dystopia, police have been wrongfully arresting people based on faulty information from AI-assisted Flock surveillance footage instead of actually investigating the evidence of the crime. In an article titled ‘She Spent 7 Months in Legal Hell After Cops Used Flock Surveillance To Identify the Wrong Car’, Reason Magazine documents multiple instances of innocent people having their lives upended in legal battles because police slammed them with charges based on incorrect Flock camera data which could have easily been ruled out by some basic verification. … Reason shared a police body cam video of a cop confidently handing a court summons to a woman for package theft, telling her and her husband that it was ‘100 percent certain’ she was guilty because Flock surveillance had her on camera committing the crime.” (08/19/26)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/08/19/today-in-dystopia-we-have-cameras-everywhere-in-that-town/

Source: Property and Environment Research Center
by Brian Yablonski

“Private bison ranchers turned a symbol of the American West into one of conservation’s greatest success stories.” (08/19/26)

https://www.perc.org/2026/08/19/bisonomics-2/