Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum

“Three decades before he was first elected president, Donald Trump had big plans for a 26-acre building site near the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. … He imagined a 150-story structure, including offices, apartments, and a hotel, that would be 1,940 feet high, surpassing Chicago’s Sears Tower, then the world’s tallest building, by nearly 500 feet. Paul Gapp, the Chicago Tribune‘s architecture critic, did not think much of that plan. … ‘The world’s tallest tower would be one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York or any other city.’ Trump was indulging in ‘Guinness Book of World Records architecture,’ Gapp said. … Trump did not like what Gapp said. And according to Trump, Gapp had no right to his opinion. Two months after the Tribune published Gapp’s column, Trump sued him and the newspaper for defamation.” (10/11/26)

https://reason.com/2026/10/11/trump-has-been-trampling-free-speech-for-more-than-40-years-and-it-keeps-getting-worse/

Source: Washington Monthly
by Tamar Jacoby

“[A]fter nearly five years of fighting, Europeans are running out of options, which is why the debate is circling back again to an idea proposed and rejected several times in the past—leveraging the Russian Central Bank assets held in European financial institutions. Europeans—both nation-states and the European Union—have tried just about everything else.” (10/12/26)

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2026/10/12/europeans-look-for-options-as-costs-mount-in-ukraine/

Source: exile in happy valley
by Nicky Reid

“It is in downright soul crushing times like these that the little things become lifesaving. I speak as a learned student of several years of intensive trauma therapy when I say that self-care is a martial art when you are this fucked up. I have my chocolate and my candles and my dreary lesbian rock music but, as bizarre as it might sound, when all feels fucked, I prep, and I’m not talking about HIV. When I say I prep, I mean I prep like a millenarian militia fiend with tits during the run-up to Y2K. … amidst all this doom and gloom and camouflage, I find peace or at least something vaguely resembling it.” (10/11/26)

https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-queer-optimism-of-post-apocalyptic.html

Source: The American Prospect
by James Baratta

“Inside the 15th Street Quaker Meeting House on Sunday, October 4, a score of bright-colored paintings depicting Native American heritage and activism were displayed at the center of the worship space. Those paintings, a selection of works by the 82-year-old Indigenous activist and elder Leonard Peltier, drew dozens and then hundreds of people to the venue for an afternoon with members of Peltier’s family, longtime advocates, and friends. Among them was the Church of Stop Shopping’s Reverend Billy, an anti-consumerist preacher personality portrayed by actor and playwright William Talen. ‘This is an event of our lifetime for many of us here,’ he said. Reverend Billy emceed the event, which aired live on the Pacifica Network, and Peltier attended the exhibition virtually from the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota. Peltier’s son and grandson hauled the paintings on display by truck from there all the way to New York City.” (10/12/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/10/12/leonard-peltiers-fight-isnt-over-american-indian-movement/

Source: Liberal Currents
by Anna O Law

“The United States is experiencing constitutional failure. Many of the guardrails of our democracy have given way. At this moment, it requires a feat of imagination to conjure what a new immigration system might look like when liberals regain power. According to the assessment of 500 political scientists (I am one of the respondents) who are regularly queried in the Bright Line Watch survey, the US is currently entrenched in some form of authoritarianism. The first instinct is to stop the bleeding, to stop the slide into complete authoritarianism. Coming up with reforms to heal and strengthen US democracy may be secondary. But liberals need to simultaneously throw sand in the gears of Donald Trump’s attempt at authoritarian consolidation and start thinking about what a replacement immigration system would look like.” (10/11/26)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/how-to-normalize-immigration-elements-of-liberal-immigration-reforms/

Source: The Price of Liberty
by Nathan Barton

“The Donald and others have proclaimed that DEI is dead in the States. Obviously, a lot of people disagree with that. Including a great many powerful and connected businesses in fields like banking and finance, education, and health care. As have many State and municipal regimes. Indeed, many entities are doubling-down on pushing these things (which we prefer to call DIE, here at TPOL: Diversity, Inclusion and Equity as they promote it is seemingly fatal to society and liberty. Indeed, the results often seem to be Division, Insanity, and Erasure. Such is definitely not the case in the United Kingdom, as a recent commentary on the failure of a jury to convict a vandal of a Churchill statue pointed out. His Majesty and His Majesty’s government are pushing DEI strongly: some municipalities even more so.” (10/11/26)

https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/10/11/the-wonders-of-dei-a-uk-issue-only-hardly/