Source: Antiwar.com
by Timothy Hopper

“The latest U.S. strikes on Iran have put one of Donald Trump’s defining promises under pressure. He returned to the White House insisting that America could no longer keep paying for other countries’ wars. During the campaign, he pointed to trillions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan while roads, factories, and communities at home were neglected. A long conflict with Iran would make that promise difficult to keep. The question is not whether the United States can defeat Iran conventionally. It can. The harder question is whether Washington can contain the fallout, absorb the cost, and keep a limited operation from widening. Presidents rarely stumble because their forces cannot win a battle. Trouble begins when war grows, bills rise, and its purpose becomes harder to explain.” (07/15/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/timothy_hopper/2026/07/14/trumps-iran-trap/

Source: Niskanen Center
by Ben Bain

“When I left the Army in 2013 I had a terrible experience with the VA. Despite having a simple profile and a graduate degree, it took me years to navigate the system after a comedy of administrative errors. I lived the dysfunction that was in all the headlines in 2014. Yet years later, whenever I re-engage, it’s a transformed experience for the better. Things just seem to work and I go back about my life. When government services work, they stop feeling remarkable.” (07/15/26)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/proof-that-it-can-be-done-what-a-decade-at-va-can-teach-the-rest-of-government/

Source: Independent Institute
by Raymond J March

“A new report from Unleash Prosperity, a free-market policy group, makes a bold and welcome claim: reforming the FDA could unlock trillions of dollars. The authors’ biggest target isn’t safety testing. It’s the years the FDA spends proving a drug actually works. Trim one year off that process, they estimate, and we generate more than $10 trillion in value to patients and producers. Trim six years, and the figure climbs past $60 trillion. … It takes roughly a decade for a new drug to clear the agency. Most of that time isn’t spent proving the drug is safe. It’s spent proving it works. Developing one now costs nearly $880 million on average, closer to $1.2 billion for cancer and eye treatments, and about 90 percent of trials fail. Meanwhile, the report notes, China has cut its lab-to-trial timelines by 50 to 70 percent and runs clinical trials 50 to 60 percent cheaper than we do.” (07/14/26)

https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/14/blueprint-bigger-medical-bureaucracy/

Source: New York Post
by Rikki Schlott

“Zohran Mamdani wants to be a knight in shining armor, coming to save New Yorkers from … their streaming subscriptions. The mayor’s office has announced a new city rule that promises to make canceling a subscription as easy as signing up for one. Do New Yorkers seriously need the government to step in and save them from their streaming subscription after a free trial renews? Let’s be adults here. This new rule, touted by the administration as a pillar of ‘Mayor Mamdani’s affordability agenda,’ is part of the larger phenomenon that propelled him into office: pandering to the entitled. For too many Mamdani supporters, the affordability crisis isn’t about the price of eggs. It’s about their inability to exercise the most basic requirements of fiscal responsibility without the government swooping in to hold their hand through the process.” (07/14/26)

https://nypost.com/2026/07/14/opinion/mayor-mamdani-is-pandering-to-entitled-voters-again/