Source: UnHerd
by B Duncan Moench

“‘Ball don’t lie.’ This phrase, originally attributed to NBA star Rasheed Wallace, comes from American basketball culture and implies that, no matter what the referees or back-office bureaucrats do to intervene in the game, the ball will end up where it should. If it goes through the net, the sporting gods wanted it to happen. The best team wins. Always. … Yes, Donald Trump may have personally intervened with Fifa to get Folarin Balogun, America’s star striker, an exception on the red card he’d earned in the previous match. But having Daddy Warbucks pull strings for your side can take an athletic effort only so far: in the end, Belgium won the game 4-1.” (07/07/26)

https://archive.is/PF12h

Source: The American Conservative
by Luke Nicastro

“[T]he plain truth is that the U.S. military presence is not necessary to keep the Cossacks from waltzing into Warsaw, let alone Berlin or Paris. This would be the case even in the absence of the current rearmament push, and even if Russia had demonstrable designs on European territory beyond Ukraine. The non-U.S. members of NATO have a collective GDP that is over 10 times that of Russia. There are over 600 million Europeans to about 140 million Russians. Although its militaries are short on what the heads call ‘strategic enablers,’ there is little doubt that they would make a conventional conflict with Russia so painful as to deter its commencement. And indeed, when it comes to Russia, America’s aim should be to avoid conflict—not provoke it.” (07/07/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/european-rearmament-is-a-trap/

Source: Christian Science Monitor
by staff

“Across the United States, a significant number of communities are experiencing a resurgence in the availability of local news from an evolving range of nonprofit outlets that are carving out a unique hometown niche. In recent decades, competition and changing readership patterns have led to the closure or downsizing of multiple city or state-wide newspapers. At the same time, however, hundreds of local news outlets are springing up to fill the gaps. An October 2025 report counted ‘more than 300 local news startups in the past five years across virtually every state, demonstrating a surge of entrepreneurship that has come along with a wave of philanthropic support’. According to the Institute for Nonprofit News, local outlets now make up 54% of its membership. ‘New growth … continues to skew local’, the institute’s 2026 index reported. ‘All nine outlets that became members and began publishing in 2025 covered local beats,’ as did the vast majority of new members in 2024 and 2023.” (07/06/26)

https://www.csmonitor.com/Editorials/the-monitors-view/2026/0706/Local-journalism-s-unique-niche-in-the-US

Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen

“The first of the two times I wrote about Graham Platner at these pages was last year. Among other things, it made the point that candidates are vessels for ideas and policies, and that none of them are indispensable. The second time, a week ago, was about how financial corruption exists on a different plane than other scandals. That is not diminished by the latest news; Platner’s actions and Susan Collins’s corruption can both be inexcusable and described as such. Regardless of any public defiance from unnamed sources, Platner is not going to survive the latest allegations, and he should not. What comes next is the only thing that matters now, in a world where a Democratic Senate is vital to preventing continued unchecked lawlessness, the confirmation of dozens more right-wing judges, and to preserve the vestiges of democracy.” [editor’s note: In recent years I have watched from afar the madness in my homeland states, with a mixture of amusement and horror. I am SO happy to be back to amusement – SAT] (07/07/26)

https://prospect.org/2026/07/06/maine-needs-lighthouse-primary-graham-platner-senate-susan-collins/

Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Tanya Goudsouzian & Ibrahim Al-Marashi

“Ali Al Zaidi has launched an unprecedented but much needed crackdown on figures tied to the country’s massively corrupt patronage system.” (07/07/26)

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ali-zaidi-iraq-corruption/