Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Rachel Chiu

“The federal government has financed public broadcasting for decades. Over that time, Republicans argue, this broadcasting has become increasingly biased. Taxpayers, they claim, should not be forced to fund media outlets that they disagree with. They are right — the federal government does not need to be in the news business. Subsidies shouldn’t be keeping entire segments of an industry afloat, and the argument that local newsrooms need a lifeline has been used repeatedly to justify a profusion of preferential treatment, including antitrust exemptions that would enable news companies to cartelize. If this news subsidy ever served a useful purpose, it has long outlived it, especially given the evolution of media. ” (08/08/25)

https://fee.org/articles/do-americans-still-need-public-media/

Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider

“The former commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces penned an article and posed for Vogue Ukraine in late July. Though the article appeared in the magazine’s 2025 Leaders edition, Valery Zaluzhny nowhere declared an intention to run for Ukraine’s leadership, nor has he declared an intention to run at any other time. But, perhaps, he did not need to. … After over a year of capably but quietly serving as ambassador in London, Zaluzhny has burst back onto the Ukrainian scene with an article and photo shoot that reintroduced him to his compatriots, not as the rough general of Ukraine, but as a relatable man of the common Ukrainian people who, unlike Zelensky, is capable of wearing a tailored suit, rather than military fatigues.” (08/08/25)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/why-zelensky-should-fear-his-own-former-general/

Source: The American Prospect
by Whitney Curry Wimbish

“America’s two biggest private prison companies have made even more money from Trump’s mass deportation campaign than executives’ wildest hopes. In second-quarter earnings calls this week, executives at both GEO Group and CoreCivic announced revenue increases of over 100 percent compared to the same period last year, described buybacks of millions of dollars’ worth of stock, and outlined plans for the day after Trump achieves his goal of deporting one million immigrants this year, which they paradoxically expect will net even bigger piles of cash. Both revised their outlook for the rest of the year upwards. At GEO Group, the largest contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), executives reported total revenue for the period of $636.2 million, about a 5 percent increase from the second quarter of 2024. Net income was $29.1 million for the period, compared to a net loss of $32.5 million last year.” (08/08/25)

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-08-08-private-prisons-cash-in-trumps-mass-deportations/

Source: Washington Post
by George F Will

“Successful democracies endanger their success because of the complacency success breeds. They solve problems only when lashed by necessity: Britain considered Winston Churchill a Cassandra — until the German army reached the English Channel ports. In the 1960s, Americans realized they could not have domestic tranquility without new civil rights laws. Today’s crisis of the nation’s fiscal trajectory elicits a peculiar optimism: Necessity, in the form of the exhaustion of the Social Security trust fund, will lash Congress into reforming two entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare) that are driving the nation’s indebtedness. This optimism is delusional.” (08/08/25)

https://archive.is/O942S

Source: Cato Institute
by Ryan Bourne & Nathan Miller

“Given the composition of the federal budget, and without a legislative strategy to work with Congress to cut entitlement programs and defense spending, it was simply impossible for DOGE to ever eke out $1–2 trillion of financial savings from cancelling DEI grants, laying off federal employees, shuttering minor departments and agencies, and delivering various software and anti-fraud upgrades to federal services. Indeed, making such wild promises on spending arguably undermined focus on what it did help achieve: a significant reduction in federal headcount, scrapping wasteful economic development aid, and zeroing near-term public broadcasting subsidies (since codified in the rescissions package). Would DOGE 2.0 heed the lesson not to overpromise again? It appears not.” (08/08/25)

https://www.cato.org/commentary/doge-overpromising-deregulation