Source: Popular Information
by Judd Legum & Rebecca Crosby
“An overwhelming majority of Americans, 64 percent, believe that crime increased across the country in 2024, according to a Gallup survey conducted late last year. An overwhelming majority of Americans are wrong. On Tuesday, August 5, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its comprehensive report on crime in the United States for 2024. … the new FBI data shows that both violent crime and property crime are at their lowest level since the 1960s. In 2024, there were about 349 reported violent crimes in the United States for every 100,000 Americans. That is the lowest rate of violent crime since 1969.” (08/07/25)
https://popular.info/p/why-you-might-not-know-that-2024
Source: Nikkei Asia [Japan]
“The government of the Solomon Islands will not invite the U.S. and China to attend a key regional meeting in September, a move experts see as an effort to avoid diplomatic fallout over the alternative of singling out and excluding Taiwan from the event. The annual leaders meeting organized by the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), a key regional body comprising 16 Pacific island nations, Australia and New Zealand …. At last year’s PIF meeting in Tonga, Qian Bo, Beijing’s ambassador to the Pacific, successfully pushed to remove a paragraph from the forum’s joint communique that would have recognized Taiwan’s standing and involvement with the regional organization. Peter Kenilorea, a Solomon Islands MP who has criticized the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the Pacific, told Nikkei Asia in May that Honiara was under pressure from Beijing to exclude Taiwan from the forum.” (08/07/25)
https://archive.is/tVmF7
Source: Reason
by Matt Welch
“President Donald Trump sure picked a curious venue to start calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a ‘dictator.’ It was February 19, halfway through a remarkable two-week run in which America reversed its approach to both the Russia-Ukraine war and possibly the entire 76-year-old Washington-led trans-Atlantic military alliance. Trump was speaking in Miami Beach’s Faena Hotel and Forum at a bland-sounding ‘Priority Summit’ hosted by the innocuously named Future Investment Initiative Institute, which in turn is owned by the nondescript Public Investment Fund (PIF). But to the global financial elite, that latter entity is far from obscure. At an estimated $941 billion, the PIF is the sixth-largest sovereign wealth fund on the planet, owned by one of the world’s most authoritarian dictatorships, Saudi Arabia.” (08/07/25)
https://reason.com/2025/08/07/does-donald-trump-know-what-a-dictator-looks-like/
Source: CNN
“A federal judge on Thursday ordered a two-week halt to construction at an immigrant [concentration camp] in the Florida Everglades dubbed ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ as she considers whether it violates environmental laws. The facility was quickly built two months ago at a lightly used, single-runway training airport and can hold up to 3,000 detainees in temporary tent structures. The site was continuing to be built out, but the order by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams temporarily bars the installation of any new industrial-style lighting, as well as any paving, filling, excavating or fencing. The order also prohibits any other site expansion, including placing or erecting any additional buildings, tents, dormitories or other residential or administrative facilities.” (08/07/25)
https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/07/us/alligator-alcatraz-construction-halt-judge
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“Libertarians who say that certain tax deductions and credits are loopholes that need to be closed argue that these loopholes distort the tax code, are inefficient, subsidize high-income taxpayers, interfere with the free market, and encourage people to make economically unwise decisions. They may be all those things and more, but what is the effect of reducing, phasing out, or eliminating them? The effect is higher taxes and more revenue for Uncle Sam. … Only those who think that the government has an absolute right to a percentage of all income produced and that tax deductions and credits deprive the government of its claim to that percentage could object to individuals holding on to more of their money.” (08/07/25)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/why-are-some-libertarians-so-concerned-about-tax-loopholes/
Source: The Intercept
by Jonah Valdez
“After a month of militarized raids and racial profiling throughout Southern California, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong of California’s Central District, in response to a class-action lawsuit filed by community organizations and detained workers, delivered the Trump administration a major blow. She issued an order that prohibits federal agents from targeting individuals based on their race and ethnicity; whether they speak Spanish or English with an accent; their location such as a car wash, department store parking lot, or other worksite; or their occupation, such as landscapers or street vendors. The Trump administration appealed, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld the temporary restraining order. The order had brought relative calm to the region in recent weeks, slowing what had been near-daily operations to occasional isolated incidents. But the Trump administration’s Southern California campaign was not over.” (08/07/25)
https://theintercept.com/2025/08/07/immigrant-raid-home-depot-la-restraining-order/
Source: New York Times
“Vice President Sara Duterte of the Philippines moved one step closer to defeating the impeachment case against her on Wednesday, after the Senate voted to put on hold a trial that could have led to her removal. The Senate voted 19-4 to archive the impeachment complaint against Ms. Duterte, which had been approved by the lower house. Though the Senate can still hold a trial later, the possibility is diminishing. Last month the Supreme Court found the impeachment proceedings were unconstitutional, which influenced the Senate vote. In a statement last week, Ms. Duterte called the charges an abuse by the House. … In May elections, candidates endorsed by the Dutertes won more seats in both chambers of Congress. That was a show of strength for Ms. Duterte, who has made no secret of her intention to succeed President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., her former ally.” (08/07/25)
https://archive.is/gPokk
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
“Trump and the Ukraine-Russia War.” (08/07/25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh4mwEpme6U
Source: New York Times
“President Trump has ordered an unspecified number of federal law enforcement agents to be deployed in Washington, D.C., days after threatening a federal takeover of the city and claiming that crime there was ‘totally out of control.’ Washington’s crime rates — ranging from violent crime to thefts and burglaries — have been falling significantly, but the order follows the president’s effort to paint the nation’s capital as rife with violent crime. Mr. Trump highlighted the beating earlier this week of a prominent Department of Government Efficiency employee by a mob of young assailants in an attempted carjacking, according to local police.” (08/07/25)
https://archive.is/ZK5ND
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by William L Anderson
“Despite denials from the left [sic], US higher education has been captured by leftist [sic] faculty, students, and administrators. This is not a figment of anyone’s imagination, as for most of this century colleges and universities have changed dramatically. Anyone who has been to college in the past half-century would attest to what then was called the ‘liberalism’ of most of their professors, and, in the post-World War II era, the probability that one’s professor was a registered Democrat has been high. Yet, this is not what we mean by the ‘radicalizing’ of American higher education, for even those professors that classified themselves as ‘liberals’ and faithfully supported the Democratic Party would not have considered themselves to be radicals.” (08/07/25)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/scholars-and-schemers-how-left-ruined-higher-education
