Source: Aaron Ross Powell’s Blog
by Aaron Ross Powell

“For most Americans—and particularly for the culturally reactionary ones who form Trump’s MAGA base—American history isn’t really history. It’s not a series of actual events to be studied objectively and probed thoughtfully. It is instead American lore. Like learning everything there is to know about Star Wars or about Warhammer 40,000 or about the endless variety of heroes who make up the Avengers, American lore is a comprehensive story any new event can fit into. And that you, if you’re American, can fit yourself into, too.” (05/26/26)

https://www.aaronrosspowell.com/3mmru6rbyis2p

Source: Antiwar.com
by Travis Lynch

“When Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that any agreement with Iran must be ‘great and meaningful,’ or there would be no agreement at all, he appeared to be drawing a wall between himself and Barack Obama’s nuclear deal. He wanted to make clear that even if negotiations were underway, they would be Trumpian negotiations: tougher, more forceful, and the ‘exact opposite’ of an agreement he had spent years denouncing as a symbol of weakness. But that statement revealed less strength than contradiction. A president who once treated Obama’s diplomacy with Iran as appeasement now has to sell his own diplomacy as victory.” (05/27/26)

https://original.antiwar.com/travis_lynch/2026/05/26/trumps-pottery-barn-war

Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker

“Around 200 economists work for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, and roughly 200 more work for the 12 district banks around the country. The new Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, could assign some of the Fed economists to assess whether the current valuation of the stock market is consistent with the Fed’s projections for the future growth of GDP and profits. Unless their arithmetic is very different than the stuff the rest of us use, they will have to conclude that stock valuations are not consistent, unless today’s crop of stockholders expect very low future returns. That seems unlikely, but that is the alternative to saying that the market is in a bubble.” (05/27/26)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/05/27/bursting-the-ai-bubble-the-fed-could-end-the-who-couldve-known-defense/

Source: The Volokh Conspiracy
by Ronald Den Otter

“Unlike concerns about censorship on college campuses, which have received a lot of media attention, when guest speakers are disinvited or shouted down, few people care much about the extent to which school authorities may suppress student speech in a public junior high or high school. The assumption is that due to their age and relative immaturity, most of what they contribute to the marketplace of ideas at their school will have little, if any, value. Furthermore, the primary mission of a school is to educate its students, and student speech can be disruptive or distracting. As such, it may appear to be obvious that teenagers should not be able to exercise the same free speech rights that college students may exercise. However, position strikes me as harder to defend than most people acknowledge.” (05/26/26)

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/05/26/the-importance-of-free-speech-in-american-public-junior-high-and-high-schools/

Source: American Greatness
by Edward Ring

“In the heart of the Santa Cruz Mountains, just off Highway 9, there is a restaurant that has become a community icon. It has a redwood-paneled dining room with exposed roof timbers that was built in 1912 and a historic bar with a wood-burning fireplace. For over a century, the people in this isolated town have treasured this gathering place. Near downtown Los Angeles, along a busy commercial boulevard, a family-owned Mexican restaurant has thrived since 1925 …. Countless independent businesses in California remain prosperous despite a regulatory environment that throws at them rules that are often unreasonable, even in conflict with each other, from agencies at the local, county, regional, and state levels. These agencies are staffed with bureaucrats who are not merely indifferent to the challenges small businesses face while attempting to comply with their edicts; many of them are actively hostile.” (05/27/26)

https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/27/tom-steyer-will-destroy-californias-historic-small-businesses/