Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille
“Leading up to our Independence Day party, my wife asked whether she should buy us T-shirts celebrating America’s 250th anniversary or stick with what we already have. We went with our existing garments. When the red, white, and blue string lights are up and the Gadsden flag is flying out front, my son will don his free speech shirt, my wife will wear one with USA printed across it, and my shirt will show an image of George Washington crossing the Delaware and text reading: ‘Americans. Willing to cross a frozen river to kill you. In your sleep. On Christmas. Not kidding, we’ve done it.’ It will be festive. But not everybody shares our enthusiasm for celebrating the nation’s birthday and the liberty at the core of its founding philosophy.” (06/26/26)
https://reason.com/2026/06/26/dont-let-the-countrys-wet-blankets-ruin-independence-day/
Source: CounterPunch
by Dean Baker
‘Most of us tend to think that the people controlling billions, or even hundreds of billions of dollars, at major corporations have a pretty good idea of what they are doing with their companies’ money. But that clearly is not always the case.” (06/26/26)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/06/26/does-us-ai-depend-on-big-companies-throwing-money-in-the-toilet-the-chinese-competition/
Source: CNBC
“The U.S. government on Friday granted Anthropic permission to release its Mythos 5 model to a group of roughly 100 companies and federal agencies, CNBC has confirmed. The decision, detailed by the Commerce Department in a letter to Anthropic, marks a major step forward in the negotiations between the Trump administration and the artificial intelligence company, which have been engaged in a two-week standoff over its latest models: Fable 5 and Mythos 5.” [editor’s note: The US government enjoys precisely zero right to decide whether AI creators can release their models, or if so to whom – TLK] (06/27/26)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/26/us-government-anthropic-claude-mythos5-ai.html
Source: The Fifth Column
“The Cadres and the Cabal.” (06/26/26)
https://www.wethefifth.com/p/the-cadres-and-the-cabal-563
Source: The Daily Economy
by Peter Jacobsen
“Students react poorly at first but show improvement over time. Unfortunately, government schools are tricky places to run experiments.” (06/26/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/should-smartphones-be-banned-in-schools-a-look-at-the-research/
Source: Free Association
by Sheldon Richman
“‘I will now sketch,’ English classical liberal, ‘voluntaryist,’ Auberon Herbert wrote in ‘The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State’ (1885), ‘the practical measures by which, as it seems to me, we could give the best effect to a system of the widest possible liberty; our great object being to secure the limitation of services undertaken by the government.’ Herbert was one of the most earnest defenders of individualism in late Victorian England. He remains an inspiration today; seeing how he thought liberty should be protected ought to be instructive.” (06/26/26)
https://sheldonrichman.substack.com/p/tgif-auberon-herbert-and-practical
Source: SFGate
“The parents of former Raiders running back Doug Martin say that the excessive force Oakland police officers used on their son during a mental health crisis led to his death in October, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday. Martin died in police custody on Oct. 18. In a statement released two days later, the Oakland Police Department said the 36-year-old was involved in an alleged break-in near the Oakland Zoo. … According to the suit, Martin fled to a nearby neighbor’s home during what his family described in the immediate aftermath as a mental health crisis, where police found him in the basement. The suit acknowledges a struggle but alleges that officers placed Martin face down on the ground with at least one officer on his back. When Martin appeared to be unconscious, the lawsuit alleges, police thought he was sleeping or pretending to be asleep.” (06/26/26)
https://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/oakland-police-doug-martin-22322530.php
Source: Freakonomics
“Why Does Vanderbilt Keep Winning?” (06/26/26)
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-does-vanderbilt-keep-winning/
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Stephen Semler
“During an April Senate hearing dominated by debate over the Iran war, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth batted down criticisms from skeptical members of Congress, saying ‘I believe we do have the support of the American people’ in this conflict. Hegseth, it turns out, was wrong. Two months later, we can now confidently say that the Iran conflict is the most unpopular war in U.S. history. When I compared public opinion on the Iran War to previous major U.S. conflicts in May, it hadn’t quite reached the Vietnam War’s level of unpopularity. But polling from June shows that the Iran War has now sunk to negative 32% net support — below the negative 31% recorded in the final poll during Vietnam.” (06/26/26)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-war-polling-us/
Source: In These Times
by Rebecca Burns
“‘I urge you guys to freeze the rent, because we want our students to succeed.’ That was the appeal Alyssa Wright made to the nine members of New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) earlier this month, a little more than halfway through a packed, four-hour hearing in the Bronx on whether to freeze rents in the city’s some 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. Wright serves as a campus supervisor for a pilot program connecting City University of New York (CUNY) students with housing, healthcare and food resources. It’s a challenging role: Just that week, Wright said in her testimony, she had counseled five students facing eviction. Some 38% of CUNY’s 240,000 students experience housing insecurity, a condition that makes them twice as likely to withdraw or be placed on academic probation, according to a 2025 study based on a representative sample of students.” (06/26/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/labor-tenant-union-mamdani-rent-freeze
