Source: Financial Times [UK]
“Japan has said it will not sacrifice its farmers to secure tariff exemptions from the US, as Tokyo and Washington hardened their positions in a rice diplomacy stand-off and hopes of an imminent trade deal between the allies faded. The comments from Japan’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi on Tuesday came as Donald Trump cast Japan, among other countries, as ‘spoiled’ and the latest round of trade negotiations in Washington ended without clear progress. … Japanese rice production has for decades been an intensely political issue. The crop commands an outsized national importance and farmers have been a crucial base of support for the long-ruling Liberal Democratic party. The US exports some rice tariff free to Japan under a World Trade Organization ‘minimum access’ agreement, but Japan imposes a levy on any imports beyond a 770,000 tonne limit.” (07/01/25)
https://archive.is/zejID
Source: The Dispatch
“Justice Kagan’s Supreme Court.” (07/01/25)
https://thedispatch.com/podcast/advisoryopinions/justice-kagans-supreme-court/
Source: The Daily Economy
by Vladimir Snurenco
“Benefit cliffs occur when earning slightly more — through a raise or extra hours — leaves people worse off because they lose government benefits. Many economists believe these cliffs can be ‘smoothed out’ through better program design. But this view overlooks a critical factor: human psychology. To truly address benefit cliffs, policymakers must move beyond formulas and graphs and consider how people actually think, feel, and behave. In some cases, benefit cliffs may not just be hard to eliminate — they may be impossible to fully remove.” (07/01/25)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/the-persistence-of-benefit-cliffs-a-behavioral-look-at-a-policy-problem/
Source: Fox News
“While Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have started questioning former President Joe Biden’s Cabinet members about the alleged cover-up of his cognitive decline, a former Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider says she is sitting on a trove of answers. In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Lindy Li, a former DNC fundraiser and National Finance Committee member, detailed her front-row seat to Biden’s presidency and the people who pulled the strings behind the scenes. ‘[Biden is] definitely complicit, but there were a lot of people behind him, like puppet masters. [Former first lady Jill Biden] very much knew what she was doing. What she did was absolutely elder abuse. There is no question in my mind,’ Li said.” (07/01/25)
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ex-dnc-insider-reveals-puppet-masters-who-ran-biden-white-house
Source: Responsible Statecraft
by Eldar Mamedov
“Washington’s foreign policy establishment has a dangerous tendency to dismantle nations it deems adversarial. Now, neoconservative think tanks like the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and their fellow travelers in the European Parliament are openly promoting the balkanization of Iran — a reckless strategy that would further destabilize the Middle East, trigger catastrophic humanitarian crises, and provoke fierce resistance from both Iranians and U.S. partners.” (07/01/25)
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-war-2672502741/
Source: Axios
“Elon Musk again blasted President Trump’s signature spending bill Monday as the Senate worked through a marathon amendment session to send the measure to the Oval Office by July 4. Hours after Musk threatened to form a new political party if the ‘big, beautiful bill’ passed, Trump claimed early Tuesday the Tesla CEO ‘may get more subsidy than any human being in history’ and suggested he may have DOGE, which the Tesla CEO once spearheaded, take a ‘good, hard, look’ at the billionaire’s companies.” (07/01/25)
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/30/musk-trump-big-beautiful-bill-new-political-party
Source: Antiwar.com
“IDF Admits To Killing Civilians Near Aid Sites, US OKs $510 Million Arms Deal for Israel, and More.” (07/01/25)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkPovOV5QQA
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob
“The civil war between sane New Yorkers and the other kind has reached its next phase. The victory of Zohran Mamdani in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary has some high-profile Democrats, like Sen. John Fetterman, expressing chagrin over the success of this openly commie slash-and-burn, soak-the-(white)-rich, pro-Hamas guy. Others, like former President Bill Clinton, who once posed as a moderate, are cheering him on.” (07/01/25)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/07/01/if-mamdani-wins/
Source: Town Hall
by Derek Hunter
“It’s pretty easy to condemn something you disagree with, you just say what you really think and feel – done and done. But when asked to condemn something you do not disagree with, something you or your friends support, things get a little complicated. That’s where Zohran Mamdani, Democratic Party nominee for New York City Mayor, finds himself. He’s not uncomfortable there, with the anti-Semitic hate, only with the prospect of having to speak about it in disapproving terms. No one wants to be the skunk at the progressive garden party. Mamdani doesn’t like Jews. Any quick search of his past statements will expose a long list of coded statements and friends who straight-out say as much (Zohran is too smart to be direct, but too much of a believer to be undetected).” (07/01/25)
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2025/07/01/obviously-mamdani-hates-jews-hes-a-progressive-democrat-n2659716
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“A father jumped into the ocean to save his daughter after she fell from the fourth deck of a Disney cruise ship travelling from the Bahamas to the US on Sunday afternoon, witnesses say. Videos showed passengers cheering as the two were pulled onto a rescue boat after apparently treading water for 10 minutes. The girl appeared to fall when her father took her picture against a railing, witnesses said. A man overboard alert was broadcast on the ship, and crew rushed to recover them. ‘The ship was moving quickly, so quickly, it’s crazy how quickly the people became tiny dots in the sea, and then you lost sight of them,’ passenger Laura Amador said.” (07/01/25)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6288v6j4y0o
