Source: Town Hall
by Mark Lucas
“The warriors who defend this country must have their votes counted. That requires two things. The first is access. They need the time, the training, and the assistance to register and cast a ballot from wherever the country sends them. The second is protection. Their votes must not be diluted by overseas civilian ballots cast under rules Congress never wrote. The Pentagon has failed on both counts. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is correcting that. Start with access. In 2010 and 2011 I served as an infantry rifle platoon leader in Afghanistan. We operated from a remote combat outpost on the Pakistani border, fighting the Taliban and the Haqqani terror network. Those were the deadliest years of the war. I also ran the Federal Voting Assistance Program for my unit.” (10/03/26)
https://townhall.com/columnists/mark-lucas/2026/10/03/the-pentagon-neglected-its-own-voters-hegseth-is-correcting-it-n2684041
Source: The American Prospect
by David Dayen
“We here at the Prospect like to point out the ways in which economic power routinely converts into political power. We saw a particularly gruesome example of that this week. Tech executives converged on D.C. for a lunch with Donald Trump that eventually led to a toothless, completely voluntary AI safety agreement. Public Citizen did the service of tallying up all the money that these executives, their families, or the corporations they lead have given to Trump’s campaign, his super PAC MAGA Inc., his inauguration fund, legal settlements that personally enriched the president, or various vanity projects like the White House ballroom. The total came out to $227 million. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who accounts for $23 million of that total, substantially devised the ‘morally binding’ self-regulatory compact to police AI models that came out of the meeting, and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang (a mere $1 million) was his key lieutenant.” (10/02/26)
https://prospect.org/2026/10/02/ai-spending-trump-openai-greg-brockman-has-become-punching-bag/
Source: The Hill
“President Trump repeatedly berated Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Saturday over his stance on a daylight savings [sic] bill after posting the Republican Congress member’s cell phone number on social media. In a morning Truth Social post, the president encouraged his supporters to call the senator and urge him to back legislation that would make daylight savings [sic] time the permanent standard time. After Cotton stood by his position in a brief statement shared later Saturday, which didn’t directly mention the president or the leak, Trump went back on the offensive. … Trump blamed the GOP lawmaker for holding up the bill in the upper chamber after the House passed the legislation in July with broad bipartisan support.” (10/03/26)
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/6127691-trump-cotton-fued-daylight-savings-posts/
Source: Free Talk Live
“Sal checks in from lunch in Florida on his way to Prague, where he’s speaking at Dark Prague on agorism and crypto anarchy. … Mark Edge is joined by Jody Underwood of Education Options (EdOpt) to talk school choice in New Hampshire. They cover tuition-free charter schools, Education Freedom Accounts, runaway school spending, and why the families who could benefit most are often the hardest to reach.” (10/02/26)
https://soundcloud.com/freetalklive/samep22
Source: Liberal Currents
by Alan Elrod
“Our attention economy incentivizes the profane degradations of fame-seeking and celebrity culture.” (10/02/26)
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/portraits-of-an-american-dopamine-eater/
Source: The American Conservative
by Jude Russo
“The headline news is good for a change: Energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz are picking up. As of Monday, a seven-day average of 13.5 million barrels of crude oil were transiting the waterway, roughly matching pre-war levels. Two questions arise out of this happy circumstance: First, what has changed operationally? Second, why aren’t markets more jubilant? The second question is easier to answer. A week of good flows does not erase six months of supply disruption.” (10/02/26)
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/glimmers-of-hope-in-the-hormuz/
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Publisher
Rational Review News Digest / Freedom News Daily
Source: Northeast Times
“A US official told Al Jazeera that the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group and the Makin Island amphibious force, carrying 2,000 Marines, have left San Diego. The official said three carriers and two landing groups are deploying around Iran. UK Maritime Trade Operations said a supertanker carrying 2.5 million barrels was struck by an unknown projectile and caught fire while passing through the Strait of Hormuz.” (10/01/26)
https://northeasttimes.com/2026/10/01/u-s-sends-carrier-group-and-2-000-marines-toward-middle-east-as-tanker-is-hit/
Source: Antiwar.com
by Thomas S Karat
“What October 7 opened is visible on the ground before it is visible anywhere else. By the reckoning of an Israeli newspaper, Israel has seized more territory from its neighbors since that day than in any comparable span in decades. The war did not stay in Gaza. It moved outward on every front where a border could be pushed. … A war that produces this much cannot be allowed to end, and it has not been.” (10/01/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/thomas_karat/2026/09/30/the-usefulness-of-a-massacre
Source: Reason
“How Nikole Hannah-Jones Gets School Choice All Wrong.” (10/01/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/10/01/how-nikole-hannah-jones-gets-school-choice-all-wrong/
