Source: France 24 [French state media]
“Haiti’s CEP electoral council on Monday scheduled the first presidential elections in a decade for December with a runoff in February, after plans to hold the vote in August with a December runoff were postponed over security concerns. Haiti has not held elections since 2016. Its last president, Jovenel Moise, was assassinated in 2021, after delaying a vote. Successive governments have been tasked with holding an election but said insecurity amid a conflict with powerful armed gangs made it impossible.” (07/27/26)
https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20260727-haiti-sets-december-presidential-election-despite-security-concerns
Source: Parallax Views w/ JG Michael
“The Honesty Crisis w/ Christian Miller.” (07/27/26)
https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/cmiller7-27-26/
Source: The UnPopulist
by Ilya Somin
“Court-packing has once again become a major focus of political contention, with many on the political left advocating it in response to what they believe are badly flawed and illegitimate decisions by the Supreme Court. In a recent article for The UnPopulist, Andy Craig provides reluctant support for court-packing, but with a twist he argues will minimize the danger: combining court-packing with a constitutional amendment imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices that would—if enacted—reverse the packing. The term-limit system would give every president two appointments per term, thereby potentially producing more ideological balance on the bench. Craig’s proposal is clever and a cut above more conventional defenses of court-packing. But I remain unpersuaded.” (07/27/26)
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/court-packing-is-a-dangerous-gambit
Source: AOL
“U.S. President Donald Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Tuesday, with wars in Iran and Ukraine at critical stages and his ties with both leaders markedly different. Relations with Zelenskiy have warmed as Ukraine has blunted Russian advances, while Netanyahu arrives amid growing White House frustration over the lack of progress toward a broader settlement in the Iran conflict and criticism from some of Trump’s supporters who oppose deeper U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The two men are in Washington to attend a memorial service for Senator Lindsey Graham, a hawkish Republican who was one of Trump’s closest allies and who frequently tried to coax Trump into providing more support for Ukraine’s war.” (07/28/26)
https://www.aol.com/articles/trump-host-netanyahu-zelenskiy-ukraine-050302000.html
Source: The Daily Economy
by Joakim Book
“When American politicians or intellectuals promise Nordic welfare states, most people imagine this happening automatically or by taxing the rich, and everybody benefits. That’s not the case. The real Nordic model taxes earners more (45 percent in Denmark, 40 in Norway, 41 in Sweden, compared to 25 percent in the United States) and charging flat value added tax (VAT). Broad welfare states require broad tax bases; Nordic welfare states are financed not by billionaires but by ordinary workers.” (07/27/26)
https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/free-stuff-in-norway-still-costs-half-of-average-pay/
Source: Reason
“The Democrats Have a Socialism Problem.” (07/27/26)
https://reason.com/podcast/2026/07/27/the-democrats-have-a-socialism-problem/
Source: South China Morning Post [Hong Kong]
“Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva agreed on Sunday night to accelerate negotiations for a trade agreement between China and Mercosur, a striking reversal for Brasilia, which for years led resistance to such a deal in the South American bloc. The two leaders spoke by telephone for more than an hour, according to a statement from the Brazilian presidency, and ‘coincided on the importance of speeding up the talks for a Mercosur-China agreement that contemplates the necessary flexibilities’. … The call came days after a 25 per cent tariff imposed by US President Donald Trump on [American buyers of] part of Brazil’s exports took effect.” (07/28/26)
https://archive.is/LZser
Source: Independent Institute
by Abigail R Hall
“A whistleblower is an employee or a former employee who reveals information about wrongdoing inside an organization. As my coauthors and I have written, whistleblowers have played a critical role in exposing government abuses in democratic societies. Ideally, government officials act only to benefit the public. Should they act opportunistically or against the public interest, they would be punished through mechanisms like the voting booth, prosecution, or impeachment. Literature on the economics of politics, or ‘public choice,’ however, illustrates that real democratic institutions deviate from this ideal as a result of information asymmetries, in which some actors have more or better information than others, voter ignorance, and the organizational structures of politics. These imperfections are amplified in the national security state.” (07/27/26)
https://www.independent.org/article/2026/07/27/hegseths-war-on-leaks-is-a-war-on-accountability/
Source: WION [India]
“Iran has rejected US President Donald Trump’s claim that negotiations with Washington are underway, with the country’s Foreign Ministry insisting that no talks are currently taking place between the two sides. In a statement on Monday (July 27), the ministry said Iran was ‘not engaged in any negotiations with the United States’ and dismissed suggestions that Tehran had sought to restart dialogue, saying such an approach was ‘not in our DNA’. Instead, it claimed it was Washington that had requested talks, according to Iranian news agency Tasnim. The remarks came despite a pause in the recent military confrontation between Iran and the United States, with both sides refraining from launching fresh strikes for a second consecutive day.” (07/28/26)
https://www.wionews.com/world/not-in-our-dna-iran-denies-seeking-us-negotiations-rejects-trump-s-remarks-1785182270778
Source: Antiwar.com
by Andrew P Napolitano
“One of the defining failures of modern American government has been the steady erosion of Congress’s constitutional authority over war. The Constitution grants Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. Congress decides to go to war. The president wages it. Over the past several decades, presidents of both major parties have increasingly treated military intervention as an executive prerogative rather than a congressional requirement. The last six presidents have not reflected distinct foreign policy doctrines but a uniparty continuum of executive overreach.” (07/27/26)
https://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2026/07/26/the-american-presidency-and-perpetual-war/
