Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance
“There is one main problem with President Trump’s call to nationalize elections: the Constitution, which decentralizes the election process with a minor role for Congress. Article I, Section 4, of the Constitution states that ‘the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.’ There is no provision for the president to have anything to do with elections through executive action. … Another problem with President Trump’s call to nationalize elections is that it is based on something that is largely imaginary.” (05/29/26)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/nothing-should-be-nationalized/
Source: Our Future
by Sulma Arias
“In a healthy democracy, we have a say in how our daily lives are run, how our neighbors are treated, and how our tax dollars are spent. Right now, the majority of Americans are dissatisfied with how the country is being run, and where it is going. In a healthy democracy, we would be able to demand the change of direction we need with our votes. Yet our democracy [sic] is not healthy. This fundamental right – for every vote to count and be counted – is being taken away from us as we speak. That is why it is our duty to rise up and restore the health of our democracy, while we still can.” (05/31/26)
https://ourfuture.org/20260531/we-must-rise-up-to-defend-democracy-now
Source: Reuters
“U.S. President Donald Trump will headline an event commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary on the National Mall next month, organizers said on Saturday, after several musical performers scheduled to appear in the celebration canceled, citing concerns about its association with him. The concerts were planned as the opening ceremony of the Great American State Fair, a 16-day event running from June 25 to July 10, 2026. … the musical lineup has been hit by a series of cancellations. On Friday, Bret Michaels, the lead singer of the rock band Poison, became the fifth performer to withdraw from the concerts, saying that the event was not the nonpartisan celebration that he thought it would be. … ‘The fact is that I am, according to many, the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World,’ Trump wrote.” (05/30/26)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-considers-dropping-concerts-us-capital-after-artists-drop-out-2026-05-30/
Source: The Bulwark
“Trump’s Staggering Corruption Is Finally Catching Up to Him (w/ Jonathan Chait).” (05/30/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Ed9BVe42U
Source: Los Angeles Times
by Matt K Lewis
“Under old ‘pre-Trump’ rules, [Graham] Platner’s campaign would have withered instantly after revelations that he once had a Totenkopf SS tattoo, previously identified himself as a communist, said Black people were poor tippers, and wrote that white people ‘actually are’ as racist and stupid as Trump thinks they are. Instead, after all this surfaced, Platner actually rose in the polls. … Maybe Maine Dems have concluded that moral purity tests are politically suicidal after years of watching heterodox figures like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk drift away from the party. … Or maybe Maine Democrats have absorbed the same lesson Republicans adopted in 2016: Once voters stop treating scandal as disqualifying, policing your own side for off-the-field behavior starts to look like unilateral disarmament.” (05/29/26)
https://archive.is/HC2Lf
Source: Law & Liberty
by Max Skjönsberg
“The French Revolution remains one of the pivotal events that still shape historical thinking and writing and is commonly seen as one of the watersheds of modernity. For Edmund Burke, it meant that “the glory of Europe [was] extinguished forever”; for Hegel, the climax of world revolutions; for Tocqueville, the triumph of centralization; for Marx and Marxists, the victory of the bourgeoisie over the feudal class. Marxism dominated history writing for much of the twentieth century until the French historian François Furet in 1978 presented a radical interpretation that shifted focus to the ideas of the revolution. But Furet had been anticipated by one of the great English historians and liberals, Lord Acton.” (05/29/26)
https://lawliberty.org/classic/actons-case-for-federalism/
Source: NBC News
“The wife of Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate in Maine, said she is ‘really angry’ about reports that she had previously told her husband’s campaign he had exchanged sexually explicit texts with other women. ‘It makes me really angry, disappointed,’ Platner’s wife, Amy Gertner, said in a direct-to-camera video released by Platner’s campaign on Saturday night. ‘And I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on.’ Gertner’s remarks came after The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal reported that Gertner had told Platner’s campaign about the sexually explicit texts last year, near the start of his Senate bid.” (05/31/26)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/graham-platner-wife-amy-gertner-disclosed-extramarital-sexting-rcna347737
Source: Yascha Mounk
“Kathryn Paige Harden on How Genetics Shapes Human Behavior.” (05/29/26)
https://writing.yaschamounk.com/p/kathryn-paige-harden
Source: The Dispatch
by Kevin D Williamson
“It does not matter whether you live in a trailer park or a brick ranch house or something more grand and getting grander, it is all the same: Tornado bait is tornado bait. When the Trump administration announced that it was staging a UFC fight on the South Lawn of the White House, I knew what I was seeing. It is as familiar to me as the taste of canned Ranch Style Beans on cornbread …. I know my people. My people know what they like. And they will have what they like even if it harelips the pope — especially if it harelips the pope. It took 250 years, but you got here. All the way down here. From Greatest Generation to White Trash Nation in the space of one lifetime.” (05/29/26)
https://thedispatch.com/article/ufc-fight-white-house-american-decline/
Source: OtherWords
by Furonda Brasfield
“As a long-time death penalty abolitionist, I’ve often compared the death penalty in America to a train with no brakes: Once the machinery starts moving, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to stop. But the real problem is that the train should never have been built. Today, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Arkansas are experimenting with nitrogen gas executions, a method officials claim is more humane. But from noose to needle to nitrogen, our constant search for a more acceptable way to kill is a story of failure, not moral progress. There’s no acceptable way to practice a form of state killing that, for Black Americans especially, has long been intertwined with terror. History should make us skeptical whenever governments begin searching for new technologies to make killing appear more acceptable.” (05/31/26)
https://otherwords.org/theres-no-moral-death-penalty/
