Source: Washington Post
by Ilya Somin
“‘Block by Block,’ Zohran Mamdani’s ‘sweeping blueprint’ to reduce housing prices in New York City, comes with a dangerous promise. ‘When necessary,’ the mayor said on May 26, ‘we will take aggressive legal action to remove negligent owners and property managers’ and transfer ownership to ‘responsible stewards.’ The problem: The proposal is an unconstitutional power grab that would exacerbate the city’s housing crisis. … The mayor’s proposal doesn’t just violate the federal and state constitutions, which have nearly identical restrictions on takings. It would also make the city’s shortages worse. Faced with the prospect of potential expropriation, many owners would likely withdraw properties from the market or not list them in the first place.” (06/09/26)
https://archive.is/VJkjO
Source: Show-Me Institute
by Cory Koedel
“Birth rates have been declining in the United States for decades, and there is little indication that the trend will reverse anytime soon. This poses challenges for many of our institutions that were built on the implicit assumption of continued population growth. Social Security is the most prominent example. Because the program relies on taxes paid by current workers to fund benefits for retirees, it depends on a steady influx of younger workers. Social Security is in trouble, and its day of reckoning is not far off. More quietly, schools across the United States are struggling with declining enrollment. After decades of needing more — more buildings, more teachers, more staff — we’re entering an era where we will need less of all these things.” (06/09/26)
https://showmeinstitute.org/article/education/declining-enrollment-will-force-hard-choices-in-missouri-schools/
Source: BBC News [UK State Media]
“Police in South Africa have launched a manhunt after 12 people were killed in a mass shooting at an informal settlement in Johannesburg. At least 10 suspects, heavily armed with rifles, entered the Jumpers Informal Settlement in the suburb of Cleveland late on Tuesday night and opened fire before fleeing in a white vehicle, police said. The motive for what police called a ‘heartless’ and ‘barbaric’ attack, in which another nine people were injured, is still being investigated. Members of the Jumper’s community believe the shooting may be linked to a turf war between groups of illegal miners living in the area. Illegal mining has been on the increase in South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world.” (06/10/26)
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c79yzqw0z0wo
Source: The Bulwark
“Pete Hegseth Embarrassed America on D-Day (w/ Bill Kristol).” (06/09/26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8GjVX5A57E
Source: National Review
“Don’t Blame Bernie for AI State Cronyism.” (06/09/26)
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/capital-record/dont-blame-bernie-for-ai-state-cronyism/
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Tho Bishop
“College athletics, particularly in the South, has long been one of the great institutions of this country. While the terminally anti-social may be quick to dismiss popular sports as ‘sportsball’ and the latter half of ‘bread and circuses,’ the reality is that popular sports have long served as an important connection in civil society, creating multi-generational stories of success and defeat, and providing valuable lessons about grit, hard work, and determination. Unfortunately, college sports have been under constant assault from political institutions, serving as a striking example of the devastation that can be wrought by anarcho-tyranny — the state-driven phenomenon of criminalizing the enforcement of basic civic norms while increasingly restricting the liberties of law-abiding citizens.” (06/09/26)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/anarcho-tyranny-killing-college-sports
Source: American Greatness
by Edward Ring
“Bill de Blasio appeared on NewsNation on June 2 and was asked to comment on Spencer Pratt’s campaign. De Blasio smugly described Pratt’s ads as ‘inappropriate’ and wondered, ‘Who is behind them?’ If de Blasio hadn’t actively participated in the decline of New York City during his disastrous eight years as its mayor, his arrogance might just be dismissed as unwarranted and clueless. But de Blasio is part of a machine that profits from urban decline. Behind his arrogance is a grasping, cynical hypocrite delighted that the machine on the West Coast is as potent as the one that elevated his own mayoral tenure and now supports Zohran Mamdani. And so way out west, the machine has struck again.” (06/10/26)
https://amgreatness.com/2026/06/10/how-the-machine-buried-spencer-pratt/
Source: In These Times
by Peter Cole
“While teaching and conducting research can be wonderful experiences, working conditions in higher education have become increasingly horrible. In the United States, massive state disinvestment coinciding with 50 years of neoliberalism has resulted in both soaring tuition costs for students and large-scale budget cuts to universities. As a result, faculty teaching loads have increased while wages have stagnated. Meanwhile, university administrators across the country have replaced full-time and permanent faculty with insecure, part-time positions, and rarely replaced faculty who retired or moved. Whereas in the 1970s, more than half of U.S. faculty were tenured or on the tenure-track, today that figure stands at just over one quarter. Students suffer because their professors have far less availability and are far more stressed. Faculty are forced to hustle, often taking on additional jobs, and are left with less time for teaching and research, thereby undermining the mission of universities.” (06/09/26)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/new-york-university-strike-non-tenured-union
Source: US News & World Report
“The race for California governor this fall will be a battle between a Democrat promising to cement the state’s status as a stronghold of liberal policies and a Republican pledging to dramatically reverse course in the nation’s most populous state. Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator backed by President Donald Trump, has won enough votes to advance to the general election, The Associated Press determined Tuesday. He’ll face Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and health secretary under President Joe Biden.” (06/09/26)
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2026-06-09/republican-steve-hilton-advances-to-general-election-in-race-for-california-governor
Source: National Public Radio [US state media]
“California counts votes slowly. Trump falsely cries fraud.” (06/09/26)
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/09/nx-s1-5850417/california-counts-votes-slowly-trump-falsely-cries-fraud