Source: Niskanen Center
by Mark Lerner

“For over a decade, the FBI had been immersed in a vast, costly, but indisputably critical effort to build a modern digital case-management system. The bureau well understood the importance of information: gathering, organizing, sharing, assessing, and putting it to use to fight crime and protect national security. Yet what followed were countless missteps and misjudgments, more than $1 billion of public money squandered, and the worst terrorist attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. And it still took more than 10 years to get it right.” (07/27/26)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/how-the-fbi-blew-1-billion-on-an-efficiency-project/

Source: The American Conservative
by Ted Snider & Nicolai N Petro

“On January 14, 2026, Mykhailo Fedorov was appointed Ukraine’s minister of defense. Just six months later, he was dismissed. One of Fedorov’s principal tasks, bigger even than addressing the shortage of Patriot interceptors, had been reforming his country’s recruitment and mobilization system. But manpower shortages remain a chronic issue …. But the real reason behind his firing may be something else—namely the risk of exposing the popular myth of how Ukraine has turned the tide both in the war and in its internal fight against domestic corruption.” (07/27/26)

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-meaning-of-fedorovs-firing/

Source: USA Today
by Theresa Olohan

“Homeschooling rates have steadily risen since the COVID-19 pandemic, when the difficulties of remote learning inspired many parents to pull their kids from school. This era exposed many parents to the widespread failures of the American education system. Many were confused why skyrocketing educational spending was not reversing plummeting student achievement nationwide.” (07/26/26)

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2026/07/26/liberal-conservative-homeschool-attacks-education/90978691007/

Source: Mother Jones
by Alex Nguyen

“Since the US and Israel first struck Iran in February, the Trump administration has several times stopped fighting to negotiate, only to later escalate the war again. This may be because, as Michael Froman of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan US foreign policy think tank, wrote on Friday, Trump is taking a middle-ground, simultaneous military and diplomacy approach to prevent extreme political fallout. He wants to avoid complete targeting of Iranian critical infrastructure and seizing oil with a military invasion or conceding to Iranian control of oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.” (07/26/26)

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/the-us-pause-in-iran-war-escalation-probably-wont-last/

Source: Townhall
by Jen Springman

“The future is arriving, and America is entering a new infrastructure age. Much of the political class is succumbing to a familiar temptation: slow it down by stoking fear of the unknown and imagining worst-case scenarios without acknowledging the benefits. Nowhere is this clearer than with data centers.” (07/27/26)

https://townhall.com/columnists/jen-springman/2026/07/27/data-centers-arent-the-problem-scarcity-politics-is-n2680140