- SCOTUS Questions Role of Race in State Election Maps
Source: New York Times
“The Supreme Court is hearing a case on Wednesday whose outcome could cause congressional seats throughout the country to flip from blue to red to cement Republican control of Congress. The case, a challenge to Louisiana’s congressional map, is a battle over whether states can use race as a factor in drawing electoral districts. But it could have much broader implications for the law, politics, and the remaining pillar of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. … Chief Justice John Roberts asked the lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund about the proper role of race in drawing congressional boundaries. … Justice Kavanaugh suggests that aspects of the Voting Rights Act might have an implicit sunset date, like the 25-year deadline Justice O’Connor proposed for race-conscious admissions in higher education in 2003.” (10/15/25)
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10/15/us/supreme-court-voting-rights
- ICC disqualifies chief prosecutor from Duterte case over perceived conflict of interest
Source: ABC News
“Judges at the International Criminal Court on Wednesday disqualified the court’s chief prosecutor from the case against former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who is charged with involvement in dozens of killings as part of his so-called ‘war on drugs’ when in office. The written decision cited a ‘reasonable appearance of bias’ because Prosecutor Karim Khan — before he took office — represented victims of Duterte’s alleged crimes. The decision, dated Oct. 2 but released in redacted form on Wednesday, comes with Khan already having stepped back in May from his duties pending the outcome of an independent investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct.” (10/15/25)
- FL: Judge grants woman restraining order against creepy politician ex-boyfriend
Source: The Independent
“Cory Mills, a Florida Republican congressman, has been hit with a restraining order that prevents him from contacting an ex-partner for reasons of ‘protection against dating violence.’ Lindsey Langston, his ex-girlfriend, filed a petition in August and claimed that the Republican was threatening to release nude images and videos to blackmail her. … According to the order, he is now barred from contacting Langston until January 1 or directly referring to her on social media. … Allegedly, the relationship crumbled after Langston saw reports that Mills had been involved in a physical altercation with a woman in Washington, DC. … Sarah Raviani, 27, allegedly called the police to the conservative’s apartment in Washington D.C., and claimed that he had assaulted her.” (10/15/125)
- Let’s shut down government for real
Source: Eastern New Mexico News
by Kent McManigal“Recently, everyone has been up in arms over a supposed government shutdown. The same way they were over the last few and will be when the next regularly scheduled shutdowns roll around. Some act as if this hasn’t become normal political theatrics. I’m not sure which rock they’ve been hiding under for the past few decades, but it must be a remote one. These same people are trying to decide who’s to blame. Blame? Instead of assigning blame, if there were a government shutdown, I would suggest proudly claiming credit for the accomplishment. Blame belongs to those who want to end the shutdown and open government back up, not those who keep it shut down.” (10/15/25)
- Free Trade and Dynamic Efficiency
Source: EconLog
by Arnold Kling“The usual case for free trade is not the best case for free trade. The usual case is based on static efficiency, meaning making better use of a fixed set of resources. Economists use the term comparative advantage to describe how, if humans choose to specialize and trade with one another, each can end up better off than if they produce everything for themselves. But trade has an even more important role to play in what economists have come to call dynamic efficiency, which is the ability of an economy to exploit innovation and increase living standards over time. This dynamic efficiency is a central concern of the economists who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize: Philippe Aghion, Peter Howitt, and Joel Mokyr.” (10/15/25)
- The Federal Workforce Will Be a Little Smaller after the Government Shutdown Ends
Source: Reason
by JD Tuccille“As promised — or threatened, if you wandered over to Reason by accident — the Trump administration has started using the government sort-of-shutdown as an opportunity to engage in mass layoffs of federal employees. In the game of chicken between Republicans and Democrats over just how much the government should overspend and on what, the losers so far appear to be some of the almost 3 million Americans who thought federal employment would be a comfortable way to collect a paycheck. Setting thousands of former government workers loose to seek jobs elsewhere — preferably not involving money forcibly extracted from taxpayers — is a step in the right direction.” (10/15/25)
- The Peace in Gaza Won’t Last
Source: Foreign Policy
by Stephen M Walt“We can all be grateful that the slaughter in Gaza has been suspended, at least temporarily; that Israeli hostages and Palestinian [hostages] are being exchanged; and that relief aid can flow more freely to the suffering Gazan population. Not surprisingly, U.S. President Donald Trump is taking a victory lap and calling the cease-fire agreement the ‘historic dawn of a new Middle East.’ … I hope he’s right, but I wouldn’t bet on it. There are two lingering questions looming in the aftermath of the present agreement. The first question, obviously, is: ‘Will it hold?’ The second question — on which the answer to the first largely depends — is whether Israel’s relations with the rest of the world, and especially its ‘special relationship’ with the United States, are evolving in ways that might make a lasting peace possible at long last.” (10/15/25)
- Russia’s Collectivist Cult of the Strong State
Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Bart Frazier“Through much of the remainder of the 19th century and an early part of the 20th century, the idea of liberty that de Tocqueville highlighted remained central to the American experience. But today, America in practice has become more guided by a set of ideas closer to those of the Russians than to our own ancestors. Ours may seem like a kinder and gentler political paternalism and system of plunder than in Russia, but our own variation on the collectivist theme has come to dominate America as well.” (10/15/25)
https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/russias-collectivist-cult-of-the-strong-state/
- Trumpanyahu Administration Already Sabotaging Ceasefire
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone“I don’t know who first coined the saying that an Israeli ceasefire means ‘you cease and we fire’, but it proves reliably accurate time after time. The IDF reportedly killed nine Palestinians trying to return to their homes today under the usual justification that they were traveling in some kind of unauthorized area in ways that made the troops feel threatened, blah blah. They did this all the time during the previous ‘ceasefire’ at the beginning of the year, using the exact same excuses. Just as we speculated the other day might happen, Israel has announced that it is going to cut the aid it allows into Gaza in half and cut off fuel and gas shipments, because Hamas hasn’t returned the bodies of all the dead Israeli hostages.” (10/15/25)
- A Government Shutdown Is Less Scary Than Its Dysfunction-As-Usual
Source: The Daily Economy
by Scott Drylie“There will be thousands of genuine stories of hardship and frustration that will emerge from this shutdown. There will be waste, interruptions, and inefficiency. Still, from a whole-of-society perspective, shutdowns have historically been much ado about little. Government is not shut and it is usually only moderately and briefly down.” (10/15/25)
- Masked law enforcement enters a danger zone beyond US democracy
Source: The Hill
by James D Zirin“The history of masks dates to prehistoric times, where they served diverse cultural purposes. Masks were used in dramatic performance in ancient Greece, to protect against plague in the Middle Ages and for entertainment purposes throughout history. Fictional masked figures include such superheroes as Batman, Zorro or the Lone Ranger. Also, there are villains like Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader who wore masks to create a scary presence. Face it, masks are intended to be intimidating, even on Halloween. But the practice of mask wearing by federal agents making arrests or controlling crowds is a novelty, particularly when their actions are the subject of civil liberties court challenges.” (10/15/25)
https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/5554243-masked-ice-agents-chicago/
- 10 Ways Billionaires Making Your Life Worse, and 5 Ways to Fight Back
Source: Inequality.org
by Chuck Collins“As a coeditor of Inequality.org, I get a lot of fan mail (and a few complaints). Greg B. recently wrote in, ‘None of my problems exist as a result of someone else being a billionaire’. My response to Greg: ‘An economy rigged to funnel so much wealth and power to the billionaire class is bad for you and everyone else. It undermines your life in some major ways.’ I wrote my new book, Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet, for folks like Greg to talk about how extreme wealth inequality disrupts our daily lives. Here are 10 ways you are being burned by billionaires, pulled from my book.” (10/15/25)
https://inequality.org/article/ten-ways-you-are-being-burned-by-billionaires/
- The Right Needs to Reject Conservatism
Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Connor O’Keeffe“[W]hen it comes to fighting back against progressivism, socialism, globalism, interventionism, or whatever you want to call the ideology of the political establishment, the American right has long struggled to do so meaningfully. The reason was best explained in a 1938 pamphlet by the Old Right writer Garet Garrett, called The Revolution Was. Garrett witnessed a conservative movement that was similarly staring down a powerful coalition of New Deal Democrats, crony business leaders, and outright socialists …. In his pamphlet, Garrett argued that the fundamental problem with the conservatives of his day was that they were looking in the wrong direction. … as long as the American right ignored the institutional changes that had already happened and, therefore, allowed them to remain in place, it was effectively a certainty that they would lose. That what they were advocating against would come to pass.” (10/15/25)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/right-needs-reject-conservatism
- Trump’s Gaza plan has resulted in a cease-fire, but the devil lies in the details going forward
Source: New York Post
by Irwin M Stelzer“He came, he saw, he conquered. That just about describes President Trump’s 12,000-mile round trip from Washington, DC, to Israel and Egypt. He addressed Israel’s Knesset in Jerusalem, greeted the hostages and their families, hopped on Air Force One for a flight to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, signed the first phase of a Gaza peace deal, delivered a moving speech, met with the leaders of 27 countries to push the next phases of his 20-point peace plan forward and take a well-earned victory lap, and returned to Washington after what most people would consider a full day. The guns are silent, relief supplies are pouring into Gaza, IDF troops have withdrawn to agreed areas and the 20 surviving hostages have been released, along with four of the 28 bodies of the dead, the others to be returned when they are found by Hamas.” (10/14/25)
- The Fifth Column, episode 528
Source: The Fifth Column
“President Comacho Delivers Peace, w/ Mary Katharine Ham.” (10/15/25)
https://www.wethefifth.com/p/528-president-comacho-delivers-peace
- Rising, 10/15/25
Source: The Hill
“Fox refuses to comply with new Pentagon press rules, signs joint statement.” (10/15/25)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/5556398-rising-october-15-2025/
- The Daily Blast With Greg Sargent, 10/15/25
Source: The New Republic
“Trump Erupts at ABC Over Vance On-Air Fiasco as Presser Goes Off Rails.” (10/15/25)
https://newrepublic.com/article/201779/trump-erupts-abc-coverage-anger-presser-goes-off-rails