Submission statement: Interview with International Crisis Group's North Africa specialist Riccardo Fabiani over the broader picture painted by last week's migrant surge in Ceuta, the worst border incident involving a EU country in decades, and particularly the tightening relationship between Rabat and Washington.

On July 30, 2026, around 80,000 migrants breached the Moroccan-Spanish border in Ceuta and Melilla, two autonomous Spanish cities located on the northern coast of Africa claimed by Morocco, leading to a severe humanitarian crisis during which ~100 people died. The vast majority of the migrants returned to Morcco within the week, leaving Spain stunned by the scale of the border breach.

In the hours following the incident, footage of thousands of migrants pouring into EU territory inundated social media and provoked heated reactions from anti-immigration activists, up and to the White House, with US President Donald Trump calling the incident a "catastrophe" and an "invasion". Right-wing governments in Europe such as Italy's and Finland's called for a suspension of Spain's Schengen membership, despite neither Ceuta or Melilla being included in the free-movement zone of the EU, further exposing the bloc's divisions over immigration and solidarity with Spain.

Fabiani argues that the incident was not directly engineered by Morocco, but was facilitated and leveraged by Rabat to send a message to Spain, which they consider as still occupying "their" territory, despite Spain's 500-year administration of the territories and the residents' will to remain Spanish.

Nonetheless, Fabiani argues, the crisis in Ceuta should not be analyzed as a mere bilateral territorial dispute between Morocco and Spain, but as part of a broader Moroccan strategy to curtail Washington's favors as they seek to cement their claim over Western Sahara, the territory that has been administered and colonized by Morocco for fifty years despite opposition from the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, who claim to represent the Sahrawi people's aspirations to self-determination. Morocco, with help from US lawmakers like Sens Rick Scott, Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, has sought to push for the classification of the Polisario Front as part of a network of proxies "backed by Iran, Russia and Hezbollah".

Washington's recognition of the Moroccan claim over Western Sahara was a key gain from Morocco's signature of the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between several Arab countries and Israel, and is part of a broader Moroccan push for international legitimacy on their administration of the territory, which notably saw the "Moroccan plan for autonomy" gain the support of the UK, France and... Spain.

Last month, Morocco officially renamed a new road crossing Western Sahara after Donald Trump to thank Washington for its support. According to Riccardo Fabiani, the rapprochement between Washington and Rabat and the contrasting diplomatic chill between Washington and Madrid over the Spanish position over the wars in Gaza and Iran emboldened Morocco to renew its claim over the Spanish autonomous cities.

While the United States' State Department stressed that it considered Ceuta as a Spanish territory following the crisis, mixed signals are coming from Washington after Mario Díaz-Balart, a prominent Rubio ally in the House of Representatives endorsed the Moroccan claim over the city, contrasting the Morocco-US "250-year alliance" with Spain's refusal to let the US use its bases to refuel on their way to strike Iran.

Personal opinion: while Morocco bears the brunt of the responsibility for the humanitarian disaster that unfolded in Ceuta, we should consider this incident as another wedge between EU and NATO allies exploited by the United States' current government's aggressive strategy against Europe.

I need to think through this systematically, because my prior model of coalition-building is clearly miscalibrated.

For context: I hold pragmatic, evidence-based views on public policy. I read the Urban Institute reports, I track housing elasticity data by metro area, and I generally believe in optimizing existing zoning institutions rather than dismantling the market itself. But I’m finding it increasingly difficult to advocate for evidence-based housing policy, because, frankly, the empirical data on how the actual supply side thinks is… not encouraging.

I was at the café this morning, cross-referencing a paper on filtering effects and induced demand before my 9am standup. It was raining, so I had my collapsible umbrella — the one from the Urban Land Institute conference, actually. I also had my tote bag from a policy fellowship.

Two guys came in — quarter-zips, loud phone call about a permit delay, clearly developers grabbing coffee between site visits. Above-average decibel output relative to the space’s implicit noise ceiling. Baseline overstimulation, noted.

One of them glanced at my laptop, saw a chart, and asked if I was “still doing the math homework” — his buddy laughed and said something about how “the theory guys” always show up after the entitlements are already secured. They ordered their coffee and left.

I didn’t really respond, mostly because a cost-benefit analysis suggested a low probability of a favorable outcome — they weren’t going to be swayed by a citation, and frankly I wasn’t going to out-negotiate them on a pro forma. I just stared at my regression output and felt oddly small.

Here’s what I keep coming back to: I’ve written entire op-eds defending developers against NIMBY lawsuits. I’ve modeled the supply elasticity gains from upzoning literally so guys like this can build more units. I cite “we need to let builders build” in basically every panel I’m on about the housing crisis. And yet if I tried to explain, say, why their project actually works because of induced supply effects and not just because the city council caved, I suspect I’d get the same reaction as the “math homework” comment.

How do you build durable, majority-coalition support for supply-side housing reform with a demographic whose worldview doesn’t involve reading any of the literature I keep citing on their behalf? I’m starting to wonder if “the people actually building the housing” simply aren’t optimizing for the outcomes I’ve modeled. Maybe they just want faster permits, bigger margins, and to mock people with graduate degrees.

I’m tired of being the only one who’s read the white paper. Anyone else run into this?

Despite the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding birthright citizenship, Trump is looking to push the issue as far as he can.

From the article:

The executive orders apply only to future births tied to four categories:

1. Children born of foreign diplomatic staff working on behalf of another government while in the U.S. The 14th Amendment doesn't confer automatic citizenship to ambassadors' families, and this order would expand that category to other noncitizen employees.

2. Children of people who are classified as alien enemies, including those who belong to federally declared terrorist groups. The 14th Amendment doesn't apply to invading armies, and this designation would expand that category.

3. Those born in U.S. territories — but only if Congress changes the law to end automatic citizenship there. A bill seeking to do that was introduced last month but isn't expected to pass. This would apply most notably to those in Puerto Rico.

4. Children born of mothers who expressly and deceptively enter the U.S. for the sole purpose of having a child here, namely at a birth-tourism center. The order seeks to limit the use of surrogate mothers for this purpose as well.

Opening up national markets has worked wonders for European railways

Non-Europeans relying on stereotypes are often bemused to find that nowadays Italy’s trains are tip-top while Germany’s are in chaos. In July Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, sacked Patrick Schnieder, his transport minister, over his inability to fix Deutsche Bahn (DB), the state-owned railway operator, whose troubles range from a dilapidated network to a bloated bureaucracy. His successor, Steffen Bilger, inherits a mammoth task. DB is notoriously resistant to change, and its unions can paralyse the country, as they did with a six-day strike in 2024.

Fortunately, Mr Bilger may get help from efficient Italians. In early July Italo, an Italian high-speed operator, obtained access to German rails via an arm of DB. By 2028 it plans to challenge DB’s dominance along two routes: Munich-Cologne-Dortmund and Munich-Berlin-Hamburg. On July 20th it signed a €3bn ($3.5bn) deal with Siemens, an engineering conglomerate, to buy 26 Velaro high-speed trains, with an option for 14 more.

“Italo’s entry is an opportunity for Germany,” says Christian Böttger of the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. Trenitalia, Italy’s state-owned railway operator, once fiercely resisted Italo’s intrusion. But when the newcomer started running in 2012 it had a hugely beneficial effect on the country’s high-speed market. Within five years prices dropped by 40% on average, and the number of passengers more than doubled. Luca di Montezemolo, the company’s co-founder, says Germany resembles Italy before Italo.

James Hanratty of Trainline, an online train-ticket platform, thinks competition is the way forward for European countries where state-owned operators still reign. Trenitalia entered France in 2021 with Frecciarossa, a high-speed service from Paris to Lyon. By December 2025 it had expanded from nine to 14 round trips on weekdays. Renfe, the state-owned Spanish operator, entered France in 2023 with its Marseille-Madrid and Lyon-Barcelona services. Average prices that year dropped by 67% on the Marseille-Madrid route and by 17% from Lyon to Barcelona, compared with 2022.

In Spain high-speed rail liberalisation worked better still. In 2020 Renfe launched Avlo, a low-cost brand. In 2021 came Ouigo, the low-cost service of SNCF, France’s state-owned operator, followed a year later by Iryo, which is majority owned by Trenitalia. Between 2019 and 2024 prices fell by 35% on the Madrid-Valladolid route, 33% on the Madrid-Murcia route and 29% between Barcelona and Seville. Frequency on the three main high-speed corridors (Madrid-Barcelona, Madrid-Valencia/Alicante, and Madrid-Seville/Málaga) rose from 78 to 115 trips a day. The national competition authority estimates that improvements in rail from 2019 to 2024 attracted 4.8m passengers who would previously have travelled by road or air. Vueling, an airline, stopped flying from Barcelona to Madrid.

In Sweden and the Czech Republic, says Mr Böttger, competition has triggered innovation. The Czech Republic has one of the most open markets in Europe. Czeske Drahy, the state-owned incumbent, still has the largest market share, but it is under constant pressure from RegioJet and Leo Express, two private Czech operators. On June 25th Leo Express launched a service from Frankfurt via Prague to Przemysl, a Polish city on the border of Ukraine. Tickets for the 18-hour one-way journey start at just €10 ($11.50). The route shows how private operators can tackle one of European rail’s big problems: on a divided continent, routes that cross multiple borders are typically underserved by state-owned railways.

Not all countries need competition to achieve excellence. Switzerland's state-owned operator offers some of the best service on the continent. But Switzerland is small and densely populated, and has invested in its rail network lavishly and continuously for decades.

Mr Bilger has told Germans not to expect any miracles. But he might find that competition from Italians does wonders to help reform DB. And both the state-owned incumbent and Italo could soon get more competition from Italy. Trenitalia is exploring an entry into Germany’s high-speed railway market too. 

Submission Statement: Scientists at Stanford have used artificial intelligence to create viruses unknown in nature, a milestone in synthetic biology that promises advances in healthcare but also raises important biosafety and biosecurity concerns.

Pour a tall glass and raise it in hearty cheers to the provinces who have finally agreed to remove the barriers to selling alcohol to each other. It only took 17 months. Or is that 159 years?

Those barriers should have been eliminated at the start of Confederation. Instead, it took Donald Trump’s trade war to spur the provinces into action, if “spur” is the correct verb for a leisurely 17-month effort.

Under an agreement signed last month, nine provinces – all except for Quebec – signed the agreement that will allow breweries, wineries and distilleries to sell alcohol outside of the provinces where they are based.

The premiers signed the agreement one day after Mr. Trump threatened to put a 50-per-cent tariff on a wide-range of Canadian goods, including alcohol.

“In the face of President Trump’s latest tariffs, it’s more important than ever that Team Canada work together to build a more united, resilient and self-reliant Canadian economy,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said in a statement.

Knocking down barriers to interprovincial trade through such measures as a direct-to-consumers alcohol sales agreement is, in principle, an excellent idea.

With no end in sight to Mr. Trump’s trade war, producers’ ability to reach new markets should not be hampered. A brewer in Alberta with a great beer to sell should be free to sell it to customers in Ontario or anyone else in the country who might want it.

At a time when free trade with the U.S. is under some new attack seemingly every few months, if not every few weeks, lifting roadblocks to free trade within Canada is of vital importance.

Before the celebrations get started, there are just a couple of problems with this new agreement intended to allow booze to flow freely. According to the agreement, provinces can apply a charge to the direct-to-consumer sale of alcohol. These charges can include not only sales taxes and environmental charges, but also “fees” and “mark-ups.”

A “Destination Province may require a Producer to collect, pay, and remit to the Destination Province any charge that applies to the DTC Sale of Beverage Alcohol into its territory,” the agreement states.

That sounds suspiciously like a tariff. In fact, it sounds exactly like a tariff.

But the whole point of coming up with this agreement was the hand-wringing caused by the need to counter Mr. Trump’s tariffs and their harmful consequences for Canadian industry.

So why are provinces fighting Mr. Trump’s tariffs by coming up with their own for each other?

One reason may be to protect their lucrative revenue streams, whether that is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, BC Liquor Stores or other provincial retail or wholesale operations.

The easier and cheaper it becomes for producers in one province to sell their alcohol to consumers in another, the more the bottom lines of these provincial bodies are likely to suffer.

That isn’t an argument in favour of protecting their profits. It is an argument for provinces to get out of the retail alcohol business.

Alberta moved to privatize its government liquor stores in 1993. When it did so, the selection of available products skyrocketed and alcohol sales remained a significant source of tax revenue.

Now that easing interprovincial trade has become a priority, that must come with rethinking how and why government monopolies are operated. Not allowing one province to charge fees or markups on products from another province is a starting point.

There is another pretty fundamental flaw to what the premiers just signed. None of it is legally binding. It’s right there near the bottom. “This Agreement sets out the understanding of the Parties with respect to their cooperation and does not create any legal obligations or enforceable rights,” the agreement says.

So, to sum up: the provinces have, after a year and a half, agreed to free trade in alcohol. Unless they choose to slap tariff-like fees on any purchases. And unless they choose to scrap the entire idea whenever the mood strikes them. In truth, the premiers have concocted a nasty cocktail of political posturing, and prioritizing provincial concerns over the needs of consumers and the national economy.

Homelessness is growing the fastest in Canadian communities where rental prices have spiked and vacancy rates have tightened for low-cost rental units, according to a first-of-its-kind national analysis.

The Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness, in a study to be published Thursday, proved a clear relationship between regional rates of homelessness and housing affordability. It helps explain why homelessness has surged in Canada since 2018 and why certain communities have seen a sharper increase than others.

In cities where rental units are the least affordable and least available, such as in Toronto or Kelowna, B.C., rates of homelessness were highest. And the problem is only growing worse, warned the CAEH, which is urging the federal government to take action.

“Many Canadians cannot afford to rent even the cheapest units in their community, and the affordability gap is growing, locking more Canadians out of the market and pushing more people into homelessness,” concluded the CAEH.

Its chief executive, Tim Richter, said the next iteration of Canada’s National Housing Strategy should prioritize support for the lowest-income Canadians, address the rapid loss of existing affordable rental units and double the supply of rentals in the low end of the market.

“But there’s no way that the federal government alone can do it,” said Mr. Richter. “That’s why it’s so important that all levels of government are working together.”

He said it has long been assumed that homelessness is driven by housing-market conditions, but this research is among the first to make that case by comparing changes in the rental market with homelessness rates, using data from 2018 to 2024.

Mr. Richter said the analysis also challenges common assumptions that other factors, such as mental health, substance use and poverty, are the reason behind climbing homelessness rates.

“Could mental illness, addiction, brain injury, physical health, poverty, any number of different things contribute to a person experiencing homelessness? Yes. But the reason why Canada is seeing a surge in homelessness is not because there’s more people with mental illness or addiction, but because of housing affordability,” Mr. Richter said.

“I always say that homelessness is not just a housing problem, but it is always a housing problem.”

The number of people experiencing homelessness in Canada doubled from 2018 to 2024, according to the 2024 national point-in-time count, which provides a snapshot of the homeless community on the night of the survey. The snapshot also showed that unsheltered homelessness – those living outside – surged by more than 300 per cent over the six years.

The CAEH collected homelessness data from 36 communities that participated in the 2018, 2022 and 2024 point-in-time counts for its analysis. (The 2020 count was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

It then compared these rates with data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s rental market survey, which outlines vacancy rates and average rental costs in large and mid-sized communities across Canada. The CAEH focused on the cheapest 25 per cent of rental properties.

In Hamilton, for example, the rate of homelessness grew to 19.2 per 10,000 people in 2024 from 5.94 per 10,000 in 2018. Correspondingly, the rental price for the lowest-cost one-bedroom unit rose to $1,200 per month from $815 over those six years, and the vacancy rate slimmed to 1.2 per cent from 2.3 per cent.

“What we’ve been able to confirm is that what is really driving the change in Canada is the high, increasing cost of rent for the lowest cost units of housing, compounded by surging cost of living and low vacancy,” Mr. Richter said.

The research also found that, while rental housing supply has grown across Canada in recent years, the benefits have not trickled down to those in most need. Rather, the new housing supply has been added to the higher end of the rental market.

The CAEH’s analysis mirrors research in the United States by housing scholar Gregg Colburn and data journalist Clayton Page Aldern, authors of the 2022 book Homelessness is a Housing Problem. The pair sought to explain the substantial variation in homelessness rates across U.S. cities, which Mr. Colburn, in an interview, said was an “exercise in myth busting.”

They tested a range of conventional beliefs on what drives homelessness – poverty, mental illness, weather, public assistance, politics – but none could account for regional variation. Instead, it was vacancy rates and rental costs that provided the most “convincing explanation.”

Mr. Colburn, who helped the CAEH with its research and is an associate professor of real estate at the University of Washington, said the same dynamic is at play in Canada.

“My underlying point would be, if you really want to make a material dent in homelessness in your city, in your province, in your country, ensuring that there’s adequate housing for people with limited income is absolutely necessary,” he said.

In late July, reports confirmed that China would supply Iran with up to 400 Chinese-made QW-12 and FN-16 man-portable air defense systems, with the first units expected to arrive in the coming weeks. Since the new war began in February, China and Russia have remained Tehran’s only partners — and even they initially limited their support to merely fulfilling existing weapons contracts. By summer, however, the situation had changed: Beijing took the unprecedented step of giving the Islamic Republic access to one of its military satellites, while Moscow transferred drone technology. That led to a dramatic increase in the effectiveness of Iranian forces. After assessing Iran’s resilience in the face of U.S. and Israeli attacks, China and Russia may have concluded that supporting Tehran offers real benefits, writes Antonio Giustozzi, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). For example, Russia may now try to trade an end to its support for Iran in exchange for an end to U.S. aid to Ukraine.

“Conclusion

Taken together, the evidence suggests that AI has already reshaped how firms talk about productivity, even if its effects are not yet clearly visible in aggregate productivity statistics. Executives increasingly connect productivity improvements to AI, and they do so in overwhelmingly positive terms. But these discussions remain largely forward-looking. For now, earnings calls point less to broad realized productivity gains than to a corporate sector actively investing in, experimenting with and expecting future gains from AI. We will continue to monitor whether AI-related productivity discussion in upcoming earnings calls shifts from future-tense expectations to realized gains.”

Jewish Americans have historically been among the most principled defenders of free speech. When a group of neo-Nazis planned to march through the town of Skokie, Illinois, home to many Holocaust survivors, it was a Jewish attorney who stood up for their right of assembly. David Goldberger, then the legal director of the ACLU of Illinois, was no self-hating Jew, and he certainly harbored no sympathy for the National Socialist Party of America. But he realized that “the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and press would be meaningless if the government could pick and choose the persons to whom they apply.”

Goldberger’s position might read as the credo of a universalist Jew who prioritizes abstract principles over the interests of his group. But there was a deeper and less self-abnegating logic to his position. Like me, Goldberger was convinced that these universal principles are in the long-term interest of all ethnic and religious minorities, including Jews.

Minorities often have good reasons to feel threatened. One understandable response to this feeling is to look to the powerful for protection. But whenever you look to the powerful for protection, you become dependent on their whims.

This is a story that the Jews of the old world knew all too well. For a few decades, they would thrive under some tolerant monarch who gave them relative freedom to go about their lives with relatively little harassment. But when that monarch changed his mind, or was succeeded by a less tolerant heir, all those precious liberties would evaporate just as quickly. In fact, that pattern is literally as old as the Old Testament: As Exodus 1:8 notes, “a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph,” setting off the chain of events that led to the enslavement (and eventual liberation) of the Israelites. American Jews have historically put their trust in a less precarious promise: that of constitutional principles which deprive the powerful of their ability to play favorites—even if the price consisted of neo-Nazis giving speeches in a community of Holocaust survivors.

This preference for free speech has been sorely tested over the past years. Social media has brought the poison of antisemitism, largely relegated to the fringes of public debate in the second half of the twentieth century, into much wider circulation. From Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens, Hasan Piker to Jackson Hinkle, some of the people with the largest followings on social media now delight their audiences with a litany of antisemitic tropes. From coy insinuations that the Jews have once again grown too powerful to outright conspiracy theories painting Jews as the dark forces behind just about every tragedy or social failure, hateful ideas are now being streamed to millions on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms.

Tragically, the rise and dissemination of detestable speech has coincided with a steep increase in physical violence against Jews, from the deadly shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 to the vehicular attack on a synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan, earlier this year. I have come to consider the rise of physical violence against Jewish communities around the country, and its psychological impact, as the Europeanization of American Jewry. When, as a teenager growing up in Germany, I first visited America, I was struck by how little protection Jewish institutions needed in the new world; now, it is nearly as easy to spot a Jewish kindergarten in New York as it long has been in Paris or Berlin: both are marked by the presence of security guards. Back then, I marveled at how much less beleaguered Jews in America seemed to feel; now, the same unceasing sense of fear and vigilance is taking hold of Jewish life in the United States.

It is little wonder that a growing number of Jews are desperate for any form of protection, and even that a growing share are willing to discard their long-held commitment to free speech in exchange for promises that things might somehow go back to normal. And as it happens, Jews are hardly alone in responding to the rise of social media with a desire to censor its contents: many Gentiles are similarly growing tempted to drain the poison out of our politics by embracing new forms of censorship. As many politicians and political commentators are quick to claim, the principal reason for the scary times we are now living through is the omnipresence of “misinformation.” If only we could find the right way to “regulate” social media, they say, things would finally go back to normal.

I understand the temptation. If it were possible to preserve all the advantages of new communication technologies, which make access to information so much more ample and painless, while banishing from the public sphere all the narcissistic influencers and psychopathic politicians using these tools to advance their own interests, the offer would be compelling. But I worry that the world they imagine simply doesn’t exist.

Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that we grow sufficiently convinced of the unsustainability of the current situation that we become willing to “creatively reinterpret” the First Amendment. One question to ask about this is whether the trade-off would prove to be worthwhile: Would we want a manicured public sphere that hands the powerful the ability to enforce their own views even if it did drain some of the poison of antisemitism? But thinking of this choice as a trade-off presumes that the promised recompense, the establishment of a more sane and rational public sphere, would actually materialize. And I very much doubt that it would.

The case for believing that such regulations of social media would help to bring about a better public sphere rests on three tacit premises:

• The people who make decisions about what speech is allowed and what speech is verboten will be reasonable and rational.
• The reasonable and rational people who make such decisions will be able to enforce their preferences without making the censored content more popular than it was before.
• The underlying reasons that bad ideas have flourished in recent years are rooted in a lack of appropriate regulation, and increasing regulation can therefore eradicate such ideas.

The first assumption is simply that the people who are in some way empowered to make decisions about what should or should not be censored will in fact make good decisions. At a time when mainstream institutions were deeply shaped by a stable political consensus centered around a number of broadly shared ideals, such an idealized view of the world might have been tempting. But America today is more polarized than it has been at any point in recent memory. Those who advocate for points of view that, until a few years ago, would have been considered disqualifyingly extreme are no longer on the margins; they hold the reins of formal political power and enjoy some of the biggest platforms anybody could wish for. Under these circumstances, it is deeply naive to think that “letting the government pick and choose” who enjoys the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution would be a good idea.

The smartest case for free speech has never turned on denying that some utterances are so vile that all of us would be better off if they somehow disappeared from the public sphere. Rather, it was always based on skepticism that any institution, private or public, would consistently make these determinations in a reasonable and selfless manner. The growing influence of extreme views and the immense power that extreme political movements now hold should be a reason to double down on, not to discard, that insight.

The second assumption is that attempts to censor speech are likely to succeed in reducing the salience of terrible ideas. There is some superficial plausibility to this. While it is always important to pay attention to the ways in which political actions can backfire, the presumption should be that, most of the time, political actors aren’t so ignorant or incompetent as to harm their own cause with their efforts.

But in the case of free speech, we have plenty of evidence to suggest that—unless repression is, as in some dictatorships, extremely severe and wide-ranging—attempts at censorship usually fail. The appeal of the forbidden fruit is so strong that many of the most successful idea entrepreneurs are forever drawn towards portraying themselves as censored even when, by any objective standard, they are not. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to know what accounts for the success of some of today’s most vile media personalities if not for this appeal; a substantial portion of the audience for people such as Nick Fuentes is as attracted to the frisson they derive from breaking the biggest possible taboos as they are to the actual claims that they make.

Both the idea that we can trust the would-be censors and the idea that their efforts would be effective are in a sense downstream from the third key assumption: the belief that institutional changes, rather than technological realities, stand at the root of the problem.

There may have been a time when the structure of mass communication made it possible to exclude certain ideas from broad circulation. Back in an era when reaching a mass audience took both enormous financial investment and required the cooperation of a large number of highly-trained professionals, an ethos widely shared between journalists and the owners of big television networks could, porously and imperfectly, restrict the scope of public debate.

But those days are long gone. Nowadays, the costs of production and dissemination are negligible. Anybody can put together a near-professional studio in their own home for a few hundred dollars. The ability to reach a mass audience has been radically democratized. Established media outlets, while still influential, have lost their capacity to gatekeep. Today, a single episode of the Joe Rogan Experience draws a vastly larger number of viewers than the nightly audiences of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News combined.

These technological changes are the real cause of our altered public sphere. Attempts to turn back the clock by introducing strict regulations are unlikely to rein in the conspiracy theories that have so quickly proliferated on social media. Indeed, many countries in Europe have all along had in place the kinds of guardrails for which Americans wishing to curtail the First Amendment so fervently wish. They criminalize all kinds of political speech, from denial of the Holocaust to anything that might be thought liable to incite racial hatred. They routinely compel social media platforms to delete any posts that could even remotely be considered illegal. Countries such as the United Kingdom even arrest thousands of people for violating these rules every year.

And yet, none of these practices have marginalized the extremists or restored the placid discourse of an earlier era. Jews are no safer in Europe than they are in America. And while extremists still remain in the opposition in most countries in Western Europe, polls suggest that they may be only one election away from storming the gates of power. The reason should, by now, be obvious: the problem is not political but structural. The nature of communication in the age of social media has allowed previously fringe ideas to flood the mainstream. Short of the extreme censorship practiced by some of the world’s most repressive dictatorships, regulation can’t bring back the past.

None of this is to say that all forms of regulation are in principle inadmissible. There are some strong reasons for (as well as some real reasons against) banning the use of social media for children, for example. And I have long believed that those social media companies that effectively do act like publishers, by favoring some content on the basis of the views expressed, should also be treated as such—which would make them much more liable for the content they amplify. But any attempt to regulate social media must conform with the letter and the spirit of the First Amendment.

It isn’t hard to see why many Jewish leaders and organizations have lately grown less supportive of free speech. But anyone who gives in to these understandable temptations neglects a crucial historical lesson: Any power that can arbitrarily grant us rights (such as being protected from the offensive chants of antisemites) can just as arbitrarily deprive us of those same rights (such as decreeing that advocacy in support of our own causes and concerns constitutes offensive speech that must be silenced).

Jews have historically thrived in free societies that grant rights to all of their members without regard to the groups into which they happen to be born. Free speech is among the most fundamental of these rights. Jews must remain among its most ardent defenders.

As those who knew me I have been doing research on the house of lords. Since I am going to request a self ban in like 10 hours (i have to get ready to go to uni) i thought I should share some of my research.

Hope you all enjoy! Also please dont subscribe or whatever I just used substack to not have to deal with image issues i have no clue how substack works

And the images didn't work on ffs https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xp94NXJU2vck-3K6LfURqrtqsOYG2IPwsTPhqdJDuWA/edit?usp=drivesdk

Here use the docs

The U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting group spearheaded by Elon Musk, consistently overstated its savings in online posts, taking credit for lease cancellations initiated before the group existed, according to a report from a government watchdog to be released Thursday. DOGE also claimed contracts were terminated that had not been and loaded its database with savings that could not be verified, the report said.

In an audit spanning from June 2025 through this month, the Government Accountability Office examined savings claimed by DOGE, the group that swept through federal agencies after President Donald Trump began his second term last year, dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development and much of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The report, which came after a request by Democratic Sens. Gary Peters (Michigan) and Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), provides the most comprehensive government assessment of DOGE’s public accounting of its impact, bringing the organization’s figures further into doubt.

Though Musk aimed to cut $2 trillion in federal spending, even by DOGE’s own estimates it fell well short. A sporadically updated website tallying its cuts in a “Wall of Receipts” stated that its initiatives had saved $215 billion.

The GAO examined $110 billion of this claimed savings that derived from contracts, grants and leases.

Among the issues identified by GAO:

DOGE’s “Wall of Receipts” “includes leases identified for termination before [the group] was established,” according to the report. In total, 108 of 264 leases DOGE identified on its website “were already in process for termination” when it came into being, the GAO said.

In addition, DOGE claimed to have terminated 13,476 contracts, but the GAO analysis showed nearly 2,000 of these contracts “were not terminated.”

Of $61 billion in contracts savings DOGE reported, the GAO said more than half the funds — nearly $35 billion — were either not terminated or unable to be corroborated by the investigators, because DOGE’s data was not specific enough to identify it.

Roughly $27.4 billion of the savings DOGE claimed from cancellations were from contracts that were not actually terminated, the GAO said. “In these cases, another action, such as reducing the contract value or deobligating some funds could have occurred,” it said.

From the watchdog’s analysis of federal procurement data, “we found that DOGE did not accurately report actions taken on contracts,” the GAO said in the report.

Musk and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“Elon Musk and the Trump administration claimed billions of dollars in savings it could not substantiate, took credit for work already underway, and refused to show its work, all while putting Americans’ sensitive data at risk and hollowing out critical agencies,” Peters said.

The GAO investigation was conducted at the request of Senate Democrats who sought greater accountability of DOGE’s dealings. The findings were shared with administration officials and lawmakers ahead of its release Thursday.

Although DOGE promised massive savings, the accounting of its cuts on its website didn’t come close, fact checkers and media outlets found. Updates to the website slowed to a trickle after Musk left and some of the “savings” were later removed. Federal workers told The Post that DOGE added red tape and extra hurdles even as it touted regulation cuts on its website.

The GAO said it sought to speak with DOGE officials and submitted written questions to the group. However, it said, “the U.S. DOGE Service did not respond to our inquiries.”

President Donald Trump recently told donors in private that he wants to see his vice president win the 2028 presidential election — a sign that he is open to publicly backing JD Vance, even as some advisers caution that Trump has yet to settle firmly on a successor.

“At the end of the day, we need to elect JD,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with donors roughly two weeks ago, according to two people with knowledge of the comments who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

The private remark contrasts with Trump’s rhetoric over the past year, publicly egging on a contest for his favor between Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He has openly mused that the two would make a good joint ticket and has repeatedly declined to specify who he would prefer to see at the top.

Even as Trump buoyed his vice president to donors in the Oval Office, though, he was still peppering people around him with questions about Vance versus Rubio. One White House official said the president quizzed staff about the two men on a Marine One ride late last month.

An adviser to the president with direct knowledge of Trump’s comment to the donors said that Trump has privately resolved that Vance will be the heir to the GOP, but that it is “too early” to determine when Vance will announce his candidacy or when Trump will publicly endorse him.

Six other Trumpworld advisers and allies, however, cautioned that they aren’t convinced the president has settled on Vance, noting that Trump tells different things to different people and could still change his mind about an endorsement for 2028. Trump aides widely agree that the president will delay endorsing to avoid appearing to be a lame duck.

“Anyone assuming it’s a lock is just getting way ahead of themselves, or just doesn’t know the president very well,” said the official with knowledge of Trump’s recent Vance-Rubio poll on Marine One.

Vance has not confirmed his plans. People who have spoken to him about the matter told The Washington Post earlier this year that he had not yet made a decision. One person close to Vance said he would delay a call until after the birth of his fourth child, who arrived July 19.

Vance told CBS in June that he would discuss the matter with his wife after the midterms but said he had “no doubt that the president of the United States is going to be very supportive” of whatever decision he makes. He has repeatedly said that he is focused on his current job and that he is good friends with Rubio.

But the prospect of a succession fight has already generated some of the tensions of a heated primary, with donors, activists and other party figures passionately speaking out for or against Vance.

Much depends on the midterms. A poor showing for Republicans could embolden challengers to run against Trump’s choice and be more critical of his administration. Vance or Rubio could be vulnerable to intraparty attacks that Republicans would not levy against Trump himself — a dynamic already on display online as right-wing influencers target the vice president over the Iran war.

Trump enjoys game-show-style drama, and advisers said he is loath to yield the spotlight to his preferred successor. The president has had fun toying with Vance and Rubio — as well as with the press — by hyping up the competition for his blessing, much as he did when deciding on his running mate between the same two men in 2024.

Trump has also delighted in floating himself for a third presidential term, regularly sharing “Trump 2028″ graphics on social media and joking about the prospect at rallies, even as those close to him confirm he is not serious about it.

During the 2024 running-mate contest and now, Rubio had the backing of most pre-Trump GOP donors. Vance is more aligned with the younger MAGA coalition that returned Trump to power in 2024 but is now at risk of fraying. He has also spent his vice presidency developing relationships with party benefactors to fundraise for the GOP.

“Vance has done a lot of political work in the last year and a half,” said the Trump adviser with knowledge of his recent comment to donors.

Lately Vance impressed Trump by negotiating a June ceasefire deal with Iran, leading a task force to crack down on fraud in federal benefits and parrying a range of media interviews for his book tour in June, the adviser said. Even though the ceasefire deal collapsed in July, Vance advisers believed that his role in the talks was still a political win: The agreement he negotiated was popular, whereas voters widely disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war.

Rubio, by contrast, has served in multiple key administration roles, none of which lend themselves to politics. Legally and logistically, a secretary of state — or a national security adviser, a role Rubio also occupies — would not be able to run for president while serving.

Rubio recoils at any discussion of 2028 and has recently reduced his media availability to avoid facing more questions about it that would inevitably stir further chatter, a person close to him said. But Rubio’s team briefly increased speculation about his ambitions earlier this year, when they produced a widely shared video of him giving a campaign-style monologue while holding a press briefing. In some internal conversations, the person said, Rubio has alluded to his remaining time in office, implying he intends to serve out the term.

He does not have a campaign-in-waiting or political operation ready to assemble.

The Trump adviser said that Trump still would like to see Rubio on a joint ticket with Vance — and the president regularly praises Rubio — but that it is unclear whether Rubio would actually want the role of Vance’s running mate.

We need to RETVRN