The Good and Bad News of Tucson Becoming More Prosperous

By Craig J. Cantoni

Written by Craig J. Cantoni

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A story in AZ Big Media out of Phoenix claims that Tucson saw the biggest increase in median household income in Arizona over the last year and ranks 23rd nationally out of 94 cities in income growth.

If true, that’s good and bad news.

It’s good news to those of us in a small minority who have lamented that Tucson is not as prosperous as it could be.

It’s bad news, however, for the political monopoly that has run the place for decades.  The monopolists have stayed in power by keeping the proletariat poor and dependent on them.  As such, they’ve done everything in their power to nip prosperity in the bud.

It’s also bad news for all of the NGOs whose grant money and donations depend on incomes not rising.

And it’s bad news for many of the NIMBYs, retirees, aging flower children and hippies, and government and university employees with sinecure.  They abhor what widespread prosperity for the masses will do to their desert paradise.  Gasp!  It might even turn Tucson into a version of Phoenix.

Radical socialists will be disappointed, too, for prosperity is an antidote to collectivism.

According to the story, median household income in Tucson increased 5.5% to $60,483 over the last year, in inflation-adjusted dollars.  And 5.6% of households earned more than $200,000 per year.

The anti-wealth cadres can relax, however.  That finding might be a false alarm, because it is based on a questionable study.

First, it’s unclear if the study compared cities or metro areas.  It says that it compared the “largest population centers” in the nation, which suggests metro areas, not cities.  But at the same time, Henderson, NV and Enterprise, NV are treated as separate population centers, although both cities are part of metro Las Vegas.

At the same time, it appears that the study cited income numbers for the entire metro area of Tucson and not just the city of Tucson.  If so, the cited income for metro Tucson is higher than it would be for just the city of Tucson, because it includes such wealthier suburbs as Marana.

In any event, the inconsistency calls into question the validity of the study.

Second, math alone can sometimes account for a lower-income metropolis like Tucson showing a larger percentage gain in income than higher-income metros.  That’s because the percentage is calculated from a smaller denominator.  For example, a $6,000 increase in income in a metropolis that has a median household income of $60,000 yields a gain of 10%.  By contrast, a $6,000 increase in income in a metropolis that has a median household income of $120,000 yields a gain of 5%.

Maybe that explains why Phoenix has a median household income of $85,246 but saw a gain of only 4%.  Or maybe the explanation is that the numbers for Phoenix are just for the city of Phoenix.  Numbers for Mesa, Chandler and Gilbert are cited separately, in another example of the aforementioned inconsistency.

In spite of how the math works, some wealthier metropolises had a much higher percentage of income growth than Tucson.  Examples:

 

City/Metro Med. Household

Income

 % Increase

In Income
Tucson $60,483 5.6
Enterprise, NV $111,128 18.3
Anaheim, CA $101,145 15.8
Irvine, CA $145,731 10.6
Henderson, NV $95,415 12.4

 

Third, with respect to the percent of households earning $200,000 or more, the study points out in a footnote that the statistic is presented as a supplemental point estimate and should be interpreted with caution because the margin of error was not evaluated.

Still, it’s interesting that the study says that 5.6% of Tucson households earned $200,000 or more.  In Gilbert, AZ, 21.7% of households are in that category; and in the imperial city of Washington, DC, 26.6% are.

The study doesn’t mention this, but a big driver of household income is how many family members work.  Naturally, a family with two working parents will have more income than a single-parent family, all else being equal.  And a city with a higher proportion of families with two working parents will have a higher median income than a city with a higher proportion of single-parent families.

In closing, it’s good news that median household income in metro Tucson seems to be increasing in real terms instead of decreasing. My condolences to those Tucsonans who see it as bad news.

-Craig Cantoni

Mr. Cantoni is an author, activist and retired business executive.

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Valor and Liberty: Trump Celebrates the 81st Anniversary of Japan’s Surrender Ending WWII

By Catherine Salgado

Written by Catherine Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

On August 14, 1945, Imperial Japan did the “unthinkable” by signing an unconditional surrender document with the Allies, ending World War II.

The “Greatest Generation,” President Donald Trump declared in a proclamation, “crossed thousands of miles of open sea, turned the tide of the conflict at Midway, broke the enemy fleet at Leyte Gulf, and seized the fortress islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Each of those battles was waged against a fierce and unyielding enemy that tested the strength of American resolve like never before.  In the end, the unbreakable will of America’s Armed Forces drove an empire of conquest to its knees, freed millions from its brutal occupation, and left the American Flag flying over a Pacific restored to freedom.”

The president recalled, “More than 16 million Americans answered the call to serve, and more than 400,000 of them never came home, laying down their lives on distant shores to keep our Nation free. Through their sacrifice, uncommon courage, and selfless devotion to freedom, America emerged from the deadliest war in history stronger, safer, and immortalized as a symbol of freedom, hope, and liberty in every corner of the world.” America not only conquered Japan but rebuilt it as a democratic ally.

As one of the most murderous regimes of the 20th century, with up to 10 million victims, the imperial Japanese regime had devastated Pearl Harbor on American soil and rampaged through numerous countries with a trail of corpses in its wake. The potential land invasion of Japan was projected to cost up to a million Americans’ lives. And so opposed was Japanese culture at that time to surrender that soldiers would fight to the last man, and mothers would throw their own babies off cliffs, to avoid capture on the islands the Americans took. Even after two atom bombs, members of Japan’s war council opposed surrender, and officials staged an abortive coup to stop the emperor’s announcement of it.

Thus Trump boasted, “When Imperial Japan laid down its arms on this day in 1945, America stood victorious over the forces of tyranny, proving to every generation that freedom survives only when brave citizens stand ready to defend it.”

He reminded all Americans of the present generation, “We owe our deepest gratitude to the Americans who gave their lives in that struggle, the soldiers who charged across open sand into enemy fire, the Marines who stormed beaches, the sailors who stood their posts on burning decks, and the airmen who took flight into the skies above the Pacific. To every one of them, our Nation makes this promise: Their valor will forever live on in the American story, the liberty they won will grow stronger in the hands of all who follow, and the Republic they saved will stand as the mightiest force for good the world has ever known.”

Trump ended with one more tribute, “Together, we salute the Greatest Generation, and we carry their indom[itable] spirit into our own time—proud, vigilant, and free.  May God bless the heroes of the Second World War, and may their triumph light the way for our Nation in the centuries to come.”

-Catherine Salgado

Catherine Salgado is a contributor for PJ Media. She also writes for The Rogue Review, Media Research Center, and her Substack Pro Deo et Libertate. She received the Andrew Breitbart MVP award for August 2021 from The Rogue Review for her journalism.

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After Billions Spent and Zero Trains, California’s Rail Boondoggle Nears a Reckoning

By Jarrett Stepman

Written by Jarrett Stepman

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

California’s high-speed rail boondoggle may finally be running out of money. It’s bad news for Gov. Gavin Newsom, possibly good news for the people of California.

I’ve been opining about why the California bullet train will never succeed since I wrote my very first column as a young college pup. But even my accurate (though not difficult) prediction about its certain failure didn’t quite capture the sheer depth of the wasteful insanity this project has achieved.

There now may be a glimmer of hope, though a faint one, that the “project”—a word I use loosely in this case—may mercifully starve to death after fattening itself on taxpayer cash for nearly two decades.

According to a recent review by the Office of the Inspector General, the California High-Speed Rail project “will exhaust its current funding resources as soon as December 2027 if it does not secure financing.”

The inspector general warned that the high-speed rail faces a $9.5 billion funding gap over the next five years and there is currently no plan to fill it.

Even more damning is the inspector general’s note that there are “significant concerns” regarding transparency and that completion projections have been a moving target.

The only reason the high-speed rail was even keeping close to its already massively bloated budget numbers was due to just lopping off parts of the planned line.

“Ultimately, the major cost savings observed in the Merced and Bakersfield extensions are not due to increased efficiency—which we define as delivering equivalent scope for less cost—but are instead the result of planning to build less,” the report explained.

The report noted that the Merced-to-Bakersfield line, the pitifully shortened and getting shorter segment of what was once sold as a connection between San Francisco and Los Angeles, now has a projected completion date of September 2034.

I’d love to go back in time to my college campus and tell students who bought into the fast, “green” train that was going to connect the whole state that what they were ultimately getting was a short line in the Central Valley that might finish construction closer to their retirement than graduation—if they are lucky.

On top of everything else, the inspector general wrote with seeming exasperation that the High-Speed Rail Authority tasked with overseeing the project “has obscured basic facts about the project, hindering lawmakers’ ability to provide effective oversight of the project.”

I’d argue that if the lawmakers and powers that be in the state cared about the high-speed rail’s viability, they would have taken action to shut it down and untangle the mess long ago.

A few lone voices, including Republican Rep. Vince Fong, have been pointing out red flag after red flag for years, but they’ve mostly been ignored. Fong, like poor Sisyphus, did so again after the IG report came out.

“California’s High-Speed Rail is the quintessential example of government mismanagement,” he wrote Tuesday on X. “I’ve called it out since day 1. Californians were promised a completed rail 6 years ago. Today we’ve spent billions and billions, for a total of zero trains. Gavin Newsom owes us an explanation. And an apology. It’s beyond time to shut this down.”

Fong is right. Not only should the California bullet train to nowhere be shut down, but taxpayers also deserve a full accounting of what went wrong here.

We don’t even know the depths of failure outside the shifting budget projections and the visible lack of evidence that a functioning train is likely to come online any time soon.

Every piece of information that drips out of the high-speed rail project is about delays, increased costs, deceptive practices, and total unaccountability.

Even basic things, like buying the trains, are behind schedule with no explanation.

Newsom and other California Democrats blamed President Donald Trump for the recent hiccups on the removal of $4 billion in federal funds.

However, according to a recent investigation by CBS News, the delay in buying trains, which was supposed to be done by the end of last year, had nothing to do with the lost federal funding. And, of course, the California government has provided no explanation for the hold up.

California quietly withdrew its lawsuit against the federal government over the pulled funding at the end of 2025, which was the right call given that it can’t meet basic deadlines.

What this means is that the high-speed rail project—which I’d argue has been operating as a slush fund for bureaucrats and fake jobs for some time—might truly be put on full pause soon.

The Trump administration isn’t going to hand them a penny now or ever again.

Private investors have mostly stayed far away. The best they’ve got on that end is some companies “exploring” the viability of the project, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they are just trying to find ways to gobble up some of the remaining public money.

And without public subsidies that would have to be approved by voters, it’s hard to see where the money will come from to keep the thing rolling. Well, not rolling at all, actually.

It’s shameful that this charade has gone on for so long. I truly hope this report will be the beginning of the end of this long, expensive, pointless scam that the people of California have endured for too long.

-Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.”

This piece was reproduced with the permission of The Daily Signal. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

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Nixon Is Back

By Geoff Shepard

Written by Geoff Shepard

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Why younger Americans are interested in the 37th president.

With the 52nd anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation, his reputation is experiencing a resurgence—especially among younger generations.

For example, in just the past month and a half, at least a half-dozen articles have examined Nixon’s legacy. There was Tim Rice’s Daily Wire article, “How The Kids Learned To Love Richard Nixon,” which ends with this sentence: “Maybe Nixon wasn’t a relic come too late, but a visionary come too early. Maybe his time is now.” Frontier Magazine published a cover story by Blaze Media Editor-in-Chief Christopher Bedford, “The Once and Future Nixon.” Then there was Philip Wegmann’s full-page Wall Street Journal feature, “Young Conservatives Have an Unlikely New Icon: Richard Nixon,” which characterizes me as “the main architect of modern Watergate revisionism.”

The biggest splash came from Vice President JD Vance’s remarks at the Nixon Library in June, where he said Nixon had always fascinated him and that Nixon was taken down by the deep state (comments that I agree with in full).

The underlying question for political junkies is this: Why the Nixon resurgence—and why now? Needless to say, as a Watergate insider, I have strong opinions.

Back to the Beginning

My own involvement with Watergate began when I served as Deputy Counsel to J. Fred Buzhardt, President Nixon’s lead lawyer. In that capacity, I transcribed the infamous White House tapes, ran the document rooms holding the seized files of Nixon’s top aides, and briefed presidential counselors on Watergate developments. I was the third person (after Nixon and Buzhardt) to listen to the June 23, 1972, tape, which I first characterized as the “smoking gun.” Because I produced certain documents for Watergate prosecutors, I testified at the Plumbers’ trial as a “chain of custody” witness and was subpoenaed for the same purpose in the cover-up trial.

Once Nixon resigned, I was essentially unemployable until I was able to secure from the special prosecutor a “clearance letter” stating that I was not, and never had been, the subject of any Watergate Special Prosecution Force investigation. My family and I then moved to Philadelphia, where I worked as corporate counsel for several major insurance companies.

Nearly 30 years later, around 2003, I decided to sift through the ashes and try to learn how everything in the Nixon Administration went so wrong, so fast. After all, his 1972 re-election was the largest popular-vote landslide in America’s history.

I have spent the past 20 years researching and writing about the judicial and prosecutorial wrongdoing I uncovered in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal. I’ve scoured the surviving internal WSPF files at the National Archives, the personal files of the top four Watergate prosecutors, and the infamous “Road Map,” the prosecutors’ secret “presentment” of grand jury evidence to the House Judiciary Committee, which was not unsealed until October 2018.

I have written three books, helped produce two documentaries and an off-Broadway stage play, authored over a hundred articles and essays, taped as many podcasts and live appearances, and maintained a website containing links to dozens of offending memos from the internal files of the WSPF.

With that recounting of my Watergate involvement, let us return to the issue at hand: Why now?

Nixon’s Legacy

Partly, Nixon’s resurgence is due to pent-up resentment at the uniformity with which liberalism controlled much of American political life in the mid-20th century. In Nixon’s era, the Democrats dominated both houses of Congress, and the media spoke with a single unified voice. There were only three networks (ABC, NBC, and CBS), two dominant weekly magazines (Time and Newsweek), and two dominant newspapers (The New York Times and The Washington Post). There was no talk radio; no Fox News, Newsmax, or NewsNation; no podcasts; and no social media. In short, the media environment is a whole lot different today—and is much more open to discussing formerly taboo subjects.

There is also the vast treasure trove of documents Nixon left from his long record of public service. He was on the national scene from his election to Congress in 1946 through his resignation from the presidency in 1974—a total of 28 years. Nixon either ran for president or vice president five out of the six national elections between 1952 and 1972. The documentary record from this period is substantial not only because he preferred to analyze and work from the written word, but also because there were no cell phones, email, or personal computers. Everything moved on paper. Plus, of course, we have some 3,600 hours of presidential tapes, most of which still need to be transcribed.

Nixon’s legacy has also been boosted through a strategic social media campaign. In 2023, the Nixon Foundation hired a young staffer named Chris Barber as Creative Director who was tasked with building Nixon’s social media presence. In 2025, he was promoted to head of marketing. Barber’s successes have been nothing short of extraordinary. To date, the Foundation’s social media postings have been viewed over 250 million times. The several articles cited at the beginning of this analysis detail the impact of Barber’s handiwork.

There is another important factor: the role President Trump has played as a catalyst in changing Nixon’s reputation. I chose this word deliberately. “Catalyst” is originally a chemistry term for a substance that induces or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being chemically changed. This is significant because I believe Trump’s considerable impact on perceptions of Nixon’s reputation and Watergate has not changed Trump himself.

There are four terms bandied about today that were not part of the political vocabulary before the Watergate scandal: “deep state,” “fake news,” “false narrative,” and—most of all—“lawfare,” the misuse of the criminal law to destroy one’s political enemies. Trump supporters believe Democrats use this playbook to try to keep Trump off the ballot, to destroy his reputation, and to bankrupt him in any way possible.

Into this fiery mix, add Barber’s postings, frequently based on internal prosecutorial documents uncovered by my research, and you have the phenomenal (and surprising) reactions we are seeing today.

Nor can it be overlooked that Nixon had a very successful first term. In foreign affairs, it included his opening to China, détente with the Soviet Union, ending the Vietnam War with the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, bringing POWs home, and reasserting American influence in the Middle East, which included saving Israel in the Yom Kippur War. In domestic affairs, he ended the military draft, lowered the voting age to 18, restored the treaty rights to Native Americans, integrated the Southern schools, created the Environmental Protection Agency, broke the back of the inner-city heroin epidemic with the nationwide methadone maintenance program, launched the war on cancer, and quadrupled the number of women named to senior government positions.

In sum, Nixon is back. For many of us oldsters, he should never have left. For many succeeding generations, their discovery of Nixon is just beginning. As for the Nixon haters who have savored their victory for so long, they can no more stop the tide of Nixon fans than King Canute in days of old.

-Geoff Shepard

Geoff Shepard is a former official in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He is the author of several books on Watergate, most recently The Nixon Conspiracy: Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President.

This piece was reproduced with the permission of The American Mind. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

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UK Arrests Thousands For Online Posts: Latest Numbers Are Stunning

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Britain now arrests thousands of people a year for what they post online, a pace of roughly thirty a day. The numbers are a warning about where “safety” regulation ends up.

State of play

  • Police made about 12,000 arrests in a single year for online communications offences, a figure assembled from force-by-force records.
  • That is more than thirty a day. The count marks a sharp rise since 2019, driven by posts on X, Facebook, and WhatsApp.
  • The laws predate the debate. Most arrests fall under two communications statutes, the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, not the newer Online Safety Act.

By the numbers

  • Arrests outpace sentencing ten to one. Thousands are detained each year, yet fewer than one in ten arrests led to sentencing in the year measured.
  • Convictions have actually fallen. Sentencings ran near 1,500 in recent years, down from peaks a decade ago, even as arrests climbed.
  • The trend runs one direction. Detentions for online communications have climbed steadily since 2019, part of a broader rise stretching back to 2016.

How we got here

  • The platform law arrived in 2023. The Online Safety Act took full effect in 2025, allowing regulators to fine companies up to 10% of global revenue or £18 million for failing to remove content deemed harmful.
  • The rules are still expanding. Regulators are phasing in duties on age checks and illegal content through 2026, widening the law’s reach over what platforms must remove.
  • Enforcement runs on two tracks. Regulators police the platforms while police enforce the older speech statutes against individuals, chilling expression from opposite ends.

The receipts

  • The cases are real. A Leeds man was jailed for Facebook posts urging attacks on a hotel housing asylum seekers, one of scores of prosecutions after the 2024 riots.
  • Washington is watching. US officials have called Britain’s speech limits serious restrictions on expression, tying the critique directly to the online-safety regime.
  • Everyday posts draw police, not just riot calls. The statutes sweep in private messages and ordinary comments judged offensive, indecent, or menacing.

What’s in it for America

  • This is a preview, not a foreign curiosity. Every proposal to police “harmful” content at home runs toward the same enforcement machinery already operating in Britain.
  • America has no equivalent. The First Amendment bars the prosecution of most offensive speech, which is why no comparable arrest tally exists on this side of the Atlantic.
  • Remedy? One British think tank has floated a model Free Speech Act to create a statutory right to expression and let citizens sue when the state censors lawful speech.

A free society argues with bad speech; it does not arrest its way out of it. Britain’s ledger is a reminder that the First Amendment is a fence, not a formality.

-The Editors

Liberty · Upstream of the Swamp · August 14, 2026

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67 Governments Fail US Transparency Test: New Release

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The State Department’s annual review of how foreign governments handle public money found that most of those assessed cleared the bar and a large minority did not. The report is the closest thing Washington has to a report card on where US aid dollars can actually be traced. What did it say?

State of play

  • The tally is stark. Of 139 governments and the Palestinian Authority, 73 met the minimum fiscal transparency standard and 67 did not.
  • Of the 67 that fell short, 14 made significant progress toward the minimum over the past year.
  • The review is broad. The assessment covers governments that receive US assistance, judging whether the public can see how that money is raised and spent.

By the numbers

  • The split is close. Of the 140 assessed, 73 cleared the bar and 67 fell short, a near-even divide.
  • Most failers are stuck. Only 14 of the 67 are improving, leaving 53 that showed no significant progress toward the minimum.

How it works

  • A passing government publishes budget documents that are substantially complete, reliable, and available to citizens within a reasonable time.
  • Contracts must be awarded openly. The review also weighs whether government contracts and natural-resource licenses are granted through a fair, public process.
  • Reliability matters as much as disclosure. Publishing a budget is not enough if the numbers are incomplete or untrustworthy, which is where many governments stumble.
  • Debt and resource revenue get scrutiny. The review examines whether governments disclose debt obligations and income from natural resources, two of the most common sources of money that vanish.

The backstory

  • This is a long-standing mandate. Congress attached the annual review to foreign-assistance funding, making transparency a recurring condition rather than a one-time check.
  • Failing carries consequences. A shortfall does not automatically cut aid, but it flags a partner whose books Washington cannot fully verify before more money moves.
  • The reach is global. The review spans partners on every continent, from close allies to adversaries that still receive US-linked assistance.

Why it matters

  • Foreign aid is under the microscope. With the administration paring overseas spending, a failure of transparency is now a direct argument against writing the next check.
  • Transparency deters graft. Open books make it harder to divert funds, so the standard is a first line of defense against corruption in recipient states.
  • It exposes where aid disappears. Governments that hide their books are the same places where diverted funds and ghost projects are hardest to catch.

Before the next tranche of aid moves, the transparency ledger is the first page worth reading. Money that cannot be traced is money that cannot be defended. This report is overdue, and increased transparency should be applauded. This is taxpayer money going to all corners of the globe, and that holds a high level of responsibility.

-The Editors

Politics · Upstream of the Swamp · August 14, 2026

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Golden Dome Could Stall Without October Funding: New Warning

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The general running America’s homeland missile shield says the program could stop cold on October 1 unless Congress finds new money. Almost all of next year’s funding hinges on a reconciliation bill that does not yet exist.

Where things stand

  • The warning was blunt. At a Huntsville symposium Monday, Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein said there is no Golden Dome without new funding once fiscal 2027 opens.
  • The cliff is structural. About 97% of the program’s $17.5 billion 2027 request depends on reconciliation, leaving it no baseline in the Pentagon’s regular budget.
  • A stopgap would freeze it. A continuing resolution locks spending to prior-year levels, leaving a reconciliation-funded effort with nothing to fall back on.

How we got here

  • Reconciliation built it once already. Congress seeded the effort with $25 billion in 2025 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, of which roughly 90% is already obligated.
  • FY2026 came through the back door. Lawmakers routed the next round to the program through reconciliation rather than the regular defense bill, setting up this year’s cliff.
  • The system is young. Trump ordered the Golden Dome into being early in his term, with the Pentagon targeting an operational architecture by 2029.

Follow the money

  • The price tag is contested. Congressional budget analysts pegged the system at $1.2 trillion to build and run over 20 years.
  • The Pentagon says that math is wrong. Guetlein rejected the estimate as built on outdated technology, putting the figure closer to $185 billion than Trump’s $175 billion.
  • Even the ceiling is disputed. Independent analysts warn that the true cost remains unknowable until the mission is defined, with public estimates ranging from $185 billion to $1.2 trillion.

In Their Own Words. “If they don’t figure it out, there’s no Golden Dome because there is no funding,” Guetlein told the symposium.

What’s in it for America

  • The threat case is concrete. The shield is pitched to defend US cities against cruise missiles, hypersonic weapons, and ballistic threats, the same classes of weapon on display in the Gulf War.
  • The bill lands on taxpayers either way. Whether the number is $185 billion or $1.2 trillion, the financing path runs through a Congress that has not passed the vehicle to pay for it.
  • A new front door opened this week. Guetlein also launched an industry portal at hub.goldendome.mil to pull startups and venture capital into the program.

Worth watching

  • Watch the calendar. The decisive date is October 1; a full-year appropriation or a fresh reconciliation bill before then is the only thing that keeps the money flowing.
  • Obligation rates tell the story. With about 90% of the 2025 tranche committed, the program has little runway left to coast on prior funds.

A missile shield that stops on October 1 protects no one. The engineering may be the easy part; the appropriations appear to be the hard one.

-The Editors

National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · August 14, 2026

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Hegseth Vows Indefinite Hormuz Blockade Potential

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The Pentagon says it can keep Iran’s ports sealed for as long as it takes, rotating warships through the Gulf on a schedule with no end date. That claim turns a five-month war into a contest of endurance, with global oil inventories draining and no deal on the table.

Where things stand

  • The blockade holds. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday the Navy can hold the cordon “indefinitely,” rotating ships in and out as the mission requires.
  • Tehran disputes the map. Iran’s military rejected US claims that commercial vessels are moving through the Strait of Hormuz, insisting that no ship passes without its permission.
  • Trump says the strait is open. The president maintains the United States controls Hormuz and that shipping is flowing, a claim Tehran disputes and the traffic data does not support.

By the numbers

  • Before the war, 130 ships a day crossed. Transits have collapsed to a five-day average near 13 ships, roughly 90% below the pre-war flow.
  • Crude is stuck near $80. Oil has held in the $80 range on the standoff, well above where it traded before the February 28 strikes.
  • US crude cover is historically thin. Domestic stocks sit below 300 million barrels, the smallest cushion in more than four decades.

Follow the money

  • Global crude is thinning fast. World oil inventories fell below 9 billion barrels in July, the lowest since April 2025 and down 410 million barrels since the fighting began.
  • The market watchdog cut its 2026 demand forecast by 1.6 million barrels a day as elevated prices choke consumption.
  • Federal forecasters see a long haul. Energy officials now model about 6 million barrels a day of Gulf output staying offline through the end of 2027.

What’s in it for America

  • The war is landing at the pump. The national average sat at $4.06 in early August, the highest August on record, after cresting at $4.55 in May.
  • A fifth of the world’s oil rides this water. Roughly 20% of global supply passes through Hormuz, so the blockade’s cost shows up in every fill-up from Phoenix to Pittsburgh.
  • The clock is political. Trump faces pressure to close out an unpopular war before the November midterms, even as his commanders say they can hold the line for months.

In Their Own Words. A top adviser to the Revolutionary Guard commander said Iran could “prolong” the war until Trump leaves office, a signal Tehran intends to wait Washington out rather than settle.

Worth watching

  • Carrier rotation is the real timeline. Hegseth’s “indefinitely” rests on swapping flattops through the Gulf, so deployment schedules, not press statements, will show how long the cordon can last.
  • Inventories, not headlines, set the price. With global stocks at multi-year lows, a prolonged closure keeps pressure on crude and fuel before any new shot is fired.
  • Negotiations are frozen. Both capitals keep trading opposing claims over the strait with no breakthrough on reviving the June framework.

A blockade is a strategy of patience, and patience is being billed to crude markets and kitchen tables alike. Whether Tehran or Washington blinks first, the meter runs on both.

-The Editors

National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · August 14, 2026

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New York Provides $7.25M For Migrant Child Legal Aid

By Chris Wade

Written by Chris Wade

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

(The Center Square) — Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is tapping millions of dollars in taxpayer funds to provide legal representation for migrant children facing deportation.

Hochul announced Wednesday that the new infusion of state funding will provide legal assistance for roughly 1,400 unaccompanied migrant children “navigating” federal immigration proceedings.

Under the plan, the New York State Office for New Americans will enter into contracts totaling $7.25 million with a coalition of legal services providers, led by the Hispanic Federation, to support children previously served under the federal program, Hochul said.

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Trump Can Still Fight Birthplace Citizenship Abuse After SCOTUS Refused To

By Samuel Kimzey

Written by Samuel Kimzey

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

The Trump administration is doing its best to creatively prevent birthplace citizenship for foreign nationals despite the recent SCOTUS ruling.

Despite a disastrously anti-American Supreme Court ruling on birthplace citizenship in Trump v. Barbara, President Trump proves determined to keep advancing his position on American citizenship despite opposition from the court. While even stronger measures of resistance would be justified, it is clear President Trump’s administration is doing its best to creatively prevent birthplace citizenship for foreign nationals while technically abiding within the confines of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Many options remain available for President Trump to curtail birthplace citizenship, which include exercising departmentalism, clearly defining the exceptions to the general rule of birthplace citizenship supported by the court, tightly controlling the issuance of visas to foreign visitors, shutting down the birth tourism industry, pressuring Congress to amend federal statutes, and generally advancing remigration as much as possible.

New Executive Orders

In Wong Kim Ark v. U.S. (1898) and most recently with Trump v. Barbara (2026), the Supreme Court had held that birthplace citizenship is not recognized for children of foreign diplomats residing in America, nor children of “alien enemies in hostile occupation.” Accordingly, President Trump announced two new executive orders this week to counter what the court has wrought.

In his order “Continuing To Protect The Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” President Trump clarified which categories of foreign nationals are to be denied birthplace citizenship consistent with the court’s ruling in Trump v. Barbara. The president ordered that birthplace citizenship not be recognized for children whose parents are alien enemies, including members of designated foreign terrorist organizations, which now includes multiple Latin American cartels. Nor is birthplace citizenship to be recognized for children of diplomatic personnel from foreign countries (defined clearly in the executive order). Lastly, birthplace citizenship is denied for those whose parents engaged in birth tourism.

In the other order, “Ending Birth Tourism,” President Trump explained how birth tourism is a form of immigration fraud because it involves dishonestly obtaining a temporary, nonimmigrant visa while actually aiming to drop an anchor baby and thereby “establish a permanent foothold in the United States by securing the advantage of citizenship for their children and then potentially for themselves.”

By its nature, birth tourism aims at acquiring permanent benefits which would normally have to be obtained through the path of an immigrant visa and eventually naturalization. There is no statute explicitly banning birth tourism, but the president is correct that birth tourism is already de facto illegal because it involves lying about the reason for entering the U.S. and likely involves committing other accompanying crimes, as the DOJ recently noted.

The president’s order instructs the Departments of State and Homeland Security to scrutinize visa applicants, prevent entry for foreign nationals who are engaged in birth tourism, and revoke visas from those who have engaged in such activity. Also, the DOJ has recently announced its intention of investigating and prosecuting those operating and profiting from illegal birth tourism schemes.

Departmentalism

In considering how to resist bad Supreme Court doctrines, it should be noted that former American presidents, relying on the tradition of departmentalism, were not so deferential to the Supreme Court’s interpretation on matters of constitutional interpretation. Famously, President Andrew Jackson rejected the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the constitutionality of a national bank (McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819), vetoing the attempted recharter of the bank in 1832. Similarly, President Lincoln rejected the Supreme Court’s interpretation about black citizenship in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), and as president, his administration issued passports to free black Americans.

These are just a few examples. In line with this departmentalist logic, the strongest thing President Trump could do would be to publicly declare his repudiation of the court’s interpretation in Trump v. Barbara and instead announce his administration intends to only acknowledge citizenship in accordance with the outlines of his original executive order.

Admittedly, this would provoke outrage, not least from the judiciary. However, given that our judiciary repeatedly commits unconstitutional outrages of its own, and given that the anti-American, pro-criminal, open-borders left poses an existential threat to the survival of our American nation, I am not sure why the right should restrain itself from taking extraordinary steps to fight back.

Trump’s Strategy At Present

If such open resistance in the style of Jackson or Lincoln could be considered “hardcore” departmentalism, then Trump seems to be taking a more moderate, subtle form of departmentalism which still ultimately aims at indirectly resisting the court’s bad interpretation. The Trump administration is already aggressively pursuing a holistic remigration strategy by deporting illegal immigrants at record levels, terminating Temporary Protected Status, increasing denaturalizations, and slashing legal immigration through regulations.

Given the corruption of our regime, there are many obstacles to achieving all of these — especially the fact that we are not receiving much help from Congress — but the Trump administration has named them as its priorities and is doing what it can to work toward these goals.

It’s also quite possible a future Supreme Court could overturn the decision and interpretation in Trump v. Barbara. Republicans should also push for Congress to interpret the birthplace citizenship question by amending federal statutes, as Justice Kavanaugh proposed in his opinion concurring only in the judgment. Specifically, Kavanaugh suggested Congress amend 8 U.S.C. §1401(a) to include language explicitly designating illegal immigrants and temporary visitors as exceptions to the general rule of birthplace citizenship. Ultimately, a constitutional amendment should be passed, though that is hardly feasible in the near future.

In the interim, the abuse of birthplace citizenship becomes far less ubiquitous when the borders are secured, fewer visas are being issued to foreign nationals and with far greater scrutiny, and the categories of birth tourists and alien enemies are explicitly defined and excluded as in the president’s most recent orders. Theoretically, the president’s administration could require all female applicants for visas to demonstrate that they are not pregnant when seeking admission into the U.S. Granted, it is impossible to guarantee they don’t become pregnant while residing in the U.S. as temporary workers or students, which is a strong incentive to find regulatory and eventually legislative means to curtail or reform those immigration programs.

Given Roberts’ egregiously bad opinion in Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court is not making this easy for President Trump. Lower courts will inevitably seek to block whatever actions he takes, and even the Supreme Court and appellate courts will be scrupulous to make sure Trump’s orders and actions align with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Consequently, barring an all-out presidential assault on the Supreme Court (which would not be unwarranted), it will take creative strategies of attack to restrict the avenues for abuse and to restrict legal immigration generally. However, even though the Supreme Court has endorsed a dangerously liberal position in its ruling, Trump can, with his current control of the federal executive agencies, creatively achieve essentially the same outcome he wants — i.e., a massive drop in “anchor babies” being born to noncitizens. Of course, this could all be undone in a day if a future Democratic president comes into office, which is why we must work urgently to prevent that from ever happening.

The first round of this fight may have gone unfavorably at the Supreme Court, but the war to restore the meaning and value of American citizenship is far from over. President Trump shows how to keep fighting.

-Samuel Kimzey

Samuel Kimzey is a doctoral student at Hillsdale College and a 2025 Publius Fellow at the Claremont Institute. He holds a B.A. in History and Christian Studies from Bluefield College and an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Dallas, and previously taught at Valley Classical School in Blacksburg, Virginia. Find him on X @SamuelMKimzey

This piece was reproduced with the permission of The Federalist. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

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Japan’s Debt Crisis Is a Global Warning

By John Phelan

Written by John Phelan

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Japan can watch debt-service costs consume its budget, or suppress rates and risk inflation. Decades of borrowing have eliminated the easy options.

With government debt over 200 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Japan forged a path that other Western governments, like the United States, have followed. Now, as Japan’s macroeconomic problems become acute, it is no longer just a cautionary tale for Americans, but part of our developing debt crisis, too.

Bust, Deficits, and Debt

In 1990, Japan’s stock market collapsed and its economy tanked. The Bank of Japan pioneered “Quantitative easing,” flooding the financial system with liquidity, but this failed to stimulate lending, borrowing, and GDP growth. With monetary policy seemingly impotent, the government turned to fiscal policy and began running budget deficits. Economists YiLi Chien and Ashley H. Stewart write that “Japan’s general government (which comprises the central and local governments) has consistently run a significant primary fiscal deficit, averaging 5.1 percent of GDP since 1998.”

These deficits were greater than the rate of economic growth, so government debt grew as a share of GDP. Between 1997 and its peak in 2022, Japan’s government debt grew from 63.7 percent of GDP to 214.8 percent, comfortably the biggest increase among the G7 countries and nearly 60 percent greater than second-placed Italy.

Debt Crisis

Japan could afford these deficits and this debt when interest rates were low. In July 1997, the rate on the Japanese government’s 10-year bonds fell below 2.5 percent and stayed there; the biggest deficits and debt in the G7 were accompanied by some of the lowest borrowing costs.

But in late 2021, yields on Japanese government debt began to rise. Not as steeply as elsewhere in the G7, but, in April, the rate on the Japanese government’s 10-year government bonds rose above 2.5 percent for the first time in 29 years. The era of cheap finance is over.

These might not seem like big numbers, but they are when servicing a debt the size of Japan’s. In February, the Finance Ministry forecast that interest payments would rise from the current year’s budgeted ¥10.5 trillion to ¥21.6 trillion ($139 billion) in the year starting April 2029. Overall debt-servicing costs are projected to rise by about 46 percent during the same period and would account for about 30 percent of total projected spending in fiscal 2029, more than will be spent on social security. Japan’s debt will devour its budget.

Bond Markets

Bond yields are rising because bond prices are falling.

When a government borrows money, its treasury essentially prints a piece of paper — the bond — promising to pay the holder, say, ¥1 million in 10 years. The treasury sells this piece of paper for cash, but generally not for ¥1 million. Why not? Consider the question from the buyer’s perspective. You have ¥1 million, and the treasury is offering to take that and return it to you in 10 years: Where is the benefit to you? To incentivize the buyer to part with their cash, the treasury sells the bond for, say, ¥900,000. Now, the buyer hands over ¥900,000 and gets ¥1 million back 10 years from now. The yield, or interest rate, is ¥100,000 — or 1.1 percent annually. It follows that when the bond’s price goes up, the yield goes down, and vice versa.

Like any other price, bond prices are driven by supply and demand. If there are no buyers for a bond at a given price its price will fall, which is to say that yields — interest rates — will rise; this is the situation Japan now faces.

Currency Crisis

There is another option. As the “monetary sovereign” of MMTers’ dreams, borrowing in a currency it issues, the Japanese government can always declare a maximum yield it will pay. If yields rise above it, the central bank can step in to purchase the bonds at whatever price the government decrees, printing whatever money is necessary.

Indeed, at its May meeting, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is reported to have urged Gov. Kazuo Ueda of the Bank of Japan to buy Japanese government bonds to curb rising long-term interest rates. Whatever concerns this raises about its independence, the Bank of Japan is already the biggest holder of government debt, with 52 percent of the total outstanding in December.

But the currency creation this requires may fuel inflation; there is a big difference between handing newly printed money to financial institutions to rebuild ravaged balance sheets, as in the 1990s, and handing it to government to finance current spending. Consumer price inflation in Japan has been above 2.5 percent annually in each of the last four years, the first time since 1981 the rate has been so high for so long. To fight this, Bank of Japan has hiked its main interest rate to a level not seen since 1995: one percent. This, of course, pushes yields higher and makes the debt situation worse.

The central bank is stuck; it prints money to keep government interest rates down, or it hikes interest rates to get inflation down. This is the choice all heavily indebted Western countries, like the United States, will eventually face; a debt crisis resolved with “austerity” or an inflationary currency crisis which will be remedied by “austerity” in any event. At some point, even government has to live within its means.

Exchange Rates

Now, Japan’s problems threaten to hasten the United States’ journey down the path to crisis.

Inflation is the loss of money’s value relative to other things. One manifestation of this is a falling exchange rate, which is just the price of one currency expressed in terms of another. As recently as January 2021, $1 US bought ¥104 (¥100 bought 96 cents); in July, $1 US bought ¥162 (¥100 bought 62 cents), the fewest in 40 years. Japanese buyers must pay more yen for goods, like energy, which are traded in foreign currencies, like dollars.

To ease this squeeze, Japan’s authorities have tried to boost the yen against the dollar. Like any other price, currency prices are driven by supply and demand so, to boost the yen’s exchange rate against the dollar, Japan needs to have fewer yen chasing dollars and/or more dollars chasing yen. Tighter monetary policy is required to accomplish the former — though that makes debt financing more challenging — and to accomplish the latter, the Japanese have been selling US bonds in return for dollars which they then use to purchase yen.

But this increase in the supply of Treasury bills on the market lowers their price and boosts their yields, another factor contributing to the alarming spike in the federal government’s borrowing costs. In summer 2026, the 30-year US Treasury yield hit a 19-year high of 5.238 percent.

Recognizing this, the US Treasury has stepped in to buy yen with dollars, but this is only a temporary fix. The underlying problem remains, as Robin Brooks notes: Japan’s bond yields are still not high enough to reflect its true fiscal situation, but Japan cannot afford for them to rise any higher.

Japan has borrowed itself into a corner. Many other countries, including the United States, are on track to join it.

-John Phelan

John Phelan is an Economist at Center of the American Experiment. He is a graduate of the London School of Economics, and worked for ten years at Capital Economics in London. He has been widely published on economic topics in popular media and in the journal Economic Affairs.

This piece was reproduced with the permission of AIER. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

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Pentagon Orders THAAD Launchers For UAE: Strange Timing?

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

The Missile Defense Agency has awarded Lockheed Martin a $211 million order to build new THAAD launchers for the United Arab Emirates. The timing is the story: the same system’s interceptor magazines are running low at home, and one production base is now asked to serve an ally and a depleted US arsenal at once.

The award. The agency booked a $211,435,067 modification to Lockheed Martin Space for new Configuration 3 THAAD launchers under a foreign military sale to the UAE, lifting that case to $1,054,537,337.

The fine print

  • Launchers, not interceptors. The order is for the launch platforms, not the interceptor missiles, and it is the interceptor stockpile the Iran war has drawn down. The two compete for the same strained supply chain.
  • The backdrop. One CSIS estimate has US THAAD interceptors down to roughly 250 from 450 since the war began.

Where things stand

  • Arming a Gulf partner’s missile defense serves deterrence against Iran, but every unit of THAAD capacity sent abroad is capacity not rebuilding the US magazine.
  • The award posted August 12 as the Hormuz standoff kept oil and threat levels elevated. Selling allies THAAD is good policy and good business; doing it while the US magazine runs thin is a bet the line can serve two masters.

-The Editors

National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · August 13, 2026

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IDF Strikes Gaza, Ending Weeklong Lull: Will This Set Peace Talks Aside?

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

Israel carried out its first airstrike in Gaza in more than a week on August 12, killing the head of a Hamas cell in Beit Lahiya. The strike comes amid the US-backed disarmament push, testing how much force the ceasefire framework can absorb before it breaks.

What happened. The IDF said it struck and killed the head of a Hamas cell in the Beit Lahiya area of northern Gaza, its first strike there in over a week.

What they’re saying. The Hamas-affiliated civil defense agency said one person was killed and several wounded were taken to a Gaza City hospital.

The backstory

  • The framework. Israel had scaled back major operations under US pressure to implement Trump’s plan, and the strike breaks a lull as the “Board of Peace” presses disarmament and an Israeli withdrawal.
  • The signal. The move shows Israel will still act on specific threats despite the peace pressure. 

Worth watching

A disarmament deal that still lets Israel hit named threats is either a durable arrangement or a slow return to war, depending on who is counting. The tell will be whether Hamas treats this as a violation or a nuisance.

-The Editors

National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · August 13, 2026

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Is The U.S. Down To 250 THAAD Interceptors? State Of Play

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

The war with Iran has drawn down America’s missile magazines faster than industry can refill them. Rich Lowry’s warning this week is that none of it was a surprise: the interceptor math was knowable before the first shot, and the country chose not to act on it.

By the numbers

The counts. By one Center for Strategic and International Studies estimate cited in the column, the US began the Iran war with about 2,330 Patriot interceptors and is down to roughly 800, and has fallen to about 250 THAAD interceptors from 450.

Nearly gone? The same reporting has the US almost out of ATACMS and Precision Strike Missiles.

The precedent

  • Lowry marks the 1979 to 1980 hostage crisis as the last time Iran so plainly exposed the limits of American power, now repeated with a more capable but under-supplied force.

The bottleneck

  • Committed elsewhere. Even as stocks fall, the production line is spoken for: this week the Missile Defense Agency booked a $211 million order for new THAAD launchers bound for the United Arab Emirates. The bottleneck is not will, it is capacity.
  • Live stakes. The shortage is not academic while the Hormuz standoff continues and prices climb.

A military can be the best in the world and still lose a war of attrition it cannot resupply. Lowry’s point is not partisan; it is arithmetic, and the bill for a decade of thin magazines is coming due now.

-The Editors

National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · August 13, 2026

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On The God-Man Science

By Conlan Salgado

Written by Conlan Salgado

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Once upon a time, there was an incredibly handsome bugger named Mr. Science. Unfortunately, he was also of minimum height, and he had an extremely obnoxious accent. However, he had a wonderful superpower, for whenever anyone threatened him, he would step forward boldly and shout—at the top of his lungs—I AM SCIENCE! Immediately, a giant intimidating troll named “Algorithm” sprang from the earth and beat the unlucky enemy of Mr. Science to death.

One of Mr. Science’s most fearful enemies was a powerful ruler named Mr. Nasty-Orangish-King-President. Mr. Nasty-Orangish would often find the shortest people in his kingdom and dress them up like Mr. Science; afterward, he would put ordinary household objects next to them to show how runty and stunted they were. He would shout, “Mr. Science is a little tiny dinker with a tiny dinky brain who wants too much power for a dinker to handle.” He made Mr. Science feel so bad about himself, he didn’t even want to summon Algorithm from the ground to beat Mr. Nasty-Orangish-King-President!

Things weren’t looking good in the kingdom. If Mr. Science was conquered by Mr. Nasty-Orangish, who would defend the people from his bloating and his orangification of everything? Everything would die a terrible orange death!

―

Most of you will recognize in the above text—with some minor inaccuracies of course—the mainstream media narrative pertaining to Dr. Anthony “Science Himself” Fauci.

Recently, he became an object of headlines once again after his controversial testimony in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee—controversial precisely because Fauci tried strenuously to avoid testifying at all. Endless invocations of his “fifth amendment right” met the senators’ numerous questions about his previous testimony ranging from origins of Covid to the efficacy of masking and vaccinations.

The questioning of Sen. Moreno from Ohio is particularly poignant, during which Fauci invokes the fifth amendment even in response to the senator’s question about “who wrote the fifth amendment.”

One cannot ignore the clownish level of irony at work: Dr. Fauci invokes an amendment to evade answering who wrote the amendment he’s invoking—in order to escape answering further questions about actions he’s been fully pardoned for.

It’s the pretty little plot of a joke, which Dr. Fauci has been playing on the rest of us for the better part of 6 years now.

There is, moreover, a larger irony—one not so much of a personal nature, but of historical proportions; not about the level of corruption and ego and pettiness present in one man, but how he scaled his ego and dishonesty into a national policy.

For hours, Dr. Fauci sat in front of the people’s representatives and invoked his Constitutional right not to incriminate himself for his role in confiscating millions of fellow citizens’ constitutional rights.

I dimly remember waking one day to find quite an Un-American America, where government regulated the place and manner of worship, where the free exercise thereof was onerously prohibited.

I remember the absence of Church social gatherings, the extreme truncation of all ritual celebrations, the forced masking of all participants—but I swear on the sacred name of science that I cannot recall being given the option to “plead my first amendment rights” on the advice of counsel.

I can conjure memories of being denied access to restaurants, movie theaters, and other public properties because of my vaccination status, but I search in vain for the opportunity I was offered to plead my constitutional right on advice of counsel.

Hundreds of thousands of people were silenced with a swift digital violence, while the real livelihoods of others were rudely snatched from them; children were denied a place in universities and colleges or cut off from a normal regime of socialization, as small business owners paid forward their decades of past investment and work to buy a future which the government never intended to lease to them. Instead, lockdowns went on for weeks or months.

Youth became dumber—the sort of dumb which might set them behind for 3 years, or maybe a lifetime.

Death, be not proud, we shouted through our masks at the Covid mortality rate! Except, of course, for those categories where mortality went up: drug overdoses, alcohol abuses, homicides, heart diseases, traffic fatalities, and the rest.

Citizens were made the instruments of their fellows’ oppression: neighbors turned in neighbors, fathers ratted out sons, daughters ostracized mothers, and grandparents died abandoned—some never to touch, hold, or spend a single live second with their children’s children. Generations were distanced from each other, and the generational divide was divided over again.

Some were even sentenced to death for their refusal to follow orders.

Dr. Fauci, very simply, is the personification and avatar of a certain order—an order which hoards what it denies to the ordinary American.

The “elites,” the administrative governors, the bicoastal managers, and the prodigies of public service all play a similar game: rights I win, crisis you lose.

They pay college prices for the private schools of their children, but they have their good reasons why school choice would be a bad decision for average folk. Illegals are good for lawn mowing and toilet scrubbing, but the xenophobia of the middle class—with their parochial concerns of house prices, blue collar opportunities, wage depression, and a common society—excites in them a strong gag reflex.

Safety is their number one priority, but they were willing to take the moderate risk of Hollywood parties during the height of the pandemic. Servants hide their faces; masters never do.

The lifestyle they lead is nigh unreachable; the education their children receive you won’t ever be able to approximate for your children; they close your businesses to the public, depriving you of the public’s profits, but availing themselves of the labor they’d deny to others.

Even the prosperity of the American economy itself they’ve tried to privatize, as they worked with admirable diligence to replace the blue collar American with illegal aliens, wage an endless tax and regulatory war against middle class property owners, and—through a savvy combination of debt-loading and money-printing—inflate the modest wealth of any regular American into an abundance of worthless currency notes.

As Gilbert Huph once famously said, “We’re supposed to help OUR people, Bob—starting with our stockholders!”

We’re not “their people.” This was all part of the plan, the inevitable trajectory of a philosophy of public governance which despises republican principles: power ought to be a function of knowledge, and knowledge belongs most fully to experts. The confiscation of our 1st amendment rights, the frittering away of our wealth, the damning of our children’s futures—these were so many Isaacs demanded by the greedy gods of Expert Administration and The Science Says.

Why? It’s simple. We are not them. We are other. We are inflated political currency for them to cash in on their mad ambition for power. They hate us.

-Conlan Salgado

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Spoiled Brats at the University of Arizona

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

The crybabies are the faculty, not the students.

University of Arizona (UA) Faculty Representative Carol Carlton is having one of her trademark tantrums.

That’s not her real name or title.  But she is a real-life publicity hound who is often in the local media berating university leadership.  As such, I don’t want to feed her insatiable ego by mentioning her real name.

What is her tantrum about this time?

According to an August 9 story in the Arizona Daily Star, UA President Suresh Garimella rearranged some boxes on the university’s organizational chart without first consulting with the faculty.

Translation:  He didn’t get Carlton’s approval beforehand and thus didn’t give her the respect she deserves—in her own aggrieved, petulant mind.

As quoted in the Daily Star story, she said, “We need to keep surviving as the most vocal and privileged democratically-elected representatives of the university community.”  She also claimed that according to Arizona law, faculty members at public universities, through their elected campus representatives, must share responsibility for “academic and education activities and matters related to faculty personnel.”

Well, that’s a broad mandate without any defined boundaries or limits.  It could mean that the decor in the faculty lounge couldn’t be updated without Carlton’s okay.

The shuffle of organizational boxes was not the most egregious action by President Garimella.  He actually had the temerity to announce a new travel/expense reimbursement policy without begging for Carlton’s blessing.

Is the policy draconian?  Does it require faculty to travel by stagecoach overland and by cargo ship overseas?

No.

Does it require faculty who are members of an oppressed group to share a hotel room with a white person whose distant forebears were settler colonialists and imperialists?

No.

Does it require a land acknowledgement when checking into a hotel?

No, but that’s something that the faculty would applaud.

Does it forbid a biological man with a female gender identity from sharing a hotel room with a woman?

Absolutely not.  President Garimella might be an autocrat in Carlton’s mind, but he wouldn’t dare go against campus LGBTQ+ mores and deny transgender guys from showering with women in dorms or sharing a hotel room with women.  After all, he’s not a right-wing cretin and transphobe.

Does it force leftist professors to share a hotel room with conservative professors?

Moot point.  There are no conservative professors on the faculty.

What does the new policy require, then?  This will be shocking, so brace yourself.  It requires faculty to complete and submit expense reimbursement paperwork themselves, without having staff do it for them.

Oh, the injustice!  Oh, the horror!  Oh, the burden!

It’s a wonder that I survived my corporate career. Whether working as a drone at the bottom of the pyramid or later working as an executive near the top, I and my peers completed and submitted our expense paperwork ourselves.  And as software changed, tax law changed, and the company’s financial situation changed, we accepted the accounting department’s changes to the expense reimbursement system.  Besides, we had more important things to do than second-guess the changes.

In comparison, it’s so quaint for faculty to have staff complete the paperwork.  Maybe underlings still type memos for faculty on carbon paper.

Other changes to UA’s expense system are just as shocking.  Approval has to be obtained beforehand for certain expenditures, and certain university credit cards have to be used for certain expenses.

According to the Daily Star story, Carlton called the policy changes “quite dramatic.”  She also said that travel is an important part of the job for many faculty and researchers and that they will now have to go through a lot of training and do a lot of work that used to be done by support staff.

In other words, prima donnas with PhDs can’t figure out the new travel policy.

No wonder UA has had serious financial difficulties, no wonder the cost of college has skyrocketed, no wonder fall enrollment at UA is forecasted to decline by at least 20%, and no wonder university employees across the land are joining unions and making demands like United Auto Workers or Teamsters.
To top it off, in a lack of self-awareness, Carlton wonders why UA President Garimella is reluctant to consult with her.

Note to Carlton:  Maybe it has something to do with your bristly personality and pettiness.

-Craig Cantoni

Mr. Cantoni is an author, activist and retired business executive. 

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VDH Turns “Weaponization” Back On Democrats: Critical Midterm Strategy Alert

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

Two days after the Senate confirmed Todd Blanche as attorney general on a 50-to-49 vote, Victor Davis Hanson answered the Left’s “weaponized Justice Department” charge by listing the precedents the Left set first. It matters because it is a main conservative counter to a hardening midterm narrative that the second term is lawless.

State of play

  • The peg. Blanche was confirmed on August 8, 2026, by 50 to 49, with only Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski crossing over. Critics called his prior role as Trump’s personal lawyer disqualifying.

The receipts

  • The precedent he cites. Hanson points to John F. Kennedy naming his brother Robert attorney general, and to Eric Holder, whom he says “bragged that he was, quote, Obama’s wingman”.
  • The pattern. On local prosecutors pursuing national figures, VDH cites Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis; on election denial, he cites Hillary Clinton and Stacey Abrams.

In his own words

“Anytime somebody on the left accuses the Trump administration of a misuse of government, it’s likely a reflection that they’ve already done that themselves,” Hanson said.

Why it matters

  • The backdrop. Trump’s approval sits at 33 percent, his lowest ever, and the other side is converting the moment into a midterm case. The weaponization fight is now the ground both sides want.

The turnabout has limits: that the Left weaponized institutions first does not prove this administration will not. But as politics, the charge lands, and it is an argument conservatives need to run into November.

-The Editors

Politics · Upstream of the Swamp · August 13, 2026

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Border Wall Shuts Organ Pipe Roads: Arizona Border Impact

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

The National Park Service has closed six public roads across the southern end of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, sealing off Quitobaquito Springs to clear the way for a second border wall. The order hands the administration a security objective and hands Arizonans a concrete cost: the last wild home of an endangered pupfish now sits inside a construction zone.

State of play

  • The Park Service issued an indefinite closure on July 31 for six roads near the border “in furtherance of the Department of Homeland Security infrastructure project,” blocking access across the 330,000-acre preserve.

What is behind the fence

  • The oasis. Quitobaquito Springs, sacred to the Hia-Ced O’odham and a haven for three endangered species, is now cut off as a prelude to construction.
  • The wall. The plan is a second barrier running parallel to the first, threading through some of Arizona’s most sensitive grounds.
  • Last habitat. Biologists believe the endangered Quitobaquito pupfish went extinct in Mexico last year, leaving the spring as its last home in the wild.

What’s in it for America

Border security is a legitimate federal duty, and the barrier’s backers can make that case plainly. So can the people who note that a sacred spring and a species found nowhere else are the price. Both are true, and Arizonans are the ones who pay it. This is another reason why preventative border security can help to avoid retroactive extreme measures.

-The Editors

National Security · Upstream of the Swamp · August 13, 2026

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EIA Slashes Texas Data-Center Power Forecast: Your Briefing

By The Editors

Written by The Editors

Estimated Reading Time: < 1 minute

Federal forecasters just cut their outlook for Texas electricity demand almost in half, and the reason is a governor, not a market. The August Short-Term Energy Outlook lowered projected 2027 Texas load growth to 6 percent, down from 14 percent a month earlier, pricing in Governor Greg Abbott’s order freezing new data-center hookups. It is the first hard signal that the AI buildout can be stopped by a red-state governor worried about the grid.

The trigger. On August 3, 2026, Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to run a comprehensive verification and audit of every data center in the interconnection queue before any new project advances.

By the numbers

  • The queue. ERCOT is holding roughly 474 gigawatts of connection requests, more than five times the grid’s record peak demand, with data centers about 90 percent of that total.
  • The cost of the pause. BloombergNEF estimates the audit could delay 8 gigawatts of load and up to $15 billion in projects, nearly 20 percent of the entire US development pipeline.

What changed

The forecast cut. On the pause, the federal outlook lowered Texas 2027 load growth to 6 percent from 14 percent. A single state order moved a national forecast.

In their own words

“The failure of some data centers to comply with the PUC’s survey measuring water and power usage under the General Appropriations Act makes this directive necessary,” Abbott said in ordering the audit.

Worth watching

The AI economy has been sold as unstoppable. Texas just showed that the grid, and the voters who depend on it, still hold a veto. The question is whether other governors now reach for the same tool.

-The Editors

Energy & Manufacturing · Upstream of the Swamp · August 13, 2026

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR

We Need To Do Nothing About AI

By Mani Basharzad

Written by Mani Basharzad

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Fear of new technology is hardly new.

In recent weeks, a letter on AI titled “We Must Act Now” has made headlines. Its list of signatories brought together an unlikely coalition of intellectuals, from Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman to Alex Tabarrok, Tyler Cowen, and Niall Ferguson.

The signatories agree on three key propositions. First, they argue that “AI may become radically more powerful over the next decade.” Second, they argue that it could “transform the economy on a scale larger than the Industrial Revolution, but over a much shorter period, bringing both large-scale job displacement and significant improvements in living standards.” Third, they argue that “economists, policymakers, and technology leaders must act now to create the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to ensure AI benefits society.”

These propositions have created an unusual consensus among economists and policymakers. They also reflect a broader public anxiety about AI and its impact on people’s livelihoods. Yet, as Stanford economist John Cochrane remarked in response to the letter, “You see AI everywhere, except in productivity and labor statistics.” That is the first problem with the argument: those are the two places where the letter’s predictions should already be showing up.

The letter makes extraordinary claims, and as the famous saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yet the evidence offered is remarkably thin. The language is dramatic—“large-scale job displacement,” “larger than the Industrial Revolution,” and “major gains in living standards”—but every prediction is qualified by one word: could. There is still little evidence that AI has fundamentally reshaped employment or productivity.

Take the labor market as an example. A widely cited survey claimed that employers plan to reduce graduate hiring because of AI. But the study was forecasting the future, not describing present reality. It found that “four in ten employers believe entry-level roles could disappear within the next five years.” Once again, the evidence rests on expectations and fears rather than observed outcomes.

Now compare that with what is actually happening. Economist Valentin Boboc has argued that entry-level jobs are growing fastest at firms that are aggressively adopting AI. If AI were already eliminating these positions, we would expect to see the opposite.

Consider youth unemployment. Which developed country currently faces one of the most severe youth employment crises? The answer is not a country overwhelmed by AI, but the United Kingdom. More than 1 million people aged 16–24 are classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), at an estimated annual cost of £125 billion ($169 billion) to the economy.

The greatest threat to young workers is not AI, but poor government policy. In the UK, higher employer National Insurance contributions have increased the cost of hiring. More generous long-term sickness benefits have weakened incentives to return to work for some claimants. Large increases in the minimum wage have also raised the cost of employing inexperienced workers. These policies provide a far more convincing explanation for weak youth employment than AI does.

The fundamental problem with the letter is its demand for urgent action in the absence of convincing evidence. It asks governments and institutions to intervene now to address a risk that has yet to materialize. The consensus itself appears to rest more on speculation than on observed facts.

As F.A. Hayek warned in his Nobel Prize lecture, quoting Alfred Marshall: “Students of social science must fear popular approval: evil is with them when all men speak well of them.” When there is overwhelming agreement that governments must “act now,” economists should become more skeptical, not less.

The mindset that governments must immediately regulate AI may prove more dangerous than AI itself. Markets generally adapt to technological change. When genuine market failures emerge, there is a case for government intervention. But where, exactly, is the market failure in AI today that demands immediate regulation?

Many of the economic problems we face today are the result of government failures rather than market failures. Excessive labor market regulation in many European countries has made hiring and firing employees so costly that employers become reluctant to take risks on new workers. Henry Hazlitt’s life contrasted this with the period before Franklin D. Roosevelt’s labor reforms:

In those years, it was not hard for a young man to get a job. With no government-imposed obstacles to hiring and firing, no minimum wage laws, no workday or workweek restrictions, and no unemployment or social security taxes, employer and potential employee needed only to agree on the terms of employment.

Fear of new technology is hardly new. Nor has it been confined to critics of free markets such as Stiglitz or Krugman. During the Industrial Revolution, David Ricardo added a chapter titled “On Machinery” to Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, arguing that machinery could often be “very injurious” to workers and might not always serve the general good. Technological pessimism has a long history even among champions of free markets.

That is why I am not surprised to see free-market economists among the signatories of this letter. What is surprising is their willingness to advocate immediate policy intervention without enough evidence that such intervention is needed.

Until there is clear evidence of widespread economic harm, we should do nothing about AI. Building regulations around what might happen, rather than what has happened, risks stifling innovation, protecting incumbent firms from competition, and erecting barriers to new entrants.

–Mani Basharzad

Mani Basharzad is a Research Associate at the Institute of Economic Affairs and an Asia Freedom Fellow at the London School of Economics. His work has been published by the New York Post, National Review, The Spectator, and Daily Express.

This piece was reproduced with the permission of FEE. Any opinions articulated herein are those of the author, not The Prickly Pear. To read the original piece, please visit HERE.

 

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