Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Jason Edmonds

“Tennessee taxpayers are about to spend millions on a Starbucks order they didn’t ask for. In April, the world’s largest coffee chain announced it would be opening a Southeast corporate office in Music City. The state has done well in attracting businesses, both large and small, through a low-tax, business-friendly environment. Yet those bigger businesses sometimes get a free upgrade, courtesy of state taxpayers, and the Starbucks move is brewing up to be a burn for Tennesseans. Despite the coffee chain’s public and vocal decision to open an office in Tennessee, state leaders act as if Starbucks needs more convincing or as if its profits aren’t ‘grande’ enough to cover office space.” (05/20/26)

https://fee.org/articles/venti-sized-subsidy/

Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“Thomas Massie has lost his congressional seat against a primary opponent whose Israel lobby funding made the race the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history. Massie has been a rare Republican opponent of Israeli abuses on Capitol Hill. The spending on Massie’s ouster topped out at a staggering $32 million when all was said and done. The second- and third-most expensive House primary races were also heavily slanted by Israel lobby funding, with AIPAC pouring millions into toppling progressive Democrats Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. Americans just watched the Israel lobby openly manipulate yet another election, and then in like two weeks they’re going to hear their government tell them they need to regime change another foreign country to bring ‘democracy’ to its people. Americans themselves do not have democracy.” (05/20/26)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2026/05/20/american-democracy-does-not-exist/

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Laurence M Vance

“The Department of Education (ED) is moving out of its headquarters at the Lyndon B. Johnson Building in Washington, D.C., this summer. The Department of Energy (DOE) will be the new tenant. Turns out that because of personnel cuts at the Department of Education, the building is roughly 70 percent vacant. … But in spite of Trump’s executive order and the elimination of half of its workforce, the Department of Education is alive and well.” (05/20/26)

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/the-department-of-education-is-alive-and-well/

Source: Brennan Center for Justice
by Michael Waldman

“On Monday, Donald Trump dropped his sham lawsuit against the federal government. In exchange, the Justice Department under his control will establish a $1.8 billion fund for ‘victims of lawfare,’ as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche put it. This will be a slush fund for Trump’s allies, presumably January 6 insurrectionists and others already rewarded with a pardon. There is a zone of lawlessness around the Oval Office, erected by the Supreme Court when it granted current and former presidents effective immunity from prosecution if their crimes involved ‘official acts.’ Loot the taxpayers, misuse government power for graft, and you’re off the hook. Last week, the president filed a report with the Office of Government Ethics detailing the stock trades he made this year. It is a novelistic tale of profiteering, recognizable as insider trading in every way except, perhaps, under the law.” (05/20/26)

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/epic-corruption-plain-sight

Source: Sex and the State
by Cathy Reisenwitz

“[T]he last 20-ish years have revealed to everyone (who paid attention and isn’t severely brain-damaged) that global trade does not, in fact, prevent armed conflict or interstate violence on its own. Now, it is a disincentive. It’s also helpful for a bunch of other reasons. But it alone clearly cannot keep leaders from starting wars. As far as I know, no one thing can universally and permanently stop wars. The best we can hope for is doing a bunch of smart things at the same time and hoping it all nets out to reducing the frequency and severity of armed conflicts.” (05/20/26)

https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/when-goods-cross-borders-sometimes

Source: Common Dreams
by Koketso Moeti

“Earlier this year a number of participants announced their withdrawal from Australia’s Adelaide Festival’s ‘Writer’s Week’ following the disinviting of Australian-Palestinian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah. The event was subsequently cancelled. This made me think of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese’s words, delivered in her Nelson Mandela Lecture: ‘The occupation of Palestine must be understood as part of a broader project of domination. This is not merely about the physical borders of historical Palestine. It is a systematic assertion of permanent supremacy that knows no border …’ Indeed, the impact of the ongoing genocide and occupation not only echo far beyond Palestine, because of our shared humanity, but also because of the impact it is having on freedoms across the globe. The censorship of Abdel-Fattah is yet another example of this, and it is not only happening in Australia.” (05/20/26)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/occupation-and-genocide-threat