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Though scholarship surrounding the Constitution’s 14th Amendment has generated much controversy, it has nonetheless established one stable point of consensus. Since its adoption, virtually all authorities have agreed that its first section bars state laws that impose a racially defined fiscal or regulatory burden on American citizens. The states cannot, for instance, establish any “black code” or “white tax.”

At the same time, there has been remarkable dissensus as to three closely related matters. First, precisely what provision of that amendment—whether the Privileges or Immunities, Due Process, or Equal Protection Clauses—establishes this prohibition? Second, what other discriminations besides race are forbidden? And third, does the ban on discriminatory burdens extend to benefits, such that the 14th Amendment bars discriminatory public expenditures (educational segregation, affirmative action, etc.) as well as discriminatory taxes?

The In-munia of American Citizenship

The debate over autonomous weapons has started from the wrong premise. Critics ask whether the United States should permit machines to kill. Advocates frame the question as whether we can afford to fall behind adversaries who will deploy such systems regardless. Both sides treat autonomous lethality as a novel moral category that demands a novel governing framework. The U.S. military already possesses such a framework, however. It has been used for decades, it scales naturally to autonomous systems, and the public debate would improve considerably if both sides understood these realities.

The military governs the use of force through weapons control statuses, a graduated system that every air defense operator and ground commander knows by three commands. Weapons hold authorizes engagement only in self-defense or under specific order. Weapons tight authorizes engagement only against targets positively identified as hostile. Weapons free authorizes engagement against any target not positively identified as friendly.

A commander sets the status based on mission, threat, and environment, as units within his command may operate under different statuses depending on the situation. The framework already calibrates lethal authority to circumstance. It does not require a soldier to seek individual approval for every trigger pull, because the controlling judgment comes from the posture the commander has set rather than in each discrete engagement.

National housing campaign Everybody’s Home has hailed the passing of investor tax break reform as a huge win for housing fairness, and said the focus must now turn to building our way out of the crisis with social housing.

The Senate has passed reforms that limit negative gearing and end the CGT Discount for investment properties.  

Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azzie said tax reform will not end the housing crisis on its own but is a crucial part of the solution.

“Winding back tax perks that pad investors’ pockets is a major win for housing fairness for our country,” Ms Azize said.

“This reform puts people before profits, and prioritises making homes an essential need for everyone instead of a cash grab for some. These changes dilute the fuel that’s been feeding our housing crisis for decades. 

“Investor tax break reform marks a decisive shift in the national interest, and we commend the Parliament for having the courage to see it through.

“Now that the federal government has moved to make the housing system fairer, it must now work to make it affordable for everybody.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss Pauline Hanson’s comments on paid parental leave and childcare, the latest inflation data, the passage of the government’s capital gains tax and negative gearing changes, and the new ‘no Gregs’ club.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 25 June 2026.

Support the research powerful interests fear. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Australia Institute’s End of Financial Year Appeal before 30 June.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes:

Capital gains tax changes are already having an impact on wealth inequality – and vested interests are running scared by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (June 2026)

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

In this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Chris Hedges speaks with Kshama Sawant, a revolutionary socialist based in Seattle, Washington, who is challenging long-time incumbent Democrat Adam Smith for Congress. Sawant served in the Seattle City Council for more than a decade during which she and her supporters won unprecedented victories for higher wages, affordable housing, taxing Amazon, LGBTQ rights and more. She then went on to organize a national working-class movement, Workers Strike Back.

This is a free piece of Notes on the Crises. All pieces in this OMB series will be free. Please take out a paid subscription to support this work. Or leave a tip.

Joshua Lawrence is a research fellow at Notes on the Crises and graduate of Sarah Lawrence College. Find him on Bluesky here.

Juan Hanes is a research fellow at Notes on the Crises and a Journalism student at NYU. Find him on Bluesky here.

25 June 2026 – Equality Australia says it’s bitterly disappointing the Federal Government has declined to accept a single LGBTIQ+ recommendation in a United Nations (UN) human rights peer review of Australia. 

Australia was reviewed by other member states at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in January as part of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) process.

The UPR provides a comprehensive peer review of each UN member state’s human rights record every four and a half years.

As part of Australia’s fourth UPR, more than 120 countries delivered around 332 recommendations to improve Australia’s human rights protections, including eight recommendations on LGBTIQ+ rights.

These included removing the exemption that allows religious schools to legally discriminate against LGBTIQ+ students and staff, recommended by Belgium, Iceland and Mexico.

Other LGBTIQ+ specific recommendations included public education campaigns to address stigma, a national ban on conversion practices, banning medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex children and more general recommendations about protecting our communities from discrimination and violence.

The 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence has reignited an old debate on the Right between the immoderate defenders of “creed” and the equally immoderate advocates of “culture.” The either/or nature of this argument was already stale 50 years ago in the lead-up to the Bicentennial, and it hasn’t improved with age.

Harry V. Jaffa, whose students founded the Claremont Institute, was a key figure in the intellectual wrangling over the meaning of America in 1976, and his name is still invoked today—wrongly—as a champion of the extreme “creedalism” position. Though his argument has often been misinterpreted, Jaffa demonstrated that American republicanism requires both creed and culture and showed why both are necessary. What both the creedalists and the culturists miss is that American constitutionalism was a moral and intellectual solution to a set of problems that had been afflicting Western civilization for more than a thousand years.

What Shakespeare Almost Saw

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

60 Days to End the War | The Roundtable Ep. 323

The United States and the Iranian regime have signed a 14-point memo of understanding, establishing a 60-day window to negotiate the war’s end. To work out the details—which include an end to sanctions and international monitoring of Iran’s uranium—J.D. Vance met with Iran’s diplomats in Switzerland, while Secretary Marco Rubio is slated to confer with Middle Eastern allies this week. Meanwhile, U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer has resigned amid a breakdown of government trust, sparked by the Labour government’s failure to take immigration and related crime seriously.

The post The American Mind Podcast: The Roundtable Episode 323 appeared first on The American Mind.

Episode 1 is coming on June 29.

Richard connects the dots between policy and politics with sharp analysis. By getting straight to the point, Richard helps listeners understand how democracy works and why it matters.

Presented by the Australia Institute.

The post Introducing What’s the Point? with Richard Denniss appeared first on The Australia Institute.

The United States has the largest carceral population in the world. Legislation designed to feed the prison state has produced detrimental outcomes for former prisoners; 70% of returning citizens go back to prison after returning to civilian life. The Return Citizen Support Group in New Jersey has constructed a community that utilizes parallel structures of mutual aid to support formerly incarcerated civilians in their journeys beyond prison. Importantly, this objective was born out of necessity. In modern America, the state and private sector only work to isolate individuals and kneecap their ability to move forward — demonstrating that rehabilitation and strength is cultivated not within the system, but outside of it.

The new cabinet of Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae recently overturned a longstanding national ban on exports of the category of military equipment that the government defines as ‘lethal’. The lifting of the ban only applies at present to a list of 17 allies including Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States though there is a mechanism for further countries to be added in the future at the government’s discretion.

The policy change is another blow to the legal pacifism central to Japan’s post-war constitutional order and represents a significant loss for the liberal political parties that performed so poorly in the general election held earlier this year. However, this political novelty has distracted from the deeply conventional economic logic that underpins this policy change. Since its post-war revival Japan has been an export-oriented economy centered on the high value-added secondary manufacturing sector. Central to this economic model from the 1950s to the 1980s was a generous peg between the US dollar and the Japanese yen, which made the US an ideal final destination for Japanese commodities. As the Cold War wound down, the US became less tolerant of trade deficits with its allies and in the 1985 Plaza Accords it renegotiated its pegs to the German, French and Japanese currencies. The subsequent appreciation of the Yen led to a speculative real estate bubble and, in 1992, a deep recession from which Japan has never fully recovered.

Even those who strongly support the Trump Administration can grow frustrated with the pace of change. Sometimes that frustration is justified. But other times, moving deliberately is essential, particularly when it comes to the law. A shoddy or rushed legal opinion may grab headlines, but if it changes nothing or is overturned in the courts, it’s just a long, noisy out. And judges are fickle and self-regarding creatures, especially on the Supreme Court, the ultimate adjudicator of many of these disputes.

Given that reality, the recent opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) declaring the vast majority of disparate-impact uses—a cornerstone of the civil rights regime for over half a century—effectively unconstitutional is a legal earthquake. It won’t get the sort of headlines of border walls or banning boys from girls’ sports, but in terms of its potential impact on America, it is vastly more important.