Incoming Feed Items

This is a Premium piece of Notes on the Crises.

I have spent the last several years learning—the (very) hard way—a lesson that most Americans still have not learned: the courtroom has become the principal battlefield of American politics. And on that battlefield, the Left arrived with an army. The Right brought a checkbook and a prayer. That ends now.

Last week, the Oversight Project announced the launch of a new law firm—a salaried, in-house, battle-ready legal outfit whose mission can be stated in just ten words: defend our friends, and go on offense against our enemies. Backed by a generous philanthropic seed investment from Tom Klingenstein, the chairman of the Claremont Institute, the firm is designed to do what the conservative legal ecosystem has refused to build for 50 years: an institution that treats the legal defense of patriots as a standing obligation rather than a series of one-off charity bake sales.

The Problem Goes Deep

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more ubiquitous by the day, its alleged dangers are being increasingly discussed by the dominant players of Silicon Valley, who are beginning to call publicly for a slowdown in its implementation. The greatest risk to people is not the technology itself but the military-contracting capitalists behind it such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who envision a technocratic future where man and machine merge in a dystopian harmony.

Americans can’t afford to be complacent about our election security. The right to vote is one of the most indispensable civil rights in a constitutional republic, but it is not self-executing. Laws must protect that right, ensure its proper administration, and defend it against error, fraud, and foreign influence.

Citizenship must be verified when voters register. States must maintain accurate voter rolls and give federal authorities the data to which they’re legally entitled. They must also have reliable proof-of-eligibility requirements and prosecute election-law violations.

This is ultimately not merely an election-administration issue—it is a matter of sovereignty.

The proposition that only American citizens may vote in elections is a cornerstone of our republic. The citizenship requirement preserves self-government and ensures that those who decide our elections are members of the American political community. If these basic rules are treated as mere aspiration rather than an enforceable legal requirement, then American sovereignty is at risk.

The vote—and the machinery that receives, records, verifies, counts, and reports it—is how the American people confer legitimate authority on public officials.

The morning after you win, the National Governors Association will call. They will offer a seminar, a binder, and a roster of former governors prepared to explain why you should slow down. Take the meeting if you must—but do not buy their theory.

The midterms may cost Republicans the House, and possibly even the Senate. But they will not lose the states. Thirty-six governorships are on the ballot, and the incoming class, with open seats in Ohio, Alabama, Iowa, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and others, will likely yield the most conservative slate of new governors in a generation. The federal government will likely be deadlocked in 2027, but the states offer hope for advancing a bold and transformative national agenda.

To carry out such an agenda, incoming governors must reject the advice found in the NGA’s transition manual, which is an apologia for paralysis. On page 39, a former governor offers what the association presents as wisdom: “As a businessman, I spent 90 percent of my time on process and 10 percent on policy. As governor, I find I spend 90 percent of my time on policy and 10 percent on process.” This advice comes from a man who once controlled his own calendar but learned to let someone else control it. Unsurprisingly, he did not transform his state during his term in office.

The American Mind’s 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.

Beasts, Gods, and Bots: Facing down the Specter of a Post-Human Future | The American Mind Podcast

On this episode of Follow the Money, Senator Barbara Pocock, Australian Greens Spokesperson for Housing & Homelessness, joins Ebony Bennett to discuss the housing crisis, its long-term impacts on the lives of younger Australians, and her proposals to turn the situation around.

This episode was recorded on Tuesday 6 October.

If you or anyone you know needs help, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or online at www.lifeline.org.au.

Guest: Barbara Pocock, Senator for South Australia and Australian Greens Spokesperson for Housing & Homelessness // @barbarapocock

Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett

Show notes:

Locked out: the growing generational housing divide, Select Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity (September 2026)

135th Henry George Commemorative Dinner Address by Mr Adam Creighton, Graduate House, Thursday, 17th September 2026.  Matt, thank you very much for the introduction. Look, it’s a great pleasure to be here. I’m very grateful to the committee for reaching out to me, and Rayna in particular, when we had a nice tea, actually, on […]

Washington’s Farewell Address is often celebrated as one of the great documents of American history—the political testament of the nation’s founding father. Its authorship, however, has occasioned debate. Some, especially those who viewed Washington as a puppet of closet monarchists, wondered if he was even in charge of his own administration and whatever statements emerged from it.

The record shows that while Washington certainly had assistance during the drafting process, the document was truly his—he dictated what he wanted included and gave the final approval of the text. The tenets espoused reflected beliefs Washington had held for decades—beliefs he hoped could guide the nation from infancy to maturity. The Farewell Address was a worthy capstone to his extraordinary career and a touchstone of American republicanism.

Writing the Farewell Address

I thought I’d do a brief description of some of the panels I went to at the Texas Tribune Festival. The TribFest (as it’s called) is policy wonk heaven. It’s three days of panels and interviews on policy questions.

You are not the kind of person who writes about Jay McInerney. But here you are, and you cannot say the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.

McInerney is best known as the author of the 1984 coke-fueled bestseller “Bright Lights, Big City”. You devoured it in high school and can quote it from memory. You just did that in the paragraph above. You are tired of repeating yourself and want to see what it’s like to repeat others. Robots are stealing your work and now they’ll jack a McInerney line by proxy. They’ll snort his line and come back for more. You’re not a stealer, you’re a dealer. Does blatant theft still count as theft? Not in The US of AI!

You apologize to Jay McInerney for this and all that follows.

When you were sixteen, McInerney confirmed your suspicions about big city elites. They were high and hollow. McInerney treated them with a wry detachment you envied. You were a 1990s teen: prey for the Epstein Class. Detachment felt good. You wished more men would detach from you.

If a week is a long time in politics, then it’s an eternity in the universe of artificial intelligence.

All the way back in June, Andrew Charlton, the Assistant Minister for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy, gave a speech on the government’s commitment to AI.

Charlton is an unabashed advocate of Australia embracing AI and developing what he calls “world-class Australian AI industry”.

Charlton explained that this aspiration would not succeed without one non-negotiable ingredient: trust in the technology. The Australian people would need to trust that the government could protect them from the risks of AI and that they would share in the benefits of AI.

He finished his speech in observing that “… trust is not the price of an AI industry. Trust is the foundation of one.”

Charlton’s speech hasn’t aged well. On September 18, CNN reported that an intelligence report provided to the US military and generated with the help of a chatbot “almost started a war“, by falsely asserting that a Chinese ship in the Middle East was transporting nuclear material to aid Iran.

According to the report, shortly before the US military prepared to intercept the vessel, the errors in the report were identified and the plan was abandoned.

As leaders gather in Fiji for crucial pre-COP31 climate talks, co-hosted by Australia’s Climate Change & Energy Minister Chris Bowen, delegates will see this message in the Fiji Times (photo).

Climate change is threatening the very existence of several Pacific Island nations. Pacific leaders have repeatedly asked Australia to reduce its reliance on, and export of, fossil fuels.

Yet, despite the rhetoric of Minister Bowen and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at events like the Pacific Islands Forum, Australia continues to expand fossil fuel mining.

Just last week the Hunter Valley Operations coal mine extension, which will generate 809 million tonnes of climate pollution out to 2045, was given planning approval in NSW.

“Australia is a terrible neighbour to its Pacific family,” said Noah Schultz-Byard, Strategic Director at The Australia Institute.

“Australian leaders fly around the world making all sorts of bold statements about meaningful climate action, then they return home and approve new coal and gas projects.

“For nations like Kiribati, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, the climate crisis is real and it’s happening now. It is not some distant dystopian prediction.

“This round of COP negotiations has become a crucial test for Australia. If we are to have any respectability in the international climate space, then strong, real-world commitments to phasing out fossil fuels are an essential minimum outcome from this year’s conference.”

This article is a joint project with the Gender Dysphoria Bible, and is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

On May 25, 2026, Pope Leo XIV stood in the Vatican’s Synod Hall and presented Magnifica Humanitas, his encyclical on artificial intelligence. Beside two cardinals sat the lay speaker chosen to address the room, Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic and self-described atheist working to develop the “soul” of its AI model, Claude.

The Catholic Church, the West’s oldest institution, has long stood at the forefront of the day’s most important moral questions. It has often found itself opposed to insidious ideologies that swept the globe. In the 1930s and ’40s, the Vatican waged a secret war against Nazism. Then it took on Communism. But at the start of the 21st century, a new ideology emerged that would eventually take hold among wealthy tech elites called Effective Altruism, or EA.

Developed from the stark utilitarian philosophy of Princeton University’s Peter Singer, EA claims to use evidence and reason to determine how to benefit others as efficiently as possible. Effective Altruists like Bill Gates and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei direct enormous sums of money toward causes they believe will produce the greatest measurable benefit, regardless of whether those causes are personally meaningful to them.

Only months into Avi Lewis’ leadership of the New Democratic Party of Canada, the work to rebuild the party appears underway. Beyond “winning seats” in a long forthcoming federal general election, “rebuilding” the NDP from the disastrous 2025 election results involves three main tasks: restoring energy among current members, growing the membership, and regaining public support. These three tasks will depend on making the party more internally democratic. This is clearly recognized by Lewis who has the stated ambition of making the NDP “a political instrument of the people” which entitled his leadership policy platform for renewing party democracy. However, this goal cannot be achieved by reproducing the 20^th century model of intra-party democracy that still structures the party. Instead, building a truly democratic party requires a new model for the 21^st century, capable of raising the bar for Canadian democracy. There are certainly proven alternative models that have worked and have been previously demonstrated within the NDP.

On this episode of After America, Québécoise senator and pollution control expert Dr Rosa Galvez joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the Carney government’s response to the Trump administration, climate policy failures in Australia and Canada, and the opportunities for a better future for both countries.

This episode was recorded on Thursday 17 September.

Guest: The Hon Senator Dr Rosa Galvez, Independent Senator for Québec (Bedford), Canada // @senrosagalvez

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @emmashortis

Show notes:

Australia and Canada can learn from each other on climate if we separate action from declaration by Rosa Galvez, Guardian Australia (September 2026)

Climate Integrity Summit 2026, the Australia Institute on YouTube

This table summarises eligibility for social security, other government financial assistance, and Medicare for people who come to Australia as migrants or refugees.

New report tracks economic outcomes for migrants in Australia

New research by the ACOSS and UNSW-led Poverty and Inequality Partnership finds that migrants in Australia have comparatively strong employment outcomes and low rates of poverty, but that outcomes vary considerably for people depending on their pathway as a migrant, refugee or person seeking asylum.

The report, The first 10 years: Employment, income and poverty among migrants and refugees in Australia, highlights concerningly high rates of poverty among people holding humanitarian, family and student visas, and points to the need for greater employment and financial support to support the wellbeing of new migrants.

Unsurprisingly, skilled migrants have the highest employment rates and lowest rates of poverty among the different visa categories.

People who are family migrants are more likely to be disadvantaged in the labour market. Women on family visas face particular barriers to employment participation with a third of women aged between 25 and 44 not in the labour force (33.2%), compared with the average of 20.8%. 

This graph compares the rates of JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and the Pension with average, median and minimum wages since 1990. It shows how JobSeeker (previously Newstart) was at a similar rate to the pension until the different indexation methods meant the payments started to diverge after 2000.

Note: Figures have been adjusted for inflation.

Sources: ACOSS calculation from Australian Bureau of Statistics (various years), Average weekly earnings, Australia; Services Australia (various years), A guide to Australian government payments; Fair Work Commission (various years), Minimum wage, Australia.

Concerns about poverty in Australia are rising as cost-of-living pressures hit hard, with a majority of people agreeing income support payments are not enough to live on, according to new research by the ACOSS and UNSW Sydney-led Poverty and Inequality Partnership.

The vast majority of people surveyed support an increase to JobSeeker, with almost nine in ten (87%) people agreeing that unemployment payments should be enough so people don’t have to skip meals. 

It comes after the Federal Government’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee announced its first recommendation is to increase working-age income support payments in the forthcoming Federal Budget. 

The new research, which surveyed 2,520 people, found:

This figure shows that households with the lowest income who rented their homes have spent a growing share on their income on rent in recent years, leaving them with less money for other essentials. Among people rent their homes who were in the lowest 20% income group, the proportion who spent 30% or more of their income on rent (ie, in rental stress) rose from 52% in 2020-21 to 57% in 2022-23.

On this episode of What’s the Point?, Richard Denniss explains the theory of ‘trickle-down’ economics – and why so much of the money seems to be trickling the other way.

This episode was recorded on Thursday 24 September.

More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press, is available now.

Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

Read more on The Point.

Host: Richard Denniss, co-Chief Executive Officer, the Australia Institute // @richarddenniss

Host: Anna Chang, Managing Editor, The Point // @annachang

Show notes:

Hon Dr Jim Chalmers MP | Bernie Fraser Oration 2026, the Australia Institute