The American Founding was an epic, earthshaking, history-making event that still reverberates through the ages. For close to half of our history, America has had a filmmaking industry—Hollywood—one that has often been the envy of the world, although its global prestige has faded in recent years.
Despite the historic weight of the American Revolution, it has been mostly a spectral presence in the cinema. Even if we expand our focus to include the period from the war’s conclusion to shortly before the Civil War, Hollywood’s filmed history of early America is rather thin.
That is not to say that American history was not present on the silver screen from the medium’s earliest days. James Fenimore Cooper’s TheLast of the Mohicans, based on events during the French and Indian War, was portrayed as early as 1909. In fact, there were three different films based on that book, and another film based on Cooper’s novel The Spy by 1920. Betsy Ross (1917), about the famous flag maker, still survives.
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.
America’s Privileged Class – The Press, Libel, and Defamation | The Roundtable Ep. 321
Early in 2026, I bought my second Greenland soccer jersey (the light blue, ice-patterned away kit) the day that US President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself planting a US flag on a Greenland landscape. He followed up later that day, posting another generated image featuring Europe’s leaders around his desk in the Oval Office, considering a map where both Greenland and Canada are overlaid with the American flag.
As acts of resistance go, buying a soccer jersey is pretty silly. It is just a piece of clothing, after all, and not even one with a political message. But over the last few years I have, rather unintentionally, built up a collection of soccer jerseys that have become a kind of armour for me against the increasingly horrifying direction of our world.
On this episode of Follow the Money, recorded live at Politics in the Pub in Canberra, Jane Caro joins Dr Alice Grundy to discuss how Australia came to the most expensive place in the developed world for families to send a child to high school and Jane’s essay for Australia Institute Press, Rich Kid Poor Kid: The battle for public education.
The original conversation was recorded live on 3 June 2026. Stay across all of our events by signing up to our newsletter.
Support the research powerful interests fear. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Australia Institute’s End of Financial Year Appeal before 30 June.
Guest: Jane Caro, Walkley Award-winning columnist, novelist & author of Rich Kid, Poor Kid: The battle for public education // @janecaro
Host: Alice Grundy, Managing Editor, Australia Institute Press // @alicektg
Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett
Though the Trump Administration has faced a series of legal setbacks on tariffs, it seems to have found a solution. After the Supreme Court ruled that the administration’s reciprocal tariffs were wrongfully imposed, the president immediately leapt to plan B: Section 122 tariffs, which allow the temporary placement of global tariffs. But these tariffs—derived from the Trade Act of 1974, which Trump used to install a 10% levy on most imported goods—expire in just over two months, and a court has ruled them unlawful.
Although that case is still working through the system, the administration is already planning to replace Section 122 tariffs with Section 301 tariffs. These, too, stem from the Trade Act, but unlike the previous tariffs, they will be here to stay. They will also allow the Trump Administration to target countries that have relied on unfair trade practices such as lax environmental standards that let our trade “partners” produce at excess capacity—essentially to get one over on the United States.
The Democratic Party has a problem: Americans are increasingly repelled by transgenderism.
Between 2022 and 2025, the average American’s favorability toward restrictions on transgender policies rose significantly. Support fell both for requiring insurance companies to cover gender reassignment procedures and for protecting trans individuals from job and housing discrimination. All of this happened as the share of Americans who consider it morally acceptable to change one’s gender has fallen from 46% to 40% since 2021.
This drop in support is seen in younger generations too. Eric Kaufmann found that between 2022 and 2025, the number of trans-identifying college students fell by half. The decline was even sharper at elite institutions: at Phillips Academy in Andover, the number of trans-identifying students fell from 9.2% in 2023 to a mere 3% in 2025. At Brown University, the number of nonbinary students was nearly halved between 2023 and 2025. The data highly suggests those rates will continue to fall.
The US-Israeli war has heated up again as Iran launched “Operation Victory” in response to Israel’s continued attacks on Southern Lebanon and attacks on Iranian infrastructure, and the United States bombing islands in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend. In this episode, Chris Hedges speaks with former British Diplomat Alastair Crooke of the Conflicts Forum Substack, who explains that given the failure of diplomatic negotiations, Iran has entered a new phase of the war utilizing the methodology of ‘escalatory deterrence’ in which every attack on Iran will be met with an increasingly greater response.
In April 2026, the Toronto Tenant Union was launched as a city-wide organization bringing together housing rights groups, neighbourhood associations, and climate activists under a common banner. A renters rights movement is growing and refusing to accept rising costs and poorer living conditions. This has also led to movement leaders hoping to push for electoral change, as 2025 Jack Layton Progress Prize recipient Chiara Padovani, former co-chair of the York-South Weston Tenants Union in Toronto, runs for City Council in upcoming elections in Fall 2026. To organize bigger, neighbourhood tenant unions are expanding city-wide, teaming up with other social movements, and finding new paths to power to change the livelihoods of renters.
Perspectives Journal contributor James Adair spoke with Toronto Tenant Union organizers Bruno Dobrusin and Sama Nanayakkara about building tenant power, the connection between housing and climate justice, and their vision for a movement capable of challenging landlords and reshaping housing politics.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
In November 1839, Joseph Smith traveled to Washington, D.C. Styled the prophet and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he sought an audience with then-president Martin Van Buren. The Saints, popularly called “Mormons” after the reputed author of their holy writ, had been hounded by vigilante mobs in Missouri. Van Buren expressed his sympathy for the Mormons but said regretfully that “if I do anything, I shall come in contact with the whole State of Missouri.” A little over four years later, Smith, then running for president, would call Van Buren a “fop or a fool” and blame him for corrupting the principles of the American Founding.
Van Buren was one of many prominent politicians to whom Smith appealed during his meteoric rise to national attention in the 1830s and ’40s. He even once dined with a young Illinois state representative, Stephen A. Douglas, and predicted that Douglas would “aspire to the presidency of the United States.” In his exhaustively researched biography, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, George Mason University Religious Studies historian John G. Turner tracks the Mormon leader’s astonishing trajectory.
Australians love a punt, but the house always wins.
We’re the world’s biggest gamblers per capita, and the biggest losers, losing more than $32 billion in bets last year. Yes, the gambling reforms announced by the Albanese government are important, but they are roughly the equivalent of throwing a bucket of water on a bushfire.
Australia Institute research shows the $32 billion Australian households lost to gambling is more than Aussies spend on their electricity and gas bills ($29.5 billion) or alcohol ($26.8 billion). That’s more than $30 billion a year in profit going to gambling companies. Thirty billions dollars a year that’s not being spent in the economy at local businesses down the main street of your city or town, that’s not being spent on food, rent or the basic necessities of life. Can we really afford that, in this economy?
These massive gambling losses are often framed as the tragic but unavoidable cost of doing business, rather than the inevitable consequence of a predatory gambling industry untroubled by regulation.
The Whitlams once sang about blowing up the pokies (a timeless classic no less relevant today), but it’s online gambling that has exploded in recent years.
On my mantelpiece sits a silver teapot. It is boxy rather than delicate, in the 18th-century American Federal style, with a thick band of vines traced elegantly below the lid. The teapot was a wedding gift in 1797 for my great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, Frances Eleanor Clark.
For over two centuries, mother has gifted that teapot to daughter, keeping alive the gathered memories of our family. Crafted by a Virginian silversmith, it has traveled from Kentucky to Missouri, from the Montana Territory to California, before returning to the East Coast. One day, I will take my own place in the line of “teapot grandmas,” woven into the long memory of that teapot and its new familial guardian.
Though women who treasured that teapot did not make history—several of them spent their lives with men who left a lasting mark on the American West—they performed an important task: keeping it alive for future generations.
Friday brought the sell-off we'd been flagging as a possibility — a hot jobs print spiked the VIX, dropped the Nasdaq nearly 5%, and sent yields jumping. The takeaway: the last argument for rate cuts (a soft labor market) just got dashed, and the market had to reprice valuations that were quietly still hoping for cuts.
We hit the 7300 zone I mentioned in the last update almost exactly. The question now is whether we hold it, bounce, or roll straight into the deeper sell-off I've been expecting around the mid-June-into-July window. I'll lay out exactly how I'm playing this, the level where I start moving defensive, and why I'm done chasing this move even if there's one more high left in it.
The longer-term picture hasn't changed: the deficit impulse keeps deteriorating in real terms with a 4.2% CPI consensus landing Wednesday, margin debt keeps accelerating toward danger levels, and credit is recovering from the oil shock exactly as we modeled. But — and this matters — I still don't think this is the end of the cycle. Full breakdown, including the levels and the playbook, below.
Revolutionary America, Hillsdale College’s new Ken Burns-style documentary on the founding, arrives at a fitting moment: the nation’s 250th anniversary. Though it resembles Burns’s work in its message, soundtrack (very much like the work of Hans Zimmer), maps, and pacing, it is far superior to anything Burns has done.
The documentary is a gorgeous, straightforward, non-ideological approach to a difficult and complex historical subject. While the film never shies away from explaining political philosophy, its main goal is to tell America’s history as a story, inviting the audience to encounter its drama, myth, and wonder.
Narrated by Tom Selleck and featuring an impressive lineup of Hillsdale professors and well-known political commentators, Revolutionary America is broken into two parts. Its first half explores the events leading up to the Battle of Lexington, the Revolution’s opening salvo, on April 19, 1775. The second half considers the move toward independence, George Washington’s masterful leadership of the Continental Army, and the Revolution’s fulfillment through the creation and passage of the Constitution. The documentary builds to a powerful close, with President Arnn observing that the American Revolution never really ended—that every generation must rededicate itself to the principles on which it was fought.
Prosper Australia is proud to sponsor the distribution of a compelling new Australian-made documentary, Common Wealth. Our team will be attending screenings across the country, participating in Q&As and other events. We would love to see you there. The following film screenings are where members of the Prosper team will be in attendance. Check out […]
The release of the Epstein Files has shocked the public with unimaginable stories of the pedophilia, exploitation of women and brash depravity of the ruling class. While these stories have been the major source of public outrage, a deeper dive into the Epstein Files reveals the inside world of how the billionaire class operates to control information and collude with each other - hide their crimes and gain massive wealth at the expense of the working class.
As we approach our nation’s 250th birthday, Americans will be doing a lot of celebrating. They will honor not only the fact of our independence and nationhood, but also the political thought that shaped America’s founding struggle for freedom. Special attention will be paid, of course, to our Declaration of Independence.
But some may be rather cool to celebrating the Declaration’s doctrine of universal truths, such as the equality of all human beings in their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Declaration has become a source of controversy among some younger conservatives who came of age during the Trump era.
The New Right’s dissatisfaction with the Declaration’s universalism is an understandable—but mistaken—reaction to various political misuses of America’s founding creed in recent decades. The older generation of conservatives who grew up admiring Ronald Reagan loves to boast about America’s defense of universal truths. The New Right has rightly argued that this rhetorical approach has not served the conservative political movement or the country well.
The poll of 1502 people, conducted by YouGov, also found 8 in 10 voters support the creation of a Whistleblower Protection Authority.
The research, supported by the Human Rights Law Centre and Whistleblower Justice Fund, shows support for better whistleblower protections hit a record high level last year and has increased even further in this new poll.
It comes as the CEO of KPMG Australia quits over his mishandling of a whistleblower request, while the federal government continues to drag its feet on releasing a long-awaited second tranche of whistleblower reforms.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the decision to lift minimum and award wages and what the latest GDP figures mean for Australian households.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 4 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
It’s the third of June, another sleepy dusty Delta day. Of course I’m republishing this! — SK
* * *
It was the 30th of December, and I was driving the Natchez Trace Parkway, looking for Bobbie Gentry.
I didn’t want to find her. I only wanted to know she was out there, eluding everyone.
I wanted her to outwit every man who did her wrong. Many are dead: Bobbie Gentry is in her 80s. She hasn’t appeared on stage since 1981, when, after a series of music industry disputes, she left public life behind with a steadfastness unrivaled.
I was not the first to explore Chickasaw County, Mississippi and other Gentry haunts, hoping for a glimpse of the singer. For over forty years, no stranger has tracked her down. Gentry wanted to disappear and she got her way. She is rumored to be happy. I am likely angrier about the treatment of Bobbie Gentry than Bobbie Gentry is.
It’s only fair when a trailblazing woman gets burned that younger women pick up the torch.
Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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.
The Truth about Derek Chauvin | The Roundtable Ep. 320
Recorded live as part of our Australia’s Biggest Book Club webinar series, Antoinette Lattouf joins Ebony Bennett to discuss her landmark legal battle with the ABC and her latest book, Women Who Win: Celebrating courage, conviction and change.
1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. Call 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732, chat online or video call via their website.
Support the research powerful interests fear. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Australia Institute’s End of Financial Year Appeal before 30 June.
Guest: Antoinette Lattouf, journalist and author of Women Who Win: Celebrating courage, conviction and change // @antoinettelattouf
Host: Ebony Bennett, Deputy Director, the Australia Institute // @ebonybennett
Since the 1970s and for a variety of different reasons, the Declaration has been marginalized as a touchstone in national discourse. There are plenty of politicians and political movements in the last two generations that included a throwaway citation of the Declaration in a speech or manifesto. But this is far from the American people—even 10 or 15 or 20 percent— taking the Declaration seriously as a touchstone for deliberation. No 12-step ideological project for taking the Declaration seriously will elevate it to the prominent position it should hold today. Still, as America enters its next 250 years, it is worth considering what nonideological, nonpartisan steps will help in this effort. For Americans to get right with the Declaration, they must take it seriously for (1) its ideas, (2) the disposition it inspires, and (3) the skill set it requires.
Taking the Declaration’s Principles Seriously Today
On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman discuss op-shop submarines, the Democrats’ review of the 2024 election, and Trump’s Iran loop.
The nonprofit Feeding Our Future claimed to have served 91 million meals to children across Minnesota. But as Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Kline described in a recent court hearing, they were not feeding kids—they were instead “feeding the bank accounts of fraudsters.” FOF founder Aimee Bock was sentenced to nearly 42 years in prison for stealing close to $250 million in taxpayer dollars, orchestrating what the DOJ called the largest COVID-19 fraud scheme in the country.
Seventy-eight defendants and counting set up shell companies and phantom sites to feed nonexistent children. Former prosecutor Joe Thompson described the urgency of the FBI takedown: “I remember we took down the case on a Thursday because the following day, on a Friday, is when [the Minnesota Department of Education] paid out the money. Every Friday, they paid out about $20 million.” Twenty million dollars every Friday for meals the system never independently verified.
Welcome to Part Two of my Q &A, in which I answer questions sent by readers! I usually do this in one article. But I’ve got pneumonia, so I’m breaking it into three parts and publishing them as I go, so that your questions don’t get dated. If you weren’t answered in the first one or in this one, wait for the final one. Thanks!
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Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I have written many book reviews before, but this is the first time I have ever reviewed a memoir, Rowan Cahill’s Cold War Kid: Resisting the Vietnam War. There is an added layer of responsibility that comes with the job – it is one thing to attack an academic text for theoretical or empirical shortcomings, but quite another to pass judgment on a person’s account of their own life. This is doubly so when that person is a friend and mentor. In the spirit of the radical history Rowan calls for in the book, this review makes no pretences about cold, dispassionate objectivity. There will no doubt be reviews aplenty in that vein down the road. No, I have approached the text as the colourful story of a devoted activist, a text which, in detailing the possibilities, limitations and costs of radical politics in the 1960s and 1970s, speaks powerfully to the contemporary scene.
For over two years, Australian media counterweighted the largest sustained protest movement in Australia’s history, dissipating public pressure to prevent Israel’s genocide. This cornerstone submission traces a lobby–media–state nexus through lobby-funded travel cultivating compliant editors; co-ordinated complaints, smears, sackings and litigation enforcing silence; and the exploitation of Bondi grief to recast solidarity as bigotry and manufacture a mandate to criminalise it. The Royal Commission now interrogating public discourse has itself adopted the lobby’s definition of antisemitism. Australian media didn’t just fail the public’s right to know; it primed consent for complicity in genocide, and for punishing those who oppose it.
The Australian epitomises editorial complicity: it published a denial of deliberate starvation two weeks after leaked Israeli cabinet transcripts confirmed it was chosen as a strategy of war; it printed over 100 pro-Israel letters and none critical, as 300,000 Australians marched for humanity; and while it referenced Randa Abdel-Fattah in 412 articles, our research found 148 referencing Louise Adler, including 23 dedicated attack pieces, 17 alone in the fortnight of her Adelaide Writers’ Week resignation. John Lyons, its former Jerusalem correspondent, says only three people can tell its editors what to run: Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan Murdoch, and AIJAC’s Colin Rubenstein.
In November 2023, more than 270 Australian journalists signed an open letter calling for fairer Gaza coverage. Consequently, senior editors at Nine's mastheads, all of whom had taken lobby-funded trips to Israel, banned signatories from covering the conflict. Two months later, an Israeli tank fired on an ambulance the army had cleared to reach six-year-old Hind Rajab, killing her and the paramedics. It made headlines worldwide — but across 2024, News Corp and Nine published no original reporting on it. This editorial blackout of verified atrocity crimes is a distinct mechanism of impunity, erasing the victims and enabling the perpetrators.
State-funded broadcasters carry special obligations under international law that commercial outlets don’t. When the World Court put states on notice of a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza, Australia’s public broadcaster should have reported it plainly. Instead, for over two years, it referred the word “genocide” upward; it humanised Israelis 1.58 times more than Palestinians; and it unlawfully sacked Antoinette Lattouf for sharing evidence of Israel’s crimes, then chose to spend over $2.6M in taxpayer money defending its surrender to the Israel lobby. Under cover of “impartiality”, this is how “our ABC” primed Australians to consent to complicity in genocide.
