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During a dinner at the annual gathering of the Ciceronian Society on March 19, a glance at my phone profoundly changed the rest of the evening. It had been an intellectually stimulating day with fellow Christian thinkers, for which my wife and I were grateful to be part of. Something familiar caught my eye: the photo of a man I instantly recognized, Brandon Shah. We were part of the same staff group section within the larger U.S. Army Command and General Staff College class of 2019. Brandon never used X, so I was immediately curious why he was showing up so prominently on my feed. Immediately, the following words accosted me: “The victim of the terrorist attack at Old Dominion has been identified as Lt. Col. Brandon Shah.”

My pulse raced, followed moments later by sudden rage. My anger over how the political class has betrayed veterans of the so-called Global War on Terrorism rekindled. My wife could tell something was bothering me. “Are you okay?” she asked. I wasn’t. My focus on the planned presentation I was to deliver later broke, my mind hijacked by a kind of mourning I had avoided throughout 20 years in the military due to learning that a man I served with died in combat on home soil.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

As the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran intensifies, the justifications for its outbreak grow increasingly murky, shifting between nuclear fears, regime change, and regional security concerns. In this interview, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy joins Chris Hedges to cut through the official narratives and examine the deeper ideological forces driving Israel’s long-standing push toward confrontation with Iran under Benjamin Netanyahu.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Matt and Elinor discuss how profits are driving inflation, why the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission doesn’t have the power to take on price gouging properly, and why migration is not causing Australia’s housing crisis. Then, the wheels come off talking about the meat industry.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 26 March 2026.

What we owe the water: It’s time for a fossil fuel treaty by Kumi Naidoo, is available now for just $19.95. Use the code ‘PODVP’ at checkout to get free shipping.

You can also subscribe to the Vantage Point series to get four essays a year on some of the most pressing issues facing Australia and the world.

Host: Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, the Australia Institute // @mattgrudnoff

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

Show notes:

Jacob Goss and Daniel Mangrum

Editor’s Note: The chart notes for the first chart have been updated to correct errors in how we labeled the trend line colors. (March 25, 2026)

When the United States Senate actually deliberates, it remains undefeated.

Last Tuesday, mere hours after Senate Republican Leader John Thune finally acquiesced to conservative calls for an open-ended floor debate on national voter ID legislation, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—who for months condemned the SAVE America Act as “Jim Crow 2.0”—told reporters that, lo and behold, Democrats are fine with requiring voters to show a photo ID. Days earlier, Senator Dick Durbin, the Democratic Whip, also admitted as much.

If you followed the debate over floor strategy for the SAVE Act over the last six weeks, you know that Schumer’s admission was supposed to be impossible. With Olympian certainty, leadership aides and former ones-turned-corporate-lobbyists dismissed conservatives’ proposal for an open floor process. After all, everyone knew that the Democrats’ opposition to voter ID was absolute; that debating the SAVE Act was a waste of time and a threat to the sanctity of the filibuster; and that voter ID was dead on arrival in the Senate.

It turns out that all of the things “everyone knows”…are false.

While many eyes are focused on Iran, the Trump Administration’s policies suggest that reasserting the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere could rank among its highest geopolitical priorities. As laid out in the 2025 National Security Strategy, the Trump Corollary “is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.” What if America could project its dominance quickly, dramatically, and without firing a single shot? With one bold stroke, President Trump could expand America’s sovereign territory by nearly 20% and recover the largest unclaimed tract of land left on the planet.

Marie Byrd Land is the name for 620,000 square miles of Antarctica, a territory roughly the size of Alaska. It belongs to no nation and is governed by no sovereign power. It is desolate, largely uninhabited, and of enormous strategic importance. Claiming it would be the largest expansion of American sovereign territory since William Henry Seward’s purchase of Alaska in 1867.

The moment is right. The case is overwhelming. And the window is closing.

Today marks the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and on this March 25, 2026, Ghana’s President John Mahama will be at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to support The UN General Assembly vote on a resolution designating the transatlantic African slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity.” This important recognition sets the stage for structural reparations and structural transformation for Africa and the rest of the Global South. That is the next frontier of the struggle for justice.

[update: The UN resolution passed with 123 votes. Three countries voted against it (the US, Israel and Argentina), while 52 countries abstained.]

If we want to understand how the modern world economy was built, we have to stop treating the trafficking and chattel enslavement of Africans as a tragic “labor system” sitting on the sidelines of industrialization. It was an engineered architecture of extraction, designed to do three things at once:

1. transfer people at a continental scale,

2. convert human beings into capital assets, and

3. organize global trade and production around coerced commodity frontiers.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Rod Campbell and Ebony Bennett discuss the case for a 25% gas export tax and the New South Wales government’s ban on new coal mines.

This episode was recorded on Tuesday 24 March.

You can sign the Australia Institute’s petition calling on the federal government to make gas exporters pay their fair share.

Guest: Rod Campbell, Research Director, the Australia Institute // @rodcampbell

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

Show notes:

The case for a gas export tax, explained by Richard Denniss, The Point (March 2026)

Tax gas exports, invest in health/aged care – new polls, the Australia Institute (March 2026)

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.

Trump: A World-Historic Figure? | The Roundtable Ep. 310

After another tense week of Iran-US operations, Trump is reportedly looking to broker a deal and snuff out the Middle East conflict. Meanwhile, amid rumors that the Right is tearing at the seams, polling now reveals that young conservatives are the least divided on the recent intervention—overwhelmingly in its favor. Reports of a deep divide between old and young may, as so often, be more media hype than reality. Those running in 2028: take notes.

An Australia Institute submission to the inquiry has found that asking artists to beg for more money from donors ignores the much bigger issue of chronic underfunding of the arts.

The arts sector was devastated by the COVID pandemic and has never truly recovered. Once-iconic music festivals have been cancelled. Venues have closed. Artists are living in poverty.

The long-running cost-of-living crisis has left Australian consumers with very little money to spend on artistic pleasures like a trip to a gallery, buying a book, watching a movie or seeing a band.

The submission concludes that “this is a critical time for supporting Australian arts and culture”.

Key points:

• In real terms, arts funding is at its lowest point since 2017/18
• Australia has the 7th-lowest arts spending in the OECD
• Despite the cost of living crisis, arts spending has been cut by more than half a billion dollars a year
• While Australia-wide employment has grown by 13% since the end of the COVID pandemic, the arts sector has only just returned to pre-pandemic levels

“Artists, authors, musicians and other creatives have a huge impact on Australian culture, how Australians see themselves, and how the world sees Australians,” said Skye Predavec, Researcher at The Australia Institute.

“Australia’s arts and culture cannot be produced overseas, and cannot be moved offshore. It must be made here.

This article is read by Eunice Wong. You can find her work at www.eunicewong.actor.

Text originally published January 19, 2026.