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Most days I still think of calling my mother.

Today, for example, I imagine ringing her up, telling her I’m back at work on The Gauntlet, writing away. She always loved to hear that.

“Yes,” I’d tell her, “I’m writing about how devastated I’ve been since you died.”

My mom died on January 3, 2026.

A bunch of doctors gathered in the hallway outside her room to thank her for being an organ donor, reading a tribute written by my father. The doctors learned about her master’s degrees in math and music, and how she conducted our church choir for decades. They listened patiently as they learned she taught college and high school math classes for many years, how she took up painting after retirement, how she was a loving mother to two children: my brother Kevin, and me.

I was here in DC, still homebound, watching via Facetime on Kevin’s phone. A dear friend lay in bed with me while I sobbed, holding my hand. They removed all the life support. She breathed for one more hour.

Since January 3rd, I’ve read Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm, A Heart that Works by Robb Delaney, A Very Easy Death by Simone de Beauvoir, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

One year ago, President Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to develop policy recommendations to protect access to in vitro fertilization (IVF), expand its availability, and lower its cost to patients. Then in October, the administration announced additional measures to lower costs for IVF and common fertility drugs and explore pathways like expanded employer benefits or excepted benefit categories for assisted reproductive technologies. While this included joint efforts across federal agencies to make this costly intervention more affordable, the administration stopped short of imposing broad new federal mandates for insurance coverage or direct government funding of IVF.

The Wrap: Australia doesn’t need a strong Opposition, but it does need a strong Parliament

“Australia is an ‘elective dictatorship’, an ominous term coined in the 1990s by David Hamer. Mr Hamer was a Liberal parliamentarian who served in both houses of Parliament (he was an MP and a senator). His point was that, between elections, the Government’s power is barely constrained by law or the Constitution.

“Instead, the Government is constrained by the Parliament. However benign or well-meaning a Government, democracy depends on the option for the Parliament to intervene to stop abuse of power,” writes Bill Browne.

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Frontline organisations responding to Australia’s housing crisis are operating at breaking point, reporting sustained increases in demand, escalating complexity, and diminishing capacity to help, according to Everybody’s Home.

The national housing campaign’s ‘No Way Out’ sector survey of dozens of frontline organisations found nine in ten (89%) reported increased workloads over the past year, while almost all (98%) expect demand for their services to rise further in 2026.

More than four in five (82%) organisations reported the housing crisis is either significantly affecting their daily operations or severely threatening the effectiveness of their programs. 

The crisis is increasingly affecting the workforce itself, with seven in ten frontline organisations (71%) reporting increased stress or burnout among their workforce, while more than three quarters (78%) said housing insecurity is impacting their staff or volunteers. 

Almost three-quarters (72%) said the increased workload has contributed to staff turnover in the past year, and more than one quarter of respondents (27%) said they’d considered leaving their role due to workload or housing-related pressures.

Shortly before Christmas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Undersecretary of State Sarah Rogers made a dramatic announcement: the U.S. was placing five individuals described as “agents of the global censorship-industrial complex” on a visa sanctions list in an effort to curb foreign suppression of Americans. The undoubted headliner of the group is Thierry Breton, the former E.U. Internal Market Commissioner who spearheaded efforts to enforce the E.U.’s Digital Services Act (DSA) during the last years of his tenure in the European Commission. The list also includes the two managing directors of the hitherto relatively obscure German organization HateAid, which serves as a so-called “trusted flagger” under the DSA.

Simone Lenzu

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 Mini-Bus, the Short Bus, and the Clown Car | The Roundtable Ep. 303

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Karl Marx, in his essay “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” said that history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Donald Trump’s actions in the first year of his second term have spelled out to many that tragedies of history are beginning to repeat themselves, this time certainly as farces.

John Mearsheimer, the renowned scholar, author and R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to contextualize what Trump’s political missions mean through the lens of history.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the Reserve Bank’s decision to raise interest rates and the absurdity of elite private schools receiving substantial public funding.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 5 February 2026.

A time for Bravery: what happens when Australia chooses courage is available now via Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘POD5’ to get $5 off the regular price – offer available for a limited time only.

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

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

Show notes:

Australian high schools the most expensive in the world – new research, the Australia Institute (February 2026)

What are the odds? The RBA has raised interest rates – for no real reason other than to meet the desires of speculators by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (February 2026)

Reading Hillary Clinton’s most recent article, “MAGA’s War on Empathy,” it’s hard not to have at least some sympathy, and perhaps even empathy, for her.

Yes, Clinton was one of the most ruthless political operators of the last century, a woman who would seemingly do almost anything in pursuit of power. She was extremely close to becoming president, the prize she had always wanted, before being thwarted by Donald Trump of all people, a figure she treated as little more than an absurdity during much of her 2015-16 campaign.

It would be easy to dismiss anything Clinton writes as simple, cynical political posturing. And to be sure, there is plenty of politicized misrepresentation of facts in her latest article. And yet her recent piece attacking the Trump GOP for its supposed lack of empathy, using Minneapolis as a backdrop, is revealing, for it lays bare the moral core of today’s Democratic Party.

If her piece were just political and not reflective to some degree of her sincere belief, she could have done it as an X post or a short op-ed—she certainly didn’t need 6,000 words in The Atlantic to make her case. In this respect I differ somewhat from Pastor Joe Rigney, one of the targets of Clinton’s ire, who wrote his own excellent response. Clinton wrote this essay because, to a certain extent, she means it.

Listen to the full conversation on the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

SUBSCRIBE to the Perspectives Journal Podcast and Activists Make History for previous and upcoming interviews with the 2026 NDP leadership race candidates.

Simone Lenzu

If Hayek taught us to inquire about who ought to decide and Lincoln taught us to ask to what end, then the question of immigration compels us toward a third and inescapable question: Where is the line drawn?

The principles of subsidiarity and federalism demand that matters should be resolved at the lowest level of authority competent to manage them. Much of what the national government has usurped would be more wisely and justly managed by the states, local communities, families, and institutions of civil society. The Constitution itself was framed to embody this division of powers, preserving the vitality of local self-government against the dangers of centralized tyranny.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Matt Grudnoff joins Ebony Bennett to discuss big economic reform opportunities facing the government and why the Reserve Bank of Australia is so cautious about cutting rates, yet so quick to hike them up.

Join economist, author and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and friends in Adelaide on Sunday 1 March and in Sydney on Thursday 5 March. Tickets are selling fast, so get yours now.

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

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

Show notes:

Hasty decision inflicts more pain and will cost jobs, the Australia Institute (February 2026)

“They’re jackhammering into the sewer and the whole house is shaking,” I texted my husband.

I was sitting on a window seat watching a construction crew drill into the sidewalk below. I didn’t want to stand on a floor that trembled. Everything valuable threatened to fall. A photo of my children flipped over like a memory I couldn’t trust.

Outside, a stream of liquid coated the road. The workers gathered in a circle and looked down at something terrible. One picked up the jackhammer again and drilled deep and hard. The rest stood back and watched while he did it. I closed the windows, but I could not block out the sound or the feeling of earth giving way.

When will this stop, how can I make it stop I started to write, then deleted it. I saw my original text. I wrote instead:

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to accidentally summarize the state of the nation.”

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A New Dataset for Consumer Spending in the New York Fed EHIs

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — Tuesday 3rd February 2026

Rajashri Chakrabarti, Thu Pham, Beck Pierce, and Maxim L. Pinkovskiy

We are enhancing our set of Economic Heterogeneity Indicators (EHIs) by adding a set of metrics on consumer spending with data presented by income, education, race and ethnicity, age, and urban status. The data will help track the evolution of aggregate behavior by analyzing the spending of specific groups in a more timely manner than is possible using public surveys.

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