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Linda Robinson, author of Women in Power: Fighting for Democracy in an Age of Authoritarianism, joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the misogyny of the Trump administration, how Big Tech enables its spread, and the stark realities facing women in politics.

This episode was recorded Friday 31 July.

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.

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.

Guest: Linda Robinson, Senior Fellow for Women and Foreign Policy, Council on Foreign Relations // @lrobinson

This policy statement affirms APA’s support for unobstructed access to health care and evidence-based clinical care for transgender, gender-diverse, and nonbinary children, adolescents, and adults.

Furthermore, this policy statement addresses the spread of misleading and unfounded narratives that mischaracterize gender dysphoria and affirming care, likely resulting in further stigmatization, marginalization, and lack of access to psychological and medical supports for transgender, gender-diverse, and nonbinary individuals.

https://auspath.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/APA-statement-on-affirming-evidence.pdf

The Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) was established in 2009 and is Australia’s peak body for professionals involved in the health, rights and wellbeing of all trans people – binary and non-binary. The AusPATH membership comprises over 600 experienced professionals working across Australia.

The NHS England has recently released a Clinical Policy advising that “Puberty suppressing hormones (PSH) are not available as a routine commissioning treatment option for treatment of children and young people who have gender incongruence / gender dysphoria.” In this policy document, it is stated that a Policy Working Group commissioned by the NHS has concluded “that there is not enough evidence to support the safety or clinical effectiveness of puberty suppression hormones to make the treatment routinely available at this time”. They recommend “that access to puberty suppressing hormones for children and young people with gender incongruence/dysphoria should only be available as part of research”.

AusPATH has significant concerns about this decision by NHS England, and the negative impact that it is likely to have on young gender diverse people in the UK. It is our opinion that the NHS England is undertaking an enormous and unprecedented public health experiment on children with no safeguards. 

The Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) was established in 2009 and is Australia’s peak body for professionals involved in the health, rights and wellbeing of all trans people – binary and non-binary. The AusPATH membership comprises over 600 experienced professionals working across Australia.

AusPATH firmly stands by the ethical responsibility of medical professionals to offer unbiased, evidence-based care to all individuals, regardless of personal beliefs.

Recently, it has come to our attention that two doctors, utilising their professional status, have publicly called for the cancellation of the Orange Rainbow Festival. Their statements, invoking their medical credentials, have misrepresented research and practice surrounding gender-affirming care.

AusPATH calls upon the Australian Health Ethics Committee to conduct a thorough review of the conflicts of interest among doctors who let their personal moral or religious judgments influence their professional obligations. Healthcare professionals must prioritise the well-being of their patients, adhering to the highest standards of evidence-based care without letting personal biases interfere.

https://doi.org/10.3390/children10020314

The Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH) was established in 2009 and is Australia’s peak body for professionals involved in the health, rights, and wellbeing of all trans people – binary and non-binary. The AusPATH membership comprises over 450 experienced professionals working across Australia.

Elkadi et al (2023) recently published a research paper in the journal ‘Children’, entitled Gender Distress: A Prospective Follow-Up Study (heretofore referred to as “the study”). The AusPATH board and its membership have serious concerns about the misrepresentation of data presented in this research, as well in the choice of language used throughout the paper, which demonstrate a clear agenda of the research team to undermine the provision of gender affirming care to transgender children and adolescents. This response will outline our major concerns with this research article.

AusPATH has concerns about the methodology used and reporting of data in the study. The headline reporting of an “overall desistance rate” of 22.1% of participants does not accurately represent the cohort as, from the authors’ own published data, the following can be seen:

In August 2022, AusPATH issued a position statement about the interim report of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people. NHS England has now issued an interim service specification for “Phase 1” services pending establishment of new regional services in England. https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/specialised-commissioning/gender-dysphoria-services/

AusPATH has major reservations about this interim service specification.

On this episode of What’s the Point?, Richard Denniss explains the purpose of the Reserve Bank of Australia and whether it’s fulfilling that role.

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

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

Climate Integrity Summit 2026 tickets.

Pre-order More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

Hello readers! There is a $2.99 sale this week on my book Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America. Hiding was published in April 2020 and was a national bestseller. Then multiple entities tried to censor it, either tacitly (as described here) or overtly. Hiding is a history book that covers the rise of Trump and the decline of the US from the late 1970s to 2019. It has unfortunately stood the test of time. Written before Epstein’s 2019 arrest and alleged murder, it was the first book to cover Trump, Epstein, and transnational organized crime.

And now it’s on sale! I’m told the eBook deal will last all week. I encourage you to get it while it’s cheap — and legal! I will make almost no money off this sale despite earning out my advance. That’s how book publishing works now. If you’d like to support my work, the best way to do it is through a subscription to my newsletter:

On July 14, the State Leadership Initiative was honored to host the Florida DOGE team and their tech partners, Vulcan, Echelon, and DigiBuild, for the Florida DOGE Showcase in Washington, D.C. Spearheaded by Governor Ron DeSantis, the state has become the leader for providing accountable and efficient governance to its citizens.

Since its creation in 2025, the Florida DOGE team has identified nearly $1 billion in waste and abuse at the local government level and sent over $878 million back to the federal government. But the team’s work extends beyond fiscal savings and budgetary cuts—it also includes auditing university curriculum and state union programs and reining in rogue municipalities that had adopted woke-left policies.

On November 10, 1793, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame ceased to be a church. The high altar where the Holy Mass had been celebrated for centuries was made into a stage, and on it, a woman was enthroned as the Goddess of Reason. The French Revolutionaries believed they were liberating France from a faith and a tradition they thought had unjustly shackled mankind. In speech, policy, and action, they sought to overturn the Christian religion that had shaped European civilization for nearly 15 centuries.

About two decades before the French Revolution, another revolution began across the Atlantic: the American colonists rose up against British rule. Yet their goal was neither a triumph of “reason above God” nor a severing of liberty from the moral order that had birthed it. The American Revolutionaries achieved a miracle, establishing the first enduring constitutional republic of the modern age. They secured the rule of law on a vast scale with a robust representative government.

Both revolutions transformed Western civilization’s understanding of authority, man, and God—the American Revolution for good, but the French Revolution for ill. They carried distinctly different anthropological messages about the nature of man, the sources of authority, and the purposes of political life.

The American Way of Life

[This is more or less a continuation of the previous post.]

The important variable in democracies shifting to authoritarianism is media.

The post We’re hiring! Content Producer and Media & Communications Advisor appeared first on CPRC.

In Trump v. Barbara, the Supreme Court deemed birthright citizenship a constitutional right for the children of illegal aliens and birth tourists. It did so based on a dubious reading of the law, a blindness to its spirit, and a stubborn dismissal of relevant history, policy, and practices. That jurisprudence, I argued in part I, could spell coming doom for the Trump Administration in parallel cases likely to arise in response to its effort to exclude illegal aliens from the census apportionment base. This is a critical initiative given that those figures are used to allocate congressional seats and Electoral College votes across the states, redistrict, and dole out trillions of dollars in federal funds.

However, there is one powerful argument the Court did not countenance in Barbara or elsewhere that could lead it to render a more favorable judgment if and when the census-citizenship issue comes before it.

Market Update Preview

Yesterday's sell-off was fierce, the Dow shed over 1,000 points following the Fed decision and Warsh's press conference, and today we've already made almost all of it back. We're at a genuine inflection point, and my read is that this consolidation is close to resolving higher.

We now have two FOMC meetings under the new chair, which is enough to start drawing conclusions about how to play this Fed. I lay out what the market's response function is actually telling us, why I expect rates to keep grinding higher, and the one thing Warsh would have to do to break the pattern.

There's also a significant change to the flow picture that arrived on July 24th, which starts to reverse the tailwind that's been supporting this market since April. I walk through what it means for the back half of the year and for the cycle timing.

Woodside has reported a revenue jump of nearly 30 per cent to $6 billion over the past three months, with the company branded “one of the Australia’s biggest winners” from the war in the Middle East.

Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO at The Australia Institute, said the soaring war profits of Woodside and other gas exporters was an opportunity for Labor to enact its pledge to get a fair return for Australia’s resources, which is now part of Labor’s Party Policy Platform.

“This week we hear that gas export profits have soared, while just last week Labor declared it would seek a fairer return for Australian gas. What great timing,” said Dr Denniss said.

“Media outlets are describing gas export companies as Australia’s “biggest winners” of the Iran war. This begs the question of who are Australia’s biggest losers?

“Obviously it is Australians who are giving away their gas to multinationals for free while paying higher prices for petrol.”

Australia Institute research shows that if Labor implemented a 25 per cent gas export tax, it would raise $350 million per week at current prices, or $17 billion per year.

“That is enough to cover the fuel excise discount, which ends on Sunday,” Dr Denniss said.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Given the importance of this issue, and in a desire to be fair when writing such a critical piece, I sent a draft of this article to Ed Zitron to review and give his response to. I've clarified a few points here and there in response to his comments but we mutually decided that it would be best for him to lay out the core disagreement (or misunderstanding) between us in a response piece that I would then respond to. Keep that in mind, and Ed's graciousness in response to harsh criticism, when reading this piece. 

It may be a few weeks until Ed can respond to me, given his busy work schedule. Please give him summer grace, especially since he only saw the details of my criticisms- and replied very rapidly- yesterday. He wants me to briefly clarify that the crux of his response will focus on the potential scale of investment expenditures that are not coming from the “big four”, particularly based on the projections of these smaller companies.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the better-than-expected inflation figures, the global oversupply of once-in-a-lifetime crises, and what the ominous-sounding ‘global balance sheet’ tells us about wealth on Earth.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 30 July 2026.

Pre-order More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

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

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

Show notes:

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

In their most recent documentary, “Earth’s Greatest Enemy”, Abby Martin and Mike Prysner examine the US military as not only the world’s biggest consumer of fossil fuels, but also the world’s biggest perpetrator of ecological devastation and a driver of both increasing carbon emissions and militarization in other countries. Chris Hedges speaks about the new film and why it is an important tool in the global struggle against imperialism with Abby Martin in this episode of The Chris Hedges Report.

When President Trump reposted a video featuring President John F. Kennedy warning about subversion in America, he renewed focus on a threat we have long ignored at our peril.

When I read James Rosen’s review of my Dispatches from the Late Republic, I panicked a little over the following:

Anton is way off base when he asserts that Wolfe’s creative decision-making was at any point driven by exigent financial needs…. For Wolfe—who never borrowed money—the 1990s were flush: The Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) had been a titanic success, and he had, as a matter of public record, sold a brownstone and bought a co-op. It was struggles with plot, not finance, that delayed the publication of A Man in Full (1998). (Emphasis added.)

Now, some of the above is not in doubt. Bonfire was indeed a huge success, selling 800,000 copies in hardcover alone, plus God knows how many in paperback (nearly 40 years later, the book is still in print), and netting Wolfe a $750,000 check for the movie rights. But does that necessarily mean that, for Wolfe, “the 1990s were flush”?

They trained us to fear quicksand. They laughed at us when we did. But we were right.

We knew. Eating Rice Krispies drowned in milk poured from a carton with a face of a missing child on it — we knew. Snap, crackle, and pop; stop, drop, and roll; hook, line, and sinker — we knew. The most entertaining shows and movies warned of quicksand. Labyrinth, a tale of a secret world where predators steal children; Scooby-Doo, the story of criminals in obvious masks; The Princess Bride, a woman’s guide to outwitting abductors; The Never-Ending Story, the saga of the Trump regime.

We watched our heroes sink while adults abandoned them and everyone screamed “Quicksand!” but never drained the swamp — and we knew.

Christmas is Not Essential: the Levers OMB has Over Agencies under Continuing Resolutions and Government Shutdowns

 — Author: Nathan Tankus — Publication: Notes on the Crisis — Tuesday 28th July 2026

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.

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What should Dems do? Read Asymmetric Politics

 — Author: Patricia Roberts-Miller — Tuesday 28th July 2026

I urge anyone who has strong opinions about what the Dems should do to read Asymmetric Politics.

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The Emerging Future Has Arrived

 — Organisation: Multisolving Institute — Monday 29th June 2026

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Speech: “Monetary Policy in an Era of Shocks”

 — Organisation: Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) — Tuesday 28th July 2026

Speech by Michele Bullock, Governor, at the Anika Foundation Fundraising Lunch

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Geoengineering, climate overshoot and the politics of climate repair

 — Publication: Progress in Political Economy — Tuesday 28th July 2026

When: 1 September, 12:00-1:30 pm

Where: Room 441, Social Sciences Building (A02), University of Sydney

Speaker: Dr Natasha Heenan

Following decades of climate denial, obstruction and delay, we find ourselves in an “overshoot conjuncture” where the absence of a coordinated global phase-out of fossil fuels is justified by the promise of novel climate technologies. Central to this conjuncture is the movement of geoengineering from the fringes of scientific inquiry into mainstream climate policy discourse. As governments and corporations invest billions in technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere and research ways to potentially reflect sunlight back into space, critical questions emerge: Who creates and owns these technologies? In whose interests will they be deployed? In this seminar, I propose a framework that seeks to move beyond debates that treat geoengineering as either a catastrophic technofix or unavoidable salvation. Instead, I argue that geoengineering is simultaneously an alienated form of our collective capacity to produce the climate and a more transparently social form of climate production, necessitated by an epochal crisis in the conditions of capitalist production. I propose climate repair as a radical ethic, politics, and historical process that is latent within but not guaranteed by the overshoot conjuncture, requiring a third pillar of climate politics alongside adaption and mitigation.

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Matt Bevan on the midterms and where Trump’s money comes from

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Monday 27th July 2026

Dr Emma Shortis reflects on Trump’s “joke” about a third term in office at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, before If You’re Listening host Matt Bevan returns to the show to discuss the midterms and Trump’s finances.

This episode was recorded Friday 24 July.

Pre-order More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press. Use the code ‘FOOLME’ on a four-edition Vantage Point subscription to receive a free copy of Richard’s book, Econobabble.

Guest: Matt Bevan, journalist and host of If You’re Listening, Australian Broadcasting Corporation // @mattbevan

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

Show notes:

Where EXACTLY is Trump’s money coming from?, If You’re Listening, ABC News (July 2026)

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What the Welfare State Unleashed

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Monday 27th July 2026

America’s debate over poverty has undergone a remarkable—and troubling—transformation. Two centuries ago, the central challenge was persuading needy people to accept public assistance. Today, the challenge is preventing people from fraudulently claiming benefits to which they were never entitled.

That trajectory tells us something profound about the nation’s changing moral culture.

Alexis de Tocqueville noticed something remarkable when he traveled through America in the early 1830s. Unlike Europe, where poverty often produced permanent dependence upon the state or aristocratic patrons, Americans possessed an almost universal determination to remain independent. They formed voluntary associations to care for neighbors in distress, but they regarded prolonged dependence as inconsistent with the character of a free citizen.

That observation reflected a broader understanding shared by the American founders and the generation that followed them. Every state maintained some provision for public relief, but it was deliberately limited and administered locally. It existed for those genuinely incapable of caring for themselves—the disabled, widows, orphans, and others facing extraordinary hardship. Families, churches, fraternal organizations, and private charities bore the primary responsibility for helping the poor.

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How an X Debate Reclaimed the First Amendment

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Monday 27th July 2026

When Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Pentagon officials briefly removed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a list of recognized faiths, Mormon commentators objected immediately, and evangelicals and Catholics jumped into the fray. The debate quickly outgrew the particulars of LDS doctrine and became a vigorous argument over the nature of God, the Trinity, revelation, authority, and the meaning of “Christian” itself. Though some of it was rude, much of it was insightful.

For many Americans, this felt unusual. We have grown accustomed to treating religious disagreement as something best kept away from the public square. But what happened on X revealed something important: Americans are increasingly willing to argue about religious truth in public again. That should be welcomed.

Most Americans assume that self-identification settles whether one is Christian—that anyone who claims to follow Jesus is a Christian. But what one means by “God” and “Jesus” matters more than just adopting a label. A group that worshipped the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Jesus’s name would not count as Christian.

Words have meanings, and categories have boundaries. The significance of the public debate on X was not about one side triumphing over the other—it was that Americans were arguing about first principles again.

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What’s the point of talking about nuclear energy?

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Monday 27th July 2026

On this episode of What’s the Point?, Richard Denniss explains the “fake fight” over nuclear power in Australia and how the gas industry benefits from the nuclear distraction.

This episode was recorded on Friday 17 July.

Pre-order More Fool Me: How the gas industry tricked Australia by Richard Denniss, the latest Vantage Point essay from Australia Institute Press. 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:

Climate Integrity Summit 2026, the Australia Institute

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Power, Opportunism, and Ideology in Republican Politics

 — Author: Thomas Zimmer — Sunday 26th July 2026

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Productivity has grown, so why have wages not kept up?

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Sunday 19th July 2026

However, just as housing price growth decoupled from wage growth in recent decades, new research shows that real wages have not kept up with productivity growth.

So, who is getting the benefit?

Firstly, it’s important to understand productivity. Productivity is getting more output from the same number of inputs, or the same output from a reduced number of inputs. For example, if workers are producing thingamajigs a new innovative way and now make more thingamajigs with the same hours of work, then productivity goes up.

This increase in thingamajigs is sold, and then that the extra money made is then supposed to flow to workers in higher living standards. Productivity has been described as “the engine of living standards”, and the Productivity Commission says the more productive the economy is, the more workers are supposed to enjoy either higher wages, lower prices, or by working less and having more free time.

The Productivity Commission claims that outside of mining and agriculture, productivity has been flowing to higher real wages. But there is new evidence that the Productivity Commission is wrong.

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