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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.

The expectation among seasoned D.C. professionals was that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would quickly fade in his tenure as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He was too idealistic, his ideas were too fringe, and the gulf between his base and Trump’s was too vast to bridge. And anyway, the vast sprawling bureaucracy of HHS—which housed 82,500 career bureaucrats when Kennedy assumed the role—would swallow him up.

But Kennedy had something that the Washington consensus failed to take into account, something that the bureaucracy didn’t have: a popular movement and a level of backing from the president that has surprised political observers.

It’s easy to forget that Kennedy pulled in millions of votes as an independent presidential candidate before throwing his support behind Trump in August 2024, a move that likely shifted the outcome of the election in key swing states. His messaging about chronic disease and corporate capture resonated across traditional political lines. But Kennedy did not just bring votes: he brought an energetic grassroots network that spanned the whole country. His rallies drew crowds that dwarfed those of other third-party candidates, feeling less like political gatherings and more like a great social movement.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the “shock” inflation figures, what energy subsidies have to do with the larger-than-expected increase, and why the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) is suing Microsoft.

Pre-order Aiming Higher: Universities and Australia’s future by George Williams via Australia Institute Press.

The Point, an initiative of the Australia Institute, is live now.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 30 October 2025.

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

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

Show notes:

So it’s goodbye to lower interest rates – to be honest, the RBA was always looking for an excuse not to cut by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (October 2025)

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.

ICE Gets Shaken Up | The Roundtable Ep. 291

A self-processed former “punk” using her position in Parliament to criticise the Prime Minister for wearing a Joy Division T-shirt is stupid-stupid, even for Auspol, which long ago shifted the bar from low to subterranean.

To borrow from Shakespeare, it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Given the nation is being forced into having a conversation about a boomer wearing a band T-shirt, let’s take a little bit more of a look at it shall we?

The T-shirt depicts the album cover of Unknown Pleasures, which – in turn – features a graphic of radio waves from a pulsar. In other words, a signal from an object of extreme density spinning away deep in the void. A perfect metaphor for this “debate”.

Physics tells us that empty vessels make the most noise, which is another perfect analogy for Sussan Ley and the modern Liberal Party. Ley’s desperate need for relevancy, underscored by her office sending her 90-second statement around the press gallery to ensure coverage, perhaps disproves the notion that nothing can be truly empty.

Ley’s “argument” was that by wearing a Joy Division t-shirt, Anthony Albanese risked upsetting Australia’s Jewish community, given the origins of the band’s name come from a 1950s book that told the story of sex slaves kept by the Nazis, who referred to them as the “joy division”.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Despite the demoralization and destruction produced by Israel’s two-year-long genocidal campaign on the Palestinians, Israel potentially finds itself at its weakest point in its short history.

In his new book, Israel on the Brink, renowned Israeli historian Ilan Pappé makes the case that Israel’s current path forward is unsustainable. With a combination of domestic, political, military and international pressures, Israel will continue to destabilize.

Late one night in May 1973, New Jersey trooper James Harper stopped a speeding white Pontiac LeMans for a broken taillight. Sundiata Acoli was driving the car. In the back was Zayd Malik Shakur, the minister of information for the Harlem Black Panther Party. In the passenger seat was 26-year-old Joanne Chesimard, wanted by the FBI for armed bank robbery and by the New York police in connection with the slayings of two policemen and a hand‐grenade attack on a police car. Six months before, she and two men stole $1,800 in bingo money from a church safe. When Monsignor John Powis let them in, Chesimard put a gun to his head until he opened the safe, and they told him, “We usually just blow the heads off White men.”

Noticing a “discrepancy” in the driver’s identification, Trooper Harper asked Acoli to exit the vehicle. Meanwhile, State Trooper Werner Foerster, who had arrived as backup, reached into the car and pulled out a semi-automatic pistol magazine. Harper ordered the car’s nervous occupants to keep their hands on their laps. Chesimard suddenly raised a pistol and shot Harper in the shoulder; he fired back into the car, hitting Zayd Shakur. Acoli attacked Foerster, seized his pistol, shot him in the head, and jumped back into the car. He sped off down the turnpike with the injured Chesimard and dead Zayd. They were soon apprehended.

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible’s list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor

Text originally published October 3, 2025.

The federal government has signaled a massive new investment in Canada’s defence capacity — an overdue step toward securing the strength of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). This investment includes the rapid approval of major projects to modernize aging CAF infrastructure, like barracks and garages on Canadian Forces bases (CFBs), with increased spending to design, build, and maintain new facilities. Ahead of the fall budget, however, the government needs to ensure that this investment delivers real value and security for Canadians by ending its reliance on private contractors at the Department of National Defence (DND), and to reinvest instead in rebuilding the public service capacity.

Civilian defence workers are essential for the military readiness of the CAF. They maintain infrastructure, feed and support troops, provide emergency services, and ensure bases run safely and efficiently. Yet, these vital jobs have been steadily contracted out in recent years to private, for-profit firms. This has meant profiteering at the expense of Canada’s security, and a hollowed-out DND whose budget is spent on corporate contracts rather than personnel.

As a bottom line, the workers who deliver public services should be public servants.

On this episode of Follow the Money, Rod Campbell and Ebony Bennett discuss the lack of political will to properly protect the natural environment, a proposal for a 25% gas export tax to replace the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax, and new research showing that Adani cost Queenslanders hundreds of millions of dollars by selling coal at mates’ rates.

Strong environment laws stop new coal and gas. You can sign our petition calling on the Australian Government to genuinely strengthen Australia’s environment laws.

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

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

Show notes:

Can Albanese claim ‘success’ with Trump? Beyond the banter, the vague commitments should be viewed with scepticism by Emma Shortis, The Conversation (October 2025)

The leaves are falling without changing, like Congress.

They’re green like dollars instead of the standard gold. They don’t get the glorious dignity of a good-looking death. These are two-day delivery leaves, plucked from the branch by the invisible hand, shot down in the amazon prime of life.

I’m old enough to remember seasons. The way colorful leaves crunched under my feet: the satisfying sound of the reliable march of time. Autumn leaves scattered like crumpled drafts of a chapter near completion. They were absorbed into the soil, and in a few months’ time, earth’s story would begin anew.

Green leaves on the ground are empty pages. They did not get the chance to dazzle and die. They were shut down, like Congress.

BOMBSHELL: 1951-1970 Federal Reserve Chair Bill Martin Was a Committed Segregationist

 — Author: Nathan Tankus — Publication: Notes on the Crisis — Monday 27th October 2025

This is a Premium piece of Notes on the Crises. 

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Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook was born and raised in Milledgeville Georgia, about a 100 miles away from Atlanta. She also shares a birth year with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which, among other things, gave the federal government multiple tools to enforce the desegregation of public schools- including the denial of federal financial assistance. This is often referred to as “banning” racial segregation in public schools but Lisa Cook can attest to the fact that racial segregation and discrimination in Milledgeville Georgia’s public schools was alive and well during her early life, this legislation notwithstanding. The most dramatic anecdote in the public record about her experience at that time illustrates the messy reality:

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