This episode was recorded live on Thursday 4 June.

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: Karina Lester, Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman and International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Australia Ambassador

Guest: Leanne Minshull, co-Chief Executive Officer, the Australia Institute // @leanneminshull

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

Host: Angus Blackman, Executive Producer, the Australia Institute // @angusrb

Show notes:

An independent public inquiry into the AUKUS security partnership

ICAN Australia

Polling – Australia, the US and Iran War, the Australia Institute (May 2026)

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.

Market Update Preview

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 […]

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

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.

Key findings

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.

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

Show notes:

Australia’s GDP figures are meaningless when the boom in datacentres means destroying jobs and the climate by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (May 2026)

Clouded Future: Managing the risks of the data centre boom, Climate Council (June 2026)

Theme music: Blue Dot Sessions

The next time one hears of virtue, honor, and “the profession of arms” in the U.S. military, one should ask whether those words still mean anything. Consider a military in which the highest flag ranks sell influence for future employment, commanders conspire to steal optics before deployment, soldiers loot their own supply rooms, chiefs sell night-vision devices online, officers defraud grieving families, and bureaucrats steal money meant for military children. Petty theft below, influence peddling above, and a thick frosting of platitudes about honor everywhere.

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

It’s the third of June, another sleepy dusty Delta day. Of course I’m republishing this! — SK

* * *

It was the 30^th 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.

Trump’s Iranian Nightmare - Read by Eunice Wong

 — Author: Chris Hedges — Tuesday 2nd June 2026

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

Text originally published May 14, 2026.

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Discussing The Rise of the Global South on The Jimmy Dore Show

 — Author: Chris Hedges — Tuesday 2nd June 2026

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Struggling Regional Small Businesses Deeply Pessimistic About 2026 Prospects

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — Tuesday 2nd June 2026

Will Aarons and Asani Sarkar

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Living the Declaration: The Next 250 Years

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Tuesday 2nd June 2026

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

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Nashville's Deepening Affordability Crisis

 — Author: Betsy Phillips — Monday 1st June 2026

Opinion: A grocery tax cut is swell, but the real problem is that the people who make Nashville great aren’t earning enough money to live here

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As Trump blusters over Iran, prospects for real peace slip further away

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Monday 1st June 2026

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.

This episode was recorded on Monday 1 June.

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

Host: Angus Blackman, Executive Producer, the Australia Institute // @angusrb

Show notes:

Shorter America: The Iran clown show continues; Trump threatens to bomb an ally (again); Trump doesn’t care by Emma Shortis, The Point (May 2026)

Democrats Can’t Avoid a Reckoning with Gaza by Matt Duss, The Nation (May 2026)

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Feeding the Fraudsters

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Monday 1st June 2026

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.

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Tyranny or Revolution

 — Author: Chris Hedges — Monday 1st June 2026

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America Is Going Backwards - and Falling Apart

 — Author: Thomas Zimmer — Monday 1st June 2026

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Remote Work Leaves Younger Workers Sidelined

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — Monday 1st June 2026

Natalia Emanuel, Emma Harrington, and Amanda Pallais

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Weaving and Grieving

 — Author: Sarah Kendzior — Monday 1st June 2026

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!

If you can afford to become a paying subscriber to this newsletter, please consider it. It keeps my articles open to all and feeds my family of four! You also get the perk of submitting a question for the next Q & A:

Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The recollections of a Cold War Kid

 — Publication: Progress in Political Economy — Monday 1st June 2026

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.

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How Australian Newspapers Restricted Reporting on Israel’s Crimes in Gaza, and the Hind Rajab Blackout Case Study

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Sunday 31st May 2026

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.

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Whose ABC? How Australia’s Public Broadcaster Failed Its Legal Obligations During Genocide

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Sunday 31st May 2026

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.

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Counterweight: How Australian Media Crushed Public Pressure to Prevent Genocide

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Sunday 31st May 2026

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.

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Anti-Palestine Bias in The Australian: Dehumanisation and Erasure as Editorial Policy

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Sunday 31st May 2026

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.

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Gasoline isn't the only expensive gas

 — Organisation: Climate Town — Friday 29th May 2026

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How the Declaration Can Unite a Divided Nation

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Friday 29th May 2026

We know we live in serious times because the Declaration of Independence itself is controversial. Its meaning is contested or repudiated, and its authors are condemned. This very meeting is criticized as an attempt to turn America into a Christian nation. The Declaration says that under the laws of nature and nature’s God, no human being may rule another without his consent. In this respect, it is just like the New Testament, which makes each of us responsible for his own salvation.

Most people long for our divisions to be healed. How can that happen? The answer is found in the unsurpassed Second Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln. You should go tonight if you can, at night when it’s quiet, to the Lincoln Memorial. Stand facing Lincoln. Very beautiful. Look to your left: the Gettysburg Address, the full text. Look to your right: this Second Inaugural about which I’m speaking. It is a poem and a prayer. It says that the story of America is unique and beautiful. The beauty is offset by tragedy, and we see the beauty next to the tragedy—and see that the beauty is higher.

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Against the Imperial Press

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Friday 29th May 2026

Writing in 1833, Justice Joseph Story, one of the greatest jurists of the early republic, warned against a dangerously exaggerated conception of the freedom of the press. “There is,” Story observed in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, “a good deal of loose reasoning on the subject of the liberty of the press, as if its inviolability were constitutionally such, that, like the king of England, it could do no wrong, and was free from every inquiry, and afforded a sanctuary for every abuse; that, in short, it implied a despotic sovereignty to do every sort of wrong, without the slightest accountability to private or public justice.” This idea, Story held, “is too extravagant to be held by any sound constitutional lawyer.”

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Where is our public inquiry on AUKUS? | Between the Lines

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Friday 29th May 2026

The Wrap with Matt Grudnoff

What we know at The Australia Institute is that change is difficult and hard fought. We have made real progress with Labor supporting these reforms to capital gains tax, negative gearing, and trusts.

But the change hasn’t passed the parliament yet, and vested interests are going to continue to push the Labor Government to water down or scrap these important reforms.

I have covered over a dozen Federal Budgets, and this is the first time I have felt optimistic that housing affordability will get better not worse. Young people deserve to be able to buy a home of their own and have the security that comes with that.

Let’s not let them down.

Photo: AAP Image/Jason O’Brien

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Australians told to take the bus as mining diesel use soars

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Friday 29th May 2026

The report, published by The Australia Institute today, shows that mining companies use a quarter of the diesel in Australia, enough to fill every big ute in Australia 30 times, 3.4 times more than all agriculture, farming and forestry.

Key points:

• Diesel use in mining has tripled in the last 20 years and is expected to increase into the future.
• Recent reports on BHP shelving plans to electrify its Pilbara mining fleet highlight how slow the mining industry has been to reduce its diesel use.
• Mining companies have little incentive to electrify because their diesel use is subsidised by the Fuel Tax Credits Scheme and they can use unlimited carbon offsets to comply with environmental requirements.
• The Fuel Tax Credits Scheme costs taxpayers over $10 billion per year.

“Australians are being told to catch the bus in the name of fuel security, while the mining industry uses ever more diesel,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“Leaked documents from BHP show that the company is in no hurry to switch to electric equipment.

“Miners like BHP are happy to keep using subsidised diesel while the rest of Australia goes through a fuel security crisis.

“The Albanese Government is making this worse, not better.

“The government failed to reduce mining diesel subsidies in the budget, despite being urged to do so by the ACTU, social service agencies and even by a mining company, Fortescue.

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Where Next After the Budget?

 — Organisation: Per Capita — Friday 29th May 2026

By Lucas Lewit-Mendes and Dr Wesa Chau

 

What’s next after the budget

This month’s federal budget included three major tax changes – cutting back tax concessions for negative gearing, capital gains tax, and trust distributions. Some of this revenue will be returned with a $250 tax offset for working Australians, providing a much-needed boost to households on lower incomes. Disappointingly, however, income support payments such as JobSeeker and Commonwealth Rent Assistance were left untouched despite them being outpaced by inflation.

This insight piece focuses on whether the remainder of Labor’s term in government is the right time for even more ambitious tax reform.

How substantial were the budget changes?

The capital gains tax (CGT), negative gearing, and trust distribution tax changes are significant reforms.

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