Foreword: Stained Glass Woman remains on Substack because I, frankly, can’t afford any of the competing options that have even passable security. Because this newsletter is and will always be free and because of its size and traffic, functional hosting alternatives would cost into four digits.
‘Making the Good Society’ is a video series from the Broadbent Institute and Perspectives Journal that asks progressive leaders and thinkers about their vision for a good society that is humane, just, and democratic.
In this episode, Lee Caprio of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 353 explains how unions build sustainable careers—not just jobs—for thousands of workers. IBEW’s “learn as you earn” apprenticeship model ensures safety and skills training, while initiatives like the Pathways and Hammer Heads programs open doors for more women, Indigenous, racialized and newcomer workers to enter the trades.
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.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss housing affordability, how so many of Australia’s biggest companies manage to pay zero (0) corporate tax, and how Trump made solving the tax problem that much harder.
Historian Rashid Khalidi, author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine, joins host Chris Hedges to detail the dwindling academic freedom in American universities and society at large as Donald Trump’s grip on free speech tightens.
Khalidi notes that while the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism is an old tactic to stifle academic scrutiny of Israel, its current deployment is unprecedented. Today, professors are intimidated out of teaching about Israel and Palestine, entire Middle Eastern studies departments are threatened with receivership and federal funding is withheld from universities.
Loyalty can elevate or enslave. Placed in truth, it anchors. Placed in tribe, it distorts. Though I have known both, I abandoned the latter and embraced the former. That is why when I look at Ilhan Omar and Charlie Kirk, I see two distinct moral universes.
Charlie’s foundation was faith in Christ and country, in family and the free market. His faith was that America embodies true freedom and dignity because our country was founded on biblical principles—principles that demand that power be checked and the weak be protected.
Ilhan Omar’s foundation rests on three pillars: clan, Islamism, and leftism. Each demands loyalty not to principle but to faction. Each reduces life to a struggle for dominance.
I know Omar’s world. It is a place without law, where men with swords and guns decide the fate of neighbors, where girls are cut to mark them as pure, where bribes stand in for justice. These are not random misfortunes, but the dynamics of the system Omar embodies. It incentivizes and rewards absolute and unchecked power—even at the expense of life, limb, and property.
The Trump Administration’s approach to the government shutdown is aimed above all at recovering the unitary executive as envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. Article II’s vesting clause, the epitome of “short and sweet,” empowers the president to control the executive branch, as Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 70. Though the administrative state steadily seized the chief executive’s power throughout the 20th century, President Trump seems determined to wrest it back by reasserting his authority over the executive agencies under his purview.
In preparing for the shutdown, each agency created contingency plans for operating during a lapse in appropriations. These are required by law and managed under guidance from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to ensure that essential government functions continue even when Congress fails to pass funding.
Each shutdown plan outlines an agency’s core mission, identifies which functions are critical, and lists how many employees will keep working and how many will be furloughed. It also explains how the agency will communicate with staff, why certain programs are allowed to continue, and how operations will restart once funding is restored.
Update at 7:30 CST: There are now over 50 questions, so I’ve got to shut comments down to keep the Q & A at a reasonable length. Themes addressed by multiple people will get top priority. I hope to have the new article up by the end of the week. Thank you very much everyone!
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Hello subscribers (and future subscribers!) It’s time for a Q & A. For those new to this feature, here’s how it works:
1) To ask a question, join as a paying subscriber, and post your question in the comments section below:
Sarah Kendzior’s Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
2) I will answer as many questions as I can in a separate article. Sometimes I bundle questions to address common themes. Please keep questions brief and ask only one!
On this episode of Follow the Money, Matt Grudnoff and Ebony Bennett discuss the latest data from the Australian Taxation Office showing that 30 per cent of large corporations paid no company tax in 2023-24 – with the gas, coal, salmon and tech industries among the worst offenders.
Some years back during a conversation with Charles Murray about his justly praised book Coming Apart, Bill Kristol made perhaps the single most outrageous statement he has ever uttered in public. Murray’s book chronicled the decline in the traditional work ethic and other foundational values in the American lower classes, and Kristol suggested a solution. If the indigenous American lower classes are increasingly “decadent, lazy [and] spoiled,” Kristol said, “don’t you want to get new Americans in?”
The idea of replacing legacy Americans with immigrants is as distant from conservatism as one can get. The Americans described in Murray’s book are far more connected to American culture than any “new Americans” Kristol would like to see take their places. Given that, however, it is undeniable that there are significant problems with the white lower classes that need to be resolved.
Last week, the federal government “shut down” because the Senate could not get the required 60 votes to invoke cloture and pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. The CR had passed the House, was supported by a majority of the Senate, and would have been signed into law by President Trump. It was defeated, however, by a minority of senators (mostly Democrats) who refused to fund the government unless the Republicans would make concessions on some other matters.
This raises an oft-debated question: Should the Senate further limit the use of the filibuster, which per Senate rules requires a supermajority of 60 votes to proceed to a vote on most legislative items? The Senate has already disallowed filibusters in the case of presidential nominations to executive or judicial office. However, some have suggested going even further and eliminating the filibuster altogether.
These calls to remove the filibuster have typically come from Democrats. They have made this argument when they’ve controlled the Senate and have been frustrated by Republicans using the filibuster to impede their agenda. They’ve noted how some Southern senators sought to thwart the enactment of federal civil rights legislation through the use of the filibuster. More generally, they have emphasized the non-democratic character of the filibuster, which empowers a minority in the Senate to defeat legislation supported by the chamber’s majority.
On this episode of After America, Antoun Issa joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the prospects for a deal that did not include Palestinians in the negotiating process. They also discuss the role of the United States in the Middle East, how power works in foreign policy, and opening up space for a bigger discussion about foreign policy here in Australia.
This episode was recorded on Friday 3 October.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via Australia Institute Press.
Political Economy is a broad church. This aspect makes it challenging to teach. One wants to engage all students in the classroom, but the range of students’ interests can vary considerably. Moreover, they demand more in terms of engagement and practicality. It is not enough to recite material for rote learning. How does one fulfill the demand while maintaining integrity of the unit in terms of breadth and depth of theory and method? Political Economy at the University of Sydney has an additional challenge in that students and staff approach facets of the economy – a system of social provisioning, more generally – from different disciplines. Disciplines represented by staff include economics, political science, sociology, and history, among others.
Yes, one can flip the units so that the examples provided to support theory act to stimulate thinking about possible explanations. Then, one can proceed to discuss the relevant theories to solidify students’ understanding. This is a good start for engagement, but beyond flipping what can one do?
U.S. trade policy remains in flux. Nevertheless, important elements of the new policy regime are apparent in data through July. What stands out are the large differences in realized tariff rates by trading partner, ranging from less than 5 percent for Canada and Mexico to 15 percent for Japan and to 40 percent for China. This post shows that the bulk of cross-country differences in tariff rates is explained by two factors: the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement and differing sales shares in tariff-exempt categories.
At Wired, Laura Bullard writes that “Among the relatively few people associated with National Conservatism who do cite Schmitt openly in their own work are Thiel and Michael Anton, the essayist and sometime Trump administration official.”
We may leave to one side the extent to which I am “associated” with National Conservatism. I did not attend its last two conferences, having been invited and then disinvited in 2024 and not invited at all in 2025. I did sign its manifesto, an act I have come to regret for reasons Charles Kesler explains here.
But that is a quibble compared to the real whopper in the sentence quoted above. I have never, to the best of my knowledge—and I assume that I know my own oeuvre better than Bullard does—“cited” Carl Schmitt. A citation is a very specific thing: a quote or an idea attributed to an author that is typically accompanied by a footnote pointing to an exact source. Moreover, one may cite to signify approval or disapproval, or just to show that one is aware of the thing being cited. Bullard implies that my nonexistent citations of Schmitt signify approval. If she can show one instance of that in any of my writings, I promise to send her a set of steak knives. But I’m certain she can’t.
In Santa Fe, I have helped start a Speakers’ Corner project. We held our first session this past Saturday. Reprinted below, from the Indivisible Santa Fe website, is my diary. But first, click the image below for footage showing a sampling of speakers from the day.
In his opening salvo, the esteemed Scott Yenor righteously scrutinizes the travesty of single-sex education at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). Yenor lays bare the deleterious effects that forced sex integration has had on honor, cohesion, and the society into which graduates of the school march. What he emphasizes less, however, is how the Supreme Court’s decision in US v. Virginia fundamentally changed the nature of VMI’s military character, and the essential path to reclaiming same-sex spaces for military officer formation.
The most important part of Yenor’s essay is his proposal to create more VMIs that can force a legal and cultural reconsideration of issues involving sex in education and the military. This is a compelling recommendation, because responsibility lies with committed red state governors who have the authority to make bold moves to challenge existing institutions and create alternative ones.
The governor of West Virginia could establish a military academy with higher education credentials and, like VMI does today, endow a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program at the school to serve as a pipeline into the military’s officer ranks. The character of this new service academy must be ironclad, inculcate a warrior ethos, and be set apart from the civil society that its graduates will pledge their lives to defend.
The Royal Commission into Robodebt recommended making cabinet documents easier to access under FOI laws, finding the current system thwarted investigations into the scheme.
The Prime Minister himself described Robodebt as a “gross betrayal and human tragedy”, yet his government plans to make cabinet documents harder to access.
This is in direct defiance of the Robodebt Royal Commission’s recommendation to make cabinet documents available for public scrutiny.
“If cabinet documents had been public, the unlawful and cruel Robodebt scheme could have been exposed and prevented. For that reason, the Robodebt Royal Commission recommended making cabinet documents available under FOI,” said Bill Browne, Director of the Australia Institute’s Democracy & Accountability Program.
“The Albanese government wants to make documents even harder to access, in defiance of the Royal Commission, increasing the risk the next Robodebt will happen in secret.”
“The over-use of the cabinet document exemption and other problems with the FOI system are critical reasons why Robodebt was allowed to continue with impunity for so long,” said Maria O’Sullivan, Associate Professor at Deakin Law School.
“The proposed changes to the FOI Act will actually expand the cabinet exemption even further.”
The new research also reveals that it is government inefficiency, not the number of requests, behind the growing cost of the FOI system.
An image went mega-viral on multiple platforms last week, of a very young man with this text superimposed: “The lion does not concern himself with his noticeable memory loss, brain fog and slight cognitive decline.” The original Tiktok garnered 1.4 million likes over the course of the next several days, and a screenshot of the Tiktok reposted on X (formerly twitter) has so far been liked 287k times.
A sampling of comments:
The Gauntlet is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
“slight?”
“ok genuinely what is the cause of this why is it happening to everyone Help”
“what could this be? I have this and I’m 19-20”
“the brain fog’s so bad, the lion can’t even bring himself to care about anything”
Freedom of speech on university campuses has collapsed. Left-leaning college administrators, faculty, and students have been silencing conservative voices, and conservative students are increasingly adopting the Left’s errant ways. The Trump Administration has launched a strong counterattack that also seems poised to suppress speech.
The First Amendment’s free speech guarantees are at the core of our liberties. As Justice Louis Brandeis explained in Whitney v. California(1927), “If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” Though set out in a concurring opinion, Justice Brandeis’s counter-speech doctrine has become the bedrock of free speech jurisprudence. In the milestone First Amendment case of United States v. Alvarez (2012), Justice Anthony Kennedy cited Justice Brandeis, opining, “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society. The response to the unreasoned is the rational; to the uninformed, the enlightened; to the straight-out lie, the simple truth.”
“Angelo.” With no surname necessary, the mere mention put Washington’s late-Cold War intelligence establishment on edge. Their tormenter was but a thirtysomething staffer on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Contrarily, to the Cold Warriors sacrificing their all to defend the nation from Communist subversion and nuclear-missile threats, that single name, like a messenger from heaven, brought comfort and joy.
Angelo Codevilla knew and understood that the country that took him in as a boy would preserve itself and its Founding principles by having the most capable intelligence and counterintelligence services the world had ever seen. “Most capable” didn’t mean the largest, or the most lavishly funded, or supplied with the most high-tech gear. It meant having the most creative, most principled, most virtuous, and wisest people doing the job.
Angelo watched the United States’ intelligence apparatus deteriorate. Visiting CIA headquarters over the years, he passed the stone inscription that the late and great CIA director Allen Dulles placed as what he intended as a permanent greeting: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free”—the Gospel According to John. In the last year of his life, Angelo saw the videos of CIA corridors festooned with mind-numbing murals and telescreens about diversity, equity, and inclusion. To Angelo Codevilla, who spoke Latin, DEI meant “of God.” A new god, a false one, possesses the American intelligence community today.
Speech by Michele Bullock, Governor at the joint workshop hosted by the Bank for International Settlements, the Institute of International Finance, and the RBA.
Someone did, however, in that very same talkback segment. Phyllis rang in to say she did want to complain, because she wanted to retire and downsize, but property prices were growing so fast that she was worried about buying and selling in the same market – even if it was a smaller property.
Howard told her she was wrong.
“You’re not actually complaining. What you’re really saying is the value of a house hasn’t gone up enough,” he said.
Phyllis was having none of it: “No, no, no. I disagree. I think that it is ridiculous that the inflation of the housing prices … what about our grandchildren?”
Phyllis was right. Because while she complained, in late 2003, about people having to spend “$500,000 … on some broken-down old dump”, the median house price for her grandchildren – assuming they live in Queensland – is now $977,300.
The government knew house prices were a problem then, and it knows they are a problem now.
And just like Howard, who was told by the Productivity Commission in 2004 – in a briefing prepared for his cabinet – that an urgent review of his capital gains tax changes was needed to arrest the jumps in the housing market, every single government has only made short-term changes that ultimately make the situation worse, rather than get to the root cause. And they are STILL doing it.
In 2003 Howard blamed low interest rates for rising house prices, as people could afford to borrow more.
Santos Limited has racked up a 10th straight year of zero corporate tax payments from a total of nearly $47 billion in sales.
Darwin’s Ichthys LNG Pty Ltd paid zero corporate tax for the 6th year running, from a total of $43 billion in sales.
Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) revenue has hit a 3-year low, down to $1.5 billion from a peak of $2.0 billion in 2021-22.
“The new tax data shows, yet again, that big gas is taking the piss out of Australians,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.
“It beggars belief that a company like Santos can spend a decade selling almost $50 billion worth of gas and not pay a cent of tax on it.
“Japanese ambassadors and executives see fit to lecture Australia on energy and tax policy, while Japanese entities like Ichthys pay zero company tax and zero PRRT.
“PRRT revenue was lower in the latest year of data (2023-24) even though production and prices were high and a Labor government had been in power for over a year.
“Australia Institute research shows that over the 10 years to 2023-24, nurses paid $7 billion more in tax than did the oil and gas companies. How’s that fair?
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.
Over the past six months, the S&P 500 has staged an incredible rally—one that was very much in line with what my models had projected earlier this year. Back at the start of 2025, following the tariff tantrum and the heavy selloff, we flagged the market’s move as a clear mispricing. Flows were simply too strong to justify the decline, and sure enough, the rebound has been powerful.
But as we head into October, the winds that fueled this rally are beginning to shift. What were tailwinds over the summer are now turning into headwinds. The key message I want to make clear is this: I believe we’re at an inflection point, and volatility is likely to spike in the near term. The rally looks exhausted, and a breather—possibly a sharp one—is overdue.
The First Domino: Treasury Flows and the Tax Drain
The most important factor right now comes down to fiscal flows. The daily Treasury statement is, in many ways, the first mover of macroeconomic outcomes.
Each September, we see a major corporate tax drain. This year, starting around September 11th, roughly $120 billion was pulled out of the private sector over a two-week period. On its own, that may not change the long-term trajectory of the economy—but in the short run, it significantly pressures the balance sheet capacity of the financial sector.
On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss whether Emirati supermarket chain Lulu will take on Colesworth, the Reserve Bank’s decision to keep rates on hold, Trump’s unworkable tariffs on foreign films, and how the government could actually address the housing crisis.
Use the code ‘podcast’ to get 50% off tickets to the Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit. Featuring Hon Steven Miles MP, Senator Larissa Waters, Senator David Pocock, Dr Kate Chaney MP, Greg Jericho and more, the Summit is on Wednesday 29 October at Parliament House in Canberra. Discount available for Dollars & Sense listeners while stocks last.
Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available now via the Australia Institute website.
This discussion was recorded on Thursday 2 October 2025.
Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut
Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek
Sex-specific education is needed to preserve America’s self-governing republic. Though many are only now rediscovering single-sex public schooling, there is still space for it to exist within the framework established by the Supreme Court’s 1996 United States v. Virginia decision, as I argue in a just-released Provocation for the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life. In that decision, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ruled for the 7-1 majority that the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), a public school, must admit women.
The Bush Administration sued VMI in the early 1990s, alleging that Virginia’s single-sex military school violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Clinton Administration continued the case, and Virginia had to tailor its defense to the reigning civil rights framework. Since VMI’s discriminatory practices faced “intermediate scrutiny” from the courts, Virginia had to prove that its admissions policies supported practices that served important but gender-neutral educational goals.
Virginia asserted that men especially benefit from and are attracted to VMI’s distinctives, including its Marine-style, in-your-face “adversative” training methods, its lack of privacy, its egalitarian grooming and uniform standards, and its rigorous, stoical honor code.
Media release number 2025-29: The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) today released its October 2025 Financial Stability Review, providing a comprehensive assessment of the health and resilience of Australia's financial system.
The list has been compiled by Dr Frank Yuan, Postdoctoral Fellow at The Australia Institute, who insists China is far less mysterious and scary than most Australians might think.
In fact, he says, beyond daily news references to China’s economic and military power, there are countless stories of successful Chinese business tycoons, entertainers, journalists, academics and government officials – many with deep connections to the west.
There’s the tech mogul who flew too close to the sun, the “wolf warrior” journalist who once described Australia as “chewed gum stuck on China’s boot” and the global pop star who could teach Taylor Swift a thing or two.
The paper – Today’s China in Seven Life Stories – urges Australian to get to know the woman behind the face on the label of their favourite chili sauce, the energy tsar helping transform China into a renewable energy superpower and the theoretician who’s shaped China’s foreign outlook under three Presidents.
“China is a surprisingly cosmopolitan society. It is full of countless rags-to-riches stories as part of the astounding economic development it has experienced since the 1980s,” said Dr Frank Yuan.
“Many Chinese elites have not only visited western countries, but even educational or professional connections with them. Increasingly, popular culture in China is also becoming part of the globalised pop culture.
On this episode of Follow the Money, Dr Emma Shortis and Glenn Connley discuss Anthony Albanese’s major diplomatic tour, the US Defense Secretary’s concerning warning to his top brass, and why the Trump-Netanyahu peace plan seems “doomed to fail”.
You can sign our petition calling on the Australian Government to launch a parliamentary inquiry into AUKUS.
I slunk into the house, body bloodied and T-shirt torn, failing to go unnoticed. My son looked up from his video game of bedraggled freaks. The real deal had arrived.
“What happened?”
“Nothing,” I muttered, peeling a bandage from my arm. Deep cut shaped like a scythe or a smile, two dark blue steady growing bruises above.
“Bruh Mama,” my son said with concern.
Bruh Mama is my name. It is a Gen Z honorific, like Friar Tuck.
“That’s not nothing. What’d you do?”
“Went to the lake.”
“What happened at the lake?”
“You don’t want to know,” I said. “You’ll lose all respect for me.”
“Um…” he said, firing teenage ellipses like bullets, and I said, “Hey!”
“Respect, Bruh Mama,” my son said solemnly. “I respect you.” Grains of sand fell from my hair like little lost pieces of dignity.
“OK, I’ll tell you,” I said. “A giant flying carp hit me in the face and knocked me half out of my kayak into a fallen tree which trapped me with branches like claws and as soon as I broke loose, the goddamn carp flew back and smacked me again.”
“Now that everyone has seen the blatant white Christian nationalism on display at the Kirk memorial/political rally, here are some resources to help you learn more and resist more effectively.” This sentence was posted on X by Jemar Tisby, a protégé of the huckster Ibram X. Kendi. Tisby followed up that observation by helpfully pointing people to his own book, Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity with Racism, as a manual to combat the grave evils they had just witnessed in State Farm Stadium.
That Tisby would think to write and then publish this sentiment about Charlie Kirk’s memorial service shows the depths to which the Left has sunk. They are categorically rejecting the bonds of civic friendship that are necessary to keep our country whole. Instead of centering “whiteness,” they center race-based narcissism, envy, and pride, the modern Left’s unholy trinity.
Audited accounts show that the ANU generated a $90 million surplus in 2024 and increased the value of its net assets.
However, the ANU’s leadership declared an ‘underlying operating deficit’ of $142.5 million in 2024.
This was by dismissing a lot of the revenue items recognised by the Auditor.
Analysis shows that to get from the audited surplus of $89.9 million to an unaudited deficit of $142.5 million, $232.4 million revenue has been left unaccounted for.
“If an organisation – as opposed to its auditors – chooses to ignore nearly one quarter of a billion dollars in revenue then the organisation’s financial result will appear one quarter of a billion dollars worse,” said Dr Richard Denniss, co-CEO of The Australia Institute.
“Our paper outlines items the auditor included, and that the ANU leadership rejected. It shows any argument that the ANU is in an unhealthy financial position is flimsy.
“If we believe the auditor, there is no crisis at the ANU.
“To be clear, as a government owned, not-for-profit entity, the ANU is under no pressure to maximise its profits so that it can maximise dividends paid to shareholders.
“On the contrary, when the ANU made a surplus of $89.9 million in 2024 it did so by spending less money on its students, staff and community than it received.
Digital currencies have grown rapidly in recent years. In July 2025, Congress passed the “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act” (GENIUS) Act, establishing the first comprehensive federal framework governing the issuance of stablecoins. In this post, we place stablecoins in a historical perspective by comparing them to national bank notes, a form of privately issued money that circulated in the United States from 1863 through 1935.
Canadians widely recognize the value of a stable power grid: households and industries need a growing base load energy system that can withstand the pressure of increasing electrification in the face of decarbonization, and nuclear power must be part of the equation. Without it, Canadians would struggle to keep the lights on or charge their electric cars and would need fossil fuels to keep the grid running. The importance of nuclear power was recognized and made clear at the 2025 Ontario NDP Convention, where labour unions, environmental activists, First Nations delegates, and the ONDP caucus came together to pass a modernized nuclear energy policy resolution. The resolution backed low emissions electricity, including hydro, renewables, and made-in-Canada nuclear, while reaffirming support for public ownership of energy. The Saskatchewan NDP is now looking to explore opportunities for building the province’s energy future, with a particular focus on advancements in nuclear energy to replace coal energy.
