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The results of the midterm elections are clear; their meaning is not. The blue tsunami apparently has not budged either of the dominant intellectual factions on the Right. The so-called “doomers” see fresh support for their conviction that the republic is sliding more or less inexorably into ruin. The more conventional Old Guard, who find such talk alarming, continue to insist that “you win some, you lose some,” and that Republicans will live to fight another day.

What makes the current political scene so perplexing is that both sides can point to certain undeniable facts to support their position. The United States is, for now, neither all one thing nor all the other. James Madison’s Constitution, though beaten and bruised, is still functioning, according to the conventionalists. American politics remains fundamentally “normal.” In reply, the pessimistic wing accuses the “normie-cons” of naivete and complacency. The original Constitution, they argue, has by now been almost entirely pushed aside by a new, second Constitution, based on a new understanding of justice and human nature, and fanatically devoted to implementing the ideological Left’s agenda.

Social researcher, policy expert and founding Director of Per Capita’s Centre for Equitable Housing, Matt Lloyd Cape, joined us for our October 2026 John Cain Lunch to discuss his new book, “Our Place: How to Solve the Housing Crisis and Rebuild the Australian Dream.” Watch the recording below.

Australia has faced a housing crisis before – and solved it. We can do it again.

In Our Place, leading policy expert Matt Lloyd-Cape cuts through the noise, showing exactly how our housing system broke. Drawing on the latest research, he reveals that although social housing tenants, renters and first-home buyers are worst affected, the whole of society suffers in a housing crisis. From the rise of far-right politics to intergenerational inequality, the housing crisis is reshaping the nation.

To solve the crisis, Lloyd-Cape argues, we need to think bigger – much bigger. Our Place shows how a bold national housing plan could:

• End homelessness by 2045
• Provide the next generation with appropriate rental standards and an affordable path to home ownership
• Create thriving urban centres away from the capital cities
• Place housing at the heart of an ambitious plan for a fairer and more prosperous Australia.

The tools are within reach. What’s missing are leaders willing to rethink the economic and political assumptions that got us here.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

The greatest injustices in the world are often masked in volumes of complex and incomprehensible legal language that are not accessible to the general public. The genocide of Palestinians in Gaza is one horrific example of how the world’s highest legal institutions appear to have gone through the motions of upholding international law, but in reality, are riddled with corruption and political ambition that have enabled the Zionist entity to commit ongoing war crimes and ethnic cleansing.

National housing campaign Everybody’s Home said the federal government must build public and community housing at scale and work with states to limit rent increases, as new analysis reveals essential workers are locked out of almost all rentals in the private market.

The Rental Affordability Snapshot: Essential Workers report, released by Anglicare Australia, found 10 of 16 essential occupations can afford fewer than 1% of rental listings, including cleaners (0.8%), hospitality workers (0.7%) and retail workers (0.9%).

Nurses could afford just 1.1% of rental listings and aged care workers 1.7%. The report found that rents rose 7.4% over the past year while wages rose just 3.2%.

Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said the government must step in and invest in homes working people can afford, because pay rises alone won’t help the rental crisis.

“It’s alarming that nurses, cleaners, aged care workers and the many others who keep our communities moving can barely find a single rental in the country they can afford,” Ms Azizie said.

“Rents are rising more than twice as fast as wages and even if they get a pay rise, these full-time workers are working harder every year just to watch rental affordability slip away.

Kevin Portteus’s essay, “Congress and the Collapse of Constitutional Republicanism in America,” is nominally a meditation on congressional dysfunction. But it’s much more than that. He offers a deep reflection on the administrative state and the breakdown of our institutions under its weight.

Portteus begins by accurately noting that Congress’s favorite activity is not legislating. Instead, it follows the other two branches of the federal government in governing by decidedly extra-constitutional means, including executive orders and actions, administrative rulemaking, and judicial meddling. As he says, “Through both positive action conferring legislative power on others, and the failure to address important issues through legislation, legislative power has steadily passed from its constitutionally-designated home to other actors.” Congress has voluntarily ceded its own authority. So much for James Madison’s argument in Federalist 51 that ambition will counteract ambition.

Legally speaking, any congressional delegation of power that articulates an “intelligible principle”—that is to say, anything that is not absurd—tends to be upheld by the courts. Portteus puts it forcefully: “As it is, there isn’t much reason for Congress to exist. They don’t legislate in the constitutional sense. [And] they lack the independence and expertise to serve as legislators in the Progressive sense.”

Imagine that there is a tendency to talk about animals in terms of a binary: those that live on land, and those that live in water. There are obviously problems with that—what about amphibians? The response might be that we can make the model more accurate by making it a continuum rather than a binary. So, we have tortoises at one end and whales at the other and amphibians would be in the middle. But, what about birds? What about animals that live on things that float in the water?

Now that, after yesterday’s election, I have your attention…

Democratic candidates won races in Republican strongholds, flipping Senate seats in Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, and even Texas. On a night shaping up as a Democratic romp, President Trump told The New York Times that he would accept the election results.

Per Grok, say hello to these DSA winners, whose number also includes Troy Jackson, who unseated Senator Susan Collins in Maine.

• Claire Valdez (NY-07, Brooklyn/Queens area; open seat formerly held by retiring Representative Nydia Velázquez)
• Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13, Upper Manhattan/Bronx; defeated incumbent Adriano Espaillat in the primary)
• Melat Kiros (CO-01, Denver area; defeated longtime incumbent Diana DeGette in the primary)
• Chris Rabb (PA-03, Philadelphia)
• Donavan McKinney (MI-13, Detroit area; defeated incumbent Shri Thanedar in the primary)

Incumbents who won reelection: