Happy Sunday. Hope and I returned from Sri Lanka this weekend and are spending Sunday afternoon steeling ourselves for the final two-week push of the school year.

I.

Earlier this week I saw reports about the changes that Google is forcing upon its users, further burying links, and prioritizing their (often factually dubious) AI summaries in results. I thought about writing an article making the case for readers to stop using Google Search. 

But then I realized I wrote that piece in June of 2025. 

This morning, I read about the police riots happening at Delany Hall, a federal immigration detention center in Newark. At Delaney Hall, detainees are on hunger strike against abysmal conditions, reportedly including beatings by guards, maggots in their food, and medical neglect. One person being detained said the only medicine being offered to people is Tylenol. 

The hunger strike at the detention center has drawn protesters who have been violently attacked by ICE agents. Earlier this week US Senator Andy Kim was pepper sprayed by ICE agents outside the facility. After visiting the detention center, Kim’s seatmate Senator Cory Booker posted the following:  

Today I visited Delaney Hall as part of my congressional oversight duties, meeting with both those who run the facility and privately with people being held there. After seeing who is being held and the conditions under which they’re detained, I believe most Americans would agree that this facility is a moral stain on our community. In fact, the majority of the people we encountered have NO criminal charges or the kind of violence or criminality that Donald Trump said he was going to be focusing his attention on. 

This is unacceptable to me.

Delaney Hall is operated by the Geo Group, who also operate the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, a topic in the prior newsletter. 

Instead of facing ICE agents, protesters outside Delany Hall on Saturday found themselves facing New Jersey State Police, sent by the governor. In essence, State Police under the command of a Democratic governor are attacking protesters who are standing in solidarity with people on a hunger strike inside an American concentration camp. I cannot think of a better metaphor for the decrepit state of American liberalism.

We are seeing all the usual tropes. The words of law enforcement public information officers make up 90 percent of the reporting. Police attacks on protesters are described as "clashes," as though the two sides are engaged in some sort of equal contest. Journalists are being assaulted on camera by police, and the anchors back in the studio refuse to call a spade a spade and accurately describe what viewers are watching happen in real time.

None of this is new. 

I debated writing today about how police escalation produces the kind of unrest we’re seeing in Newark. But then I realized I wrote that piece also in June of 2025.

Everywhere I look feels like the movie Groundhog Day.

II.

One of the books that helped shape my worldview on US politics, and probably contributed to my political radicalization, is War Is a Racket by Smedley Butler. Butler was one of the most decorated Marines in American history, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient who spent more than three decades fighting in America's overseas wars. By the time he retired, he had come to believe that many of the wars and military actions he participated in had less to do with national defense than with advancing the interests of wealthy individuals and corporations.

Published in 1935, it is short, angry, and remarkably readable. Butler's central argument is right there in the title: war is often presented to the public as a matter of patriotism, security, or principle, while in reality a small number of political and economic elites reap enormous profits and ordinary people bear the costs. He argues that soldiers do the fighting, taxpayers foot the bill, and corporate interests cash the checks.

I think about that book a lot, more so lately. 

Today is the 92nd day of the headass US war on Iran.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 Iranian people have died in the war. The death toll in Lebanon has crossed 3,300 people according to health officials in Beirut.  

The war is a functional stalemate. 

The US is unable to accomplish its strategic goals and the Iranian regime is not going anywhere. Both of these have been apparent since March. As has the fact that whatever deal the President ultimately accepts will be worse than the JCPOA he withdrew from in 2018. 

In 2023, Trump criticized Joe Biden for unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian assets. Yet the most recent negotiations with Iran, that he walked away from under pressure from right-wing media, included up to $300 billion in payments that are functionally war reparations. In every way, what the US will get is worse than the pre-war status quo.

While we were in Sri Lanka, we saw long queues of scooters and tuk-tuks waiting for petrol. In the US, $6 gasoline is now the norm. And according to reporting in The National, people in Iran are increasingly shifting toward carbohydrate-heavy diets as soaring food prices push protein out of reach under the pressure of war and inflation.

None of this needed to happen—none of it was inevitable. We're all being held hostage by one man and the war he can’t admit he’s lost. 

The largest obstacle to peace in the region and resolving the conflict is hubris.

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This week I will have author Jordan Harper back on the podcast to talk about his newest book A Violent Masterpiece. If you have questions you’d like me to throw his way, feel free to shoot me an email.