From the article -- Do compulsory education and government-school funding violate the U.S. Constitution and the free-speech rights of parents as enshrined in the First Amendment? A Nebraska court is considering that very question right now. The implications could be far-reaching.
A pair of Lincoln families have finally put into a courtroom what Columbia Law School Professor Philip Hamburger has been arguing for years: the government-school monopoly is not merely a bad policy. It is an unconstitutional machine for substituting the government’s speech for the speech of parents.
On August 13, as children across Nebraska headed back to class, the New Civil Liberties Alliance filed Jacobsen v. Spellerberg in Lancaster County District Court. Plaintiffs Justin Jacobsen and Timothy and Joanna Menter are challenging the state’s combination of compulsory schooling and public-school-only funding.
Represented by the organization Hamburger founded, they contend that Nebraska abridges their First Amendment right to educate their own children.
2) “Anyone Who Knows The History Of Islam And The West Knows This Doesn’t End Well” (Erick Stakelbeck, Harbinger’s Daily)
From the article -- They say that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. We’re seeing this in real time in 2026 when it comes to the rise of Islam in the West.
Muslim populations in Europe, Canada, Australia, and right here in the United States are growing at a rapid clip—so is the building of mosques. What makes this mass immigration so unprecedented is that these new Muslim arrivals have been welcomed in by their host countries. Despite approximately 1,400 years of confrontation between Islam and the West and jihad after jihad launched against non-Muslims, today’s so-called Western leaders apparently think this time will be different.
If you understand Islamic history, you know how dangerously wrong they are.
The armies of Islam roared out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century. They violently conquered much of the known world, from the Middle East and North Africa to South Asia and swaths of Europe. They drove as far as central France before being turned back and reached the gates of Vienna twice.
Rome was sacked by Muslim armies. Sicily, Hungary, Greece, and the Balkans all came under Islamic control. The crown jewel of Islam’s European conquests was Spain, which was ruled by Muslims for nearly 800 years before they were finally expelled in 1492.
3) “Who Has Been Driving That Big Rig Looming Over You on the Highway?” (Eileen J. O’Connor, American Greatness)
From the article -- How surprised were you to learn that the person behind the wheel of that 80,000-pound tractor-trailer towering over you at a high rate of speed on the highway might be an illegal alien who neither reads nor speaks nor understands English, including rules of the road and street signs? You probably figured that someone operating that enormous, powerful, potentially dangerous, and important segment of the transportation industry has been trained in accordance with standards set by a government agency, and that a government official has verified that to be the case.
Only after social media began featuring videos of the carnage caused by foreign nationals who clearly had no business operating big rigs did the public awaken to the fact that laws intended to promote highway safety were either ineffective or not enforced or both.
How has this happened? The short answer is four levels of complete and utter government failure:
-- the complete and utter refusal of many states to comply with federal law;
-- the complete and utter failure of the responsible federal agency to detect and deal with that refusal and impose the penalties the law provides;
-- the complete and utter failure of the relevant agency’s Inspector General to detect the agency’s failure;
-- the complete and utter absence of Congressional oversight.
More detailed answers can be found in an August 5, 2026 investigative report by FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. It is titled License to Kill: Uncovering the Anti-Borders Takeover of the National CDL Program.
Related articles – “Trump admin shuts down 270 driving schools in fraud crackdown: The administration shut down hundreds of driving schools for granting licenses to illegal immigrants” (Anders Hagstrom, Fox Business)...“Sean Duffy says nearly 300 truck driving schools have been shut down nationwide” (Rubin Report staff)
4) “The Jason Arday Scandal Proves Woke Isn’t Over” (Helen Andrews, American Mind)
From the article -- Optimists have lately claimed that wokeness was a fad that has gone out of style. To their credit, there has been evidence to support this. “Woke 1 was crazy,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in August on ABC News. “Rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric we would use today.” Progressivism’s biggest champions seem eager to distance themselves from its recent excesses.
But the Jason Arday scandal shows that wokeness is not over, not by a long shot. The fact that Arday held a well-paid position at one of the world’s most prestigious universities is a telling sign that wokeness is alive and well.
More telling still is that powerful and otherwise seemingly intelligent people, such as the autism specialist Simon Baron-Cohen, have leaped to defend Arday. It would have been easy for people on the Left to acknowledge his blatant fraud and dismiss him as an isolated case whose offenses have no bearing on the broader issue of DEI in higher education. They did not.
The lesson for the Right is that there is much more work to do to dismantle wokeness, and it will not simply be a matter of doing more of what we have been doing so far. The power centers of wokeness are not just holdouts we haven’t gotten around to eliminating yet. They are strongholds that have been impervious to our tactics.
5) “The Exclusivity of the Cross” (Franklin Graham, Decision)
From the article -- In July 28, I had the privilege of proclaiming the eternal promises of the Gospel at Washington National Cathedral during the memorial service for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham.
The senior statesman from South Carolina, who died unexpectedly on July 11 from an aortic tear, was remembered as a tireless advocate for faith and freedom and a defender of the U.S. Constitution and Israel. I was glad to hear his longtime pastor at Corinth Baptist Church in Seneca, South Carolina, share about the late senator’s profession of faith in Jesus as his Savior and Lord.
I stood in the same church where my father preached some 25 years ago following the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks on our homeland. I said that for those who have been to the foot of the cross in repentance and believed in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, death is not the end but instead the beginning of eternity in the presence of Almighty God.
Standing before members of our nation’s executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, I lifted high the Name above all names—Jesus Christ—as I read from God’s inerrant and infallible Word about a glorious eternity for those whose lives are surrendered to Christ.
Other Important Reads from this Week:
* “De-grading America’s Children: Grade inflation, along with dumbed-down curricula and tests, persists throughout U.S. schools.” (Larry Sand, American Greatness)
* “The Mutation of Womanhood: American universities and social networks, increasingly dominated by radical-left ideology, are now cultivating revolutionary women in significant numbers.” (Sasha Gong, American Greatness)
* “The Chinese Dragon Lurks Beneath the Pacific: China's Atomic-Powered Submarines, With Nuclear-Tipped Missiles, Can Reach US Cities, Pacific Rim” (Lawrence Kadish, Gatestone Institute)
* “Health Insurance Costs Are Soaring. Here’s Why: Costs have more than quadrupled as consumers lost control over healthcare spending.” (Deane Waldman, M.D., American Spectator)
* “The Progress(ives) War on Reliable and Affordable Electricity” (Geoffrey Pohanka, Real Clear Energy)
