Think More: Friday, August 7, 2026
Declassified files undercut the 2020 security claim, Trump narrows birthright citizenship, Michigan's Democrats pick El-Sayed, a bot army boosts Mamdani, and State names the far-left terror fronts.
Lead · The Ballot and the Birthright
Declassified Files Show Washington Knew the 2020 Election Was Not “the Most Secure” in History
Steven Richards | Just the News
Newly declassified records show that officials who called 2020 the most secure election in American history were tracking the scraping of 633,000 Maricopa County voter registration files while ballots were being cast. U.S. intelligence later determined China had obtained 220 million voter files. Steven Richards reports that nothing released so far shows votes were altered, but the vulnerabilities were known and unannounced.
The Ballot and the Birthright
Trump Moves to Narrow Birthright Citizenship and Shut Down the Birth Tourism Trade
Marc Caputo reports two executive orders limiting birthright citizenship for children of foreign diplomatic staff, of declared alien enemies, and of mothers who enter deceptively to give birth commercially. A second order directs State and Homeland Security to target the industry abroad. The Supreme Court rejected a broader order on June 30, and fresh litigation is certain.
What the declassified 2020 election records show: Just the News, August 6
633,000
Maricopa voter files scraped before the election
220M
Voter files China obtained by 2023
6,600
Non-citizens registered by New Jersey DMV
The Left’s New Coalition
Barone Traces El-Sayed’s Michigan Upset Back to a 1988 Jesse Jackson Caucus
Michael Barone | Creators Syndicate
Michael Barone reads Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate primary win over Representative Haley Stevens as the maturation of a coalition first visible in 1988, when Jesse Jackson beat Michael Dukakis in Michigan’s caucuses on Black church turnout and what Barone calls the graduate student proletariat. Michigan’s highest Democratic percentages now come from Washtenaw and Ingham Counties rather than Wayne.
A Watchdog Says Pro-Mamdani Bot Accounts Trace Back to City Hall
Jennifer Rust relays a Jerusalem Post account of a World Zionist Organization cyber review that flagged dozens of X accounts amplifying Mayor Zohran Mamdani, several posting more than 900 times a day. Analysts told the paper they were certain the IP addresses traced to City Hall. The Post noted no evidence establishes who controlled the accounts.
Behind the “Antifa Summit,” State Names Four Fronts of Far-Left Terror
Kyle Shideler | The American Mind
Kyle Shideler reports that Secretary Rubio’s ministerial identified four shared concerns: infrastructure sabotage, foreign fighters, adversaries using far-left proxies, and targeted attacks on individuals. Rubio told delegates that from 1970 to 1980, 93% of terrorist attacks in the West came from the far left. Germany will host a follow-up law enforcement workshop.
The Right Argues With Itself
Conservatives Are Fighting Over a $20 Burrito While Voters Wait on the Price of Everything
The New York Post opinion page argues that the right’s leading voices have mistaken a symbol for the problem, trading insults over whether a burrito should cost $20 rather than governing. Republicans won unified control in 2024 because voters blamed pandemic-era spending for the prices that followed, and tariffs and unsettled energy markets have not helped since.
Rasmussen Casts Trump as President of District 13, With the Capitol Still Standing
Scott Rasmussen argues that American politics is now a war between two ten-percent factions while the remaining 80% go unrepresented. Borrowing from the Hunger Games, he casts President Trump as the leader of District 13, an army raised against the establishment that found the Capitol’s powers agreeable once it arrived. The corrupt system itself is the enemy.
The American Bargain
Klingenstein Asks the Doubters to Forgive the Country Clarence Thomas Already Has
Tom Klingenstein | TomKlingenstein.com
In a speech marking the Declaration’s 250th anniversary, Tom Klingenstein builds on Justice Clarence Thomas’s account of a Jim Crow boyhood spent saluting a flag that did not salute back. Thomas neither forgets the evil nor withholds forgiveness. Klingenstein divides the country into lovers, haters, and doubters, and stakes the republic’s future on winning the doubters.
Algorithmic Pricing Threatens the Quaker Invention That Made American Commerce Trustworthy
Sophia Bulla | Foundation for American Innovation
Sophia Bulla traces the fixed price tag to Quaker merchants who posted their prices and earned a reputation for honest dealing. She argues AI now makes individualized pricing feasible, and that state bills conflate dynamic pricing with discrimination while exempting the digital subscriptions most exposed to it. Maryland passed the first grocery restrictions. Her opening ask is transparency.
