Think More: Monday, August 10, 2026
The FBI's declassified Sessions probe, Green Bay's Zuckbucks clerk, the socialists at home and abroad, and the property-tax revolt.
Lead · The Paper Trail
The FBI Investigated Its Own Attorney General, One Day After Trump Fired Comey
Steven Richards | Just the News
Newly declassified memos show the FBI opened MARCH TOLL, a false-statements investigation of sitting Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one day after Trump fired James Comey. The predicate: a weeks-old letter from Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy and Al Franken, though Sessions had already supplemented his disputed testimony. Mueller’s office closed the case in May 2018; the White House Government Transparency Task Force released the files Monday.
The Paper Trail
The Clerk at the Center of Green Bay’s Zuckbucks Scandal Resigns on the Eve of the Primary
Green Bay City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys resigned days before Tuesday’s primary, after her office mailed duplicate absentee ballots in back-to-back elections and state regulators found probable cause of an election-law violation. Jeffreys was the mayor’s chief of staff during the 2020 Zuckbucks episode, when a former Democratic operative held keys to the city’s absentee-ballot room.
The Socialist International
The DSA’s Constitution Was Tried in Pennsylvania in 1776. It Lasted 14 Years.
Aaron Kushner reads the DSA’s 2026 platform, which would abolish the Senate and subordinate the presidency and the Supreme Court to Congress, against Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution, which tried it first. Within 15 months the unchecked legislature had more than tripled its own pay, then stripped civil rights from those refusing a loyalty oath. Pennsylvania repealed the experiment in 1790.
How the DSA Traded Its Social Democrats for Revolutionaries: A Former Organizer Confesses
Maya Sulkin interviews Jake Altman, who joined the Democratic Socialists of America in 2013 and left in 2022. The group he entered was a coalition of middle-aged social democrats; the one he quit had become a revolutionary organization now wielding real power in Democratic politics. His confession maps the transformation from the inside.
Xi Jinping Is the Unseen Third Party in Nolan’s Odyssey Interview
Mike Watson | Washington Free Beacon
Mike Watson finds the unseen participant in Christopher Nolan’s interview with Chinese podcaster Yiyang Zhuge: Xi Jinping. Zhuge frames Homer through Xi’s talking points because the party permits no art on its own merits; artists, Xi says, are “engineers of the human soul.” Nolan’s case for transcendent moral law is what Leninism cannot abide.
The Consent of the Governed
Scott Rasmussen: The President of District 13 and the Real Enemy in the Capitol
In a Lyceum guest editorial, pollster Scott Rasmussen maps American politics onto The Hunger Games and his 10-10-80 nation: 10% on the left at war with 10% on the right, while the 80% go unheard. Trump commands District 13’s army, but the real enemy is the corrupt Capitol system that enriches and empowers both political classes.
From Chicago’s Bill Bonfire to Florida’s Ballot, the Property-Tax Revolt Arrives
Steven Malanga surveys the revolt against property taxes, which raised nearly $800 billion in 2024 as bills far outran inflation. From Cook County’s tax-bill bonfire to the $250,000 homestead exemption on Florida’s November ballot, more than a dozen states are debating relief; the driver is government spending that grew even as school enrollment shrank.
The property-tax revolt: Steven Malanga, City Journal, Summer 2026
$800B
Property taxes collected in 2024
23%
Median bill increase, 2019 to 2023
12+
States debating relief in 2026
The Academy and the Treasury
The Administration Defends Its Harvard Freeze as an ACLU-Led Coalition Backs the University
Esteban Elizondo | Campus Reform
Campus Reform reports the administration is defending its freeze of nearly $2.2 billion in Harvard research funding on appeal, arguing the university failed to address antisemitism and that grant agreements permit termination. An ACLU-led coalition has filed in support of Harvard, which prevailed last fall when Judge Allison Burroughs vacated the cuts as First Amendment retaliation.
Fund People, Not Projects: 535 Congressional Fellowships for the Next Einsteins
Michael S. Kochin | The American Mind
Michael S. Kochin would zero out the project-grant model, under which researchers spend up to half their time writing proposals and, on average, win their first major NIH award in their mid-40s. His replacement: 535 ten-year research fellowships, one appointed through every member of Congress, at roughly $35 to $40 million a year during the rollout.
