Think More: August 18, 2026
The NSA's buried election intelligence, an alleged green-card marriage ring, the K-12 techlash, and the Founders' measure of greatness.
Lead · Protecting the Brand
The NSA Shelved Election-Threat Intelligence Rather Than Risk Looking Political
A March 2020 memo released Tuesday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force records NSA deputy director George Barnes blocking a long-delayed report on foreign targeting of U.S. elections. His fear: findings touching 2016 would brand the agency part of the “deep state.” The analyst who wrote it noted the finished work had languished 16 months. It informed the intelligence ombudsman’s 2021 politicization report.
Protecting the Brand
A Year On, Fresno’s High-Speed Rail Viaduct Still Opens Onto Dirt
Chris Bray | Tell Me How This Ends
Chris Bray stood on the Fresno high-speed rail viaduct in August 2025; Ben Bergquam filmed the same spot this month. Bray’s side-by-side verdict: nothing has changed. The viaduct still opens onto dirt, no causeway has been paved, and the only visible addition in a year is a fence erected after Bray noted there wasn’t one.
The Border and the Bench
The Officer Who Arrested Laken Riley’s Killer Indicts the Sanctuary System
Ethan Curreri, the former NYPD officer who arrested Jose Ibarra six months before Ibarra murdered Laken Riley in Georgia, writes that New York’s sanctuary policies put the man back on the street with federal authorities kept in the dark. Curreri, who spoke at the White House Angel Families event in 2025, calls the failure systemic.
Prosecutors Charge an Alleged 1,000-Wedding Green-Card Ring in New York
Federal prosecutors in New York unsealed an indictment charging 11 defendants with staging more than 1,000 sham weddings, pairing Chinese nationals with Americans willing to rent their names for green cards. The Federalist reads the case beside June’s Trump v. Barbara ruling: with birthright citizenship settled, marriage-fraud prosecution is the enforcement tool that remains.
The alleged sham-marriage price list: New York federal indictment, via The Federalist
1,000+
Sham weddings alleged over a decade
$100K
Top price paid by a foreign national
$30K
Top payout to a citizen spouse
The Techlash and Its Limits
Big Tech Turns on the AI Slop Its Own Tools Unleashed
Daily Report Staff | Baton Rouge Business Report
LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, and Substack are rolling out tools to remove, label, or throttle low-quality AI content, the Baton Rouge Business Report notes, summarizing New York Times reporting. The bind: the same companies built or promoted the generators. Detection systems misfire on human work, and the deeper problem is platforms that reward high-volume, attention-grabbing content.
The K-12 Techlash Is Racing Ahead of the Parents
Frederick M. Hess | Law & Liberty
At least 35 states limit phones in school, and six enacted screen-time caps this spring, yet Frederick M. Hess finds 86% of parents still back classroom laptops and only a third support bell-to-bell bans. A backlash “a mile wide but may be only an inch deep,” he writes, will not stick unless household norms change.
The Left’s Second Act
A Former Believer Maps the Road From Woke 1.0 to Woke 2.0
Sasha Stone | Free Thinking Through the Fourth Turning
A former Democratic activist, Sasha Stone describes Woke 1.0 as a cult she belonged to and Woke 2.0 as its harder sequel: DSA candidates rebranding for kitchen-table voters while the oppressor-oppressed hierarchy, she argues, curdles into antisemitism that now spans the left and portions of the online right. Her warning is a convert’s.
The AAUP’s First-Ever Endorsement Goes to Abdul El-Sayed
The American Association of University Professors issued its first national electoral endorsement in 111 years, backing Abdul El-Sayed, who edged Haley Stevens by fewer than 16,000 votes in Michigan’s Senate primary. Paul du Quenoy traces the association’s slide from professional guardian to partisan actor; the first post-primary poll puts Republican Mike Rogers ahead by four.
The Founders’ Measure
Publius Cited Ancient Failures but Never Rejected Ancient Wisdom
Michael Anton | The American Mind
Excerpting his forthcoming Studies in Machiavellian Political Philosophy, Michael Anton examines the 23 Federalist papers that invoke the ancients, nearly always as cautionary tales. Yet Publius never criticizes ancient philosophy, and his account of human nature runs closer to the classics than to Hobbes. The Founding, Anton concludes, ranks among history’s greatest political achievements.
Who Killed Greatness? Priou Blames the Culture, Ellmers Blames the Elites
Weighing Alex Priou’s “How to Be an Elitist” against Glenn Ellmers’s critique, David Bahr finds the two agree American education has stopped forming great souls. They part over the culprit: Priou indicts a culture of “collective aimlessness”; Ellmers blames the intellectual elites entrusted with shaping it. Both men, Bahr notes, keep fighting from inside the academy.
