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Final regional bracket reaches the Final Four

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Two mini upsets in the Elite Eight created a couple of mismatched pairings in the Final Four of the Democracy Madness "Best of the Rest" division.

Always using paper ballots (No. 1), the top priority of election security experts, is taking on the concept of creating an ethics code for the Supreme Court (No. 5). The fifth seed destroyed the idea of statehood for Washington (No. 4) in the last round.


Could Congress' constant dysfunction have voters thinking it's a lost cause? The legislative branch had two chances to make it to the semifinals of this bracket, but both increasing Congress' capacity (No. 3) and having members spend more time on Capitol Hill (No. 7) got knocked out.

Instead the second seed, using federal funds for elections, will take on the sixth seed, increasing civics education.

Voting closes Tuesday evening, so make your choices now.


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Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

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Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

There may be no greater indication that voters are not being listened to in the escalating redistricting war between the Republican and Democratic Parties than a new poll from NBC News that shows 8-in-10 Americans want the parties to stop.

It’s what they call an "80-20 issue," and yet neither party is standing up for the 80% as they prioritize control of Congress.

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Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

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Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

In the United States, where the free market has long been exalted as the supreme engine of prosperity, a peculiar irony is taking shape. On August 22, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the federal government had acquired a stake of just under 10% in Intel, instantly making itself the company’s largest shareholder. The stake - roughly 433 million shares, valued at about $8.9 billion, purchased at $20.47 each - was carved out of the Biden-era CHIPS Act subsidies and repackaged as equity. Formally, it is a passive, non-voting stake, with no board seat or governance rights. Yet symbolism matters: Washington now sits, however discreetly, in Intel’s shareholder register. Soon afterward, reports emerged that Samsung, South Korea’s industrial giant, had also been considered for similar treatment. What once would have been denounced as creeping socialism in Washington is now unfolding under Donald Trump, a president who boasts of his devotion to private enterprise but increasingly embraces tactics that blur the line between capitalism and state control.

The word “nationalization,” for decades associated with postwar Britain, Latin American populists, or Arab strongmen, is suddenly back in circulation - but this time applied to the citadel of capitalism itself. Trump justifies the intervention as a matter of national security and economic patriotism. Subsidies, he argues, are wasteful. Tariffs, in his view, are a stronger tool for forcing corporations to relocate factories to U.S. soil. Yet the CHIPS Act, that bipartisan legacy of the Biden years, remains in force and politically untouchable, funneling billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor projects. Rather than scrap it, Trump has chosen to alter the terms: companies that benefit from taxpayer largesse must now cede equity to the state. Intel, heavily reliant on those funds, has become the test case for this new model of American industrial policy.

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