‘Maui residents are trying to rebuild. Let them.’
Jonathan Helton at The Washington Post
Almost “three years after wildfires engulfed Lahaina, Hawaii, rebuilding continues to move at a glacial pace,” says Jonathan Helton. Not a “single business destroyed in the fires has been rebuilt, and just two commercial permits have been issued.” Some “well-meaning state and county land-use, zoning, permitting and historic-preservation laws — passed over decades — have caused reconstruction to move at a crawl.” Lawmakers have “tried to cut through the most damaging regulatory strictures with piecemeal waivers.”
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‘Minneapolis residents don’t want police drones spying on us’
Meredith Aby, Sana Wazwaz and Michelle Rennie at The Minnesota Star Tribune
What “do you call an AI-powered drone in the hands of the government, with the power to be deployed upon complaints of any ‘suspicious person’ — a drone that records their data, and can be retained by our government”? say Meredith Aby, Sana Wazwaz and Michelle Rennie. It “sounds to us like the textbook definition of Orwellian surveillance — and it’s exactly what might happen in Minneapolis.” This is “not only politically naive but also tone deaf.”
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‘Tackling the annoyance economy is an easy way to win voters’
Neale Mahoney and Chad Maisel at Newsweek
Democrats “running for president will woo voters with sweeping policy plans — on housing, health care, corruption and more,” say Neale Mahoney and Chad Maisel. Those “problems are real, and big solutions are desperately needed.” But “ambitious leaders are missing something hiding in plain sight: All the everyday hassles that steal our time and make life harder than it should be.” What “started with airlines and banks has metastasized into nearly every corner of daily life.”
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‘The Supreme Court could eventually decide if Kalshi is just sports gambling’
Matt Stieb at Intelligencer
There is “good news for people who dislike the gambling-ification of seemingly everything in America: Kalshi could be in trouble,” says Matt Stieb. A federal judge “ruled against the leading prediction market, determining the State of New York has the authority to regulate sports betting on the website, even up to the point of banning it altogether.” Prohibition “would be a serious blow for Kalshi as it tries to expand amid the loose regulatory environment of the Trump administration.”
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