Colonizing the Moon

Entering the new space age: The White House wants upwards of 1,000 rocket launches and re-entries per year in the U.S. by 2030 and has unveiled a new policy initiative to this effect.

“The new policy puts greater emphasis on developing additional locations for rockets to launch from and for spacecraft to land. It also calls for plans on how to integrate management of space traffic with air traffic control, and how to enable launches within 48 hours of high-priority civil and national security missions,” reports The New York Times. The policy “calls for more commercial involvement in efforts to reach the moon and Mars” and talks about companies more easily “selling American capabilities to other countries.”

The administration intends to “evaluate the regulatory, programmatic, operational, and technological barriers for prompt, responsive, and resilient access to space,” per the White House memo, and “review, on a case-by-case basis, requests to launch foreign space vehicles or permit reentry of foreign space vehicles in the United States for commercial purposes.”

The Trump administration also says it wants to put U.S. astronauts back on the Moon by 2028 and explore more commercial avenues for bringing people to Mars.

It’s a good plan! Sort of a continuation, interestingly, of policies created during the Obama and Clinton administrations. Exploring the final frontier is rather bipartisan, turns out. But the emphasis on paving the way, from a regulatory standpoint, for more private companies to innovate in this sphere is a distinctly Republican-flavored approach.

Mass psychosis? “Hundreds of Lindsay Clancy supporters, many wearing pink clothing emblazoned with phrases such as ‘Believe’, ‘She Needed Help’ and ‘Peace For Lindsay’, gathered on Thursday outside the courthouse where she is on trial in the killings of her three children,” reports The Guardian. “Several of the 300 women, and a few men, said Clancy’s story resonated with them and that they wanted to raise awareness about how the mental health system treats women. Clancy’s lawyer does not dispute that she killed the children, but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she was mentally ill.” Her lawyer also argues she had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants she took to treat that disorder after the birth of her third child made her problem much worse.

It’s still wild that women are coming out in support of Clancy:

I’ve wanted not to wade into this discourse because it’s so dark I almost can’t believe it’s real.

When your children are that young, you are their entire world. You are the person they run to when they’re scared, hurt, or confused. They trust you completely because they don’t… https://t.co/lfaUCDWte8

— Brittany Hugoboom (@BritHugoboom) August 20, 2026

Scenes from New York: “The captain in a deadly boat accident in New York Harbor this month was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after an investigation found that he was in the United States unlawfully, the federal authorities said on Wednesday,” reports The New York Times. “The captain, Manuel Hernandez, 46, was initially arrested on Aug. 9, the day after the boat capsized in the harbor, killing a mother and her 5-month-old daughter. A Coast Guard investigation found that the boat was over capacity when it capsized near the Statue of Liberty and did not have life jackets for infants on board, according to a criminal complaint.”

QUICK HITS

• “Iran said on Friday that its response to any new U.S. threats would be ‘devastating’ after Washington pledged ​to impose the toughest financial penalties in history with the aim of toppling the Iranian leadership,” reports Reuters. “U.S. Treasury chief Scott Bessent said he would give details on Monday of the ‌planned sanctions, which follow a warning from President Donald Trump of economic consequences against any country that provided ‘any type of lifeline to Iran.'”
• “Today, flexible work is a theoretical possibility for knowledge workers, yet white-collar institutions still prefer 9-to-5 workers,” writes Allison McFadden for Fairer Disputations. “The lack of alternatives to this model is a lose-lose situation for mothers and society alike. We can gainfully employ moms who are primary caretakers if we embrace the reality that they are a different kind of worker.”
• Calling in the money doctor:

Venezuela’s National Assembly named professor @steve_hanke Special Adviser on Economic, Monetary, and Energy Affairs, tasking him with curing hyperinflation now running at a 400% annual clip — the worst in the world.https://t.co/uxF8gavXNc

— FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) August 20, 2026

• Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento, is “the prototypical dead mall: Built in 1972, it seems like it was last spruced up in either the late 1990s or early 2000s,” writes Nolan Gray. “The vast parking lots sit empty, strewn with litter and dead leaves. Inside, underwatered tropical plants hang on by a thread. Of the five original anchor tenants, only JCPenney survives. The rest of the mall is filled with low-margin businesses: a local clothing store, a cellphone repair shop, a Bitcoin ATM.” But what’s going on here? Why are dead malls still around? And why on Earth can you go into them? “The actual answer,” writes Gray, “is that dead malls are the physical embodiment of a spectacular breakdown in private governance.”
• Checking in on the Mooch:

Incomparable. https://t.co/CF33cSNwk3 pic.twitter.com/0zr4zfMBL1

— Leah Libresco Sargeant (@LeahLibresco) August 21, 2026