A mother who’s on trial for murdering her three young children wrote diary entries about her worsening postpartum mental health and told clinicians she thought she was experiencing severe side effects from the psychiatric medications she was prescribed. “I’m so desperate to get a mental break from taking care of everyone that my mind is trying to find something physically wrong with me,” Lindsay Clancy wrote in November 2022. Clancy fatally attacked her children on January 24, 2023. “I want help. I want to be well,” she said in another entry. She also said she felt “incredibly sad and guilty” about being unable to breastfeed her youngest child and was “obsessed” with his sleep schedule. “I have crazy brain fog. I feel like I can’t make a plan,” Clancy wrote. “I live moment to moment waiting for the next nap time. I’m terrified of Cal getting overtired now because I feel I can’t help him.” Additionally, Clancy’s defense team said that in December the mother told a crisis service that she believed her symptoms were side effects from psychiatric medications she had been prescribed. In the months leading up to the incident, Clancy was prescribed numerous medications, including Zoloft, Ativan, Benadryl, trazodone, Prozac, Ambien, Remeron, Klonopin, Seroquel, Valium, and amitriptyline, with doctors changing or adjusting her medications over time as her symptoms persisted. Several of the psychiatric medications listed potential side effects, including agitation, insomnia, suicidal thoughts, confusion, and — in rare cases — hallucinations or psychotic symptoms. According to court filings, Clancy’s medication regimen changed multiple times during the fall and winter of 2022. Clancy does not dispute that she strangled her three young children — 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan — inside the family’s home in Duxbury, Massachusetts, in January 2023 after her then-husband left to pick up takeout food and medication. Prosecutors say Clancy then attempted suicide by jumping from a second-story window after cutting both of her wrists. All three children died, and Clancy was left paralyzed from the waist down. Earlier this week, the defense team tried to counter the state’s argument that Clancy was organized and calculating in her actions and therefore not clinically insane. Dr. Sejal Shah, who testified as a rebuttal witness for the defense and is a forensic psychiatrist, agreed with the defense that “people can communicate and plan and act on plans even if they’re in the middle of a psychosis.” Shah also agreed that someone does not have to be “drooling and stumbling and unable to walk and talk” in order to be psychotic. Clancy has many public supporters who believe she should be treated by medical professionals and avoid jail time, citing what they see as the medical system’s failure, particularly given that Clancy was newly postpartum when her symptoms first appeared. Others have acknowledged the unhealthy and sometimes dangerous reliance on pills and medications to treat mental health struggles while still believing Clancy needs to be held accountable for killing three innocent children. A jury is expected to render a verdict by the end of August or early September. Related: Lindsay Clancy Strangled Her Three Children. Why Some People Want Her Set Free.

New York City’s Democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has dismissed the entire advisory board of the Mayor’s Fund, removing a roster of business executives who helped raise private money for city projects. The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City is a nonprofit that pulls in private-sector donations to support city initiatives. Mamdani became the first mayor in at least three administrations to dissolve the board of advisers in its entirety, saying that he planned to rebuild from the ground up. “I commend you for your dedication and the benefit you have brought to our City as you conclude your tenure on the Mayor’s Fund Board of Advisors,” Mamdani’s letter, obtained by Bloomberg News, read in part. The list of prominent business leaders ousted from their roles, as reported by The New York Post, includes Richard Born, owner of BD Hotels; Jeffrey Gural, chairman of GFP Real Estate; Alex Katz, senior managing director at Blackstone Inc.; Edward Skyler, Citigroup Inc.’s head of enterprise services and public affairs; and James Whelan, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. Economics professor Isabella Weber praised the move, saying it reduced the influence of business interests over city government. “One of the beautiful things about Mamdani’s renewal of NYC government is that it shows how deeply business interests are usually baked into state capacity,” Weber wrote. “Why should private equity, banks and real estate interests advise a mayor on what to spend?” One of the beautiful things about Mamdani’s renewal of NYC government is that it shows how deeply business interests are usually baked into state capacity. Why should private equity, banks and real estate interests advise a mayor on what to spend? pic.twitter.com/Mnr75JlglY — Isabella M Weber (@IsabellaMWeber) August 4, 2026 But Bloomberg Philanthropies head James Anderson countered that the advisory board’s role was to drum up charitable donations, not to decide how those donations were spent. “This is a mischaracterization,” Anderson wrote. “The Mayor’s Fund is designed to bring philanthropic resources to public priorities. Its advisory board has historically helped mobilize those resources — not determine public spending. Remaking the board is the mayor’s prerogative.” “Treating public-private collaboration as evidence of capture may be red meat for the base, but it’s a poor theory of urban governance,” he added. Mamdani is expected to fill the positions for his new board later this year. Mamdani senior advisor Dora Pekec told The New York Post that the administration is “reimagining how philanthropy can augment, but not replace, public dollars and public goods, and we are eager to share more about our new board of advisors later this year.”

Paramount announced it was delaying its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, pausing a deal expected to bring big changes to Hollywood. Why? Democrats did everything they could to stop the merger, including filing a lawsuit to block it. The merger is still expected to proceed once the litigation is resolved in court. But it’s just another example of how Democrats are getting back to their anti-market, anti-business roots. No one is allowed to merge. No one is allowed to achieve greater scale. Profit is a dirty word. The Trump administration takes a different approach. It’s not afraid to use antitrust law to protect consumers while also letting free enterprise thrive. Earlier this year, before Paramount came knocking, Warner Bros. was planning to merge with Netflix. Then Trump expressed skepticism, and with good reason. The deal would have concentrated an enormous amount of market power inside Netflix — already the world’s number one streaming service and no slouch in content production either — with a history of dramatically raising costs on the American people. There were genuine antitrust concerns about the effects of a Netflix-WBD behemoth. This led Netflix to ultimately withdraw and WBD to announce it would merge with Paramount instead. Yet Democrats are still crying foul, accusing Trump of being an agent of big business for approving this deal. At the same time, the Trump administration has been willing to take direct stakes in companies such as Intel in order to counter mercantilist policies pursued by China. Are we witnessing a political realignment in business regulation? One where traditional Left/Right arguments as to the proper role of government are being altered? The jury is still out on that question, but at least on the Democratic side, that old anti-business itch remains irresistible. As the Biden administration’s litigation-happy antitrust strategy under then-FTC chair Lina Khan showed, Democrats never really abandoned their belief that government should always question private-sector actions — even if the proposed actions don’t raise consumer costs. For example, Democrats recently hit the warpath over budget airlines — even though these carriers are often Americans’ best chance to afford a vacation. Under Khan, the Biden administration successfully blocked Spirit Airlines from merging with JetBlue, which would have provided it with additional capital and prevented it from shutting its doors. Democratic attorneys general also worked to block that merger despite the lower fares benefiting consumers. The result? Spirit had no choice but to cease operations entirely in May amid rising fuel prices. Airline prices rose dramatically overnight. Consumers now have fewer airline choices. Or consider when tech company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced it would acquire Juniper Networks. The Trump administration waived the merger through, drawing instant blowback from Democrats. Intelligence agencies had insisted the combined HPE-Juniper company would provide needed competition for Huawei, the Chinese giant considered a national security threat that controls over 30% of the world’s telecom market. Naturally, Democrats are still trying to block this business deal through the courts. This is before we even get to the Left’s bread-and-butter anti-business crusades. Energy companies are bracing for an onslaught of lawfare if Democrats win the midterm elections. Firearms manufacturers are being driven out of blue states and into red ones. Some Democrats have even pledged to unwind mergers approved by Trump if they take back control of Congress. Imagine the unpredictability that will create for American businesses. Why are Democrats reclaiming their anti-business roots? One reason is the Democratic Party agenda is being driven by so-called “democratic socialists,” who despise free enterprise and excoriate successful job creators. Democratic socialist New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has personally attacked business leaders while promoting ever higher taxes and dramatically increased spending. It was no surprise when Mamdani hired Lina Khan into his administration. Mamdani hates anyone who makes a profit, thinks the government should own grocery stores, and intends to drive private landlords out of New York so the government can own more housing. If Khan’s record is any indication, she wholeheartedly agrees. While popular with some now, Mamdani’s socialist experiment is doomed to failure. As Margaret Thatcher once quipped, “the only trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Yet the rise of democratic socialism and the failure of more centrist Democrats to prevail in primaries means even more attacks against the private-sector economy are on the way. To be sure, not every business combination is in the public interest. Some — like the Netflix-WBD merger — risk shoring up monopolies. But others — like Paramount-WBD — can create competition for market leaders like Netflix and bring down prices. It’s complicated, and this seems to be where conservatives have landed: assess mergers and corporate behavior on the merits. The Democrats, meanwhile, fundamentally oppose free enterprise capitalism and seek to stoke jealousy and class resentment as a means to achieve political power. It remains to be seen which side will prevail. Let’s make sure it isn’t the socialists. *** John Faso is an attorney and former Republican congressman representing New York’s 19th congressional district.

A Republican senator introduced a bill on Monday that would allow states to run visa programs to fill labor shortages. Senator John Curtis (R-UT) announced the State Sponsored Visa Pilot Program Act of 2026 to empower states to expand the number of foreign workers given visas, according to Deseret News. The proposed program would allow states to bring in up to 5,000 migrant workers per fiscal year, plus a proportional cut of a separate 245,000-visa pool based on population. The bill also caps state-sponsored visas at three years. Under the bill, visa holders who have been in the United States illegally since December 31, 2016, would have a path to legal residency. The illegal immigrants seeking residency would be required to pay a $1,000 “penalty,” according to the bill’s text. Curtis, who introduced the proposal alongside Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ), said his state is in desperate need of workers. “I’ve heard time and again from small business owners, farmers, and ranchers across Utah how difficult it has become to hire enough workers to meet growing market demands,” Curtis said in a statement. “Our legislation would help fill the gap by creating a pilot program allowing states to sponsor visas tailored to their unique economies, without sacrificing rigorous federal vetting or accountability,” he added. The proposal comes after House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA) recently introduced a separate bill to provide illegal immigrant farmworkers with a path to temporary legal status. Thompson’s bill quickly faced an onslaught of criticism from immigration hawks. Gregory Bovino, the former Border Patrol official who led the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids in Minneapolis and other major cities, said the bill’s Republican backers “just stabbed Trump’s deportation promise in the back.” “They’re only gonna get the message one way. Vote every single one of them out in a massive wave, and replace them with real immigration hawks. Anything less, and they’ll never take us seriously,” Bovino wrote in a recent X post. For supporters of the bill like John Hollay, president and CEO of the National Council of Agricultural Employers, the Visa plan is viewed as a necessary tool to address a yearslong farming “labor crisis.” “They can’t get the help they need to harvest their crops and astronomical labor costs have pushed many lifelong farmers to the brink of bankruptcy,” Thompson said. “This is happening because the very program that once kept farmers in business is sinking under the weight of bureaucratic costs. Without reform, the H-2A visa program may now be the reason these same farms cannot be passed on to the next generation,” he said.

There’s a narrative making the rounds on social media that tries to explain why so many restaurants taste the same. The villain, we’re told, is Sysco. According to the internet, one giant food distributor supplies every restaurant in America with the same frozen food, which is why every mozzarella stick, onion ring, chicken tender, and burger tastes identical. It’s certainly a satisfying story, but unfortunately it’s not that simple. I don’t have any particular interest in defending Sysco. In fact, I have plenty of criticisms of large food distributors in general, from their unwillingness to support local producers to their lack of general customer service, but blaming Sysco for what has happened to the American restaurant industry is like blaming UPS because every package looks the same. Sysco isn’t creating the demand for generic pre-processed junk; it’s responding to the (government-manipulated) market. If you really want to understand why restaurant food has become so homogenized, you have to stop looking at the distributor and start looking at the incentives that created the demand in the first place. As economist Thomas Sowell has often argued, people respond to incentives. You don’t change outcomes by pretending human nature is different than it is; you change the incentive structure, and behavior follows. Over the past 15 years, the economics of running a restaurant have changed dramatically. Labor costs have blown up, food costs have nearly doubled — rent, insurance, utilities, workers’ compensation, credit card fees, compliance costs, and government regulations have all increased. Restaurant margins, which were never especially generous to begin with, have been squeezed thinner and thinner. Sometimes it feels like we are running a non-profit, and I don’t mean a 501(c)(3). For decades, restaurants could survive by preparing food from scratch every day. They employed prep cooks who chopped onions, breaded chicken, cut fries, made sauces, rolled meatballs, and prepared desserts using the owners’ recipes. That labor was never “cheap,” but it was manageable. Today, that same labor has become one of the hardest expenses to justify. When labor and food already consume well over half of every dollar that comes through the register (typically 60-70 cents on every dollar), owners begin to question those foundational operations: “Can someone else do this cheaper? Can someone do this absent the excess workers’ compensation costs or the risk of changing labor violations?” That’s where the food manufacturers find their opening. Restaurant owners decided they could buy labor along with their products, especially if they are mass-produced. The onion rings arrive already breaded, the chicken already par-fried, the fish already dusted in cornmeal, and the mozzarella sticks already assembled (complete with TikTok-ready cheese pull). Sauces are made in massive facilities, packaged, labeled under different brands, and shipped through distributors across the country. Whether the box arrives from Sysco, US Foods, Performance Food Group, Shamrock Foods, or a regional distributor is almost beside the point; in many cases, those products originated from the very same manufacturers, just with different labels. Distributors didn’t invent this model; the market demanded it because the economics forced them to. This had become a more prevalent industry trend, but COVID nitro-boosted it. During the pandemic, labor became even scarcer (as people were paid not to work), while supply chains became entirely unpredictable. Restaurants outsourced everything they possibly could just to survive. Sauces moved to co-packers — products that once required skilled kitchen labor became commodities. The government loved this because now they had only a few companies to control, as opposed to thousands of smaller ones. This is why I suggest the COVID economy was a corporatists’ dream: It killed the “artisanal” nature of the restaurant industry. It also perpetuated a movement that made Americans sicker (sadly, during a pandemic that targeted those with chronic disease). Factory-produced food has to survive transportation, freezing, warehousing, and distribution. That means they must use an abundance of stabilizers, preservatives, gums, emulsifiers, fillers, and countless ingredients that never existed in traditional scratch kitchens. These questionable ingredients are often approved through the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) loophole, becoming necessary parts of the manufacturing process and, subsequently, the food supply chain. I’m not suggesting every processed ingredient is inherently dangerous, but anyone who’s worked inside both scratch kitchens and large-scale food manufacturing understands they’re fundamentally different products. One requires a chef, and one requires a chemist. The further food moves from the kitchen toward the factory, the more processing it generally requires. So, when people ask why restaurant food feels heavier than it used to or why everything tastes similar, or why eating out leaves them feeling sluggish, this is exactly why. And these are the right questions to ask; I am glad Americans still have the palate to taste it, but we might just be blaming the wrong company. There’s another restaurant “pipeline” that deserves an honest discussion — the workforce. We’ve hollowed out the labor pipeline upon which restaurants once depended. For decades, restaurants trained people from the ground up. To start, you washed dishes, then learned prep, worked the line, and eventually became a sous chef. A select few may have become executive chefs or opened their own places. That pipeline is broken. Too many young people have been told that success only comes from earning a $200K four-year degree and pursuing a white-collar profession, or getting five more degrees in comparative literature. Meanwhile, vocational education has steadily lost ground as fewer students are encouraged to master skilled trades, including culinary trades, that require discipline, craftsmanship, and years of experience. We traded woodshop, auto shop, and home economics for the fantasy that every kid needed a college degree — a cultural shift “Mr. Birchum” skewered because it has left America desperately short of hands-on workers. When culinary graduates do enter the workforce, most demand management or executive roles much earlier than previous generations did, regardless of their experience. Restaurants, meanwhile, still need experienced line cooks, prep cooks, and kitchen staff who can execute consistently under pressure. The shortage isn’t simply about wages; it’s about the shrinking number of people entering the profession and staying long enough to master it. It’s another incentive problem. Then there’s consolidation. Over the past decade, private equity and large investment groups have acquired significant numbers of restaurant brands. Don’t get me wrong: not every investment firm is bad; many have turned around struggling businesses and preserved jobs, but ownership incentives also matter. If financial performance is measured quarter by quarter through the lens of a board, every kitchen becomes a spreadsheet. Anyone who has worked in a large hotel kitchen or a private equity-backed concept knows this. It’s a joke amongst chefs: every labor hour becomes a cost center, which means every semi-complicated recipe becomes an opportunity to cut (and round out some Chief Operating Officer’s bonus). If replacing six hours of kitchen prep with a frozen product adds another point to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, the pressure to make that change becomes enormous. Again, this isn’t about evil people making evil decisions; it’s more so about rational Chief Financial Officers who know nothing about food responding to the incentives in front of them. Independent owner-operators think differently because they live with the consequences differently. When your name is on the building (something I can never do with a name like Gruel), when your kids grow up in the dining room, when your customers know you personally, quality becomes more than shareholder value — ultimately, your reputation is your retirement plan. That’s why I (and many other great chefs) choose to make as much as possible from scratch. Does it cost us margin? Absolutely. Making food in-house costs significantly more money, requires more labor, and can create more waste. On paper, it’s the less profitable decision. But I believe customers recognize the difference between food cooked in a kitchen and food assembled in a lab. I’d rather sacrifice several points of margin today if it means earning one loyal customer who doesn’t get sick down the road. If we want America’s restaurants to taste as they used to, we should ask why independent restaurants no longer have the economic freedom to cook the way they once did. Who is driving these decisions? Getting back to real restaurant food means reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens that disproportionately hurt small operators. It means expanding vocational education and restoring respect for skilled trades. It means creating an economic environment in which independent restaurants can compete without being forced into industrial food production just to survive. In essence, bring back Main Street. America doesn’t need another thousand identical restaurant locations serving identical food prepared in identical factories, arguably making us sicker. We need more entrepreneurs who own one restaurant instead of one hundred. Heck, we need more families building businesses in their communities (that’s why I keep having so many kids — for the free labor). And more cooks (note I don’t say chefs) creating menus instead of selecting products from a culinary Sears catalog. If we change those incentives, I predict restaurants won’t need to buy so much factory-made food and distributors like Sysco won’t sell as much of it. They will get back to being a pipeline for thousands of small producers who don’t have trucking and storage capability. Heck, maybe we can bring back the Jersey diner! Stop blaming the distributor; blame the overregulation and fix the incentives. *** Andrew Gruel is a chef, restaurateur, and Huntington Beach City Councilmember.