Checking In

Posts are likely to be less frequent and more varied

My muse, Kaya, turned five years old June 25.

So if you have happy employees, if you produce a good product and you’re keeping your customers happy, there’s no way you’re not going to make money.—Tish Gance

After publishing 52 essays from September 21, 2023, when I launched The Curious Watchdog, through May 9, 2025, this is my first post for June 2025. It’s been more than a month since I last posted.

Some reasons for this lapse have to do with the newsletter itself. I’ve written mainly about free speech, and that landscape has changed dramatically since Trump returned to the presidency in January 2024.

A whole range of revelations are coming out. Congressional committees and the Trump administration are investigating topics from Biden’s use of the autopen and January 6 to the coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story and potential interference in the 2020 election.

Books published in 2025 include Original Sin: President Biden’s decline, its cover-up and his disastrous choice to run again by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson; Independent: A look inside a broken White House, outside the party lines by Karine Jean-Pierre; and All the President’s Money: Investigating the secret foreign schemes that made the Biden family rich by James Comer. Joe Concha and Newt Gingrich have written books about Trump’s comeback.

Major realignment is occurring within the legacy media. Joe Concha wrote a January 15, 2025, prophetic opinion piece for the New York Post titled “Reality bites the leftist media with shakeups, layoffs and declines.” It started, “If the state of the legacy media as 2025 begins were put to music, the only appropriate soundtrack would be the iconic theme from “Jaws.” The piece went on to discuss downsizing at the Washington Post, changes at MSNBC, and declining ratings at both.

The developments above relate to a new chapter in the battle for free speech, or at least the end of the chapter on which I’ve focused. I feel like I’ve accomplished my initial goals with the newsletter, but I’d like to reorganize the information in my posts thematically to tell the story, from my perspective, about the battle for free speech mostly between the time Elon Musk bought Twitter and Trump’s second inauguration. I needed a little distance from what I’ve already done with my Substack to see what to do next.

Meanwhile, I’ve also had a few disruptions in other areas of my life. First, I’ve had some medical issues that appear manageable, even though they’re time-consuming and sometimes painful. Second, I’ve met new bridge partners and found new games and ways to have fun with bridge. And, third, I’ve been spending time on related projects that involve caring for Kaya, my son’s dog and my muse for The Curious Watchdog; requests to host Airbnb guests; and redecorating my living room.

I’m working on an essay based on an interview with local businesswoman Tish Gance who explains why capitalism gets a bad name because it’s often confused with corporatism.

Generally, I expect my posts to be less frequent and more varied in the future.

Here are a few articles related to free speech and related topics that have appeared since my last post:

A quick update on Berenson v Biden: The wheels grind slow; Alex Berenson for Unreported Truths 250611

Elon Musk says he activated Starlink in Tehran after regime cuts citizens off from internet amid Israeli strikes; Sam Sokol for The Times of Israel 250615

The Icarian Gene: The rise and fall of the expert class; Jonathan Turley for janathanturley.org 250626