Walter Olson Donald Trump’s most infamous pardons are those he issued to January 6 rioters, which extended clemency to every wrongdoer, no matter how violent or premeditated the conduct. (Here are my reasons for calling them infamous.) Less widely discussed has been his November 7 order “granting pardons for certain offenses relating to the 2020 presidential election.” This order pardons ...
Patrick G. Eddington US Sen. Mark Kelly (D‑AZ). In mid-July 1941, anti-interventionist Senator Burton Wheeler (D‑MT) sent 1,000,000 postcards to Americans across the country, urging them to write President Franklin Roosevelt to keep America out of the raging war in Europe. Two of those postcards were received, respectively, by Staff Sergeant William L. White at Fort Benning, Georgia, and 1st ...
Jeremy Horpedahl In the summer of 2024, a passage from J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy gained widespread attention on social media platforms, including X/Twitter. Vance described his refrigerator from the 1980s, asserting that it preserved lettuce for weeks beyond the capabilities of contemporary models. This was not just an offhanded comment by Vance, as he also said his takeaway from this anecdote ...
Jennifer Huddleston To date, states have considered over 1,000 bills about artificial intelligence (AI). More than 160 state-level laws have been passed, including everything from model-level regulations in Colorado to specific applications like the use of AI in hiring to more general studies of the technology’s potential impact. With so much action on a state level, there is a significant ...
Colleen Hroncich When millions of children struggle to sit still, focus, and conform to rigid classroom expectations, it’s become an epidemic of ADHD and other disorders. The New York Times is beginning to consider what should have been obvious all along: Maybe the problem isn’t the children. Others, including my colleague Kerry McDonald, have been raising these concerns for years. ...
Travis Fisher The need for speed is more than just a cool line from the movie Top Gun (the original)—it’s the overwhelming focus of people in the electricity sector today. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recognizes the need for speed and has responded with two initiatives: the “Speed to Power” request for information at the Department of Energy (DOE) and ...
Jeffrey Miron New research reminds us that policies designed to improve national security have costs, even if the policies have good intentions: Although the US was already an industrial nation in 1940, roughly 20 percent of the labor force was still employed in agriculture. Japanese Americans represented an exceptionally skilled segment of the agricultural workforce in the western United States. ...
Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins made headlines last week after proposing that all 41.7 million beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) reapply to crack down on fraud and “fundamentally rebuild” the program. The USDA has since backtracked, saying it will instead continue to work with states using their existing recertification ...
Jennifer Huddleston The college football season is hitting rival games, conference championships, and playoff season. Similar to many Alabamans, I may be a little too invested in the SEC football season and the upcoming bowl bids. Regardless of your preferred team, most of us yearn for solid competition in the sports we either play or watch. We enjoy seeing how ...
David J. Bier President Donald Trump premised his mass deportation agenda on the idea that he will be “returning millions and millions of criminal aliens.” Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has repeatedly claimed that they are arresting the “worst of the worst.” New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leaked to the Cato Institute reveal a different ...