Clark Neily Eighty-three people are dead. So far this fall, US military forces have struck 22 suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Caribbean, killing dozens in what the Trump administration claims is a lawful counter-narcotics operation. The most controversial incident involved a September 2 “double-tap” strike: After missiles destroyed a boat and killed most of its crew, US forces fired again ...
Michael F. Cannon The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report on how careless Obamacare is with your money—for more than a decade, with no improvement. I don’t … I can’t even … I’ll just quote the report: The federal Marketplace approved coverage for nearly all of GAO’s fictitious applicants in plan years 2024 and 2025, generally consistent with ...
Mike Fox In 2023, Charles Foehner, a 65-year-old retired doorman and firearms collector, found himself in an unimaginable scenario. While walking to a Queens, NY, parking garage, a stranger brandishing a sharp object tried to mug him. Foehner pulled a revolver from his pocket and fired, killing his attacker, who had an extensive criminal record and a history of mental illness. ...
Walter Olson President Donald Trump continues to use his pardon powers in remarkable ways. Now he has pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was sentenced to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking. Cato asked me to write a statement on this development and here is what I wrote: The most coherent explanation for pardoning Juan Orlando Hernández would ...
Michael F. Cannon The “fraud scandal that rattled Minnesota,” reports the New York Times, “was staggering in its scale and brazenness.” Dozens of Minnesotans are facing felony charges for defrauding multiple government programs, including Medicaid. How staggering and brazen was it, you might ask? Let me put it this way: the title of this blog post is a quote from ...
Jeffrey A. Singer With Secretary of War Pete Hegseth embroiled in controversy over the extrajudicial killings of alleged drug smugglers operating a small, short-range boat off the coast of Venezuela, it’s worth examining how this all began. President Trump has repeatedly claimed that “narcoterrorists” are on these boats, transporting large quantities of fentanyl and other illegal drugs into the US ...
David J. Bier Last week, I published data leaked from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showing that 73 percent of individuals booked into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities since October 1, 2025, had no criminal convictions of any kind—only 5 percent had violent criminal convictions. It included this chart: In response, DHS called the report’s main chart ...
Michael Chapman Among its best books of 2025, The Economist selected Peak Human, What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages, by Johan Norberg, a Cato Institute senior fellow, historian, and documentary filmmaker. Commenting on its selection, The Economist wrote, “Peak Human. By Johan Norberg. … A historian explains how golden ages really start—and end. Some of the periods Johan ...
Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman Ending the government shutdown restored benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), but it also highlighted a broader issue in welfare policy: Congress often allows states to expand programs while shifting the costs to federal taxpayers. A clear example is SNAP’s Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility (BBCE), which lets states bypass the program’s asset limits and ...
Thomas A. Berry Are you graduating from law school in 2026, or are you a lawyer with roughly 0–2 years of legal experience? Do you want to write briefs on the most important cases of the year to defend individual liberty and robust constitutional rights? Then, apply to be a legal associate at the Cato Institute for the 2026–2027 term. Are ...