Walter Olson Number five in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy: As polls closed and began to be tabulated, “rigged election” talk suddenly fell quiet. [I’m interviewed at StateLine.] Later, as the absurdly slow count of mail votes on the West Coast put off the counting of many millions of Democratic-leaning votes, both simple misunderstandings and ...
Alex Nowrasteh Support from Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and others was essential to President Donald Trump’s recent reelection. Immigration was a crucial issue to Musk and Ackman, who rightly complained about border chaos. Musk and Ackman emphasized how expanding legal immigration for skilled, entrepreneurial, and ambitious people would be a great boon to the United States. The Trump administration should listen to Musk and ...
Marc Joffe and Krit Chanwong Federal reforms in 2025 may give states both the flexibility and incentives they need to rein in spiraling Medicaid costs. As we discussed in a February 2024 Cato Policy Analysis, the Biden administration gave states few opportunities to improve the cost-effectiveness of their Medicaid programs, but this is likely to change under the second Trump ...
Eric Gomez and Benjamin Faber In October 2024, Congress received notification of two new arms sales for Taiwan, and the Ministry of National Defense (MND) confirmed the final delivery of Javelin anti-tank missiles. The net value of the US arms sale backlog to Taiwan increased by $1.86 billion, bringing the backlog’s total value to $22.39 billion. Figure 1 shows the ...
Jeffrey Miron For most goods and services, governments leave the production, distribution, sale, and consumption decisions to private individuals or groups. For gambling, however, US states are schizophrenic. Historically, state governments banned gambling of all kinds. In 1931, however, Nevada re-legalized casinos, leading to the return of parimutuel horse betting and casinos in some states. In 1964, New Hampshire authorized ...
Colleen Hroncich Project-based learning sounds great … until you realize you have to find or create the projects for your learners. That’s where Rock by Rock comes in. Jeff Imrich and Sung-Ae Yang, experienced teachers and school leaders, created Rock by Rock to increase access to project-based learning. “For a lot of kids, what we do traditionally for learning isn’t ...
Chris Edwards President-elect Trump should add “and Elimination” to his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The federal government has grown far too large to be managed efficiently. Even if federal workers were highly industrious, and even if politicians were laser-focused on the public interest, the government’s vast size would still create failure after failure. To achieve efficiency, we need major program ...
Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar Under 10 years of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rule, industrialist Gautam Adani became a “national champion” in infrastructure and one of the richest men in the world. He is India’s main face in attempts to combat China’s Belt and Road Initiative. To compete with China in building infrastructure across Asia and Africa, Modi has nominated or ...
Walter Olson Voters in ten or so states this month turned down proposals to change the way elections are held, and reformers will be taking time to absorb the lessons. But I’d caution against treating this, as some headline writers have done, as a general rejection of ranked choice voting (RCV), which figured in many of the proposed ballot measures. ...
Neal McCluskey In a bit of a surprise to education watchers, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon has been nominated to be the new US Secretary of Education. It comes amidst a renewed push to eliminate the unconstitutional and ineffectual federal Department of Education. Will McMahon tear the place down? That’s the wrong question. The right one points to ...