Neal McCluskey The Trump administration is looking for federal spending to cut, which seems pretty urgent given the nation’s nearly $37 trillion debt. The US Department of Education (US ED), which is neither constitutional, competent, nor effective, is home to numerous prime targets, including the Department itself. US ED in Context US ED spending constitutes a relatively small part of all education funding. ...
Adam N. Michel As Republicans work to extend and expand the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) before it expires, politicians will relitigate the deceptive distributional statistics that purport to show who benefits most from tax cuts. These distribution tables are inherently limited, often grossly misleading, result in distorted policy outcomes, and make fundamental tax reform all but impossible. ...
Colleen Hroncich Even before she had children, former public school teacher Jada Robinson often tried looking at her classroom as if she were a parent. “I would always think ahead—if this was my child in this class and my child was in this environment, how would I feel about that? Would I be okay with it?” she recalls. It gave ...
Scott Lincicome and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon Following a one-month suspension in the 25 percent tariffs on all goods imported into the United States from Canada and Mexico, President Trump announced on February 27 that his administration would move forward with these duties. As we explained in a previous blog post, these US tariffs (and the subsequent retaliation by the Mexican ...
Brian Doherty (Note: Below is the Introduction to the new book, Modern Libertarianism, A Brief History of Classical Liberalism in the United States, published by Libertarianism.org, a project of the Cato Institute, and available through Amazon and the Cato Store. The author, Brian Doherty, is a senior editor at Reason magazine.) Introduction What is the American libertarian movement? It is a ...
Walter Olson As one who watches the law, there are no questions I get asked more often these days than: What happens if the Trump administration decides to defy a court order? Who will win? The answers aren’t easy, because there are multiple possibilities that fall between clear compliance and clear defiance. That makes it hard to predict where the ...
Clark Neily Like Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick, I’ve sworn eternal hostility to the rational basis test. It’s a fraud and a charade—a constitutional kludge dressed up as judicial review, but with none of the substance. Worse, it’s unconstitutional for two reasons we’ll get to in a moment. Before supporting my extraordinary claim that the Supreme Court’s default standard for ...
Jennifer J. Schulp Crypto policy is off to the congressional races. Putting the rubber to the road on the Trump administration’s executive order “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Financial Technology,” Davis Sacks, the White House artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto czar, announced on February 4 that stablecoin legislation is an administration priority. And Congress (perhaps uncharacteristically) hopped to it. Stablecoins ...
Neal McCluskey NBC News has a story today about state education officials living in fear that President Trump will eliminate the US Department of Education (US ED). “States brace for Trump’s plans to dismantle the Education Department,” the headline intones. Fear not: Plans to end US ED do not spell doom. As I explain in this one-pager for states, to ...
Michael Chapman During his first term, President Donald Trump spoke boldly of religious freedom. At the UN in 2019, for instance, he said, “As president, protecting religious freedom is one of my highest priorities and always has been. … No matter the case, America will always be a voice for victims of religious persecution everywhere. No matter where you go, you ...