Mike Fox Americans rightly recoil at recent reports from Britain, where Justice Secretary David Lammy announced that criminal jury trials for offenses carrying fewer than three years behind bars will be scrapped. This disturbing move may well mark the beginning of the end of jury trials in England and Wales. But those casting judgment on the British legal system are throwing ...
Scott Lincicome and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon In 2025, President Donald Trump not only raised US tariffs to their highest level since the 1930s but also repeatedly claimed that higher tariffs would fund many of his administration’s policy priorities. Whether bankrolling government handouts for American families and military personnel, offsetting the increase in the federal deficit created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act ...
Jeffrey Miron At the risk of repeating myself: Set aside the legal issues raised by the US removal of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (but see here and here for perspectives that make sense to me); And assume, as asserted by the Trump administration, that Maduro has been involved or complicit in the illegal drug trade, with adverse consequences for the ...
Chris Edwards We are seeing a remarkable cascade of fraud scandals in Minnesota. Program after program has been hit with taxpayer losses from organized scams in recent years. In the Feeding Our Future scam, 78 individuals have been indicted and 57 convicted of various fraud-related crimes against US Department of Agriculture food programs. Taxpayer losses from these thefts in Minnesota total ...
Jeffrey Miron The Trump administration recently initiated rulemaking to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. Drugs in Schedule I are deemed to have no accepted medical purpose and high potential for abuse, while those in Schedule III (e.g., ketamine, anabolic steroids) are categorized as having “moderate to low potential for physical and psychological dependence.” Opinions vary as to ...
Marcos Falcone The end of Nicolás Maduro’s tyranny is great news for Latin America and the world. For over two decades, the Venezuelan dictator and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, were the main advocates of socialism across the region, which led Venezuela into left-wing authoritarianism and economic collapse and dragged other countries along the way—much like Cuba during the 20th century. ...
Ian Vásquez, Justin Logan, Brandan P. Buck, Marcos Falcone, Katherine Thompson, Clark Neily, & Jeffrey A. Singer Scholars at the Cato Institute provide independent analysis on the implications of the US military raid in Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the country’s socialist dictator. Ian Vásquez, Vice President for International Studies at the Cato Institute, holder of the David ...
Clark Neily Last night, US forces attacked various locations in Venezuela in an operation to capture the loathsome President Nicolás Maduro and bring him to New York to face federal weapons and drug-trafficking charges for which he and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020. Much ink has already been spilled regarding the legality of that operation and whether it transgresses the ...
Romina Boccia Debates over Social Security reform in the United States are often framed around financing tweaks rather than first principles. Proposals to lift or eliminate the payroll tax cap, for example, are frequently presented as a way to secure the system by tapping higher earners, as if rising retirement obligations could be effectively met without confronting deeper questions about ...
Travis Fisher In the energy sector, 2025 was the year when we all realized we had outgrown our trousers. The flaws inherent in the systems that seemed to work well for decades, such as the US power grid, were finally exposed. The two big drivers for reform were the return to high growth in electricity demand after 20 years of stagnation—looking at ...