Neal McCluskey By a 6–3 vote, the US Supreme Court has overturned a lower court decision that the Trump administration violated the Constitution by firing 1,300 US Department of Education employees. Both the Supreme Court minority and the lower court argued that the staffing reductions were intended to dismantle the department, which only Congress can do because it makes laws, ...
Alex Nowrasteh Darel E. Paul, the Willmott Family Third Century Professor of Political Science at Williams College, wrote a piece for Compact Magazine titled “Mass Immigration Lowers Fertility.” He uses the example of Czechia to argue that a surge of refugees from Ukraine lowered fertility. Paul’s piece is unconvincing, even if well-written and interesting. The latter is certainly the case, as ...
Jeffrey A. Singer Researchers at the University of California-Davis released a study last month on three popular, currently illegal disposable pod vapes: ELF Bar, Esco Bar, and Flum Pebble. They found that certain heavy metals, such as antimony, chromium, copper, lead, nickel, and zinc, were present in the aerosols, some of which can be toxic or carcinogenic and are at ...
Walter Olson Elon Musk’s social media platform X / Twitter was in the news this week—and not in a good way—when its built-in AI chatbot, Grok, began launching into anti-Semitic rants, praising Adolf Hitler, and fantasizing about violence against an online liberal figure. (Coverage here, here, here, and here.) You might think one consequence of this blowup would be that ...
Jennifer J. Schulp and Christian Kruse If the American economy were running a 100m dash, small business would be the starting blocks, providing the foundation for success. Making up 89.8 percent of all US companies and contributing 20.6 percent to American job creation since 1992, small businesses—those under 20 employees—are launchpads for growth. However, small businesses can have a hard ...
Colleen Hroncich As a private school teacher turned homeschooler, Arkansas mom Trisha Tyler was more prepared than most parents when COVID-19 disrupted education throughout the country. But she saw how difficult it was for many families in her community and thought learning pods could help. “It really hurt my heart for people that had no community, that were stuck in ...
Clark Packard To hear Washington’s hawks tell it—including many in the Trump administration—trade with China jeopardizes domestic manufacturing and, worse still, US national security. A rational response to such fears would be to eliminate trade barriers with a number of Asia-Pacific trading partners. Yet the administration’s trade policy continues to undercut that goal in the quixotic belief that the US ...
Adam N. Michel I would not have voted for the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that President Trump signed on July 4. The legislation adds trillions to the national debt, expands some of the worst tax subsidies, increases spending for parts of the government that are chronically overfunded, and includes many budget gimmicks. But it also does something Republicans haven’t had ...
Jeffrey A. Singer Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute is no fan of cannabis legalization. On July 2, 2025, he took to the Wall Street Journal opinion pages to argue that it would be disastrous for the Trump administration to move cannabis from Schedule I (“drugs with no currently accepted medical use and high potential for abuse”) to Schedule ...
Matt Mittelsteadt Perhaps the biggest near-term AI opportunity is reducing cybercrime costs. With serious attacks unfolding almost daily, digital insecurity’s economic weight has truly grown out of control. Per the European Commission, global cybercrime costs in 2020 were estimated at 6.5 trillion euros (around $7.65 trillion). Since then, costs have only spiraled. In 2025, Cybersecurity Ventures estimates annual costs will hit ...