Chris Edwards The Trump administration plans federal worker layoffs if the government shuts down this week. The president’s budget director argues that the federal workforce is bloated. The administration has worked to cut the number of federal employees since the beginning of the year. Let’s put the administration’s efforts into broader context. The figure shows Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) ...
Patrick G. Eddington In my book The Triumph of Fear, one of the Cold War-era political repression programs I spend some time discussing is the Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO). The operative language that gave life to AGLOSO was contained in President Truman’s Executive Order 9835, which launched the so-called federal employee loyalty program—an executive action that led ...
Clark Packard Earlier this week, the Cato Institute, the Fraser Institute in Canada, and a number of global think tanks published the annual Economic Freedom of the World report, which assesses and ranks economic freedom in 165 countries. Though the United States has historically fared well in the annual report—including in this year’s edition—the Trump administration’s aggressive protectionism is quickly eroding ...
Michael Chapman Libertarians and many conservatives have long argued that the federal government is too large, too intrusive, and often operates beyond its constitutional limits. They also agree that for liberty to expand, government must contract—dramatically. One way to help do that is to reduce the federal workforce. The Trump administration pledged to take that step this year, and a ...
Walter Olson Yesterday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order laying out plans to use law enforcement and regulation to “investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations” that, according to him, are responsible for encouraging acts of political violence. The order envisages the use of government power to crack down on a vaguely specified mix of organizational, associational, and individual ...
Jai Kedia The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) met last week and decided to lower the target for the federal funds rate (FFR), the policy rate used to affect economy-wide changes, by 25 basis points, as was widely expected. Recent developments, especially Stephen Miran’s appointment and subsequent dissent at the FOMC meeting, have again triggered concerns over Fed independence and the degree ...
Jeffrey Miron On September 19, President Trump signed an executive order adding a $100,000 fee to applications for H‑1B visas, which allow US employers to hire foreign workers for specialty occupations. H‑1B applications previously cost about $1,500. While the White House has clarified that the fee will not apply to current visa holders or renewals, the policy still has significant economic implications. The primary ...
Jeremy Horpedahl The Census Bureau recently released a massive amount of new data on Americans and the US economy, as they do each year with their “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States” release. The latest data cover the year 2024 and contain a lot of good news about how Americans are faring. In this post, I ...
Chris Edwards In recent years, investigators have uncovered huge fraud in Minnesota’s school food subsidies. A group called Feeding Our Future spearheaded the theft of $250 million in federal school food aid administered by the state Department of Education. More than 50 people have pleaded guilty to crimes related to receiving government payments for meals not delivered to the claimed groups of children. ...
Matt Mittelsteadt This month, the SANDBOX Act was introduced in the US Senate, marking the first attempt to establish a federal artificial intelligence regulatory sandbox. For the unfamiliar, a regulatory sandbox is a legal framework that allows organizations to experiment with emerging technologies in a controlled environment—providing regulatory enforcement relief in return for agency oversight. The aim is to create ...