Matthew Cavedon By all appearances, the death penalty is highly unpopular in the District of Columbia. The last person the city executed was Robert Carter in 1957—his jury actually recommended that he get life, but the death penalty was mandated by statute. In 1981, the city council formally abolished the death penalty. When Congress put the issue to a local ...
Neal McCluskey and Kayla Susalla In maybe a surprise move, President Donald Trump on August 25 said he would allow 600,000 Chinese students to enter the country to attend college. It is “maybe” a surprise because a basic Trump negotiating strategy seems to be unpredictability. Regardless, such openness would be a good thing for the country, both for its direct financial impacts ...
David J. Bier Many people believe that immigrants increase crime, and they are extremely reluctant to accept the mountains of evidence that prove otherwise. In my latest policy analysis for the Cato Institute, coauthored with data analyst Julian Salazar, we investigate the question of immigrant crime from a different angle: the perspective of the victims of crime. Cato has previously ...
Matthew Cavedon On August 25, President Trump issued an executive order regarding burnings of the American flag. Media criticism was swift. MSNBC declared, “In this country, a presidential executive order cannot override a Supreme Court ruling. On flag burning, Trump doesn’t appear to care.” The truth is subtler but still troubling. Though the executive order is not going to overturn ...
Matt Mittelsteadt In late July, the White House released its AI Action Plan. As I noted in part one of this series, policy has pivoted toward a much-needed emphasis on innovation while still striking a relatively balanced tone on risk management. These are welcome shifts. But they don’t excuse the Plan’s largest flaw: a push to combat so-called “AI ideological ...
Walter Olson So far as I can see, Trump’s Executive Order today denouncing flag burning is a legal nothingburger. Under the Supreme Court’s 1989 decision in Texas v. Johnson, famously joined by Justice Antonin Scalia, the First Amendment does not permit laws generally banning burning or other desecration of the American flag. Trump can’t himself nullify or overturn that precedent ...
Mike Fox As a former public defender, I represented hundreds of poor individuals relegated to cages, having never been convicted of a crime, not because they were dangerous but rather solely because they were poor. Money bail does nothing to protect public safety. It simply dictates that if you have money, you’re free to terrorize others, and if you’re poor, ...
Jeffrey A. Singer Patients taking popular GLP‑1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy could face higher costs as new tariffs hit European-made branded medicines under the free trade agreement between the US and the European Union, which was announced last week. As I explained here, under the framework trade agreement between the United States and the European Union, generic pharmaceuticals and ...
Scott Lincicome and Alfredo Carrillo Obregon At 4:00 p.m. on Friday, August 15, the Trump administration quietly announced that imports of more than 400 additional products—valued at almost $210 billion in 2024—would be subject to “national security” tariffs on steel and aluminum. The action is disturbing for many reasons. For starters, many of the listed items can’t plausibly be considered “steel ...
Colleen Hroncich When her daughter turned five, Chris Hauer thought, “Well, we could do one year of homeschool. We’re doing okay at preschool, we could probably handle kindergarten.” But she knew they needed to find some friends, so she found a homeschool group, the Helena Homeschool Enrichment Co-op. Little did she know where that would lead. “I showed up the ...