Economics The Trump Administration's Latest Housing 'Fix' Could Inflate Another Bubble Socializing risk to subsidize demand isn't a solution to the housing crisis, but it is a good start to another financial crisis. Jack Nicastro | 11.12.2025 2:03 PM
Antitrust Trump Baselessly Accuses Meat Packers of 'Criminally Profiting at the Expense of the American People' There are several reasons why beef prices are at a record high. Collusion isn't one of them. Jack Nicastro | 11.10.2025 5:18 PM
Tariffs Trump's Lawyer at the Supreme Court Cites a Letter from James Madison That Says Tariffs Are Taxes During oral argument at the Supreme Court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer cited a letter by James Madison that completely undermines the administration’s case that its tariffs are legal. Jack Nicastro | 11.7.2025 12:45 PM
Entertainment Review: KPop Demon Hunters Teaches Us That Harmony Thwarts Evil A girl group battles a demon boy band in the wildly popular Netflix musical. Jack Nicastro | 11.7.2025 6:30 AM
Minimum Wage Washington's State Capital Just Voted Against Increasing the Minimum Wage, Unemployment Olympia residents apparently learned from Seattle’s experience that minimum wage hikes do not improve the welfare of the worst off in society. Jack Nicastro | 11.5.2025 10:07 AM
Israel Massachusetts Town Votes To Boycott Any Business That 'Sustains Israel's Apartheid' City officials should spend and invest public funds in the most prudent manner possible. Jack Nicastro | 11.4.2025 10:27 PM
New York City 6 Zohran Mamdani Campaign Promises That New York City Can't Afford Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani has been elected mayor by promising New Yorkers “free” programs and services with their own money. Jack Nicastro | 11.4.2025 9:37 PM
Tariffs As Tariff Case Heads to the Supreme Court, Trump's Strongest Argument Has a Fatal Flaw The International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn't grant the president the power to regulate imports with tariffs. Even if it did, these tariffs would still be unconstitutional. Jack Nicastro | 11.4.2025 3:40 PM
Tariffs These Small Business Owners Explain How Trump's Tariffs Are More of an 'Existential Crisis' Than COVID President Donald Trump says his tariffs protect American businesses, but more than 700 small businesses represented by We Pay The Tariffs beg to differ. Jack Nicastro | 10.30.2025 11:55 AM
Protectionism This Virginia Company Says Donald Trump's Tariffs Make 'Rational Business Planning Impossible' Crutchfield Corporation, a Charlottesville-based and family-owned electronics retailer, has submitted an amicus brief in support of challenges to the president’s reciprocal tariffs. Jack Nicastro | 10.27.2025 5:30 PM
Government Waste This College Dropout Thinks His AI Startup Can Do What Elon Musk Couldn't: Expose Fraud Alex Shieh, creator of Bloat@Brown, co-founded the Antifraud Company to investigate and publicize corporate fraud in critical government programs. Jack Nicastro | 10.24.2025 11:11 AM
Antitrust Live Nation's Merger with Ticketmaster Isn't Responsible for High Resale Prices—You Are Antitrust enforcers at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have singled out Live Nation as a scapegoat for concertgoers' insatiable appetites. Jack Nicastro | 10.22.2025 9:45 AM
Tariffs Coming Soon to the Supreme Court: Are Tariffs Taxes? The correct answer is: Yes, even when they are also regulations. Whether the Court agrees could determine the future of presidential power. Jack Nicastro | 10.20.2025 12:50 PM
Innovation Empower Stays on D.C. Streets as Appeals Court Weighs Future of Rideshare Company The D.C. Superior Court found Empower still in contempt of court despite updating its software-as-a-service agreement and will reconvene in January. Jack Nicastro | 10.17.2025 1:15 PM
Peter Thiel I Listened to Over 7 Hours of Peter Thiel's Leaked Antichrist Lectures. They're Surprisingly Libertarian. The PayPal and Palantir co-founder warns about the dangers of government overreach and a one-world state. Jack Nicastro | 10.14.2025 2:45 PM
Movies Review: Dracula: A Love Tale Casts the Title Character as a Trad Religious Hero Director Luc Besson delivers a conservative interpretation of Bram Stoker's classic vampire novel. Jack Nicastro | 10.10.2025 6:00 AM
ridesharing D.C. Will Arrest This CEO if His Rideshare Alternative Doesn't Shut Down by Friday Empower CEO Joshua Sear is guilty of providing a cheap, popular alternative to Uber in the nation's capital. Jack Nicastro | 10.9.2025 3:45 PM
Bureaucracy The Economy Doesn't Need Federal Jobs Data To Function There are plenty of private alternatives to the employment report put out by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jack Nicastro | 10.8.2025 10:20 AM
Artificial Intelligence Josh Hawley and Democrat Allies Target AI With New Legal and Regulatory Regime Two bills recently introduced by Hawley would set American AI and the economy back. Jack Nicastro | 10.2.2025 2:15 PM
Government Shutdown A Government Shutdown Isn't Really a Shutdown. Most Federal Employees Are Still Working and Will Get Paid. The federal government continues paying its biggest bills during a shutdown, and hundreds of thousands of federal employees get a belatedly paid vacation. Jack Nicastro | 10.1.2025 4:46 PM
Donald Trump Trump's 100 Percent Chip Tariff Could Make It More Expensive To Build More Semiconductors in the U.S. Trump exempted imported chips from his reciprocal tariffs in April. Now he's threatening them with 100 percent rates. Jack Nicastro | 9.29.2025 4:46 PM
Politics The American New Right Looks Like the European Old Right When conservatives reject constitutional limits on executive power and foment civil conflict, what exactly are they conserving? Phillip W. Magness | 9.26.2025 2:19 PM
Business and Industry Amazon Is Being Forced To Pay $2.5 Billion for Making It Easier To Sign Up for Prime The Federal Trade Commission reached a settlement with Amazon in its yearslong lawsuit against the company for "dark patterns" in Prime sign up and cancellation. Jack Nicastro | 9.26.2025 12:00 PM
Tariffs Trump's Tariffs Have Already Hurt the Economy—and the Pain Is Only Beginning The OECD just published its projections for American growth, and they're grim. Jack Nicastro | 9.24.2025 4:43 PM
Artificial Intelligence These 2 Terrible Tech Bills Are on Gavin Newsom's Desk One limits children’s access to mental health services, the other mandates a black box warning, and both undermine users’ digital privacy. Jack Nicastro | 9.22.2025 4:53 PM
Monetary Policy The Federal Reserve Cuts Rates With Inflation Still Hot. Is Political Pressure Winning? When the Federal Reserve is concerned about inflation, it increases the federal funds rate. Despite expressing such concerns, the Fed lowered it. Jack Nicastro | 9.18.2025 1:04 PM
Tariffs House Republicans Just Voted To Give Even More Tariff Power Away to Trump House Republicans passed a resolution that prevents Congress from ending the national emergency Trump is using to impose tariffs until March 31. Jack Nicastro | 9.17.2025 4:00 PM
Free Speech J.D. Vance Says 26 Percent of Young Liberals Justify Political Violence. Here's What the Data Really Say. Majorities on the left and on the right denounce political violence and its celebration. Jack Nicastro | 9.16.2025 1:45 PM
Innovation California's Tech Regulations Could Strangle AI Innovation for the Whole Country Federalism works best when state-level policy experiments stay contained. Jack Nicastro | 9.16.2025 6:00 AM
Artificial Intelligence Lawmakers Want To Shield Kids From AI Chatbots. But Restricting Them Could Cut Off a Mental Health Lifeline. Crackdowns on AI chatbots over perceived risks to children's safety could ultimately put more children at risk. Jack Nicastro | 9.12.2025 3:15 PM
Artificial Intelligence Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley Are Borrowing Joe Biden's Playbook To Regulate AI Republican AI opponents sound an awful lot like Democrats. Jack Nicastro | 9.10.2025 3:30 PM
Trump Administration Donald Trump's Antitrust Enforcers Continue Their Harassment Campaign Against Google There is no hard evidence of Gmail discriminating against Republican campaign emails, but that’s no matter to the FTC Chairman. Jack Nicastro | 9.5.2025 2:36 PM
Antitrust Trump and Biden Tried To Break Up Google. Now, They've Both Failed. A federal judge rejected the proposed structural remedies in the Google search engine monopoly case. Jack Nicastro | 9.3.2025 5:00 PM
Tariffs The White House Says Trump's Tariffs Have Raised $8 Trillion in Revenue. That's Not Even Close. The administration attributed the $8 trillion figure both to new investment and to tariff revenue. So which is it? Neither. Jack Nicastro | 9.2.2025 5:20 PM
Tariffs Trump's Tariffs and Immigration Policies Are Why Your Amazon Packages Are So Expensive and Will Take Forever I got a pair of shoes delivered from Asia for a reasonable price. Trump just ended the exemption that makes that transaction possible. Jack Nicastro | 8.29.2025 6:20 PM
Higher Education Federal Funding for Universities Comes With Strings. Now Trump Is Pulling Them. The potential nationalization and forced revenue sharing of university patents makes a strong case for the separation of economy and state. Jack Nicastro | 8.28.2025 4:00 PM
Artificial Intelligence No, These New Studies Don't Show an AI Jobs Apocalypse Is Coming Economists at the Federal Reserve and Stanford University recently published studies investigating how AI affects employment in different industries. Jack Nicastro | 8.27.2025 4:05 PM
Protectionism Trump's Furniture Tariffs Will Make It Harder To Turn Your House Into a Home Protectionism won't save the American furniture industry, but it will increase the cost of living. Jack Nicastro | 8.27.2025 9:45 AM
Department of Justice Spirit Airlines May Go Out of Business Because of the Justice Department The DOJ blocked Spirit's merger with JetBlue in 2024 over concerns about market consolidation, but markets also consolidate when failing firms go bankrupt and exit. Jack Nicastro | 8.15.2025 10:12 AM
Protectionism Trump Administration Plans To Tax More American Companies on Overseas Sales The president's revenue-sharing agreement on chip sales to China may pass legal muster, paving the way for effective export tariffs. Jack Nicastro | 8.14.2025 3:00 PM
Tariffs This Trump Tariff Could Increase America's Trade Deficit Switzerland might respond to Trump’s double-digit “reciprocal” tariff by canceling its multibillion-dollar F-35 order. Jack Nicastro | 8.13.2025 11:30 AM
Artificial Intelligence U.S. Revenue Grab on Chip Exports Raises Legal, Economic Alarms The Trump administration will allow Nvidia and AMD to sell chips in the Chinese market—in exchange for 15 percent of their revenue. Jack Nicastro | 8.11.2025 12:31 PM
Interest rates The Federal Reserve Rightly Rejects Trump's Calls for Lower Interest Rates Maintaining the elevated federal funds rate makes borrowing more expensive, but the alternative is artificially cheap money, malinvestment, and inflation. Jack Nicastro | 7.30.2025 4:25 PM
Tariffs Trump Seeks Even Higher Tariffs: 'Between 15 Percent and 50 Percent' on Imports From All Countries The 10 percent baseline reciprocal tariff rate was bad for America; the 15 percent rate is even worse. Jack Nicastro | 7.25.2025 4:47 PM
Artificial Intelligence Here's How the AI Action Plan Will Accelerate—and Throttle—AI Innovation The American AI industry doesn't need industrial policy, just freedom. Jack Nicastro | 7.24.2025 4:27 PM
Artificial Intelligence Virginia Is Using AI To Identify Illegal and Redundant Regulations While other states are focused on regulating AI, Virginia is using the technology to repeal regulations. Jack Nicastro | 7.23.2025 4:48 PM
Social Security A Social Security Bailout Would Cost Younger Workers $157,000 in Higher Taxes To keep Social Security solvent without cutting benefits would require a massive hike in payroll taxes, which would fall entirely on working Americans. Jack Nicastro | 7.22.2025 5:00 PM
Artificial Intelligence Pentagon Awards up to $200 Million to AI Companies Whose Models Are Rife With Ideological Bias The Department of Defense awarded contracts to Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. The last two are particularly concerning. Jack Nicastro | 7.21.2025 4:21 PM
