Morning Briefing

Including FEMA, POTUS, and other acronyms

And a terrifying illiteracy story out of Connecticut

Also taxes and DEI

Also we solve the ILA strike

And news about defense supply chains

Probably not. But maybe.

And other policy news

Fear us.

Keep it simple

Charles Fain Lehman brings the numbers

If you're like us, you have been following the CR business in the House, and wondering: "What is going on?"

Beyond the cat memes

Say hi to the Mossad's new agent, Motti Rola

Education is doing poorly and the candidates don't talk about it

More about the story about the cats in Ohio... Is this a policy story? Ostensibly, no. But in reality, we believe, yes.

We don't know who in or around the Trump-Vance campaign is a follower of French politics, but President Trump's new proposal to exempt overtime from tax was Nicolas Sarkozy's signature issue in the 2007 campaign.

If you're like us, you just watched Steve Rattner on Morning Joe do a frankly surreal bit as a post-debate fact-checker, focusing of course exclusively on Trump “lies.” Why does a private equity baron want to do stints as a contributor on a small cable news channel? It's bizarre.

Today we remember those who died on 9-11-2001 and their families. Never forget. SpaceX cannot fly its groundbreaking Starship rocket until November at least, according to a blog post by the company.

Cointelegraph, a news outlet covering cryptocurrency, reports that transactions on Monero, a cryptocurrency designed to guarantee anonymity, can be traceable after all.

Hello from Dupont Circle! Your correspondent has finished his tour of the Bay Area (more to come) and is now in the Swamp for a series of meetings.

Your correspondent is highly sympathetic to the proposition that lithium battery electric vehicles are, to use a highly oversimplistic and not-at-all-controversial term, a scam. While battery efficiency has been improving, there is good physics to suggest that there is a hard limit and they will never get to the point where they can afford as much range and convenience as gas cars.

Your correspondent is still in San Francisco for the Reboot Conference. And it looks like today's big policy news is tech related, which is that the draft of the House version of the permitting bill has been released.

We apologize for yesterday's Briefing being missing, as a consequence of a plane with malfunctioning wifi. We apologize for the inconvenience.

This is Matt Stoller’s takeaway from a recent Third Circuit decision. We don’t have to tell you how far-reaching the implications could be if this ruling–which is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court–is confirmed.

In a recent article for American Compass, EPPC’s excellent family policy scholar Patrick T. Brown (you should read his newsletter) proposes an innovative and straightforward approach to supporting new parents: a $2,000-per-parent “baby bonus.”

We all know about Loper Bright. But in a recent article at Commentary, Adam J. White argues that overturning Chevron is part of a broader pattern by the Supreme Court to rein in the administrative state and restore some resemblance between the current state of affairs and the separation of powers as envisaged in the Constitution.

AI as an Efficient Grader: One of the most promising applications of AI in education is its ability to grade short-answer questions. Recent studies have shown that advanced AI models like GPT-4 can grade almost as accurately as human teachers, but with significantly greater speed.

Like many on the right, on the center, and even on the sane left, I am an enormous admirer of Bjorn Lomborg. The Swedish statistician has made a name for himself by responding to the craziest claims and prescriptions of radical environmentalists regarding topics such as climate change, with sober analysis.

It’s easy (and correct) to simply be outraged at the arrogance of an EU bureaucrat having the audacity to comment on an American businessman hosting a conversation with an American political candidate on an American website.

In the 1960s, police cleared (through arrest or exceptional means) around 90% of homicides. By 2020, that rate had fallen to about 54%. For other violent crimes like aggravated assault, clearance rates dropped from over 80% to under 50%. Property crimes have seen even steeper declines, with burglary clearances falling from over 50% in the 1960s to around 14% in 2020.

The time of Covid is the time everyone would like to forget. It’s just too traumatic. Thankfully, the Brownstone Institute was founded in the era of Covid to try to apply some of the lessons learned to public health.

EPPC’s Patrick T. Brown is one of the sharpest minds working on family policy in DC, and has been a day-one subscriber and supporter of PolicySphere (hi Patrick!). This is why you should follow him on X and subscribe to his weekly newsletter covering family policy.

Millennium Health is a drug testing company that monitors drug use for drug addiction treatment centers. They publish “Signals Reports” on emerging drug use trends based on urine drug test samples across the country.

We almost titled this “Don’t take the Good Lord’s children for wild ducks,” except nobody would have gotten the reference to the great midcentury French screenwriter and director Michel Audiard. An American phrase carrying the same meaning would be “Don’t ____ on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

The Soviet Union implemented widespread price controls starting under Stalin in the late 1920s, which lasted until the end of the Soviet era. Price controls were intended to keep prices low and stable, especially for basic goods and food.

Yesterday, we learned two things. First, Vox.com still exists. Second, it has published a hit pieced about what it calls “The right’s plan to fix America: Patriarchy 2.0” full of innuendos and dark warnings about the right’s concerns about broken families and collapsing birth rates.

In 2006 (we may as well say the dark ages), Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam wrote a book about how the Republicans should reach out to the working class. One of their ideas was a child tax credit.

Your regular correspondent, Pascal Emmanuel Gobry, is out today with a (non-life-threatening, we are happy to say) surgery. He will be back soon, but the morning briefing will continue… written by PolicySphere’s mysterious special correspondent.

There seems to be a theme with Tim Walz: the demeanor of a moderate Midwestern dad, and a radical political record.

This is the title of a new article by David Bell at the Brownstone Institute, whose coverage of public health issues and agricultural issues has been consistently stellar.

We first heard of immunotherapy as a potential quasi-miracle cure for cancer in the 2010s, around the time Sean Parker launched a foundation to fund cancer immunotherapy.

As you know, we try to stay away as much as possible from horse race politics news, here. (If you don’t trust us, read our latest article, which is on monetary policy!)

Your correspondent writes and edits this newsletter, but he is also the Founder and CEO of the company that publishes it, which means he has to do business things like raise money.

Hey, remember how two astronauts are stranded on the ISS because of a bad Boeing return vehicle?

One of the funniest meme creators on the Francophone version of X dot com goes by the pseudonym of Bouli. Bouli’s most famous meme is philosophical (appropriate for a Frenchman) and titled Le Contrat social, The Social Contract.

So-called “Opportunity Zones” have been a standby of conservative policy recommendations for troubled urban areas, going all the way back to the Reagan era. The TCJA created the OZ program to spur investment in low-income communities. 8,764 census tracts were designated as OZs in 2018. The way it works is that investors can defer and potentially reduce capital gains taxes by investing in Qualified Opportunity Funds (QOFs) that invest in OZs.

The national debt has officially hit $35 trillion. What is even more striking is that it reached $34 trillion just 209 days ago.

KOSA will get a floor vote in the Senate, likely this week. Its bipartisan sponsors are aiming to get the House to pass it and have it on the President’s desk before the August recess–a tight timeline.

It’s truly a privilege to write for such an elite group of subscribers. After yesterday’s article exploring the possibility of a link between the boom-and-bust nature of the construction business and housing prices, a subscriber who wishes to remain anonymous reached out.

During his Convention speech, Republican Vice-Presidential nominee JD Vance had this to say about the rising cost of housing (from the text of the speech): “The absurd cost of housing is the result of SO MANY failures of America’s leadership class. And I can tell you exactly how it happened.

Who should you trust: the Science, or your lying eyes? This is a question that seems to recur surprisingly often. Lots and lots of professionals in the “social sciences” are invested in a worldview that goes against most people’s common sense and day-to-day experience, and they tend to produce “science” that validates their worldview rather than common sense–but too often at the cost of, shall we say, “creativity” in how the data is selected or analyzed or presented.

With all the political news over the weekend, some may have already forgotten what would otherwise be a neverending news item: the global outage of IT services that occurred on Friday, which is called the largest in history, freezing the operations of countless companies and banks, forcing all planes in the United States to land, causing an estimated $1 billion of damage and, perhaps worst of all, forcing your correspondent’s favorite bakery to revert to pen and paper for a day.

PolicySphere covers the tiny world of center and right-of-center policy professionals in Washington. It’s a tiny world, but an influential and important one and one whose nerdiness your correspondent finds infinitely fascinating.

The Trump/Vance View Of Social Security Versus The Traditional View. One of the ways in which both Donald Trump and his new running mate JD Vance have diverged from traditional Republican orthodoxy has been entitlements.

Before your links of the day, a confession: we put together this daily email by reading many, if not most (or at least we try) of the material put out by think tanks, policy journals, policy wonks, and other media, about public policy in the United States, every day.

As you know, we here at PolicySphere try to cover as little political news as we can. We must make an exception, however, when it comes to the Republican Party’s new nominee for the office of Vice President of the United States, since J.D.

Happy Monday, whether you’re attending the Republican Convention, and Heritage’s Policy Fest, or not.

#TaxPolicy – “The Biden administration’s $60 billion expansion of the IRS has netted $1 billion in new revenue so far.” We believe in good government and were skeptical of conservative opposition to the Biden administration’s efforts to expand the IRS.

#FamilyPolicy – The pandemic and associated troubles caused many families, especially families with young children, to flee America’s big cities. Since then the phenomenon has gone unabated. This important new report from the Economic Innovation Group charts this phenomenon.

#Populism #Elites – In many ways, your correspondent founded PolicySphere in an attempt to get the various factions of the right to talk, and to talk productively and concretely. A man not averse to controversial statements is Oren Cass of American Compass.

#Antitrust – At The Federalist Society, Mark Meador makes the case for enforcing the Robinson-Patman Act, a somewhat obscure piece of antitrust legislation designed to prevent predatory pricing behavior.

#Trade – New research from the Tax Foundation suggests that almost all of the Trump & Biden tariffs were passed on to consumers as higher prices. The Tax Foundation is a virulent opponent of tariffs so take it with a grain of salt, but this is still a legitimate concern that trade skeptics need to answer.

We hope you’re ready for the fireworks of Independence Day! There will be no Morning Briefing during the long weekend, so we now wish a Happy Birthday to America. May this great, exceptional nation endure as a Shining City on a Hill.

#DEI – We know the Supreme Court made race-based admissions preferences illegal for institutions of higher education. But we also know that in the past universities have tried to get around such prohibitions at the state level by using various proxies for race.

#Economics – From the Committee to Unleash Prosperity: revised GDP numbers show that, once again, in Q1 2024, government spending outgrew personal consumption, which means that growth is fueled by (deficit-financed) government spending, not by the real economy.

By now you have certainly learned that the Supreme Court has done what many desired and few expected: it has overturned the Chevron doctrine. This is a massive change to administrative law in the United States, so we are doing a special edition of the Briefing with early links and analysis to help you make sense of what is going on.

#ThinkTanks – A little inside baseball, but…Well, that’s why you subscribe, don’t you? American Compass, the think tank founded by Oren Cass to chart a course for post-Reagan-consensus conservative economics, has announced a reorganization.

Inflation seems to be the theme of the day #Inflation – American Action Forum President Douglas Holtz-Eakin on the Biden Administration’s incoherent response to inflation.

#TaxPolicy – The Tax Foundation, whose online content is always high quality and very clear, has put out a very well-done tracker of the 2024 Presidential Tax Plans.

#StateCapacity – So much of good government involves basic competence. For example, not doing this: before the government issues children new Social Security numbers, it doesn’t check whether that number has previously been linked to identity-related fraud. This can occur, because many criminals use randomly-generated SSNs.

Today of course we have a raft of SCOTUS decisions, which we will cover shortly.

#AmericanManufacturing #DEI – Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has a plan to fix the CHIPS Act, by keeping the subsidies but eliminating onerous labor regulations, especially those concerning DEI.

Reports of the Petrodollar’s Death Have Been Exaggerated (For Now)

Biden Amnesty

Friday Essays And Morning Briefing

JD Vance Talks Economics, Immigration, Trade, And More

Administrative State Delenda Est?

Nukes And Nicotine

The Biden War on Appliances; What Just Happened in France

On the Acceleration of Lawfare; Friday Essays

Senate Dems’ Election-Year Contraception Fear-Mongering

The Fight Over The Future Of Conservative Fiscal Policy Continues

Prominent Conservatives Fight Over Future Tax And Spending Policy

Shock Report: The Biden Administration’s Quiet Mass Amnesty

Friday Essays And Stingy Boomers

Top To Bottom Incompetence On Immigration

The French Have A Cure For the Common Cold, But the FDA Doesn’t Want You To Have It

Do Smartphones Really Cause Teen Depression? Also, Important New Inflation Paper

Friday Essays And Links – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 24, 2025

The Science Is Fake And The Babies Are Gone – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 23, 2025

Chinese Science Is Fake (But Don’t Worry, Ours Is Great) – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 22, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 21, 2025

Friday Essays And Links – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 17, 2025

Fake Science – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 16, 2025

The Scourge of Doxxing – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 15, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 14, 2025

UBI, Immigration, And AI – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 13, 2025

Links And Friday Essays – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 10, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 9, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 7, 2025

Immigration Insanity – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 6, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 3, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – May 2, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 30, 2025

3 Million Missing Workers – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 29, 2024

Friday Essays, AI Hate Crime Hoax, And More – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 26, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 25, 2025

Women’s Sports and Noncompetes – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 24, 2025

GDP vs GDI And Other Economic Woes – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 23, 2025

NatCon Brussels, The Economy, Stoopid, Title IX, And More – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 22, 2025

Links And Friday Essays – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 19, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 18, 2025

NatCon Censorship – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 17, 2025

DEI Madness and Disappearing Kidneys – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 16, 2025

Tax Week! – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 15, 2025

Friday Essays And PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 12, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 11, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 10, 2025

Calling for Feedback, and Discussing “Light Touch” YIMBY – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 9, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 8, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 5, 2025

AI and the Bible in Schools – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 4, 2025

Industrial Policy and the Digital Longhouse – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 3, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – April 2, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 28, 2025

Announcing PolicySphere Series And Infrastructure Week! – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 27, 2025

Baltimore Bridge Collapse – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 26, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 25, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 22, 2025

Neuralink, Funding Deal, and Biden Waters Down EV Mandate – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 21, 2025

Is It Discrimination If You Cannot Buy A Hermès Handbag? Also, Great Replacement Talk – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 20, 2025

Funding Deal? – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 19, 2025

How Do We Do Public Health Post-Pandemic? – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 18, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 15, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 14, 2025

Biden Budget and TikTok – PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 13, 2025

PolicySphere Morning Briefing – March 12, 2025