As you know, like many of you, we were deeply affected by the terroristic murder of Charlie Kirk. One of you, a subscriber who wishes to remain nameless and asked understandably to be described only as a "friendly neighborhood coservative-but-not-tenured-yet professor," wrote to us with a great idea to honor Charlie's legacy: create a nationwide network of Charlie Kirk Chairs in Conservative Thought in universities across the country.

The inspiration is the University of Colorado at Boulder’s experiment with a Visiting Scholar in Conservative Thought and Policy. Since 2013, CU has invited a rotating series of conservative scholars and public intellectuals to teach courses and participate in campus debates. This was not just symbolic. It opened doors for students to encounter ideas rarely entertained in mainstream faculty lounges. It also demonstrated that with the right donor support and institutional arrangements, universities, even ones with overwhelmingly progressive faculties, can be compelled to make space for alternative viewpoints.

The Colorado experiment was not perfect. As a rotating position, it lacked permanence and deep institutional roots. But it succeeded in one crucial respect: it proved that conservatives can use philanthropy and endowment strategically, leveraging universities’ perpetual hunger for donor dollars to gain a foothold on otherwise hostile terrain.

One of the most common excuses for denying conservative student groups official recognition is the supposed inability to find a faculty sponsor. Administrators can always conjure a reason: “Sorry, nobody is available to advise your group.” This problem is not abstract; it is a known tactic used to bury groups like Turning Point USA (TPUSA) before they can even get off the ground.

An endowed “Charlie Kirk Chair in Conservative Thought” would solve this problem elegantly. By design, the holder of the chair would be required to serve as faculty advisor for the TPUSA chapter on campus. That requirement ensures students have the institutional support they need and that the university cannot use procedural hurdles to silence them.

The second safeguard would be equally important: the estate of Charlie Kirk, with his wife Erika serving as steward, would retain veto power over appointments. Donors frequently establish endowed chairs with conditions attached, including approval rights or mission-specific stipulations. In this case, it would guarantee that a “Charlie Kirk Chair” is not filled by a token conservative handpicked by progressive deans to play along. Erika’s oversight would preserve the integrity of the project and honor Charlie’s vision.

Maybe Harvard will not agree to a "Charlie Kirk Chair." Then again, maybe that can be made a condition of its settlement with the Federal government. But we don't need to get the Ivy League. Across the country, hundreds of tuition-dependent universities are struggling with shrinking enrollments, declining public subsidies, and rising costs. These schools are cash-strapped and often desperate for outside funding. Endowments earmarked for new faculty lines, especially ones that create buzz and attract politically engaged donors, will be hard to turn down.

Federal reforms now under discussion at the Department of Education—loosening the flow of easy loan dollars, demanding greater transparency in spending—will gradually “starve the beast,” forcing universities to tighten their belts. At the same time, targeted spending can step in and offer lifelines to those institutions willing to open their doors to conservative ideas. The very financial pressures that progressive administrators lament become leverage for conservatives to insist on ideological diversity.

It's a great idea, honors Charlie's legacy and pushes it forward. Congress should appropriate the funds right away.

Policy News You Need To Know

#LaborMarket #Immigration — In a startling reversal for traditionally secure STEM fields, recent US college graduates majoring in computer science and computer engineering have elevated unemployment rates of 6.1% and 7.5% respectively as of 2025, the highest since 2009-2010, surpassing the overall rate for new graduates at 5.8% and even outpacing some humanities degrees like art history (!) at 3%. This trend has been accelerating over the past year. Causes being put forward by experts include tech layoffs, AI replacing entry-level coders, and a surge in STEM enrollments leading to market saturation. One obvious fix: stop bringing in foreign tech workers!

#LaborMarket — Speaking of the labor market, in a recent Hill opinion piece, Liya Palagashvili of the Mercatus Center champions Senator Bill Cassidy's Unlocking Benefits for Independent Workers Act as a solution to "job lock" that would empower workers through portable benefits. Palagashvili argues that tying benefits to employment creates harmful dependency that reduces worker bargaining power, citing data showing 73% of workers stay in jobs primarily for health coverage, and suggests that portable benefits would enable workers to build multiple income streams and increase their leverage vis-à-vis employers. While she correctly identifies the problem of benefit-induced immobility, her libertarian framing overlooks how the gig economy's supposed "flexibility" often masks a race to the bottom in labor standards and how atomized workers juggling multiple income streams typically have less, not more, bargaining power than those in traditional employment relationships. The real issue may not be that workers are too dependent on single employers, but that we've allowed the erosion of the social contract that once provided dignity and security through stable employment. Portable benefits, while a very good idea on their own, don't address the fundamental problems with the American labor market.

#LaborMarket — Speaking of, again: here's an interesting Brookings policy brief, on a seemingly niche, but potentially important idea: service and conservation corps programs could serve as effective talent pipelines for America's struggling infrastructure workforce. The analysis identifies 81 corps-related occupations employing nearly 13 million workers nationwide, with median wages approaching $30 per hour and relatively low barriers to entry, making them attractive career pathways for young Americans without four-year degrees. Given the infrastructure sector's severe workforce shortages (requiring 1.7 million replacement workers annually due to retirements) and the proven track record of corps programs in developing practical skills through hands-on experience, the authors argue for strengthening these programs' workforce development components and employer partnerships. While federal funding for AmeriCorps faces uncertainty under the current administration, state-level initiatives continue expanding, and the newly announced federal Patriot Program suggests bipartisan recognition of this model's value. Republican policymakers should pay attention to this idea. It emphasizes work-based learning over classroom instruction, promotes self-sufficiency through skilled trades careers, addresses critical infrastructure needs without expanding permanent government employment, and leverages public-private partnerships.

#Energy — In his latest "Low Energy Fridays" piece, Josiah Neeley, one of the very best energy analysts working today, delivers a compelling synthesis of America's dual AI and energy challenges while offering an unexpectedly elegant solution. Neeley astutely identifies the fundamental shift in US electricity planning: after decades of flat or declining consumption, AI data centers are driving an unprecedented 80-gigawatt surge in demand by 2030, with individual facilities consuming as much power as mid-sized cities. Yet rather than treating this as merely another infrastructure crisis requiring massive federal intervention, Neeley highlights how AI itself can accelerate the permitting reforms we desperately need, pointing to partnerships between Idaho National Laboratory and Microsoft that could slash nuclear plant approval timelines from a decade to just 18 months. His central insight—that the same technology creating our electricity demand spike can help streamline the byzantine permitting processes that have turned America from a nation that built 28 subway stations in under five years to one that takes 17 years to build three—demonstrates why Neeley remains essential reading for anyone serious about energy policy. While acknowledging that technology alone won't solve our permitting morass, particularly given the outsized influence of anti-growth activists in the current system, his vision of AI-enabled regulatory efficiency offers a practical path forward that should resonate with anyone who believes America's technological leadership depends on our ability to build again.

#Chargers #EVs — Here's a new policy paper on a very niche but surprisingly important, from Brookings and AEI: the lack of real-time data on charger availability is, it turns out, an important barrier to EV adoption. Currently, only 34% of EV charging stations along major US interstates provide real-time status information to apps like PlugShare, creating "data deserts" stretching up to 1,300 miles where drivers have no reliable way to know if chargers are working or available. This uncertainty exacerbates range anxiety, which is already a primary concern for potential EV buyers, and creates a significant impediment to EV adoption even as the Trump administration scales back federal EV subsidies and regulatory mandates. The authors propose that states require all publicly accessible fast chargers to report real-time availability and pricing data through open APIs, following the model already established for federally-funded NEVI chargers. This requirement would be essentially costless to implement (the technology is already standard in current-generation chargers) but could yield substantial benefits: their economic modeling suggests universal real-time data would increase the EV share of new vehicle sales by 6.4 percentage points by 2030, adding 3.5 million more EVs to the fleet. The proposal is particularly relevant for Republican-led "Battery Belt" states that have attracted billions in EV manufacturing investments and need robust charging infrastructure to support their industrial base. While some charge point operators may resist data sharing to protect proprietary advantages, the authors argue that even a handful of states adopting these requirements could tip the market toward universal disclosure, as operators would find it impractical to maintain inconsistent data policies across state lines. Given the minimal regulatory burden and potential for significant market improvement without federal spending, this represents exactly the kind of light-touch, market-enhancing intervention that should appeal to conservative policymakers seeking to support domestic auto manufacturing while avoiding heavy-handed mandates.

#CollegeSports — Texas Tech billionaire and former football player Cody Campbell has an op-ed out urging Congress to pass comprehensive college sports reform that goes well beyond the narrow SCORE Act currently being fast-tracked in the House, arguing that the legislation must address President Trump's stated objectives of protecting women's sports, Olympic programs, and smaller schools. Writing in USA Today, Campbell—who has Trump's ear on this issue—contends that any congressional solution must strip the NCAA of its governance role in favor of a new independent body that gives student-athletes meaningful representation, while also modernizing the 1961 Sports Broadcasting Act to generate sufficient revenue to sustain all collegiate athletics programs. His intervention highlights growing Republican concern that hasty NIL legislation could inadvertently hand power back to the NCAA bureaucracy that lost a 9-0 Supreme Court case, while failing to protect the 500,000 student-athletes across all sports who rely on scholarships for educational opportunity rather than lucrative endorsement deals.

#CDC — Dr. Joseph Varon, a critical care physician who spent 715 consecutive days treating COVID-19 patients on the frontlines in Houston, delivers a forceful critique of the CDC's pandemic performance in a Brownstone Institute piece, arguing that the agency fundamentally betrayed its mission through data manipulation, censorship, and political control rather than scientific integrity. Varon documents specific failures including the release of defective test kits despite known flaws, politically-driven mask guidance reversals, documented statistical errors that exaggerated pandemic severity by 80%, suppression of vaccine injury data, collaboration with Big Tech to censor dissenting physicians, surveillance of citizens through location-tracking databases, and the burial of myocarditis risk data while overcounting child COVID deaths. His central argument is that these weren't mere bureaucratic missteps but institutional malpractice that shattered public trust in the agency, and he calls on HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to conduct an immediate "top-to-bottom house cleaning" that replaces political operatives with practicing clinicians and mandates full transparency in data release.

#Religion — Recent Barna Group research reveals a striking reversal in church attendance patterns, with Millennials and Gen Z now leading a resurgence in religious participation, attending church 1.9 and 1.8 times per month respectively, the highest rates since tracking began (Washington Stand). This upward trend, which accelerated post-COVID, coincides with a 12% increase since 2021 in Americans reporting a personal commitment to Jesus, suggesting what Barna calls "the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States." Conservative analysts attribute this shift to younger generations' disillusionment with secular ideologies and the sexual revolution's failed promises, creating what FRC's Brent Keilen describes as "a tremendous hunger for genuine faith" that emerged after the pandemic exposed the emptiness of cultural idols.