DC is a city famously almost Kremlin-like in the opacity of who actually wields power and how power actually works in this town (which seems strange for a regime that represents itself as a representative democracy, but this is another discussion for another day).

Tanner Greer, an interesting blogger, had an interesting thread on X on the culture of DC and how things work here, building on an earlier post.

Contrasting a city like LA where the social currency is access, Greer writes:

And the wonks, by and large, run the place. They are not in charge—though in some executive branch agencies this is true, and they are the hidden hand in Congress—but they are the largest social group in DC. The think tanks, the NGOs, the civilian DoD folks, congressional aides, the people running most of the executive government, the judges and their clerks—this class of people might be considered a single class, but “know the powerful and prominent” is not how they judge their success or each other. I will still have to think over what kind of achievements this class orients around (the cynical person would say “credentials”) but I think it something like “ability to shape how people—the government, the public, or even an influential band of experts—thinks about topic x.” People respect the columnist, the think tank analyst, the speech writer, the legislator, and so forth who can claim “oh, yeah, the pentagon/the media/congress/Joe Biden talks about x/y/z because of that memo/speech/report/law/judicial opinion I worked on.”

This seems right to us and gets at a significant difference in the reality of how DC works and the public perception. If you were to ask the average person what has the most power in DC, they would probably say "lobbyists" or "money." And while they wouldn't be wrong, this underrates the extent to which this is a city in which people care about ideas and the discourse around those ideas and the way these ideas are perceived.

Like Greer, we have a hard time exactly putting into words what we mean, but it is real. It's a city that runs on discourse, and on discourse about discourse. It's a city that loves memes. And it's a city where the "wonks", what we call the policy space, has a surprising amount of influence because everyone is looking for the next idea that can help shape the discourse.

This is also why we think a media company covering that space and those people might be a valuable enterprise. ;)

Obviously you, our subscribers, are best placed to know and comment on this, so feel free to share your thoughts. We'd love to publish them, anonymously of course.

Policy News You Need to Know

#Chyna — A Chinese startup trying to imitate SpaceX's reusable rockets had a near-miss test. As you can see in the impressive video, the rocket eventually crashed, the test looks promising. China is catching up to SpaceX on space tech, so the FAA and other authorities should probably get their act together and stop trying to stop Elon.

#SocialIssues — An American woman in Switzerland was reportedly the first victim of the "suicide capsule." As the mental health crisis gets worse and as the left's progress on social issues continues unabated, expect the issue of euthanasia to make a comeback in the US.

#BigTech — Google has agreed to pay $93 million to settle accusations of misleading consumers about how and when their location information was being tracked and stored. The free speech attorney Ted Frank has a summation of how ridiculous this settlement is: "Attorneys get $19M. Class gets zero. Variety of largely left-leaning nonprofits (and no right-leaning nonprofits) get $42M: ACLU gets $7M to promote abortion; Rose Foundation gets a $6M slush fund to give grants prioritizing “BIPOC communities”; millions to lawyers’ alma maters (who already had billions of dollars of endowments)" Why do random non-profits get money and not ordinary people? "Because class counsel preferred structuring a settlement to give money to their friends and alma maters than to class members." If you want to "do something about Big Tech," it's probably not going to happen through class action lawsuits.

#Energy — France's new energy minister, who is the senior minister in the new cabinet appointed by President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Michel Barnier as "climate" and "energy transition" minister, is strongly pro-nuclear. She was previously minister of industry where manufacturing groups (including nuclear, an important industry in France) liked her. Why should you care? Because it solidified Macron's 180 on nuclear energy at a time when the European Commission is being reshuffled and the German experiment with "renewables" is blowing up for the whole world to see. This could portend a pro-nuclear shift by the EU Commission and the EU generally. In which case the US could very well be left behind if it doesn't fix issues like permitting reform…

#LGBT — Very good news announced by the great Roger Severino: a coalition of "22 Attorneys General" are threatening fraud enforcement against the American Academy of Pediatrics for lying about puberty blockers being reversible. "When it comes to treating children diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the AAP has abandoned its commitment to sound medical judgment."

#Seniors — "Older adult falls result in 38,000 deaths, 1 million hospitalizations, and 3 million emergency department visits each year, along with $80 billion in health care costs, including $53 billion to Medicare," Anand Parekh, chief medical advisor at the Bipartisan Policy Center, informs us. As America ages, issues like this will become more important. Can policy do something? Yes, Parekh believes. Plus, it's bipartisan! What would that entail? "First, policymakers should make more community-based falls prevention programs accessible to seniors," then we should "pay clinicians specifically to screen for falls risk, intervene to reduce risk factors, and refer patients to additional falls prevention programs and specialists," and finally "government agencies should identify and streamline the various home modification resources available across federal agencies to help older adults make their homes more age-friendly." This sounds rather vague and wooly to us, and we will be permitted to doubt whether this would actually prevent falls in the real world. But it's certainly worth looking into.

#Immigration — The econ blogger Noah Smith asked how, if you don't want Haitian migrants, you could revitalize struggling towns in the middle of the country. The great new group America 2100 has an answer.

#Immigration — Every time we read about the missing migrant children scandal, we have a new surge of vertigo, and we wonder why this isn't a national scandal (we know why). Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, has a new op-ed in the Washington Times, going over the facts of this terrible scandal.