As the author Leah Libresco notes in a new piece, the child tax credit provisions of the TCJA are set to expire under current law, and both presidential campaigns are talking about expanded child tax credits and other ideas around tax policy.

Libresco makes the case for the baby bonus, largely because it's the simplest option, and simple policies are the most appealling. She's not wrong!

Because it's a straight grant, unlike WIC benefits, it wouldn't restrict parents to specific products or brands; unlike child care subsidies, it wouldn't exclude families where one parent stays home; and it would support various family structures and caregiving arrangements.

Libresco, a Catholic, notes that the baby bonus follows the principle of subsidiarity, trusting parents to make wise decisions about how to use the funds for their children's benefit, unlike many benefit programs that try to run people's lives.

All perfectly sound arguments!

Policy News You Need To Know

#FreeSpeech — The University of Pennsylvania has sanctioned law professor Amy Wax despite, as FIRE points out, zero evidence Wax ever discriminated against her students. The only reason Wax is being punished is for saying politically incorrect things. This is un-American and runs counter to everything academia is supposed to be about, and Penn should have every taxpayer subsidy and every taxpayer exemption removed forthwith.

#DEI — Speaking of Ivy League universities engaging in scandalously un-American behavior, Columbia University has published a new "anti-discrimination" guidebook, which states that "race-neutral" policies "constitute discrimination," The Daily Caller reports. Though, to be fair to the university, it is simply describing current civil rights law—although they're not supposed to actually say it. Columbia should still lose its tax dollars, though.

#Politics — Puck has an interesting piece on how, as younger men trend conservative, the Harris-Walz campaign is targeting voters over 65. After race, class, and sex, another realignment?

#Drugs — The DEA is calling for increases in legal production of psychedelics like psilocybin and ibogaine to be used in research for 2024 and 2025 while at the same time keeping marijuana and cannabinoids at previously set levels, "Marijuana Moment" reports. There are very strong moneyed interests, particularly in Silicon Valley, pushing for partial or total decriminalization of psychedelics. Given that every other "vice" legalization story (we covered sports gambling yesterday) has turned out worse than proponents expected, we have every reason to fear the worst here. Camille Paglia has written about how her fellow scholars in graduate school at Yale who did psychedelics went on to do nothing productive with their lives, even though they were among the most talented of their generation.

#Drugs — Speaking of: "More Teens Who Use Marijuana Are Suffering From Psychosis," the WSJ reports.

#Drugs — The one chemical that the government seems to actually want to actively enforce laws against and stop is also the least harmful (indeed, some would argue, a beneficial one): nicotine. The government's war on vaping, in particular, is particularly incomprehensible, since vaping gets people off cigarettes. Cato has flagged an unintended consequence of the FDA's war on vaping: because the agency is still working through applications to market nicotine vapes (applications which were submitted in 2020!), people use vapes with nicotine-adjacent products, which are worse for their health.

#Immigration — One of the most heartbreaking, infuriating aspects of the current quasi-open-borders settlements is that it empowers the most despicable people on this planet, human traffickers, and leaves vulnerable people, particularly women and children, at their mercy. One shudders just to think of the atrocities that are being committed daily against would-be migrants, in the name of compassion toward them. For example, one smuggler recently admitted in court to using drugs to knock out children to smuggle them through the border. That child's tragedy was a policy choice.

#BigTech — The Australian government has promoted a plan to get kids off social media. More at AEI Ideas.

#Reg — CEI has a good roundup of recent ridiculous regulations.

#BigGovt — Don't laugh: the IRS Agents Union has endorsed Kamala Harris for President.