DON'T MISS: Understanding CS3D: The New EU Law That Could Cost U.S. Industry Trillions — First in a new article series in collaboration with Baron Public Affairs. Read and share!

We hope you enjoyed Indigenous Peoples' Day!

The Demographic Cliff Is Here

You know that the fertility crisis is a recurring theme here. One important thing to note: it will come faster and harder than you think.

Case in point: America has already hit Peak College Students. The cohort graduating high school in 2025 is smaller than the previous year's.

According to CBO, the number of 18-year-olds in America will drop from approximately 4.3 million today to 3.9 million by 2039, a 15% decrease that translates to 650,000 fewer potential college students annually. The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education confirms this trajectory, projecting a 13% decline in high school graduates by 2041.

The crisis will hit the pocketbooks of American higher education institutions. Twenty-one higher education institutions defaulted on municipal bonds last year, compared to just 22 in the previous five years combined. Each college closure eliminates an average of 265 jobs and $67 million in annual economic activity. You may be tempted to cheer (so are we), but these colleges are often in rural communities that form the backbone of conservative America. States crucial to Republican electoral success face particularly severe drops in college enrolment: Pennsylvania down 17%, Michigan down 20%, and Ohio experiencing double-digit declines. The colleges most severely affected won't be Harvard or Brown, they will be small rural community colleges that provide middle and lower-middle class people with actual marketable skills and don't engage in much political advocacy, exactly the sort of institutions we should be supporting.

Conservatives should prepare for this.

The decline will lead to renewed calls for immigration, particularly of students, which we will have to resist.

The private sector is already responding more efficiently than government-subsidized institutions. We're seeing innovative approaches like cross-institutional partnerships, managed service providers, and competency-based credentials that bypass traditional degree requirements. Conservative states should champion these market-driven solutions rather than propping up failing institutions with taxpayer dollars.

Consider the success of technical colleges and apprenticeship programs in red states; many of them are already pivoting toward stackable credentials and industry partnerships that provide better ROI than traditional four-year degrees. This demographic shift presents an opportunity to fundamentally restructure higher education away from the liberal indoctrination model toward practical, workforce-aligned training.

This demographic cliff can also be an opportunity.

First, we must resist bailouts for failing institutions. Market discipline will eliminate redundant programs and force necessary consolidation. State legislatures should instead redirect resources toward community colleges and technical training programs that directly serve workforce needs.

Second, we should champion alternative credentialing systems that bypass traditional academia. Professional certifications, apprenticeships, and corporate training programs can fill workforce gaps without the ideological baggage and crushing debt of conventional higher education.

Third, conservative states must become more aggressive in recruiting and retaining young families. This means tax policies that reward family formation, not just corporate relocation. States like Utah and Idaho, with their relatively robust birth rates and family-friendly policies, provide models worth emulating.

That being said, these are ultimately stopgap measures. The root cause, our catastrophically low fertility rate of 1.64 births per woman, demands bold action. We cannot sustain American greatness, economic dynamism, or even basic entitlement solvency with a shrinking population.

Future Republican policy will be pro-family, or it will not be at all. Literally.

Policy News You Need To Know

DON'T MISS: Understanding CS3D: The New EU Law That Could Cost U.S. Industry Trillions — First in a new article series in collaboration with Baron Public Affairs. Read and share!

#Peace — Of course, the highlight of our day yesterday was watching the release of all 20 remaining living Israeli hostages, after 738 agonizing days. We are thankful for President Trump's leadership. The scenes of families reuniting remind us why America's leadership and commitment to its allies matters so profoundly.

#Freedom #America — Over at The Federalist, Brianna Lyman argues for granting the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Charlie Kirk. Hear hear. Charlie would have turned 32 today.

#Chyna #IndustrialPolicy — In a recent interview, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent vowed to "do an equivalent of Operation Warp Speed" to tackle supply chains and rare earths. The Pentagon has already taken unprecedented steps, becoming a 15% shareholder in US rare earths company MP Materials with a multi-billion dollar investment package that includes price floor guarantees and offtake commitments, while the Department of War has committed to purchasing 100% of magnet production from their upcoming "10X Facility" for a decade. We hailed this as a step in the right direction at the time. The parallel with Operation Warp Speed is well-taken. The question remains: what are the next steps?

#Chyna — Speaking of, Bessent's recent interview with the FT is full of bangers, as the kids say. He argued that China's export controls are a sign of weakness: "This is a sign of how weak their economy is, and they want to pull everybody else down with them." China is scrambling to export its way out of a domestic slowdown that's bordering on recession territory, including a giant slow-motion real estate crisis that is paralyzing banking and domestic spending. Bessent also alleged that the Chinese Ministry of State Security—their version of the KGB—is playing a bigger role in economic policy. The excellent Brad Setser has a great thread on X analyzing the interview. In particular, Setser notes how Bessent is now striking very multilateral tones, arguing that the US's relations with Asian democracies gives it "much more leverage" vis-à-vis China.

#Chyna — Speaking of speaking of, former NSA Director General Tim Haugh recently gave an interview to 60 Minutes, during which he provided sobering details about the extent of Chinese cyber penetration into US critical infrastructure, from water treatment plants in small Massachusetts towns to major telecommunications networks and the New York City subway system. Here's the Washington Times writeup. Haugh, who was removed from his position by President Trump in April, characterizes these intrusions as "unrestricted warfare," referencing the influential 1999 PLA strategic doctrine that advocates breaking conventional rules of engagement. Allegedly, Chinese operatives have maintained dormant access to some systems for at least five years, with the apparent intent to activate disruptions during a future Indo-Pacific conflict.

#PoliticalViolence — Senator Eric Schmitt has written an outstanding letter (PDF) to AG Pam Bondi, debunking the so-called studies claiming right-wing political violence dominates the threat landscape. Schmitt points to how these studies systematically distort reality: one counts prison-gang violence as right-wing while conveniently ignoring prominent left-wing attacks; another tracks only incidents involving deaths, thereby erasing thousands of BLM and Antifa street violence instances and targeted terrorist attacks like the Alvarado ICE ambush and the explosive device detonated at a Michael Knowles campus speech; and perhaps most egregiously, a frequently-cited study was authored by an Antifa-affiliated professor with a known history of promoting political violence for left-wing causes. To counter this misinformation campaign and properly inform legislative solutions, Schmitt requests DOJ and FBI produce a comprehensive public report on left-wing political violence that includes a full accounting of 21st century incidents (particularly the last decade), reviews the domestic terrorism database to correct ideological misclassifications (like the 2017 congressional baseball shooting the FBI initially refused to label domestic terrorism), catalogues not just deaths but intimidation tactics including mobs, doxxing, and SWATting, examines large-scale actions like CHAZ/CHOP, maps organizational structures and funding sources of domestic terror cells, reassesses whether current terrorism categories adequately capture modern ideologically-inspired violence, and provides concrete recommendations for both law enforcement and Congress to address this crisis. All very good recommendations that we hope DOJ follows.

#Immigration #H-1B — Well well well. According to a report by Indian newspaper Deccan Chronicle, Indian outsourcing firm TCS, the top H-1B sponsor with 98,259 approvals from 2009-2025, has announced they will halt new H-1B hires, shifting focus to local US talent. The article also quotes a "consultancy manager in Hyberabad" as saying that "With TCS CEO stating openly that they would not look at hiring new H-1B holders, it is just a matter of time before other major corporations like Amazon, Cognizant, Microsoft, etc. follow suit." It looks like the $100,000 fee is having the desired effect. However, the article also notes that firms may switch to the L-1 visa. L-1 visas allow a corporation to obtain a visa for foreign employees employed in their branches in other countries. L-1 visas have no cap, no wage restrictions, and information about the number of them granted every year is not published. The L-1 visa, currently, is an unproblematic visa that allows companies to transfer employees internally; however, the H-1B was also unproblematic when conceived, and a combination of loophole exploitation and lax rulemaking and enforcement has turned it into a disaster. We have to make sure this doesn't happen with L-1.

#IndustrialPolicy — JPMorgan Chase announced yesterday a substantial $1.5 trillion, 10-year "Security and Resiliency Initiative" aimed at industries critical to national economic security. This includes a $10 billion direct equity commitment focused on supply chains, defense/aerospace, energy independence, and frontier technologies like AI and quantum computing. CEO Jamie Dimon's accompanying remarks are worth noting—he explicitly called out excessive regulations, bureaucratic delays, and partisan gridlock as obstacles undermining American competitiveness and national security, arguing that US overreliance on "unreliable sources" for critical minerals and manufacturing has become a strategic vulnerability. Still, from a policy perspective, this represents a significant private-sector mobilization around themes we've been advancing: supply chain resilience, domestic manufacturing capacity, and reducing dependence on adversarial nations for strategic materials. The initiative's success will depend heavily on the regulatory and permitting reforms Dimon identifies, which creates a natural alignment with the admin's deregulation and permitting modernization agenda. Of course, we'll want to watch whether JPMorgan's inevitable policy advocacy on this front remains focused on genuine barrier reduction versus seeking favorable carve-outs. Still, it's a whitepill, as the kids say, and something that is hard to imagine under any administration other than this one.

#LongMarch — The Capital Research Center, in partnership with Discovery Institute, has released a new report (PDF) with a foreword by the great Chris Rufo that exposes how radical activist organizations have co-opted America's homelessness crisis to advance anti-capitalist and even pro-terrorist agendas. Using financial data, legal records, and original research, the report identifies a network of nonprofits—including the Western Regional Advocacy Project (which glorifies violence against law enforcement), the Autonomous Tenants Union Network (explicitly committed to "overthrowing capitalism"), and the Right to the City Alliance (which has endorsed pro-Hamas groups)—that collectively redirect billions in taxpayer dollars and philanthropic grants away from proven solutions and toward ideological activism. Rather than addressing issues that are proven to matter like mental health challenges and substance abuse, these organizations spend their resources on protests, pressure campaigns, and frivolous lawsuits while vulnerable Americans remain on the streets. This is exactly the kind of "long march through the institutions" that the left does, and this kind of institutional capture calls for decisive government action to break it.

#BigTech — Apple and Google have announced full compliance with Texas’s App Store Accountability Act, which requires age verification for app downloads and parental consent for minors, reports Ars Technica. This is despite earlier warnings that the law could burden privacy and developers. Both companies rolled out new tools, such as Apple’s updated “Declared Age Range” API and Google’s “Play Age Signals” API, to help developers meet the law’s requirements while maintaining data security. The move undercuts Big Tech’s earlier claims that such state-level regulation would be unworkable or disastrous for privacy: the firms have adapted swiftly and are even helping app developers do the same. Worth noting.

#BigGovSucks #OrDoesIt — The FTC has filed suit against Ticketmaster and Live Nation under its recently finalized all-in pricing rule, which took effect in May and requires businesses to disclose full prices upfront before consumers consent to pay. While the good folks at ATR note that many companies, including Ticketmaster itself, had already voluntarily adopted transparent pricing practices without regulatory intervention, they give cautious credit to the Trump FTC for taking a transparency-focused approach rather than imposing outright price controls. The case represents an interesting test of market-driven versus regulatory solutions to consumer concerns, with traditional conservatives generally preferring the light-touch approach, and the new right being more friendly to government intervention. A transparency mandate seems like a good compromise.

#BowChikaBowWow — Time to destigmatize workplace romances, and adjust sexual harassment laws? A fun new NBER paper by David C. Macdonald, Jerry Montonen, and Emily E. Nix looks at workplace relationships between managers and subordinates. Using data from Finland, they find that "entering a relationship with a manager increases the subordinate's earnings by 6%, but breaking up triggers an abrupt 18% earnings decline."

DON'T MISS: Understanding CS3D: The New EU Law That Could Cost U.S. Industry Trillions — First in a new article series in collaboration with Baron Public Affairs. Read and share!