Hope you enjoyed Veterans' Day!

Let a thousand flowers bloom! Let a hundred schools of thought contend!

Since the recent D wave, it's been a cornucopia of policy proposals, with a common theme: focus on the bread-and-butter, kitchen-table issues facing middle and working-class Americans. This is the clear takeaway from the election. However they feel about tariffs, mass deportations, or world peace, they want economic improvement in their daily lives. This is what democracy is about!

And so we've had…

$2,000 Tariff Rebate Checks. These would be sent to people making under $100,000.

50-Year Mortgages. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte confirmed the agency is working on 50-year mortgage terms, which Trump compared to FDR's introduction of the 30-year mortgage.

Meatpacking Industry Crackdown. President Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate major meat packing companies (JBS, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and National Beef) for potential collusion, price fixing, and price manipulation.

Direct Payments to Health Savings Accounts. President Trump proposed that Republicans should give money directly to Americans' Health Savings Accounts rather than sending subsidies to insurance companies through the ACA.

Less than each specific proposal, what's important here is the new emphasis and the new direction. This is very good and very healthy. There is an openness to new ideas, and new ideas focused on providing concrete benefits to the average person. This is, also, what the New Republican Party is about.

We will have much more to say in upcoming days.

Policy News You Need To Know

#H-1B #Immigration — President Trump gave an interview on Laura Ingraham where he gave confusing comments on H-1B visas that many people misinterpreted (though they're straightforward enough if you watch the entire clip). Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later clarified that President Trump’s plan for H-1B visas is to temporarily bring in expert overseas workers to train Americans and then send them back.

#Immigration — Meanwhile: Trump’s crackdown on immigrant work visas is spurring a Wall Street hiring boom… in India, Bloomberg reports.

#Chips #Chyna — Good story by Lingling Wei, Amrith Ramkumar, and Robbie Whelan in the Journal showing that US export controls on AI chips are working, slowing down the country's industry. This is one of our few levers to slow down China on AI.

#AI — Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car subsidiary, has announced that it is now offering robotaxi rides on highways across the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. It's happening!

#AI — Speaking of, a new report from the good folks at the Center for Public Enterprise warns that the current AI investment surge rests on fragile foundations and could unwind rapidly if tech-sector conditions deteriorate, jeopardizing the data-center construction boom now driving major electricity demand growth. The analysis argues that AI-oriented data centers combine the vulnerabilities of real estate and capital-intensive infrastructure: tenants face weak cash flow, falling GPU collateral values, heavy capex cycles, and circular financing structures that concentrate risk across major hyperscalers, while debt plays a growing, and often opaque, role in propping up expansion. Should a market correction occur, the report outlines how liabilities would cascade through GPU producers, data-center developers, lenders, and local governments, drawing on Minsky’s framework to map contagion channels.

#IsOurKidsLearning #DEI — This report is going viral: the UCSD math department administered a test to 138 students in a remedial math class, and the results are truly disastrous. Truly. Like something from Idiocracy. Incidentally, a friend commented upon seeing his report that his White son, a 7th generational Californian with a 4.0 GPA and high test scores, was rejected by UCSD.

#RuleOfLaw — House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has demanded detailed records from the DOJ IG regarding its role in the FBI’s 2022 seizure and forensic imaging of Rep. Scott Perry’s cell phone and the broader Arctic Frost investigation, an operation that later fed into Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump. The letter (PDF) cites newly surfaced FBI documents showing that agents collected call logs tied to nine Members of Congress and received White House assistance in obtaining government phones previously issued to former President Trump and former Vice President Pence. It questions why the IG, an entity meant to serve as an independent watchdog, helped facilitate actions that touched constitutionally protected communications, including material shielded by the Speech or Debate Clause, and requests all related communications as well as a briefing by November 26, 2025. The Committee frames these disclosures as evidence of potential partisan misuse of federal investigative powers and seeks clarity on whether the IG raised internal objections to seizing congressional communications. Important to get to the bottom of this stuff.

#PublicHealth #WomensHealth — Useful reminder: pregnancy is not bad for women. Pregnancy and motherhood are linked to lower risk of breast cancer, higher reports of meaning, and lower risk of suicide. Good stuff from Rosemary L. Hopcroft at the Institute for Family Studies.