Destroying the gigantic leftist NGO blob that has hijacked American culture and institutions over the past decade will take more than simply cutting off the spigot of Federal cash as DOGE is doing, though that is necessary. These institutions are also funded by private entities, including philanthropists and…corporations.

We shouldn't forget how, in 2020, Corporate America fell all over itself to write huge checks to the BLM movement and allied organizations. Nor should we forget that BLM is not some milquetoast movement, it instead preaches racial revanchism that is directly at odds with American values, and has embraced political violence.

The Federalist has a very good article on the Claremont Institute's "BLM Funding Database" which "employs the DOGE approach" of identifying the funding streams going from "woke capital" to leftist NGOs. These funding streams should be catalogued and then there should be consequences.

A thought experiment will suffice: if Boeing made a large donation to the KKK, it would immediately be investigated by the DOJ's Office of Civil Rights. Protests about the right of one private entity to give money to another private entity would be inoperative; the fact of the donation would be taken, very rationally, as prima facie indication (if not evidence) that the corporation has contempt for the ideal of racial equality and that therefore the DOJ should use its enforcement discretion to put the company's recent-past actions through a fine-tooth comb because it's likely to find violations of civil rights laws. Corporate and institutional donations to extreme far-left organizations should be seen in the same light.

Those who care about the business climate should not worry: there is no more timorous creature than the Corporate General Counsel. A few high-profile examples "pour encourager les autres" should ensure that funding streams from corporations to anti-American leftist organizations dry up very quickly.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Trade #Energy — Very insightful article from R Street on tariff policy; we say so because instead of rehashing Econ 101 arguments, it is takes a practical look at real-world consequences from various trade regimes, in this case energy trade between the US and Canada and Mexico: "U.S. refineries work well with heavy crude oil, while many foreign refineries prefer lighter oil. As it happens, Mexico and Canada produce lots of heavy crude, while U.S. fracking mainly yields light, sweet crude. Trading oil across borders helps match each type of oil with the refineries that can process it best, creating better value for both oil producers and refineries." In other words, just because the US is energy independent doesn't mean it won't be hurt by an energy tariff with its neighbors, because there will be a mismatch between the kind of crude oil it produces and the kind of crude oil it is set up to refine. The piece has more such examples, including liquefied natural gas. More of this kind of analysis, please.

#VibeShift — The New York Times Magazine published a long, researched article from their authorized centrist David Leonhardt making the in-itself-unremarkable observation that in Denmark populist right movements have been neutered politically thanks to the center-left's embrace of immigration restrictionism, and that said center-left parties now dominate political life in Denmark thanks to a combo of center-left social policies and highly restrictionist immigration policies. As we say, in and of itself the message is unremarkable. What's remarkable is the messenger: pointing out that it's possible (and may even be good) for non-Nazis to restrict immigration is now, apparently, allowed in the pages of the New York Times. "Vibe shift!"

#DOGE — Oren Cass with the case for why "DOGE will fail." Cass leans on Musk's self-appropriated metaphor of the chainsaw to say that right-sizing government requires a scalpel. “DOGE is haphazardly cutting expenditures without even knowing what they are.”

#Reg — AAF's "This Week in Regulation" is a great high-level overview of, well, regulation as it happens. It has been very fun to watch the change of tone before and after January 20. "Perhaps the most significant developments, however, came in the form of two executive orders (EOs) that potentially hold broad and deep ramifications for the rulemaking process going forward."

#ConsumerFinance — You may remember the bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Warren and Hawley to cap credit card interest rates at 10%. Capping credit card interest rates was a President Trump campaign promise. It is, to this correspondent's mind, a difficult issue, with good arguments on both sides. The key issue, we feel, is that in most cases, these kinds of loans aren't used by poor people to buy a Dodge Hellcat they can't afford, it's to meet immediate and unforeseen expenses which they don't have the savings to meet, say their boiler broke down. Or they have a healthcare emergency which is not covered by Medicaid or by their ACA insurance plan. The annualized interest rates look extortionary but they give a distorted view of the picture. Paying an additional $50 next month to borrow $500 to pay a plumber works out to an insane annualized interest rate but it's still a small amount of money in absolute terms. And, of course, those interest rates are enormous because, in a competitive marketplace, which a casual observation of advertising on American TV suggests the credit card market is, the interest rate reflects risk, and some low-income people do in fact use the money to buy a Dodge Hellcat they can't afford and then never pay it back. As we said: complicated! Anyway: AAF's Fred Ashton has the classic free-market case against the cap.

#Ed — We've written many times on how the Trump Administration should not seek to "dismantle" Ed but rather repurpose it to support patriotic and rigorous education. This is probably not what Brookings scholars have in mind, but this roundup of their thoughts on what is happening is still an interesting taking of temperature of where the reasonable centrist mind is.

#FinReg — "Anyone who believes insurance is a dull industry is unfamiliar with recent fraud schemes so macabre they could be turned into gripping adventure movies." More at Insurance Journal.