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The PolicySphere Briefing is brought to you by Baron Public Affairs
Baron Public Affairs and PolicySphere have cooperated on a series of articles on the upcoming EU directive CS3D:
"Understanding CS3D: The New EU Law That Could Cost U.S. Industry Trillions"
"CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality"
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DON'T MISS: Opinion: If We Don't Change Our Regulatory System, We Won't Be Able To Produce The Energy The AI Revolution Needs — New guest article by Josiah Neeley of R Street Institute
Yes Let's Drop The Nuke
We have consistently said that Republicans should not negotiate over the budget (or anything else) with a gun to their head, that political experience suggests that the electorate punishes the party that caused the government shutdown regardless of how they feel about the underlying issues, and that therefore they should just ride out the shutdown until the Democrats blink.
We still agree with all of that.
However, President Trump's endorsement of ending the filibuster changes all that.
There are three obvious reasons why.
The filibuster is doomed anyway. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explicitly stated in August 2024 that there would be "consensus in my caucus" to change filibuster rules when Democrats next hold power. 48 of 50 Democratic senators already voted for filibuster reform in January 2022, the two holdouts (Manchin and Sinema) have left the Senate, and all competitive 2024 Democratic Senate candidates explicitly campaigned on ending it. Beyond Schumer's commitment, Vice President Kamala Harris stated in September 2024 that Democrats should "eliminate the filibuster for Roe," President Biden declared in January 2022 that "we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster," and every newly elected Democratic senator from 2024 ran on explicit pledges to end or reform it. What was once a divisive internal debate among Democrats has become a near-unanimous consensus. We don't have to wonder. Next time the Democrats have a majority in the Senate, they will abolish the filibuster.
We should stop unilaterally disarming. A common argument against these types of moves is that if we do something like this, the Democrats will use it against us. As we have noted, they will use it against us regardless of what we do. This is generally true about all these process questions: as JD Vance pointed out during his recent Turning Point USA event, the general principle is that we shouldn't be afraid of Democrats doing X to us if we do X to them, because they will do it regardless. It's true in this specific instance and it's true in general.
We can pass a Second Big Beautiful Bill. We have become strangely accustomed to the notion that it's impossible to pass major legislation except through the kabuki of reconciliation, with all the constraints implicit there (also without overruling the parliamentarian, which we could also have done). Imagine what we could pass, even with a small majority, between now and the midterms, without the filibuster. No, seriously. Think about it.
Let's just do it. Drop the nuke.
Policy News You Need To Know
The PolicySphere Briefing is brought to you by Baron Public Affairs
Baron Public Affairs and PolicySphere have cooperated on a series of articles on the upcoming EU directive CS3D:
"Understanding CS3D: The New EU Law That Could Cost U.S. Industry Trillions"
"CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality"
#MoreDrugs — The American Action Forum’s latest Weekly Checkup by Michael Baker applauds DHS and the FDA for shifting drug policy toward competition instead of price controls. Their new draft guidance would streamline biosimilar approvals by removing redundant clinical efficacy studies when strong analytical and pharmacokinetic data already demonstrate similarity to reference biologics. Biosimilar drugs are highly similar versions of approved biological medicines, designed to match their effectiveness without meaningful differences in safety or efficacy, at a lower cost. Baker cites data showing biosimilars have already saved Medicare billions and cut average patient costs by nearly $2,000 in 2023. A lot of time, deregulation is good!
#RuleOfLaw — Leftwing violence has grown so bad that now top Trump administration officials have moved into homes on military bases for their own personal safety, The Atlantic reports. This includes Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, and Kristi Noem. The crackdown on left-wing violence and radicalism must be implacable.
#Immigration #Shutdown #SNAP — A new analysis from the good folks at the Center for Immigration Studies points out that the expiration of federal funding for SNAP and WIC will heavily impact illegal aliens, who rely extensively on such benefits. According to their research, 59% of households headed by illegal immigrants use at least one welfare program, with nearly half (48%) participating in food assistance programs such as SNAP, WIC, or school meal programs, and 17% using SNAP specifically. The report notes that many illegal immigrants access these benefits through their US-born children or via states that extend Medicaid and other assistance to noncitizens.
#Immigration — Speaking of, The Federalist's M.D. Kittle exclusively reports that new investigation by the watchdog group Open the Books found that nearly $200 million in federal health-related grants since 2021 have gone to programs benefiting illegal aliens. Quelle surprise. The report details NIH- and HRSA-funded projects in states like California, Florida, and New York that include services for illegals, from abortion to opioid treatment. California alone received $65.5 million, while a total of $75.6 million flowed through the Health Resources and Services Administration. Time for the Federal government to act.
#GoodGovernment — Nice catch by Russ Greene of Stand Together: Virginia has created a new online "permitting dashboard," which has cut permit processing times by 72%. These kinds of good government interventions are good! Greene notes that Virginia "attracted $125 Billion in capital investment since 2022."
#Reg — Tom Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research, has published a good opinion piece calling for the elimination of CAFE. The piece traces CAFE's evolution from its 1975 origins, designed to address oil supply vulnerabilities following the Arab embargo, through its dramatic transformation under the Obama and Biden administrations into what Pyle describes, correctly, as a "de facto EV mandate," with Biden's standards requiring fuel economy increases that would have forced over half of vehicles sold to be electric by 2032. While acknowledging the Trump administration's recent progress in reversing these mandates through the OBBBA and related regulatory rollbacks, Pyle argues that partial reforms remain insufficient given the 149% increase in domestic oil production since 2005 and the observation that average fuel efficiency has remained relatively static since 1985 despite CAFE's existence. Makes sense to us.
#Reg — At Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok calls for privatizing US air traffic control. He argues that America's air traffic control is chronically underperforming and politically hamstrung, and that congressional budget cycles harm it. He notes that the FAA’s NextGen modernization program has achieved only 16% of its projected benefits after two decades, while staffing shortages and shutdown disruptions continue to ground flights. He points to Canada’s 1996 reform, which established NAV CANADA, a private non-profit financed by user fees and governed by airlines, as proof that privatization yields efficiency, stability, and innovation, including world-leading satellite-based navigation. Worth looking into.
#Conscience #ReligiousLiberty — The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that state judges and justices of the peace cannot be disciplined for refusing to perform same-sex weddings based on sincerely held religious beliefs, affirming religious liberty protections within the judiciary. The clarification, issued as a formal comment to the Judicial Code of Conduct, arose from the case of Jack County Judge Brian Umphress, who argued that being forced to perform same-sex marriages violated his First Amendment rights. Good to protect the First Amendment.
#BalanceOfPowers — Unrealistic, but still worth thinking about: at NR, Dan McLaughlin has published a clarion call asking for some future President to "Make Congress Great Again."
#Trade — Good reminder from Douglas Holtz-Eakin: he notes that while President Trump’s recent Asian trade mission produced several agreements with Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, Cambodia, Thailand, and Malaysia, alongside a tentative truce with China, tariffs remain elevated and none of the deals carry the force of ratified law, leaving US firms potentially exposed to ongoing trade distortions and politically driven protectionism.
#Tax #OBBBA — The good folks at the Tax Foundation have published a useful explainer on the green energy tax credits on the OBBBA, a topic on which a lot of misconceptions or misinformation are circulating, so it's useful to have a refresher. The OBBBA raises an estimated $484.5 billion over the next decade through targeted repeals and restrictions. It eliminates approximately $267 billion in consumer-focused electric vehicle and residential energy credits—subsidies that predominantly benefited higher-income households, by the way, while demonstrating minimal impact on actual purchasing decisions or emissions reduction. For business-related power generation credits, OBBBA phases out wind and solar eligibility while maintaining support for baseload-capable technologies including nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric power, and introduces crucial Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) restrictions targeting Chinese involvement in the domestic energy supply chain. While the bill does expand certain credits for carbon capture and alternative fuels at a cost of roughly $40 billion, the net effect significantly broadens the corporate tax base and reduces the deficit.
Friday Essays
The PolicySphere Briefing is brought to you by Baron Public Affairs
Baron Public Affairs and PolicySphere have cooperated on a series of articles on the upcoming EU directive CS3D:
"Understanding CS3D: The New EU Law That Could Cost U.S. Industry Trillions"
"CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality"
At The American Mind, Joshua Mitchell has written a very good and beautiful essay about Charlie Kirk. He argues that the murder of Charlie Kirk demonstrates that identity politics has evolved from cancel culture into a dangerous quasi-religious movement requiring literal purging of designated scapegoats. In an essay full of Girardian undertones, he points out that after the decline of Christianity, Western societies developed "incomplete religions" (French Revolution, Communism, National Socialism, identity politics) that each identify scapegoats to purge for societal "cleanliness"; in the case of identity politics, the scapegoat is white, Christian, heterosexual males. Truly an important essay that a summary cannot do justice to.
Very good and important review essay by Mark Bauerlein at the Claremont Review. Conservatives love books—but fiction, not so much. And the fiction they do love tends to be a small catalogue: Lord of the Rings, 1984, Dostoevsky. Thankfully, Christopher J. Scalia has written "13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven't Read)" to fix that. It's an admirable attempt to broaden the literary imagination of conservatives.
If you want to feel angry, do we have the essay for you. At Commonplace, Dan Kishi tells the story of how America built, then lost, a mine-to-magnet rare earth ecosystem, creating a strategic vulnerability which haunts us today. You may be shocked to learn, for example, that US reviewed and approved the buyout of our leading rare earth magnet producer by Deng Xiaoping's sons-in-law.
At Compact, Samuel Goldman has a good essay on Christian Zionism. He skewers a few misconceptions, including the notion that Christian support for Israel is mainly driven by so-called "dispensationalist" theology and other weirdo Evangelical apocalyptic fantasies.
A little birdie told us that no column in recent memory has generated so much bile and anger among New York Times commenters, which is rather strange. In his recent column, Ross Douthat didn't tackle abortion, or climate change, or race, or gender. Instead, he apparently did much worse: he had the temerity to defend President Trump's East Wing refurbishment project, and to point out that when liberals build things, they tend to be ugly.
The great David Beckworth has a very interesting essay at his Substack on the monetary and macroeconomic consequences of the growth of stablecoins. Stablecoins will raise structural demand for Fed liabilities, Beckworth argues, particularly when they create net new demand from foreign users seeking dollar access, which will require the Fed's balance sheet to expand to accommodate this demand. If stablecoins achieve widespread adoption with direct Fed access through "skinny master accounts," the Fed would be pushed even more to the center of global dollar intermediation with a correspondingly larger balance sheet.
At First Things, Justin Lee has written an interesting feature essay, a deep dive into the history of Halloween—a history of decadence which, he believes, mirrors the decadence of Western institutions.
The PolicySphere Briefing is brought to you by Baron Public Affairs
Baron Public Affairs and PolicySphere have cooperated on a series of articles on the upcoming EU directive CS3D:
"Understanding CS3D: The New EU Law That Could Cost U.S. Industry Trillions"
"CS3D Is Just One Way In Which Europe Exploits American Economic Vitality"
Chart of the Day
Striking stat from Stephen Moore: taxpayers now cover 87% of insurer revenues.
