Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
The administration and congressional Democrats are teaming up to force a taxpayer bailout of private unions’ underfunded and over-promised pension benefits. On May 6, the Treasury Department rejected a plan by the Central State Teamsters trucking union to reduce some of its pension benefits to prevent the plan from going belly up within a decade….
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit the U.S. this week for the fourth time in two years. While in Washington, he will hold summit-level meetings with President Barack Obama, address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, and meet with the heads of several think tanks. The visit is an opportunity to showcase the…
Stop your average American on the street and ask them, “What happened on June 6?” Surprisingly, a few might recall that on a dreary morning while the low tide lapped lazily on the rocky coast of Normandy, France, brave men in battle armor no thicker than an olive drab shirt grimly headed toward Hitler’s Atlantic Wall….
This article was originally published in 2016. June 4 marks the 27th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, a day that will live forever in Chinese history, no matter how hard the Chinese Communist government tries to deny it. Twenty-seven years ago, on June 4, 1989, the streets of Beijing were filled with the sounds of machine…
The Senate will soon start debating the annual defense policy bill. This bill is particularly critical now when threats are rising, from state-sponsored cyberattacks to Russian aggression, to terrorism at home and abroad. At the same time, our military is getting smaller and weaker. Unfortunately, the Senate bill is a mix of good and bad policies,…
The New Hampshire Legislature adopted a significant bill to protect private property on Thursday, which will reform the practice of civil asset forfeiture in the state. The sudden move comes after a lengthy debate that nearly saw SB 522 stripped of one of its most important provisions: the elimination of the financial incentive to seize…
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama took an economic victory lap in Elkhart, Indiana. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment report, which came out Friday, shows he was far too optimistic. Both the household and payroll surveys showed employment growth slowing to a crawl in May, while hundreds of thousands of Americans stopped looking for work. Seven…
It seems the “Socialism of the 21th Century” is really no different from socialism from the past. Venezuela’s current tragedy, simultaneously culminating in food shortages, a crime epidemic, and an energy collapse, is the latest example of why centralized planning economy does not work—and how it is indistinguishable from tyranny. In the South American country,…
There are only a handful of organizations whose sole mission is to travel across the United States and allow Americans to see their military up close and personal. Among them are two teams that showcase the professionalism and leading edge technology of the most powerful Navy and Air Force the world has ever known. They…
With the departments of Justice and Education’s new announcement on transgender access to showers, locker rooms, bathrooms, and other sex-specific facilities in schools, there is reason for concern. The Obama administration has unlawfully rewritten law, meddling in state and local matters, and imposing bad policy on the entire nation. Americans agree that while we should…
President Barack Obama took an economic victory lap in Elkhart, Indiana, on Wednesday. In a major speech he argued his policies have brought the economy back. He blamed remaining economic weaknesses on trends preceding his administration. This analysis has the economic facts precisely backwards: Economic growth benefitted Americans up and down the income distribution until…
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has issued its long-awaited rule proposal to regulate small-dollar lenders such as those who provide payday loans. Formally, the CFPB’s proposal applies to payday, vehicle title, and certain high-cost installment loans. While it’s impossible to analyze all the details in this piece—because the proposed rule is more than 1,300 pages—it…
SINJAR, Iraq—Evil doesn’t always reveal itself through goose-stepping armies or skyscrapers collapsing on a clear autumn day. Sometimes, it’s only a sun-bleached bone in a field. This was the place the old peshmerga colonel wanted to show me. It wasn’t anything special by the look of it. Certainly, this plot of brown grass on a…
Whatever happens in the NBA finals, Steph Curry should be on every box of Wheaties. His example is just the antidote to many of the ills currently holding America back. In an age of vulgarity, he’s humble; in a season of cynicism, he’s a religious family man; in a time of grievance mongering, he peddles…
The Justice Department is resisting a judge’s order to provide ethics training for its lawyers and is objecting to turning over to the court the names of illegal aliens who were granted what amounts to administrative amnesty (“deferrals”) in stark violation of an injunction issued by the court. On May 19, Judge Andrew Hanen of…
For the first time in over 130 years, more young adults lived with their parents than any other living situation. According to the analysis by the Pew Research Center, 32.6 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 lived with their parents; 31.6 lived with a spouse or romantic partner; 14 percent lived without other adults…
Between North Carolina’s bathroom law and President Barack Obama’s recent school bathroom mandate, bathroom use has suddenly burst on the scene of public opinion. Now pollsters and politicians alike are scrambling to figure out what Americans really think about bathrooms and privacy. CNN quickly released a poll with the headline proclaiming that “6-in-10 Oppose Bills…
Whether you’re a painter, pastor, lawyer, or laborer (pro-life or pro-abortion), you work for Planned Parenthood. A portion of every paycheck goes to the world’s leading abortion business through the federal and state taxes allocated by your elected representatives and the unelected bureaucrats they empower. For the fiscal year ending in June 2015 (just before…
Some Louisianan children recently opened a lemonade stand and were ticketed for operating a business without an occupational license or paying taxes on their earnings. This not only highlights the absurdity of criminalizing children who were too young to obtain an occupational license or to even pay taxes—but also illustrates how unpredictable enforcement of arcane…
The Texas Public Policy Foundation came out with a series of short videos addressing myths about air pollution and the effects of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. The plan was first proposed by the EPA in 2014 and the final version was unveiled by President Barack Obama in August 2015. In February, the…