“China is not run as a centrally planned economy. It’s run like a fascist state, with party members working within businesses, only occasionally taking full control and ousting (even executing) owners and entrepreneurs and ‘uncooperative’ managers … when the State requires. Just as did the National Socialist Party during Germany’s ‘Third Reich’ period. As Peter Drucker sagely noticed, ‘Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.'” (10/15/26)
“Shortly after taking office in 2025, Trump claimed to have discovered a previously unnoticed delegation of extensive tariff authority in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), a 1977 law that does not mention import taxes and had never been used to impose them. That claim was rejected by every court that considered it. Last February, the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA does not authorize tariffs at all. But Trump had a backup plan: Hours after that decision, he announced another sweeping set of tariffs, this time relying on Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. In May, the U.S. Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that the new tariffs were illegal …. Trump then switched to Plan C, invoking Section 301 of the Trade Act …” (10/15/26)
“The federal government sued the state of California on Thursday in an escalating battle over how to prevent non-U.S. citizens from voting by mail in federal elections. The lawsuit is the latest action by the Department of Justice targeting state administration of elections, which President Donald Trump has often criticized as susceptible to fraud and voting by noncitizens. The civil complaint, which the DOJ had threatened to file, asks a judge to prevent California officials from tabulating mail-in ballots ‘from likely non-citizens in the upcoming federal election until the voter’s citizenship status can be determined.’ The Department of Justice asks that a judge order the state to set aside mail ballots from voters ‘identified by the Federal Government likely to be noncitizens,’ and to verify their citizenship status before their ballot is counted.” (10/15/26)
“Civics centers, teaching civic and classical education through ‘Western civ’ and great books, are often described as conservative enterprises. In a strong sense, this is manifestly false, because they are, at least in my personal experience, entirely free from political litmus tests. Yet there is a sense in which there is an essential ‘small-c’ conservative element to civic and classical education, as there must be in all liberal learning (the appropriate term for such education). As Michael Oakeshott once put it, ‘Every human being is born as an heir to an inheritance to which he can succeed only in a process of learning.'” (10/15/26)
“While the proposed Kentucky Academic Standards for Social Studies dated August 2026 (hereafter the ‘proposed standards’) contain some improvements over the December 2022 standards currently in use, many major problems remain.” (10/15/26)
“Fossil fuels are an economic liability, and not just because of the war in Iran. Rising energy costs were a major driver of the hotter-than-expected US inflation figures reported yesterday. This fact won’t surprise anyone reading this newsletter. Still, the numbers are pretty astonishing: Behind an overall gain of 3.7% across all goods and services in the past 12 months, gasoline prices are up 34.2%, and fuel oil prices (relevant mostly for home heating) are up 74.2%. The proximal cause is the war, of course, and the figures cement that US President Donald Trump has by now run out of time to change the picture ahead of the midterm election. But the broader takeaway here is that the inherent volatility of oil and gas prices is a persistent vulnerability in the US economy that can only be solved by limiting exposure to these energy sources.” (10/15/26)
“A report released by the US Labor Department on Thursday showed first-time claims for US unemployment benefits edged slightly higher in the week ended October 10th. The Labor Department said initial jobless claims ticked up to 199,000, an increase of 1,000 from the previous week’s revised level of 198,000.” (10/15/26)
