“The number of POTENTIAL government students has been decreasing since 2007, when birth rates began falling. That was the beginning of the turning point, the ‘crisis.’ Private education and homeschooling are increasingly reducing the number of ACTUAL government students as well. Will some people experience negative effects from this ‘crisis?’ Yes. Parents may have to make some difficult choices about where, how, and from whom their kids will receive education. Fewer potential teachers and administrators will have jobs waiting for them if they choose to major in education in college. These are the kinds of problems that markets are very good at dealing with. Government monopolies, not so much.” (11/12/26)
“Several concerns drove voters to reject Trump’s GOP in historic fashion: the economy (centered on prices and affordability), Iran, corruption, aggressive deportations, and Trump himself. We know this because voters told us—before and after the election. … the war was an accelerant, not what got voters’ economic fire roaring in the first place. As Phil Magness already detailed for The Dispatch, the administration’s weakness on the economy started with Trump’s tariffs, with voter disapproval evident in both last week’s exit polls and numerous surveys dating back to last spring …. They told us they’d vote on tariffs. Then they did.” (11/12/26)
“”The U.S. government paid just under $1.36 trillion of interest on the national debt during its 2026 fiscal year. That makes 2026 the third year in a row the federal government paid out more than a trillion dollars of gross interest to all its creditors. The government’s net interest payments came in a little over $1.05 trillion. That’s the first time Uncle Sam’s net interest payments have ever exceeded $1 trillion. … According to the Congressional Budget Office, most of the $308 billion difference between its gross and net interest payments represents money Uncle Sam ‘owes’ to itself. The net interest the government pays goes to people and institutions outside the U.S. government.” (11/12/26)
“After decades of contention, we seem to have given up on reforming our immigration system. That system has long had many irrational features. For years, Congress chased the mirage of ‘compromise immigration reform,’ and now the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have gone all in on mass deportation. Neither approach can resolve the fundamental tension between an economy that demands immigrant workers and federal laws that criminalize their hiring. When we tire of self-harming laws and policies and seek rational approaches designed to solve real problems, we will need to go back to basics and reevaluate the very language—and thereby the principles—we use to discuss the issue.” (11/12/26)
“A long running Immigration and Customs Enforcement practice is to post photos, on Instagram and other sites, of ICE detainees. Often, detainees are shown being put on an airplane for deportation. In just the first year of the administration, at least 2,000 images were posted on X, and over 30,000 immigrants were listed on a new Department of Homeland Security website. Many of the social media posts also list criminal convictions — some erroneous — which are usually posted after a prison sentence has already been served. Still others go further, mocking or disparaging immigrants based on their perceived ethnicity or national origin. … These posts are not law enforcement; they are shocking abuses of power.” (11/12/26)
“Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson announced that she and the city would back the Seattle School Board’s unanimous vote to begin legal action to block enforcement of Initiative 638, which requires separating boys and girls in K-12 sports in Washington state. Voters overwhelmingly approved the initiative in 36 of the state’s 39 counties. Critics have charged that Wilson and other Seattle Democrats are seeking to negate the popular vote after campaigning on ‘saving democracy’. The greater challenge, however, is the legal basis for such an action in light of recent Supreme Court rulings.” (11/12/26)
“Alberta joins 17 U.S. states that have given trained optometrists the green light to perform certain advanced procedures, giving patients more eye care options.” (11/12/26)
“For years, states have been joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). The compact commits these states to award all their Electoral College presidential votes to the winner of the popular vote nationwide, even if a majority of their own state voters choose a different candidate. It kicks in once enough states sign up to equal the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the presidency. … Once we elect the president purely on the total vote nationally, will sanctuary state California give the nearly five million non-citizens living there the vote for president? Those additional voters would constitute about two percent of the electorate in the entire country.” (11/12/26)
“AI pessimists’ most powerful debating point is that, unlike normies, they foresaw the future. Back when AI was embarrassingly dumb, AI pessimists warned that it would rapidly improve. And rapidly improve it did. … Given the pessimists’ foresight and my confessed lack thereof, there is a strong reason to consider them to be more reliable than yours truly on the subject of AI. I freely concede that. But AI pessimists plus Bryan Caplan are not the only people in world. Most notably, there have long been AI optimists. They too foresaw the future back when AI was embarrassingly dumb.” (11/12/26)
“You may remember stories of bitter unionization battles at places like Starbucks, but AI workers can probably route around that. The toughest labor disputes happen in fields where the employer could easily fire all the organized workers and replace them from a bottomless pool of faceless scabs: although this is illegal, everyone needs to be maximally lawyered-up to prevent it. But there are so few skilled AI researchers that these laws are hardly necessary; if a dozen top AI researchers threaten to walk, it doesn’t matter whether Section P Sub-Section Q forces the AI company to negotiate – the AI company will want to negotiate.” (11/12/26)
