“By any conventional measure of power, the U.S. remains formidable. Its military power is unmatched, and it still possesses the world’s largest national economy. Yet power in the 21st century has never rested on material capabilities alone. For decades, America’s true strategic advantage lay in something less tangible but more potent: its capacity to attract. Its ideals, openness and professed commitment to universal values conferred a moral authority that made alliances easier, its influence deeper and its leadership more legitimate. That advantage is now being squandered.” (03/05/26)
“In March 1776, while the redcoats remained under siege in Boston, a torrent of copy about the colonies continued to flow from the printing press in London. Every notable British writer felt obliged to take a stand for or against the American cause and on the rights and wrongs of war. On March 9, there appeared the weightiest contribution of all …. It was ‘An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,’ by Scottish polymath Adam Smith. … Europe’s empires in America had their origins, Smith wrote, in ‘folly and injustice,’ the thirst for gold that led the conquistadors to Mexico and Peru. Smith thought British colonies to be the best of a bad lot, ‘only somewhat less illiberal and oppressive than that of any of the rest.'” (03/05/26)
“The guilty verdict Tuesday in the murder-by-proxy trial of a father whose son is accused of killing four people in a school shooting in Georgia sets a devastating and absurd precedent for imprisoning people for essentially being bad parents. Colin Gray, 55, was found guilty in a case involving his son Colt Gray’s alleged actions before the latter’s guilt has been determined.” (03/05/26)
“I’ve written in the past about how Hegseth’s vision of the American military is preoccupied with an ideal of the male form — one that’s a kind of modern mishmash of Spartan imagery and homoerotic fascist machismo. But that is only one facet of the Trumpian right’s fixation on the body. Another example is the now well-known phenomenon of Mar-A-Lago Face, wherein the women of the right doctor their appearances with filler, cosmetic surgeries, and absurd excesses of makeup. My colleague Samantha Hancox-Li has astutely observed that the prevalence of steroid use and plastic surgery on the right constitutes its own form of gender-affirming care in an era of reactionary fantasies. What matters here to me is that the body is the primary subject of Trumpian politics.” (03/05/26)
“aby Boomers should be remembered in domestic terms for enervating the U.S. economy with Total Boomer Luxury Communism. That generation vacuumed up current and future revenues to fund their luxe retirements, while young people struggle to find good jobs and homes while staring down a desolate future of debt and constraints. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy is very much a Boomer foreign policy, and in a similar sense. The second Trump administration has lit small fires across the world and let them burn, while accruing the costs of putting them out well into the future.” (03/05/26)
“This essay was prompted by my reading of John Passmore’s book, The Perfectibility of Man, which was first published in 1969. I read the book mainly because of James M. Buchanan’s suggestion that ‘it remains the most definitive work on the history of ideas’ relating to the extent to which classical liberalism depends on some presumption that man is perfectible.” (03/05/26)
“Congress is scrambling to insert itself into the debate over next steps in Iran. The Senate on Wednesday weighed opening up a debate about whether the conflict fits within the scope of the War Powers Act—a Vietnam-vintage law riddled with loopholes that would be unlikely to constrain this White House anyway. The House is likely to vote on similar measures. Although Congress was not included in the leadup to this conflict, many members in both chambers simply do not want to authorize this war for fear of ‘owning’ it if things go wrong. But there is a far more direct way for Congress to intervene and to show constituents it remains focused on the kitchen-table issues that decide elections: the power of the purse.” (03/05/26)
“Every time the U.S. military blows up a suspected drug boat, President Donald Trump claims, it saves ‘25,000 American lives.’ As of late January, Trump’s deadly campaign against cocaine couriers had destroyed 37 vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific, killing 126 people. According to Trump’s math, he had already prevented 925,000 U.S. drug deaths — 11 times the total recorded in 2024. Although Trump has repeatedly touted that improbable estimate, the basis for it remains fuzzy. But it seems to derive from several empirical and logical errors.” (03/05/26)
Source: Niskanen Center
by Rachel Levine & Grace Olsen
“A new era of load growth will require a far more abundant supply of electricity. Yet on its current trajectory, the U.S. risks falling short of meeting rising demand. While policymakers acknowledged the scale of the challenge, last year offered little concrete progress that the gap is closing fast enough. Federal and state leaders are grappling with this issue in markedly different ways.” (03/05/26)
“The 74’s Bright Spots project identifies public schools across the country that are beating the odds in reading. Specifically, ‘Bright Spot’ schools have literacy rates that are significantly higher than what is predicted based on their student poverty rates. In other words, these schools are outperforming expectations in terms of teaching kids to read. The project is impressive in both scope and purpose. Using data from 41,883 schools across 10,414 districts in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., it shines a light on excelling schools. Too often, education debates fixate on failure. Highlighting success—and learning from it—is just as important. While there are surely all kinds of interesting tidbits in the data, in this post I want to focus on the disproportionate representation of charter schools among Bright Spots. Charter schools make up seven percent of The 74’s national sample, but 11 percent of schools identified as Bright Spots.” (03/05/26)
