Source: Niskanen Center
by Rachel Levin, Zachary Norris, & Grace Olson

“As America’s demand for affordable and reliable electricity grows, expanding our electric grid has become more urgent — and more challenging. One major obstacle is the rise of right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) laws, which allow incumbent utilities to block competitors from building new transmission lines, even when others can do the job more cost-effectively. Despite bipartisan opposition at the federal level, an increasing number of states are adopting these anti-competitive laws, favoring utility monopolies over consumer interests. These laws exclusively benefit monopoly utilities at the expense of consumers.” (05/15/25)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/rofr-laws-fragment-americas-transmission-grid/

Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“Bryan Caplan’s Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids is like the Bible. You already know what it says. You’ve already decided whether you believe or not. Do you really have to read it all the way through? But when you’re going through a rough patch in your life, sometimes it helps to pick up a Bible and look for pearls of forgotten wisdom. That’s where I am now. Having twins is a lot of work. My wife does most of it. My nanny does most of what’s left. Even so, the remaining few hours a day leave me exhausted. I decided to read the canonical book on how having kids is easier and more fun than you think, to see if maybe I was overdoing something.” (05/15/25)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-selfish-reasons-to-have

Source: Common Dreams
by Thom Hartmann

“Republicans in the House of Representatives voted out of committee early Wednesday morning legislation that would strip as many as 14 million Americans of their Medicaid-based healthcare, including millions of seniors in nursing homes and children living in poverty. Ironically, red states will be hit harder by this than blue states, as they’re generally less capable of making up the loss of federal funds (Medicaid is administered at the state level with block grants from the feds). Which provokes some serious head-scratching among the pundit class: Why would Republicans kneecap their own people? Do they really think they can get away with it, just to fund tax breaks for Elon, Mark, Jeff, and Donald? And, for that matter, why is it that red states are so vulnerable to this GOP perfidy?” (05/15/25)

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gop-hates-you

Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Rachel Chiu

“On April 9th, President Trump signed ‘Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads,’ an executive order (EO) that directed the Secretary of Energy to repeal a 13,000-word regulation limiting, by definition, the amount of water that could flow through household nozzles. … A crucial sentence was tucked away in the middle of the EO: ‘Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal.’ Procedurally, rules are rescinded and replaced by new rules, which undergo a statutorily mandated process called notice and comment. Under the Administrative Procedure Act, an agency must give public notice of a proposed rule and allow interested parties to comment before the final rule is issued. President Trump’s EO discounted these requirements, proclaiming instead that the agency could bypass the process because he declared it so. For administrative law experts, this sentence has caused some pause.” (05/15/25)

https://fee.org/articles/water-pressure/

Source: The Bulwark
by Mona Charen

“As matters stand at this moment (and things may have changed by the time you read this), the overall average effective tariff rate is 17.8 percent — the highest since 1934. It was 2.5 percent when Trump took office in January. That’s enough to do serious harm to the average consumer. But if the current pattern holds, Trump will back down even more, all while claiming, as he backpedals, that he’s ‘winning’ glorious ‘deals.’ How can I possibly suggest that I would prefer Trump to take the ruinous path on tariffs that he first started down? Sadly, because I think economic pain for the average American is the only thing that really matters. … sadly I believe that a durable majority of the American people will not turn their backs on MAGA unless they feel dire consequences in their daily lives.” (05/15/25)

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-if-trump-ditches-the-tariffs-too-quickly-liberation-day-approval-rating