At a recent press conference, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell claimed that the Fed’s flexible average inflation targeting (FAIT) framework did not contribute to the post-pandemic inflation surge. 

There was nothing moderate about the overshoot. It was — it was an exogenous event. It was the pandemic and it happened and, you know, our framework permitted us to act quite vigorously. And we did once we decided that that’s what we should do. The framework had really nothing to do with the decision to — we looked at the inflation as — as transitory and — right up to the point where the data turned against that. — and when the data turned against that in late ‘21, we changed our — our view and we raised rates a lot. And here we are at 4.1 percent unemployment and inflation way down. But the framework was — was more — was more irrelevant than anything else that — the that part of it — that part of it was irrelevant. The rest of the framework worked just fine as — as we used it — as it supported what we did to bring inflation down.

The temporary rise in inflation and permanent rise in the price level was, according to Powell, beyond the Fed’s control. The Fed’s framework did not inhibit the Fed’s response. To the contrary, Powell said, the framework supported the Fed’s efforts to rein in inflation.

There’s no subtle way to put this: Powell’s account of what happened is incorrect.

Let’s start with the rise in prices. While the price level initially declined below the Fed’s two-percent target when the pandemic hit, it quickly recovered. By March 2021, the overall level of prices had returned to the two-percent growth path. It then rose rapidly until the Fed aggressively tightened monetary policy midway through 2022.

In his recent remarks, Powell describes the rise in prices as “exogenous,” suggesting that it had nothing to do with monetary policy. It is unclear what he means here, but one interpretation is that he is blaming inflation on pandemic-driven supply constraints. 

There are several problems with this view. For one, the timing does not make any sense. The worst of the pandemic-induced supply constraints occurred in 2020. The economy had largely recovered from these constraints by the time inflation picked up in late 2021.

Moreover, a temporary reduction in real output, on its own, would not result in a permanent rise in the price level. Absent an increase in nominal spending, the price level would have fallen as real output recovered. That, of course, is not what happened. Real GDP has basically returned to trend, yet the price level remains substantially higher than it would have been had the Fed hit its two-percent inflation target over the past few years.

So what caused the rise in prices? 

The short answer is that the Fed’s response to the pandemic resulted in a surge in nominal spending. Mistaking this positive aggregate demand shock for a negative aggregate supply shock, the Fed initially delayed its response. As Powell admits, it is only after “the data turned against that” view that the Fed changed course.

But even that is too charitable. The Fed did eventually change course, but it did not do so right after the data turned against the transitory supply-side story in the back half of 2021, as Powell suggests.

By the time the Fed released its projections in December 2021, Fed officials had access to inflation data through October, which showed inflation had averaged 5.8 percent year-to-date. But the December median inflation projection for 2021 was just 5.3 percent. For that forecast to be accurate, inflation would have needed to average just 2.7 percent in November and December — a sharp decline from the preceding trend. Moreover, Fed officials made no changes to monetary policy at the December meeting, nor did the December median federal funds rate projection for 2021 shift from prior meetings.

In short, it seems as though they expected inflation to fall in the final months of 2021 without any policy tightening — suggesting they still attributed inflation to transitory, pandemic-related supply constraints, despite Powell retiring the term at the end of November.

Fed officials did not act swiftly and decisively once they realized the problem in late 2021, as Powell claims. They did not even begin to raise the federal funds rate target until March 2022 — at least five months after the data revealed a demand-side problem and three months after Fed officials acknowledged that problem. Even then, the Fed officials proceeded slowly, despite inflation surging past their projections during the early months of 2022. Indeed, the real federal funds rate would remain negative until June 2022! It was not until July 2022 that Fed officials finally got serious about getting inflation under control. They raised the federal funds rate target by 75 basis points, and then followed up with several substantial rate hikes throughout the remainder of 2022 and early 2023.

The Fed’s slow response to the surge in aggregate demand pushed the price level well above its pre-pandemic growth path. 

Where does the Fed’s FAIT framework come into play? Under FAIT, the Fed targets inflation asymmetrically: it only makes up for inflation undershoots. It does not make up for periods when inflation averages more than 2 percent. Consequently, the price level will not return to its pre-pandemic growth path. That is not an accident. It is the direct result of the Fed’s FAIT framework. 

Contrary to Powell’s claims, FAIT is far from irrelevant. It explains why the price level, having grown faster than the Fed had hoped, will now remain permanently elevated despite the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes. Perhaps that’s what Fed officials wanted. Perhaps they would not have done anything differently had they not been constrained by FAIT. If that’s the case, they should say that. The fact is, given the Fed’s adherence to its FAIT framework, they were not able to do anything other than permit the price level to remain permanently elevated.  

Getting this history right matters. If Fed officials are going to avoid making similar mistakes in the future, they must take responsibility for their role in driving prices permanently higher. As Fed officials review their framework this year, they should keep the following in mind: either FAIT enabled the price level to rise permanently higher beginning in 2021 or failed to prevent it from rising permanently higher. Either way, it needs to go.

On Sunday, Germany’s voters will elect a new government. Polls indicate that the once mighty Social Democratic Party (SDP) will be reduced to fighting the Greens for third place while the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AFD) will finish second behind the more “moderate” Christian Democrats (CDU). With the war in Ukraine at a turning point, the result matters beyond Germany, and even Vice President J.D. Vance has found himself caught up in the campaign.    

The proximate cause of Sunday’s election is the collapse of the governing coalition of the SPD, Greens, and free-market Free Democratic Party (FDP) following disputes over economic policy. The ultimate causes are several, and a leading one is Germany’s stagnant economy. It offers a stark warning to the United States and any country tempted to sacrifice its economy in pursuit of “green dreams.”   

Green Dreams 

Until recently, this would have seemed incredible. In the early 1990s, Germany’s per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adjusted for inflation and differences in living costs, was equal to that of the United States, an incredible achievement for a country whose economy was obliterated during World War II. The jewel in West Germany’s economic crown was its manufacturing sector, which specialized in high-quality products made by a highly capitalized, highly productive, highly paid workforce. This accounted for 19.9 percent of German GDP in 1997 compared to 16.1 percent in the United States: By 2021, while manufacturing had fallen to 10.5 percent of United States’ GDP, it still accounted for 18.7 percent in Germany.  

The absorption of East Germany, historically poorer than the west and relatively impoverished further by decades of communism, was a strain, and German per capita GDP reached near parity with France and Britain by the mid-2000s. Then its relative performance improved thanks to the introduction of a currency shared with weaker economies like Greece and Italy which dragged the foreign currency price of German exports down. By 2020, Germany’s per capita GDP was about $12,000 to $10,000 higher than that of France or Britain.  

But German policymakers were determined to fight climate change; indeed, they opposed not only fossil fuels but anything that wasn’t wind or solar. In 2011, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) accelerated the end of nuclear power. Those renewable sources of energy weren’t scaling up fast enough to fill the gap,  but gas could be imported from Russia while the wait for renewables went on…and on. Even after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, German leaders went ahead with Nord Stream 1 which piped natural gas from Russia and even following Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, Berlin’s policymakers went ahead with Nord Stream 2 which began construction in 2018.  

In July 2017, Merkel denounced President Trump’s approach to fighting Climate Change at a meeting of the G20 while, at the same time, she was turning Germany into a Russian client state with her own energy policies. In September 2018, Trump hit back, telling the United Nations General Assembly that “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.” In response, the Washington Post reported, “German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas could be seen smirking alongside his colleagues.”  

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 vindicated Trump and wiped the grins off the faces of Maas and his colleagues. Moscow cut off natural gas supplies to Germany and prices skyrocketed for gas and for electricity generated from gas, both key inputs for energy-intensive industries such as steel, fertilizer, chemicals, and glass. Germany had to turn to liquefied natural gas (LNG), super-cooled and imported by ship from Qatar and the United States, all of which cost more than pipeline gas. Electricity now costs industrial users in Germany an average of 20.3 euro cents per kilowatt hour, while its competitors in China and the United States face costs equivalent to just 8.4 euro cents. 

Germany’s political class thought that it could have an industrial economy based on pre-industrial sources of energy like wind and solar. For a time, Russian natural gas allowed them to live that fantasy and lecture those who did not share it. The fantasy is now over, and it turns out that switching your economy to pre-industrial energy sources switches you back to a pre-industrial economy. Germany’s energy-intensive industrial production is now at a level even below those it fell to during the pandemic. 

The country hasn’t seen significant economic growth in five years and 2024 was the second year in a row where Germany’s economy actually shrank. In January, the government cut its 2025 growth forecast from 1.1 percent to 0.3 percent and the number of unemployed hit almost three million, a rate of 6.2 percent.    

Political Realities 

The combination of left and right parties that formed a government after the 2021 elections was doomed to struggle in such circumstances.  

In November 2023, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court lit the fuse to its eventual explosion when it declared the government’s reallocation of unspent debt proceeds to its climate action budget unconstitutional. To fill the resulting €60 billion shortfall, the government attempted to fill this gap by, among other measures, raising taxes on farmers, prompting widespread protests. In three state elections in September 2024, the coalition parties performed poorly while AfD and the left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) made significant gains. 

On November 1, FDP leader and finance minister Christian Lindner called for tax cuts and a halt in new regulations, and opposed new spending, including on action against climate change. The SPD and Greens branded this “provocation” and on November 6, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) dismissed Lindner, and the FDP quit the coalition, leaving a minority government.

On December 16, Scholz called (and then lost) a vote of confidence, prompting Sunday’s vote. 

Lessons for America 

In recent years, policymakers across the West, including the United States, have argued for and enacted costly policies to shift from cheap and reliable energy sources to expensive and unreliable ones. Voters have been told that, if everything goes right, not only might this come at no economic cost, but it might even usher in some “Green Revolution.” The fate of Germany’s economy — its entirely self-inflicted crippling in pursuit of a fantasy — exposes the folly of this argument. No government should follow its example and anyone who says it should ought to be dismissed as a crank.   

There is another lesson, perhaps a deeper one. The economic situation, along with mass immigration, has created a situation where AfD can thrive. If they do well, Russia will be blamed and so will populists and populism generally. But it wasn’t populists who crippled Germany’s economy. It was its “moderate” elites, people like Merkel, who did that. If AfD performs well on Sunday, it is to those “moderates” and their disastrous, immoderate policies, that it will owe its success.       

The Trump administration’s announcements of a 10 percent tariff on Chinese imports and 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada (all currently in some holding pattern) have led to considerable volatility in stock and foreign exchange markets. 

Investors, unsurprisingly, are expressing concerns over potential disruptions in global supply chains and the macroeconomic implications of obstructions to trade. But interestingly, various financial markets have shown a relatively muted response to proposals regarding the implementation of reciprocal tariffs. The subdued character of the reaction may simply show exhaustion, with market participants becoming desensitized to new announcements. Or, the quiescence could indicate that investors are nonplussed, perceiving reciprocal tariffs as less impactful, likely to be negotiated away before implementation, or even positive. 

By way of explanation, reciprocal tariffs are trade duties that a country imposes to mirror the tariffs placed on its exports by another nation. The primary objective is to either establish a level playing field or retaliate, ensuring that if one country levies tariffs on certain goods, the affected nation can respond with equivalent tariffs. For instance, if Country A imposes a 20 percent tariff on steel imports from Country B, Country B might retaliate by enacting a similar tariff on steel or comparable goods from Country A. The strategy behind reciprocal tariffs is to incentivize countries to reduce or even eliminate trade barriers, fostering a more open and balanced international trading system.

Several nations currently impose tariffs on US goods without facing equivalent tariffs, or impose tariffs of a much higher magnitude on goods imported from the United States. India, for example, has been identified as maintaining high tariffs on many American products, with average rates around 17 percent: significantly higher than the US rate of 3.3 percent on some Indian products. Similarly, the European Union applies a 10 percent tariff on US automobiles; the US has its own tariffs on European cars, but at a much lower rate (2.5 percent).

A foundational distinction in economics is that which separates positive analysis (describing the world as it is) from normative analysis (prescribing how it should be). Reciprocal tariffs provide a particularly useful lens through which to examine this dichotomy. While economic theory generally favors free trade as the optimal state of global commerce, real-world policy decisions tend to reflect a more interventionist approach. Specifically, the question of whether a nation should respond to foreign tariffs with its own protectionist measures exemplifies this ongoing debate. 

Reciprocal tariffs illustrate the divide between positive and normative economics: a positive analysis explains that while unilateral free trade generates benefits for consumers and economic efficiency, imposing reciprocal tariffs can pressure protectionist nations to lower their trade barriers, potentially leading to freer trade overall. The normative question, however, is whether a nation ought to take the principled high ground by avoiding retaliatory tariffs or instead strategically impose them to achieve long-term trade liberalization.

On one hand, a nation may determine that the most economically sound response to tariffs on its goods is not to impose retaliatory tariffs of its own. Free trade tends to maximize efficiency by allowing nations to specialize in the production of goods and services in which they have a comparative advantage. Retaliatory tariffs, by contrast, restrict trade, increase costs for consumers, and distort resource allocation. 

US Trade Policy Uncertainty Index (1990 – present)(Source: Bloomberg Finance, LP)

Even when one country implements tariffs, unilateral free trade remains beneficial. Avoiding counter-tariffs keeps domestic prices lower, benefiting consumers and businesses reliant on imported goods. Not retaliating also prevents damaging trade wars, which have historically had negative economic consequences (consider the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which exacerbated the Great Depression). In addition, there is the not-inconsiderable moral high ground: a nation committed to unilateral free trade can position itself as a stable, open-market economy, attracting investment and diplomatic goodwill. From this perspective, free trade is the ideal arrangement regardless of how other nations act.

There is an alternative argument, which holds that reciprocally tariffing nations that impose or maintain tariffs may serve the broader cause of freer and more productive trade in the long run. While imposing tariffs is contrary to free-market principles, strategic reciprocation may pressure protectionist nations to lower or eliminate their trade barriers, leading to a more open global system. The practice of imposing reciprocal tariffs is not without risk, but may force protectionist governments to reassess the costs of obstruction, possibly resulting in broader trade liberalization. In that sense, reciprocal tariffs may be viewed as a corrective measure as opposed to an end goal. Proponents of doing so are likely to characterize reciprocal tariff campaigns (such as that which is being discussed) as pragmatic, free-market oriented interventions as opposed to dogmatic non-interventionism.

But imposing retaliatory tariffs, even if undertaken in the spirit of fostering unfettered trade, is a perilous proposition. History shows that such measures may escalate trade disputes, disrupt supply chains, and inflict disproportionate harm on domestic consumers and producers. While foreign tariffs hinder US exports, raising domestic barriers in response may encounter intransigence, compounding inefficiencies and weakening economic stability. Additionally, their targeting is inherently political in nature. The prosperity of the United States ultimately depends not on mirroring the protectionism of others but on maintaining open markets and competitive pricing. Imposing reciprocal tariffs, would represent a further deviation from the general historical principle of the US applying unconditional Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) trading policies outside of bilateral and regional agreements. 

(Two such deviations have occurred recently: Biden’s 2022 revoking of Russia’s and Belarus’s MFN status to impose higher tariffs in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, and the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on Chinese imports during beginning in 2018.) 

The debate over reciprocal tariffs underscores the is/ought dichotomy that is central to economic policy analysis. Free trade is the optimal outcome, and unilateral free trade remains beneficial even in the face of foreign tariffs. In the government/official sphere, though, trade dynamics may be deemed as necessitating strategic responses to protectionist policies abroad. But dismissing, let alone praising, tariff threats of any kind (retaliatory or other) as “negotiating tactics” ignores the creation of market distortions through preemptive stockpiling, increased costs due to administrative and compliance changes, and growth-impeding uncertainty, which delays investment and expansion decisions.

Navigating between the science of economics and the practical realities of real-world decision-making is a perpetual challenge. The debate over the application of reciprocal tariffs illustrates a broader truth pertaining to all of the social sciences: sound economic theory provides guiding principles, while real-world application, especially when political dynamics enter the fray, frequently requires balancing normative ideals with unsentimental practicality. 

As a scientist, I would prefer the theoretically sound, apolitical (and principled) approach, but the debate presents a valuable opportunity to highlight the contrast between idealism and expedience: in trade policy, and beyond.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was established by President John F. Kennedy on November 3, 1961 with Executive Order 10973. Kennedy created USAID to implement the noble objectives of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and consolidate several existing foreign assistance organizations and programs into a single agency under the US State Department. 

The purpose of the Foreign Assistance Act was clear. It stated: 

a principal objective of the foreign policy of the United States is the encouragement and sustained support of the people of developing countries in their efforts to acquire the knowledge and resources essential to development and to build the economic, political, and social institutions which will improve the quality of their lives” and “that development concerns be fully reflected in United States foreign policy and that United States development resources be effectively and efficiently utilized.

In 1998, USAID split off from the State Department, becoming its own stand-alone agency.  This eventually led to USAID being used as a tool of the State Department and the CIA for domestic political agendas and foreign covert operations intended to escape transparency and accountability.  Thus, USAID’s original mission became corrupted.

On Inauguration Day, President Trump issued Executive Order 14158 to establish and implement the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).  Led by Elon Musk, DOGE hit the ground running.  It immediately began reviewing and terminating hundreds of wasteful contracts, leases, and grants across several government agencies.   

While DOGE has not yet established a system to report running cost savings by agency, it has set up a “DOGE Clock” to provide live tracking of the cost savings it is achieving in aggregate.  As of February 17, the DOGE Clock was reporting $49 billion in aggregate cost savings.  Not bad for only 28 days of cost-cutting work.   

The one agency that quickly caught the attention of the DOGE team for its shocking level of waste, fraud, and abuse was USAID.  During a live X Spaces discussion on February 3, Musk made the following comments about the DOGE team’s review of USAID:   

As we dug into USAID, it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple you just need to get rid of the whole thing.  

On the previous day, February 2, Musk posted several critical comments about USAID on X:

“USAID was a viper’s nest of radical-left Marxists who hate America” and “USAID is/was a radical-left political psy op.” 

Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on February 9th describing USAID as a “rogue agency” that has a history of stonewalling congressional requests for information about its activities.  Excerpts from Senator Ernst’s piece:

After keeping its spending records hidden from Congress and taxpayers, USAID employees are now protesting the review of the agency’s records by President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. It’s no surprise that Washington insiders are more upset at DOGE for trying to stop wasteful spending than at USAID for misusing tax dollars.  The question we should be asking isn’t why USAID’s grants are being scrutinized, but why it took so long.

Criticisms of USAID by Musk and Senator Ernst are backed up with detailed lists of waste, fraud, and abuse uncovered by the DOGE team and congressional committees.  

On January 31, DOGE reported on X that it had terminated seven DEI-related USAID contracts with a total contract value of $375.1 million. The Trump White House issued a fact sheet on February 3 entitled “At USAID, Waste and Abuse Runs Deep” and the House Foreign Affairs Committee followed with a press release on February 4 that listed numerous egregious examples of wasteful USAID spending, such as millions of dollars spent promoting DEI and LGBT activism in multiple countries around the world, and hundreds of millions of dollars paid to support poppy cultivation and heroin production in Afghanistan that benefitted the Taliban regime.   

USAID development programs are no longer wanted by recipient countries in some cases.  On February 2, the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, posted the following on X:

Most governments don’t want USAID funds flowing into their countries because they understand where much of that money actually ends up.

While marketed as support for development, democracy, and human rights, the majority of these funds are funneled into opposition groups, NGOs with political agendas, and destabilizing movements.

At best, maybe 10 percent of the money reaches real projects that help people in need (there are such cases), but the rest is used to fuel dissent, finance protests, and undermine administrations that refuse to align with the globalist agenda.

Cutting this so-called aid isn’t just beneficial for the United States; it’s also a big win for the rest of the world.

DOGE’s revelations about USAID’s wasteful and fraudulent spending on foreign aid activities are only part of the story.  Even more disturbing are its activities beyond foreign aid into radical leftwing cultural and political activism.  According to former State Department official Mike Benz, this has been exacerbated in recent years with USAID’s embrace of disinformation campaigns and censorship efforts in collaboration with the State Department and the CIA. 

Mr. Benz, founder and executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), provided a detailed report of USAID’s censorship operation from USAID’s own internal documents on March 14, 2024.  The most shocking revelation from Benz’s investigation is that USAID’s censorship program was implemented domestically against Americans.  Excerpts from the report: 

USAID — the foreign-facing wing of the federal government that purports to use taxpayer dollars for ‘strengthening resilient democratic societies’ and exporting American democratic ideals abroad — has been quietly pushing private sector technology companies, media organizations, education ministries, national governments and funding bodies to adopt social media censorship practices, according to newly revealed internal documents. 

USAID’s 97-page proprietary ‘Disinformation Primer,’ labeled ‘for internal use only’ was obtained by America First Legal (AFL), a public interest law firm conducting a number of major investigations and lawsuits into the censorship industry and its government partner agencies, after a lengthy process in which the US Department of State failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and was compelled to turn over government documents after AFL succeeded in a formal lawsuit.  

The USAID Disinformation Primer reveals a detailed compilation of the agency’s advocacy for some of the most economically damaging censorship strategies — many of which had been deployed in America to throttle populists in the 2020 elections and afterwards — and endorses recommendations from some of the most controversial censorship industry institutions under scrutiny by the US Congress. 

USAID’s ‘Disinformation Primer’ outlining its censorship promotion strategies is dated February 2021, the first month after the Biden administration took office after the 2020 election. It proposes censorship action items for virtually every governmental, non-governmental and private sector commercial actor across society… 

Benz has explained in recent interviews with Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan that the CIA cannot lawfully engage in covert operations without a presidential finding; there is no such requirement for USAID.  Thus, Benz claims that the CIA and the State Department use USAID to carry out covert operations that they want hidden from the president and Congress.     

Independent journalist Michael Shellenberger corroborates Benz’s comments in his February 3 Substack piece, “USAID’s History Of Regime Change, Destabilization, And Censorship Justifies Its Closure By Trump” and expands further on USAID’s funding of global censorship.  Shellenberger writes: 

As part of US government efforts to overthrow governments abroad, or simply influence what they do, USAID has in recent years been funding censorship advocacy worldwide through its ‘Countering Disinformation’ program, which is part of its Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS).

After DOGE exposed USAID’s decades of extensive waste, fraud, and abuse, the Trump administration shut down USAID’s head office in Washington, DC on February 7 and is reportedly planning to fire over 10,000 USAID staff and retain only 294.  Both Trump and Musk favor abolishing USAID as an agency and moving any legitimate foreign aid functions into the State Department.  Whether Trump has the legal authority to abolish USAID by executive order is legally questionable, but, at a minimum, Trump and Musk are right to dramatically downsize USAID, restore its transparency and accountability under the State Department, and return it to the basics of its original mission, as envisioned by John F. Kennedy in 1961.    

In the 2022 BBC show Inside Man, Stanley Tucci’s character (Jefferson Grieff), an inmate on death row, says something dramatic about murder: “There are moments that make murderers of us all… all it takes is a good reason and a bad day.”

In Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence, University of Chicago Professor Jens Ludwig, goes further. He reduces that bad day to single ten-minute windows — and does away with much of the “good reason” part. 

America’s gun violence is, as he puts it, the outcome of a simple formula: guns + violence. 

We all come to the question of America’s gun violence, mass shootings and assaults, with implicit or preconceived notions — all too often lined up with our political or ideological priors. Ludwig summarizes the two major stories as bad people versus bad social or economic conditions. Those two stories, roughly corresponding to the political positions of those on the Right and the Left, don’t account for the real-life gun violence.

Ludwig painstakingly assesses the statistics he reports. Channeling his best H.L. Mencken (“For every complex problem there is a solution which is clear, simple, and wrong”), Ludwig explains that it’s not — like the Right thinks  — that there bad people pathologically out for blood; and it’s not — like the Left thinks — good people in bad circumstances (racism, poverty, oppression, deprivation) forced into crime by the lack of any other choice.

The most obvious anomalies have to do with large gun presence in some places; Switzerland or Finland (even Canada!) have plenty of guns but few murders, while the UK has almost no guns but an abundance of murders. Ludwig limits the scope to his own home turf and the typical analytical approach of randomized control trials, by looking across two neighborhoods in Chicago — South Shore and Greater Grand Crossing. 

Right off the bat, in the preface, Ludwig lays out the empirical anomaly that blows apart what almost everyone thinks they know about guns in America: 

The two neighborhoods are dramatically different in one important respect: On a per-capita basis, there are about twice as many shootings in Greater Grand Crossing as in South Shore. Whatever you believe about the causes of gun violence in America, those beliefs almost surely fail to explain why Greater Grand Crossing would be so much more of a violent place than South Shore.

Same gun laws and access to guns, same court system, same socioeconomic conditions, same racism and police (brutality), same segregation; thus: “the policy variables that we think of as determining public safety are identical in both places.” 

He observes that more shootings and gun murders take place when it’s warmer outside, at night, and on weekends and holidays. Does a person’s fundamental moral character, or the extent to which they experience poverty (…or racism or oppression) shift that much?

Ludwig advances a different story: “Most homicides are arguments that end in tragedy, usually because someone has a gun.” Exaggerating only a little here, we can therefore all become murderers. Ludwig argues that anyone, at any moment, can fall into the System 1–type catastrophizing, or misconstruing of social situations, that escalate a conflict into homicide. He relays personal anecdotes of everyday disputes with neighbors or fellow drivers that could, in the presence of guns, very well have ended in disaster. 

People just spur-of-the-moment kill each other; gun violence is gun plus violence. 

Instead of getting bogged down in counting the number of guns in America or comparing changes in legal guns, he asks a more fruitful question: is there a theory that can weave itself between these puzzling facts?

Analytically, then, Ludwig cleverly hones in on economics’ own rationality postulate. Specifically, he takes Gary Becker to task for thinking that murder (and other violent crimes) are the outcomes of cold, calculating, utility-optimizers. People don’t always (or often), per the line from Inside Man, murder one another for good reasons. He accounts for plenty of examples over turf, social status, or robberies gone wrong. Sometimes the expected financial payoff to the murderer is: heads, I go to jail for life; tails, I get away with $300 worth of goods. 

You’d need some pretty insane, risk-loving indifference curves to make rational sense of those decisions (or you’d have to really like violence, really like prison, or really like those goods). 

If the rest of us can disrupt or change those critical ten-minute windows where conflict escalates into violence, and violence — via America’s outsized presence of guns — escalates into shootings, we can greatly reduce the frequency of homicides in America: “Violence interrupted can often be violence prevented.”

The story Ludwig paints is one of cognitive bandwidth, of occasional circumstances that can be calmed down by others around us; in short, physical places that are more forgiving to our very human (innocent?) shortcomings. People under stress — financial, social, moral — are more likely to react instinctively, less able to override their own System 1 steering them toward catastrophe. 

That’s the practical and statistical difference between the two Chicago neighborhoods too: South Shore has more “liveliness” than Greater Grand Crossing — more densely populated, more businesses per square mile, more commercial land use, more residential housing, and more residents per square mile:

While the neighborhoods are socio-demographically similar today, the legacy of their built environment creates different conditions for liveliness and eyes on the street.

Ludwig’s explanation is brimming with paternalism, exactly Mario Rizzo and Glen Whitman’s main objection to the whole field of behavioral economics in Escaping Paternalism Rationality, Behavioral Economics, and Public Policy. While the word “economics” is in the subfield, there is very little “economics” (properly speaking) involved in Unforgiving Places. This is a sociological study, drawing on — at best — plenty of statistically focused randomized control trials and some questionable results from the field of psychology. 

The best evidence he brings to the table is precisely these small-scale, scattered randomized control trials of different kinds of social-level interventions that interrupt violence mid-air. The shockingly large effect sizes (20-60 percent reductions in gun violence), make my alarm bells go off — à la The Quick Fix, Jesse Singal’s take-down of much psychological “research.”

The most compelling bits are the anecdotal stories, surrounded by Ludwig’s lengthy and well-described account of Jane Jacobs’ research on cities — the “eyes-on-the-street” lens through which she assessed crime and other social outcomes in Death and Life of Great American Cities. When people live, work, go to school, and operate stores on the same streets, there are always trusted community “eyes” watching out for mischief. When there’s an altercation, there are eyes peeking out of from second-floor windows; when others in the neighborhood start fighting, the butcher, the schoolteacher, the security guard, the police officer, or the social worker that happened to be around can step in and ask the very obvious and calming questions: What are we really angry about? Take a walk and get your outrage under control. 

Interrupting violence is key. Because the source of (gun) violence isn’t a deep-seated moral failure or even desperation, but a momentary state of mind: “violence interrupted can often be violence prevented.”

Even though Ludwig works hard to bring supporting evidence to his story — threading his psychology-based explanation through the myriad of confusion and contradictory data surrounding guns, gun laws, and violence — the result is very… unsatisfactory. Not bad, not necessarily wrong, but unsatisfactory, located somewhere in the la-la-land of human behavior and social psychology. 

The book’s central message is that people kill each other on a whim. Specifically over misunderstandings or small, everyday altercations that escalate into conflict and are made so much worse by the immediate presence of guns.

Perhaps that’s right, perhaps it’s all a distraction, but it’s definitely a refreshing take on America’s most pernicious social problem.

The tide of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) causes has been ebbing rapidly. Many of the largest corporations in America have partially or fully reversed course, and large financial institutions have decided to pull back from their international alliances and coalitions. The Trump administration has begun an all-out war on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a subset of the ‘Social’ in ESG, within the federal government. 

But the most interesting contest over ESG and DEI has been at the state level. Red states have been warring over ESG policies for years. Texas and Florida led the charge in 2022 and 2023 by changing policies and passing laws curtailing ESG. Other states followed suit: Tennessee, Alabama, Indiana, Oklahoma, Montana, and many more. 

These legislative advances have not always been easy. Financial companies and their lobbyists, as well as complacent pension managers and state treasury officials, have threatened financial Armageddon should some of these “anti-ESG” bills be implemented. While some caution should be taken when passing legislation affecting billions of pension dollars and state funds, most of the “costs” projected by pension officials and lobbyists are blatant scare tactics with limited connection to reality. Price tags in the billions of dollars have been used to scare legislators and to provide ammunition for lawsuits to block state reforms on finance and ESG.

One such claim comes from opponents of Wyoming’s latest “anti-ESG” bill. The state Treasurer, Curt Meier, argued that stringent requirements and penalties for asset managers who pursue ESG objectives over financial returns will drive away half of his staff and make Wyoming’s public funds unattractive to top asset managers: “we’re going to be left with nobody to invest, no markets to invest in.” 

But when’s the last time you heard a major institutional asset manager turn down $30 billion because it was too difficult to manage? It beggars belief that Wyoming would somehow struggle to find competent managers for its assets. Any financial adviser who objects to investing money for returns rather than for ESG goals ought to be avoided anyway!

State legislators increasingly recognize that they wield significant financial influence when deciding who will manage their financial assets. Texas does not “need” Blackrock or any of the large banks to manage its finances or to buy its bonds. Even if every major bank would refuse to work with Texas, new firms would emerge to profit at their expense. The claim that states won’t have competent managers and firms to work with if they restrict the use of their funds from DEI and ESG priorities is ludicrous.

Promoters of the status quo also argue that the three major institutional investors — Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard — offer the lowest management fees. While that is true, at least for now, it should not matter much to policymakers. The difference between management fees from the big three and other competitors, like Strive, are negligible — usually less than two tenths of a percent, or $2,000 per million dollars. This is a rounding error compared to the potential for lower returns of multiple percentage points with funds that prioritize ESG rather than pursuing the best financial outcome.

More importantly, the big three asset managers may have broken multiple state laws and violated their fiduciary duties. It doesn’t matter if an embezzler, fraudster, or ponzi scheme artist offers you a lower management fee — state officials have an obligation to their pensioners and their citizens to avoid working with such people. As demonstrated by the American Airlines ruling, a notice letter to the largest banks, and the recent lawsuit against Blackrock, State Street, and Vanguard, investing with large firms who prioritize ESG considerations is fraught with legal risk.

The debate raging in Wyoming is the latest example of the dynamics and arguments laid out here. The state treasurer and other public officials have claimed the new bill will cost up to $5 billion, with a “B”, over the next three years if passed. Such claims don’t pass the smell test — for these estimates to be true, the state fund of $30 billion dollars would have to run five to ten percentage points lower than the status quo for several years in a row — a truly staggering loss of return. 

How could losses that large emerge when the difference in management fees is a few tenths of one percent? And the funds will be invested for maximum financial returns rather than non-pecuniary ESG goals. If ESG investing somehow offered a five to ten percentage point higher return than non-ESG investing, the wealth-maximizing strategy would have no conflict with ESG. We know the opposite is the case. If anything, ESG funds have had weaker performance than non-ESG funds and the general market over the past three years.

Of course, states should also avoid playing favorites or putting their thumbs on the scale when it comes to how public money is managed. Pursuing the best financial returns, and keeping non-pecuniary considerations out of the picture, is one thing. Requiring pension money to be invested in fossil fuels or any other industry for political or local economic reasons is another. 

Republican legislators have been accused of using state funds as a political football, but the laws on the books champion financial returns and fiduciary responsibility, not favoring pet industries or punishing less-favored ones.

Ultimately, seeking the best financial returns should be the only guiding light for how state funds are managed. Normally such a declaration would be sufficient. But the bait and switch game played by ESG advocates over the past decade, and the clear history of misleading investors about the financial returns of ESG-investing, have pushed state legislators deeper into the weeds of how their assets are managed. 

Many legislators believe they must explicitly exclude ESG prioritization to make sure their assets are properly managed. If Blackrock, large banks, and other asset managers don’t like the extra scrutiny and sometimes ambiguous strings attached to managing public money, they have no one to blame but themselves.

Robert Kennedy Jr. is the new Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you enjoy emotionally charged events, you might have found the Senate confirmation hearings regarding Kennedy’s nomination compelling.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, among others, criticized Kennedy for his “dangerous views.” In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, the late Nobel laureate in economics, Daniel Kahneman, cautions against emotionally charged declarations: “It is wise to take admissions of uncertainty seriously, but declarations of high confidence mainly tell you that an individual has constructed a coherent story in his mind, not necessarily that the story is true.” 

Kahneman explained that some make decisions involving risk by consulting their emotions: “Do I like it? Do I hate it? How strongly do I feel about it?”

The result is that “the answer to an easy question (How do I feel about it?) serves as an answer to a much harder question (What do I think about it?).” During the Kennedy hearings, many feelings were displayed, but little thinking. 

If you lean towards a powerful government and prefer delegating important health choices to experts, you may be at ease with emotional governance. 

Warren was confident of the “coherent story” in her mind as she railed against Kennedy. She was concerned that Kennedy would make lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies so easy that he’d “shut down access and manufacturing for vaccines for every one of us.” She opined that “Vaccine manufacturers often operate on very slim profit margins. If they get sued repeatedly and successfully, they simply move out of the vaccine space.” 

Warren champions legislation that one analyst says would result in “wholesale expropriation of private enterprise.” How ironic that Warren now wants to exempt some corporations from market forces.

In this essay, I won’t try to settle the charged issue of vaccine safety. However, as an economist, I can identify market distortions resulting from corporations being exempt from market forces like liability.   

You may have seen the Hims & Hers Super Bowl ad promoting their weight-loss medications. While the ad avoided naming specific drugs, its visuals showed injection pens similar to those used for Novo Nordisk’s popular Ozempic diabetes treatment.

Like all pharmaceuticals, Ozempic comes with side effects. Some of the side effects are very serious, including vision impairment. For some, the benefits exceed the risks of taking Ozempic for weight loss. 

Product liability lawsuits are possible when the product is defective, or consumers are not fully informed of risky side effects whose magnitude is often not evident until years later. 

Would a law exempting Ozempic from product liability make these drugs safer or more dangerous? Using her logic at the Kennedy hearings, Senator Warren might argue that such an exemption is necessary in the fight against the nation’s obesity epidemic.

A similar argument was used to pass the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (Vaccine Act). The Vaccine Act granted pharmaceutical manufacturers broad legal immunity from lawsuits for vaccine injuries. The Act included “preemption of state tort claims…  alleging design defects and warning defects.” Further, once approved, a vaccine manufacturer “does not have a statutory obligation to actively collect and analyze safety and efficacy data, nor are manufacturers obligated to update vaccine formulas in light of new scientific advancements.” 

The Vaccine Act did provide for a “compensation program for vaccine-related injuries.” Despite original intentions, families of the vaccine-injured face “complex legal hurdles for obtaining Compensation” in a process that has become “adversarial.” 

Corporate immunity from lawsuits provides vaccines with a hidden subsidy.

Consequently, the number of vaccines a child receives from birth until 18 has exploded. By one count, in 1983 there were 24 doses of four vaccines administered between birth and age 18. In 2023 up to 88 doses of 16 vaccines were recommended. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) vaccine recommendations are wide-reaching because they guide the states to set vaccine requirements to attend public schools. 

Recommendations from the CDC weren’t handed down from above. CDC recommendations are influenced by politics and the financially intertwined relationships between government and industry. 

Dr. Frederik Schaltz-Buchholze, a Danish vaccine expert, counts “11 separate vaccine injections to Danish children, whereas it seems that American children would receive 72 vaccine injections up to 18 years of age.” Dr. Schaltz-Buchholze adds, “I consider several of the vaccines (e.g. hepatitis B, COVID-19, influenza) in the US program to be completely unnecessary and I would not subject my children to this vaccination program if I lived in the US.” 

At the Kennedy confirmation hearing, Senator Rand Paul raised the issue of the hepatitis B vaccine administered at birth. Are Drs. Paul and Schaltz-Buchholze anti-vaxxers? Both are clear they are not. 

Accusations of being anti-vaccine are used to silence inquiry and debate over concerns about vaccine safety and the schedule for administering vaccines. 

Senator Warren is someone for whom inquiry is unnecessary, for she is sure the coherent story in her mind is true. In her story, increasing the number of vaccinations leads to more lives being saved and a healthier nation. 

As an economist, I’m raising a cautionary flag. Early in my career, I investigated how insurance regulates risk in nuclear power. I testified before Congress about the Price-Anderson Act’s limitations on nuclear power liability in accidents. Incidentally, conservative supporters of subsidized nuclear power used the same rhetoric now used by those who liability exemptions for vaccines: I support it, the country needs it, so let’s subsidize it. 

The issue of limiting liability has been examined by classical liberal law professor Richard Epstein. Writing about the British Petroleum 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he explained why “the best way to deter future spills is to expose drillers to the full costs of any mistake and not let any company without proper insurance near an oil derrick.”

Epstein added, “Solid insurance underwriting is likely to do a better job in pricing risk than any program of direct government oversight.”

The 1986 Vaccine Act is subject to Epstein’s logic. The need for insurance coverage would encourage pharmaceutical firms to prioritize vaccine safety.

Those who support liability exemptions say they are safeguarding public health. Like Warren, they believe that otherwise, vaccine production would be inadequate. They reject criticism of the CDC vaccine recommendations.

Let’s be clear: Rejecting liability shields is not a rejection of vaccines. Liability waivers undermine incentives to prioritize vaccine safety.

Today, I read a case in point about liability and safety: a large product recall of canned tuna due to a risk of food poisoning because of a defect in the can’s pull-tab lid. The manufacturer recalled the product “out of an abundance of caution” despite no reported injuries. 

The recall is both expensive and extensive. Why would the manufacturer shoulder this massive cost for what appears to be minimal risk? The answer to that question is straightforward and extends past moral considerations. The manufacturer will be accountable for all product liability claims if the risk proves to be greater than anticipated. It’s smarter to bear a relatively small expense than risk bankruptcy if people start dying.

Under tort law, the need for food doesn’t exempt manufacturers from liability. The need for pharmaceuticals shouldn’t be a defense against tort claims. Emotional governance makes compelling theater, but it is not a search for truth about safety. Eliminating the guard rails of the market process places the public in jeopardy.

Since Bitcoin reached the $100,000 mark, a question has begun to bubble up in the blogosphere and economic discourse: what is the relationship, if any, between the price of gold and Bitcoin? 

I wrote code to evaluate the relationship between gold and Bitcoin prices. Using monthly price changes from January 2014 to December 2024, I first ensure the stationary of the date. The data is then split into pre- (2014–2019) and post-pandemic (2020 – present) periods for focused analysis. Granger causality tests are performed to determine whether past values of gold can help predict Bitcoin or vice versa. Correlation coefficients are then calculated to measure the strength and direction of their relationship. A Vector Autoregression (VAR) model to analyze dynamic interactions between the two assets, with Impulse Response Functions (IRFs) applied to illustrate how a shock to one variable (e.g., Bitcoin) affects the other (e.g., gold) over time, providing a detailed view of their economic interplay. The same operations are also performed on the S&P 500 and gold to provide a benchmark for comparison. 

Findings Summary

Granger Causality Tests:

• Gold and Bitcoin (Pre-Pandemic): The Granger causality tests yield high p-values (> 0.05) for all lags, indicating no evidence that gold influences Bitcoin or vice versa in the pre-pandemic period.
• Gold and Bitcoin (Post-Pandemic): The p-values drop slightly, particularly at lower lags (0.1492, 0.129, 0.0982), suggesting a weak indication that gold might influence Bitcoin, though still not statistically significant overall.
• Gold and S&P 500 (Pre-Pandemic): P-values are lower for certain lags (0.0787, 0.0798, 0.1223), hinting at a modest causal relationship where gold might provide predictive signals for the S&P 500.
• Gold and S&P 500 (Post-Pandemic): P-values remain consistently high (> 0.05) across all lags, showing no significant causal relationship between gold and the S&P 500 post-pandemic.

Correlation Analysis:

• Pre-Pandemic:
  • The correlation between gold and Bitcoin is weakly positive at 0.10, reflecting little connection between the two assets.
  • Gold and the S&P 500 have a slight negative correlation of -0.08, consistent with gold’s historical role as a counterbalance to equities.
• Post-Pandemic:
  • Gold and Bitcoin show a near-zero correlation (-0.01), indicating their relationship has weakened further.
  • Gold and the S&P 500 exhibit a stronger positive correlation (0.20), suggesting gold moved more in line with equities during this period, potentially due to pandemic-driven monetary policy or broader risk-on sentiment.

Impulse Response Function (IRF) findings:

• Gold and Bitcoin:
  • Pre-Pandemic: A shock to gold has a small and mixed effect on bitcoin over time, with initial responses being slightly negative before stabilizing near zero. Conversely, a bitcoin shock results in noticeable, short-lived fluctuations in gold prices, though the impact diminishes after a few periods.
  • Post-Pandemic: Bitcoin becomes more responsive to gold shocks, with sharp, significant reactions observed initially, followed by stabilization. Gold, in turn, reacts more prominently to shocks in bitcoin, showing stronger feedback effects compared to the pre-pandemic period.
• Gold and S&P 500::
  • Pre-Pandemic: A shock to gold has a moderate but short-term negative impact on the S&P 500, consistent with gold’s role as a hedge against equity markets. Shocks to the S&P 500 slightly influence gold prices, although the responses are relatively muted.
  • Post-Pandemic: Both assets exhibit more dynamic interactions. A gold shock now has a more sustained and mixed effect on the S&P 500, including periods of positive and negative responses.Conversely, S&P 500 shocks have a more noticeable influence on gold prices, highlighting an increased link between the two assets in the post-pandemic environment.

Conclusion

With all the caveats that normally attend econometric analysis, the following can be said. In the pre-pandemic period, gold and Bitcoin exhibited little to no relationship in terms of causality or correlation, with Granger causality tests and correlation analyses showing minimal interaction. In that same time period gold maintained a modest counterbalance role against the S&P 500, consistent with its historical function as a safe-haven asset during periods of equity market stress. 

The Impulse Response Function (IRF) analysis further supports this: gold shocks had limited and short-lived impacts on Bitcoin, while Bitcoin shocks caused slight, temporary fluctuations in gold. Similarly, gold’s influence on the S&P 500 was modest, with a negative but short-term impact that aligns with its role as a hedge.

Post-pandemic, gold’s relationship with Bitcoin remains weak overall, but the evidence shows hints of evolving dynamics. Correlation remains near zero, but Granger causality and IRFs suggest a slight increase in mutual influence, with Bitcoin exhibiting sharper responses to gold shocks and vice versa. Meanwhile, gold’s correlation with the S&P 500 has turned moderately positive, reflecting a shift in investor behavior where gold may have tracked broader market movements during times of economic uncertainty. The IRF results further highlight this change: post-pandemic, shocks to gold have a more pronounced and sustained impact on the S&P 500, and the S&P 500 in turn influences gold prices more significantly. 

Together, the econometric findings suggest a growing interconnectedness across assets in the post-pandemic period, driven by shared macroeconomic forces and evolving investor sentiment.

President Trump signed an executive order last month directing the Department of Education to prioritize discretionary funding for school choice initiatives. 

This order is a step in the right direction and puts wind in the sails of the school choice movement. But executive orders can only do so much. The Education Department’s discretionary funding for school choice is limited, so the order — although welcome — cannot expand educational opportunities to all American families. 

To make school choice happen nationally, Congress must get with the program. The good news is Republicans in Congress introduced a nationwide school choice bill last month called the Educational Choice for Children Act.

The bill creates a federal tax credit scholarship program that is neither run nor regulated by the institution President Trump wants to abolish: the Department of Education. This framework means Congress could expand school choice and get rid of the Department of Education at the same time.

People and corporations would receive federal tax benefits for contributing to organizations that provide scholarships to K-12 students. the House Ways and Means Committee passed a version of the bill on a party-line vote last September. That vote was the first time a nationwide school choice bill passed out of a Congressional committee in US history. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune both support the legislation, and President Trump said he would sign it. 

This bill would boost the school choice revolution already happening in red states while expanding educational opportunities to families in blue states. Tax credit funding is limited, however, to $10 billion and families must earn no more than 300 percent of the median household income in the area (or a national average of $225,000 according to the latest data from the US Census Bureau) to qualify for the scholarships.  

An estimated two million students could benefit from these scholarships. That would be a big win, but it represents less than 4 percent of the roughly 55 million K-12 students in the US. 

If we want to unleash education freedom for all, most of the magic needs to happen in the states. The vast majority of K-12 education funding – about 90 percent – comes from state and local sources. 

Thankfully, power-hungry teachers unions overplayed their hand during the COVID era by fighting to keep schools closed as long as possible. These government school cartels held children’s education hostage to secure billions of dollars in ransom payments from taxpayers. After seeing left-wing indoctrination in the classroom during remote learning, parents were mobilized to fight for school choice.  

Parents were right to be upset. A new nationally representative survey found that Critical Race Theory concepts are prevalent in schools. The Education Next survey from this year found that 36 percent of US high school students reported being taught “often” or “almost daily” that “America is a fundamentally racist nation.” 

Because parents have awakened, we’ve seen more advancement on school choice in the past four years than in the preceding four decades. Zero states had universal school choice policies — meaning all families are eligible, regardless of income — before the teachers-union-induced school closures started in 2020. Now, 13 states have passed universal school choice. 

Each of these 13 states passed universal school choice policies with Republican-controlled legislatures, which makes sense. Conservative parents are more likely to be upset about leftist indoctrination in public schools, and the Democratic Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers unions who only want to protect their monopoly. In fact, 99.9% of the campaign contributions from Randi Weingarten’s union – the American Federation of Teachers – went to Democrats in the 2024 election cycle. 

Red states are expected to continue leading the way on education freedom. Last month, Tennessee became the first state to go all-in on school choice in 2025, and the thirteenth overall. I expect more red states to follow suit this year. 

The Texas Senate already passed a universal school choice bill by a vote of 19 to 12, with only one Republican joining each of the 11 Democrats in opposition. 

President Trump posted in support of the bill’s passage and said that the “Texas House must now pass School Choice to deliver a gigantic Victory for Texas students and parents.” Mr. Trump added that he “will be watching them closely.”

Elon Musk agreed. He said, “I hope Dustin Burrows passes school choice in Texas to give kids a chance.”

The Republican Texas House Speaker, Dustin Burrows, responded to them both: “We will.”  

Speaker Burrows also said this month that “the political winds have shifted” and that “the votes are there for universal school choice” in the Texas House. Mr. Burrows also voted for school choice last year and signed a pledge to pass universal school choice. 

Texas would be the biggest win in the history of the school choice movement. About 10% of all K-12 students in the nation reside in Texas. 

The Idaho House passed a universal school choice bill by a vote of 42 to 28 this month. Governor Brad Little also called to expand school choice during his official State of the State address. This is a big deal. Governor Little was endorsed by the teachers union in 2022 and used to be a school choice skeptic.

President Trump is watching Idaho’s bill, too. He endorsed it in a Truth Social post on Sunday. “Congratulations to Governor Brad Little, and Idaho Legislators, who are fighting to bring School Choice to their beautiful State,” Mr. Trump said. “This Bill, which has my Complete and Total Support, MUST PASS!”

The Idaho Senate is expected to vote on this bill Wednesday.

Wyoming’s House passed a universal school choice bill by a vote of 39 to 21 last month and it passed the Senate Education Committee this month. The state legislature passed a universal school choice bill last session, too, but the Republican Governor — Mark Gordon — line-item vetoed most of the bill so that only families from the lowest income category were ultimately eligible to participate.

That’s a shame — Governor Gordon shouldn’t be picking winners and losers. The good news is legislators are already back fighting for all parents, and the Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction, Megan Degenfelder, is on board. 

So is Donald Trump. On Sunday, the president endorsed the bill, saying that, “Every Member of the Wyoming Senate should vote for HB 199. I will be watching!”

New Hampshire has a shot at expanding its existing education savings account program to all families and North Dakota is in position to pass universal school choice as well. Notably, former North Dakota Governor, Doug Burgum, vetoed a school choice bill that made it to his desk last session because he said it didn’t go far enough. The state’s new Governor, Kelly Armstrong, included school choice in his official State of the State address last month.

North Dakota’s House of Representatives passed a universal school choice bill this month by a vote of 49 to 38. It now awaits a vote in the Senate.

Red states are engaging in friendly competition to empower all families with education freedom. Hopefully Democrats will read the tea leaves soon and support parents, not special interest control.  

For far too long in education, the only special interests represented the adults in the system. But now, there’s a new sheriff in town: parents. 

Parents are making their voices heard at the ballot box like never before. In fact, two nationwide surveys by America’s most accurate pollster found that Donald Trump was beating Kamala Harris on the issue of education leading up to Election Day, and exit polling found that Mr. Trump won the parent vote by nine points. 

Democratic politicians would be wise to embrace school choice and be on the right side of history. They could chip away at the GOP advantage on education freedom and stop the bleeding of votes on the issue. 

This realization by Democrats would help them win elections. But, more importantly, it would bring about the bipartisan school choice revolution needed to unleash education freedom in all 50 states.