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Can the President Really Disrupt Free Speech?

While the country’s attention was drawn to the federal government shutdown, President Donald Trump signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which purports to designate the ideology of antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization” and directs federal law enforcement to disrupt its gatherings and those of its supporters. The gist of NSPM-7 appears to be the president’s view that the United States suffers from an enemy within our borders, an enemy that consists of Americans who hate Christianity, capitalism, and Americanism, and it is somehow the duty of the ...

What Is It That Truly Makes Items in Our Life Affordable?

Affordability. It’s the word on everybody’s lips. Ever since self-described socialist Zohran Mamdani became the frontrunner in the New York City mayoral election by saying the word “affordability” with talismanic regularity, we have been told that the key to modern politics is that word’s repetition. Say “affordability,” and watch your polls rise. And yet the world becomes ever more unaffordable. Why? Because there is, in the end, only one way to make things more affordable: to reduce prices. And there are only two ways to reduce prices: to reduce demand, or to ...

Solving government’s failures with more government

In 1996, former President Bill Clinton declared, “The era of big government is over.” Three decades later, the left has a different message. In his victory speech, NYC mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani declared, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.” While that’s a terrifying sentiment that leaves little room for individual liberty, it’s important not to dismiss it out of hand. Think about young adults in New York City who’ve moved there to build their lives and careers. The rental site Zumper ...

Making Ozempic more available would benefit everyone

Americans are going to get a little healthier. President Trump cut deals with the drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to increase access to obesity drugs in a major benefit to American public health. The agreements are a win-win-win — good for consumers, good for the companies and good for Trump. One of the most irrational superstitions of our time is that Big Pharma, which has long been routinely delivering near-miraculous therapeutics to extend and improve our lives, is a public enemy. Its latest breakthrough is a class of so-called GLP-1 drugs that make it easier to ...

Trump can do a lot better than dividends and 30-year mortgages

Time is short for the Trump administration. Last week’s elections were a setback, but not a devastating one: New Jersey is still a blue state, and while Virginia went red four years ago, it’s been trending Democratic for more than a decade. Republicans also fared poorly in Pennsylvania, however, an all-important presidential battleground. Democrats even made inroads deep into the South, taking two state senate seats in Mississippi and picking up city council spots in South Carolina and Florida. With results like these, the Republicans’ razor-thin majority in Congress ...

Can President Actually Levy a Tax On You?

This past week the Supreme Court began the process of deciding if the president can impose a sales tax on products and services which originate in foreign countries and are purchased in the United States. The president calls these taxes tariffs. Tariffs are nearly as old as the republic and when imposed by Congress — as they have been going back to the presidency of Thomas Jefferson — are clearly constitutional. Yet the questions before the court ask if Congress delegated away to the president the power to tax, and if it did, was that delegation constitutional? The Department ...