War Powers Act

Don Wolfensberger: As we have relearned recently, members are reluctant to go against presidents of their own party, and minority party opposition, while expected, seldom has legs.  Presidents since Nixon have uniformly ignored or denounced the War Powers Resolution...

Economic Forecasts

From CBO: In this report, the Congressional Budget Office assesses its economic forecasts over the first two years and five years of each baseline period from as early as 1976. (The baseline period is the time frame covered by the agency’s annual baseline...

Factions

Jay Cost at AEI: There are many reasons for the dramatic rise in partisanship at the end of the 1820s, mainly related to economic diversification and rapid democratization. The number of voters had more than doubled between the elections of 1800 and 1820, and while an...

David Gergen, RIP

At With Honor, Rye Barcott reflects on the legacy of David Gergen: Leadership at its best is service to others.   If this were a ranked-order list, this might be the first bullet for David’s advice on leadership, though it is also fitting as the last....

War Power 2025

Don Wolfensberger at The Hill: In the Iran case last month, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced concurrent resolutions in their respective chambers prohibiting the president from going to war with Iran. Kaine...

Using Litigation to Silence Journalists

Filmmaker Mary Strause made a docuseries critical of UnitedHealth.  The companies used the threat of litigation to coerce streaming services to take it down. CMC alum David Enrich at NYT: In legal letters and court filings, UnitedHealth has invoked last year’s murder...

Congressional Lobotomy

R Street Institute and other think tanks comment on proposed cuts to congressional capacity: Specifically, the bill reported by the House Appropriations Committee on June 26, 2025, would decrease funding of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) by $396.5 million,...

Tariffs on South Korea

The U.S. is imposing a 25% tariff on Korea because of trade deficits that it claims are “engendered by Korea’s Tariff and Non Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers.” But Korea has a free trade agreement with the U.S. It charges zero tariffs on nearly...