by jpitney | Oct 17, 2025 | Budget, Congress
Kevin Kosar: Sometimes Congress does not bother to adopt a budget resolution. Legislators rarely enact individual spending bills. Instead, they ball them up into omnibus spending packages or pass continuing resolutions. Reconciliation has devolved into a vehicle for...
by jpitney | Oct 16, 2025 | civic virtue, Free Speech
Mike Johnson: Did you know that censorship hurts your brain? Yes, it does, according to Barbara Oakley, Oakland University professor writing in the Wall Street Journal last month: “Our brains are built to form habits…deep learning circuits that automate...
by jpitney | Oct 15, 2025 | China, Economic Policy, Trade
Lingling Wei and Gavin Bade at WSJ: In its trade standoff with Washington, Beijing thinks it has found America’s Achilles’ heel: President Trump’s fixation on the stock market. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is betting that the U.S. economy can’t absorb a prolonged trade...
by jpitney | Oct 12, 2025 | Economic Policy
Congratulations to @MariaCorinaYA on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Her courageous fight for democracy in Venezuela is a reminder that socialism doesn’t lift people up, it holds them down. We continue to stand with the Venezuelan people in their pursuit of freedom,...
by jpitney | Oct 11, 2025 | China, Trade
Vivian Wang and Keith Bradsher at NYT: As the trade war between the United States and China kicked back into high gear after a period of tentative détente, it was clear just how vast the gulf of misunderstanding between the two superpowers had become. President Trump...
by jpitney | Oct 10, 2025 | Civility, Congress, Violence
Justin Papp at Roll Call: “A shutdown distracts from a lot of things, and could clearly distract from a mission like trying to dial down the rhetoric,” said Rodney Davis, an Illinois Republican who joined more than 100 other former members of Congress last year...
by jpitney | Oct 9, 2025 | California Politics, Local Government, Los Angeles
Alene Tchekmedyian at LAT: Los Angeles firefighters will remain on duty for an additional shift during red flag weather warnings in a mandatory protocol instituted after top fire officials failed to pre-deploy engines to Pacific Palisades in advance of the devastating...
by jpitney | Oct 8, 2025 | Congress, House of Representatives, Separation of Powers
Jay Cost at AEI: By centralizing authority so heavily, the United States has rejected a fundamental governing principle upon which it was originally founded: the separation of powers. As the French philosopher Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, a work that...
by jpitney | Oct 7, 2025 | Journalism, Journalists, Mass Media, Public Opinion
Megan Brenan at Gallup: Americans’ confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly. This is down from 31%...
by jpitney | Oct 6, 2025 | California Politics, Housing, Regulation
Roger Vincent at LAT: Los Angeles apartment construction has dropped by close to a third in three years as developers struggle with unprofitable economics and regulatory uncertainty. Institutional investors are pulling money from L.A. real estate projects, preferring...
