March 6, 2025
America’s New Frontier of Opportunity and Inclusion
It would be a king-sized understatement to say that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have had better weeks, months, years, and decades than they are currently experiencing. From the Supreme Court’s ruling that banned affirmative action in admissions, to the Trump administration’s full-scale bureaucratic offensive to expunge DEI from federal policy and programs, to corporate America’s widespread retreat from years…
March 4, 2025
A Model for Effective and Reasonable Work Requirements
As Congress considers instituting work requirements to maintain eligibility for Medicaid, it is illustrative to examine an effective model for how such requirements have been implemented in New York City to maintain eligibility for the federal cash welfare program Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Proposals to mandate work requirements as a condition of receiving…
March 3, 2025
It’s Time for Time Limits on Public Housing
Like other Cabinet agencies, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is moving quickly to undo long-standing progressive policies. New HUD Secretary Scott Turner has asserted that the agency is now “DEI-free.” Perhaps even more significantly, the agency is considering implementing time limits and work requirements for tenants of public and subsidized housing. Although we should expect howls of protest from tenant…
March 3, 2025
Up in the Air
For whom is the bell tolling? When it comes to the leading-edge impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) on the workforce the answer appears to be well-paid, middle managers at some of the nation’s leading high-tech firms. As the Financial Times reported late last week, Amazon has announced the elimination of nearly 14,000 jobs concentrated in the ranks…
February 28, 2025
Trump Stopped Biden’s Plan to Force DEI on Local Communities
The pullback from diversity, equity and inclusion programs — in government agencies and business — has focused on their impact at the individual level — on hiring, or college admission. But an under-the-radar initiative of the Biden administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development planned DEI for communities across the country. It would do so through required “equity…
February 28, 2025
Less Than Half of Medicaid Recipients Work Enough to Comply With a Work Requirement
Congress is considering implementing work requirements for Medicaid. This reform could help Congress achieve its goal of reducing federal expenditures and simultaneously strengthen the incentive for Medicaid recipients to work. At the same time, individuals who do not comply with the work requirement may lose health insurance coverage. Underlying the policy debate is the extent…
February 27, 2025
The GOP Is Still the Pro-Marriage Party
While Elon Musk was chainsawing at CPAC, his ex-girlfriend, the singer Grimes, pleaded with him to attend to their child’s medical crisis. This dustup followed a claim by the conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair that she had given birth to Musk’s 13th child. Musk’s complicated family life, combined with the admiration for Musk among many conservative writers,…
February 27, 2025
Powering AI: The Energy Workforce Crisis No One Is Talking About
We are used to thinking about how burgeoning artificial intelligence (AI) may affect jobs and employment. Usually, this means fixating on whether or not AI systems will replace or augment human labor. What is less often considered is the way AI will, and in fact already does, spur new demand for labor that has nothing…
February 27, 2025
How Progressive Policy Distorted the Housing Market
For more than a century, American progressives have argued that the costs and conditions of American housing prove that the private market has failed. In the early twentieth century, the often-rough tenements of New York’s Lower East Side were deemed the work of rapacious “slumlords,” while small single-family or duplex homes that sprouted in cities…
February 25, 2025
We Replaced Families with Uncle Sam. DOGE Must Make the Right Choices When Cutting
If we want a smaller government, we need stronger families. President Donald Trump’s efforts to shrink the size and scope of government through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has the potential to change the trajectory of the nation. But Trump can’t deliver this promise only by cutting wasteful spending. American taxpayers have been forced to fund…