Long Island, New York Correspondent I have spent enough time reading deeds, zoning decisions, court orders, and correspondence from people who were quite certain they owned something to know that a map is not a deed. A government may have a convincing map showing where its strategic interests lie. A mining executive may circle a … Continue reading With increasing competition over Arctic access, critical minerals, and supply-chain security, how are the United States, China, and European partners positioning themselves, and what does this mean for long-term economic and strategic competition?
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Nine months into Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty in New York City, what has the experience shown about the practical limits and possibilities of progressive urban governance on housing, policing, affordability, and relations with the federal government?
Long Island, New York Correspondent I live in Suffolk County, which means I live in the place where the New York City experiment is observed from forty miles away by people who work in the city, pay its taxes through the commuter rail and the payroll, and go home at night to a county that … Continue reading Nine months into Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty in New York City, what has the experience shown about the practical limits and possibilities of progressive urban governance on housing, policing, affordability, and relations with the federal government?
As space companies like SpaceX expand satellite constellations and others pursue more frequent heavy-lift launches, what practical benefits and drawbacks are materializing for communications, Earth observation, and the growing volume of objects in low Earth orbit?
Jacksonville, Florida I spend enough time around a port to have become suspicious of the word seamless. A terminal operator will tell you a shipment is visible from end to end, a carrier will promise real-time tracking, and somebody in a conference room will call the whole arrangement an integrated platform. Meanwhile, a truck sits … Continue reading As space companies like SpaceX expand satellite constellations and others pursue more frequent heavy-lift launches, what practical benefits and drawbacks are materializing for communications, Earth observation, and the growing volume of objects in low Earth orbit?
How should the United States respond to the continuing evolution of artificial intelligence now that early regulatory frameworks are being tested in practice?
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — Early frameworks are meeting the gap between paper rules and fast-moving systems, which is what everybody predicted and few prepared for. Stay focused on high-risk applications — safety-critical uses, systemic financial and infrastructure exposure, election tools — rather than licensing every model. Keep the transparency and liability requirements that prove … Continue reading How should the United States respond to the continuing evolution of artificial intelligence now that early regulatory frameworks are being tested in practice?
With Humphrey’s Executor overruled last week and the Federal Reserve expressly carved out, what remains of the independent agency, and is that the accountability people wanted?
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — The decision is five days old and it answers a question this forum has been arguing about for three years. The holding is clean: a subordinate exercising the President's power is removable by him, and Congress cannot require cause. The Court said what is left of the 1935 case is … Continue reading With Humphrey’s Executor overruled last week and the Federal Reserve expressly carved out, what remains of the independent agency, and is that the accountability people wanted?
Has the realignment of global trade and investment reduced or increased American strategic vulnerability?
Dayton, OH Correspondent — We just ran the experiment and it wasn't the one anybody designed. Four years of arguing about diversifying away from a single adversarial source, and the thing that actually stopped global supply this year was a strait nobody had reshored anything through. That's the finding. We hardened one dependency and the … Continue reading Has the realignment of global trade and investment reduced or increased American strategic vulnerability?
Four months into the war with Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz still contested and a cessation of attacks six days old, what should the United States be trying to achieve now?
Jacksonville, FL Correspondent — A port has watched this from the first week and I'd start with what actually happened to the water. About a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and a fifth of its liquefied gas moved through that strait before February. It has been largely closed since, and what reopened it partially … Continue reading Four months into the war with Iran, with the Strait of Hormuz still contested and a cessation of attacks six days old, what should the United States be trying to achieve now?
With the effort now folded into the personnel office and other agencies rather than operating as a standalone body, how should the work be made permanent rather than becoming another audit that gets filed?
Long Island, NY Correspondent — The vehicle was always the wrong shape for the mission, and its absorption this autumn is the proof. An entity created by executive order, staffed with temporary employees, with no statutory authority to compel anything, was going to end when attention moved. It did. If the work is to be … Continue reading With the effort now folded into the personnel office and other agencies rather than operating as a standalone body, how should the work be made permanent rather than becoming another audit that gets filed?
Did the government efficiency effort identify genuine waste and fraud in federal programs, and what has it established that a future administration cannot ignore?
Gastonia, NC Correspondent — It established something that badly needed establishing, which is that nobody in Washington could tell you where the money went. Not that it was stolen. That nobody could produce a list. The government's own auditors put improper payments at something like a hundred and sixty billion a year, and cumulatively somewhere … Continue reading Did the government efficiency effort identify genuine waste and fraud in federal programs, and what has it established that a future administration cannot ignore?
Did the political realignment produce more functional governance, or new forms of polarization?
Wheeling, WV Correspondent — Realignment can create clearer coalitions and coherent majorities. It can also rearrange the same conflict into new lines. We now have a year of evidence and it's not encouraging on the functional half. Unified control produced one large bill and then a forty-three-day shutdown, the longest ever recorded, resolved by an … Continue reading Did the political realignment produce more functional governance, or new forms of polarization?
