Johannesburg, South Africa Correspondent South Africa has spent four years declining to take a side in this war, which the Americans and the Europeans have found infuriating and which I have found instructive, because a country that is not a party to a negotiation can see the shape of it more clearly than the parties … Continue reading As U.S.-mediated efforts to manage the Russia-Ukraine conflict have continued alongside other global crises, what realistic paths remain for de-escalation, and how are the war’s ongoing costs affecting European security and U.S. domestic priorities?
politics
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?
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?
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?
How should democratic societies balance the benefits of open information systems against their capacity to amplify both accurate analysis and sophisticated manipulation?
Prescott Valley, AZ Correspondent — Open systems increase access to evidence and to coordinated deception at the same time. Societies cannot abandon openness without losing the corrective power of free criticism, and cannot ignore the scale at which engineered content now travels. The balance is transparency about amplification, friction for coordinated inauthentic behaviour, and better … Continue reading How should democratic societies balance the benefits of open information systems against their capacity to amplify both accurate analysis and sophisticated manipulation?
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?
Is the current combination of fiscal policy, monetary conditions, and debt levels sustainable through the next economic downturn?
Owatonna, MN Correspondent — Debt is high, interest claims a growing share, and the deficits are running in what is nominally a non-recession environment. The complication this year is that the environment stopped being clearly non-recessionary. Growth in the final quarter of last year came in near half a percent, dragged down by a six-week … Continue reading Is the current combination of fiscal policy, monetary conditions, and debt levels sustainable through the next economic downturn?
With the emergency tariffs struck down in February and replaced under a narrower authority that expires by its own terms, does trade policy now have to go through Congress?
Novi, MI Correspondent — Yes, and the industry has been saying so since 2025 for reasons that had nothing to do with who was president. You cannot make a capital decision against a tariff that a court can vacate. That was the argument, it was correct, and February proved it in the most expensive possible … Continue reading With the emergency tariffs struck down in February and replaced under a narrower authority that expires by its own terms, does trade policy now have to go through Congress?
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?
