Washington has developed a reliable tell for when an industry wants something it cannot justify on the merits: It puts “AI” in the title.

That is bad for serious debates over artificial intelligence, and it cheapens policy discussions by turning “AI” into a buzzword or sales gimmick.

The instinct is understandable. AI is the defining technology story of the moment, and policymakers are eager to be seen as responsive. That creates an opening, and savvy advocates have not been slow to exploit it. The result is a growing list of proposals that invoke AI while advancing objectives that long predate the current AI debate.

Spectrum policy — the rules governing the allocation, licensing and use of radiofrequency spectrum — is now squarely in this territory. It deserves more careful treatment.

The core facts are clear, even if they are routinely obscured. Somewhere between 80% and 90% of mobile data traffic already travels over Wi-Fi — unlicensed local wireless networks, not licensed cellular networks. Wi-Fi carries roughly 10 times more data than all licensed cellular networks combined. And the architecture of the AI services consumers and businesses are adopting — cloud-dependent, fixed-connection-friendly, built around short prompts and returned responses rather than continuous high-bandwidth streams — does not obviously change that calculus. These facts should be the starting point for any serious analysis.

Given that reality, proposals to reallocate 6 GHz spectrum away from unlicensed use toward exclusive licensed access deserve scrutiny. The 6 GHz band supports the Wi-Fi networks doing much of the heavy lifting in the American wireless data ecosystem. Shrinking that resource in the name of preparing for an AI-driven traffic surge would be an odd response to demand that, based on today’s evidence, is more likely to flow over Wi-Fi than cellular networks.

If anything, forward-looking spectrum policy should look upward, to the Lower 7 GHz band, which sits directly above the current Wi-Fi allocation and could provide meaningful additional unlicensed capacity without displacing what already works.

The enterprise AI story is similarly complex. Private 5G networks, largely running on CBRS spectrum, are increasingly used by manufacturers and industrial operators building AI-powered facilities. Satellite connectivity is attracting serious capital for applications such as drone logistics, where terrestrial infrastructure may be unavailable or unreliable. The AI future will not be dominated by a single spectrum technology. It will rely on heterogeneous networks, unlicensed bands and competitive alternatives.

Licensed spectrum remains important to American AI leadership. But importance is not exclusivity, and proximity to AI is not necessity. Policymakers allocating scarce spectrum resources should ground decisions in data: where AI traffic flows, which connectivity models markets are building and what consumers and businesses need.

Saying “AI” loudly is no substitute for answering those questions.

Aspirational Americans are being priced out of homes. A recent poll found that 65% of Americans believe they will not be able to purchase a home “in the foreseeable future.” Singles who want to put down roots and families who want to grow are growing discouraged about their prospects. So when the Senate passed a bipartisan housing bill 89-10 in March, there was reason for cautious optimism. Congress seemed ready to legislate, for a change.

But the Senate included a harmful provision that would stymie the construction of new homes.

Buried in an otherwise constructive package that streamlines environmental reviews, modernizes manufactured housing rules, and updates multifamily financing tools is a provision bearing the unmistakable fingerprints of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her colleagues in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It mandates that institutional investors must sell build-to-rent homes within seven years of construction.

Every five- or six-years Congress must reauthorize the major federal surface transportation programs, including rail, highways and infrastructure, public transit and major transportation safety programs. And 2026 is the next reauthorization deadline.

The last reauthorization was the bloated “infrastructure bill” passed in 2021 during the Biden administration. That legislation, originally targeted for around $700 billion, ended up a massive $1.2 trillion monstrosity, including green energy project giveaways, ridiculous sums for broadband buildout, and conditions dictated by labor unions and other progressive interest groups. It helped drive the “Bidenflation” that cost American households billions of dollars that they have never gotten back.

It’s crucial that the 2021 mistake not become the baseline for this year’s reauthorization. Congress must find savings everywhere possible and certainly should not tack on further unnecessary spending and giveaways to special interests.

But they might.

Something called the Railway Safety Act has been hanging around Congress ever since the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. Because rail is heavily unionized, it was no surprise that Democrats have tried to use the tragedy to benefit labor unions, but then Republican Senator J.D. Vance saw it as an opportunity to burnish his populist bona fides, and has remained stubbornly supportive as vice president.

We learned during the Covid-19 pandemic that we had underestimated the importance of our supply chains, and that supply chain infrastructure should be a priority. But the Railway Safety Act would inhibit freight rail safety by requiring union-mandated crew sizes and other regulations instead of allowing railroads to adopt new technology to make railways safer.

The provisions of the Railway Safety Act, whether they appear in surface transportation reauthorization or in a giant omnibus reconciliation package, would slow down investment in modernizing our freight rail system and improving its resiliency.

Adding additional regulations and mandates have been estimated to cost the economy an estimated $30 billion in lost GDP. While it’s critical for Congress to reduce the inflated infrastructure spending level of the Biden administration, it’s even more important to not impose additional costs on a struggling economy. No one is happy with the economy right now, including voters who supported Republicans in 2024 hoping for a return to the pre-Covid Trump economy. It hasn’t shown up yet, and it certainly won’t show up if Republicans put additional pressures on the supply chain.

The Surface Transportation Reauthorization is being consider in committee this week in Washington. The draft legislation thankfully does not contain the harmful provisions of the Railway Safety Act, but proponents will attempt to add an amendment to the draft language. For the sake of the economy, here’s hoping wiser heads prevail.

The ability of Americans to engage freely and fairly in international commerce is a critical element in the American economy. Since our founding, the United States has leveraged our rich natural resources and our unique ingenuity to compete globally. But our continued ability to compete is now under direct threat from the European Union (EU).

The EU is attempting to impose sweeping, extraterritorial regulations on U.S. companies through the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), alongside its recently adopted AI Act. Together, these overreaching rules risk constraining the growth of artificial intelligence, raising costs for American firms, and slowing the cutting-edge research and deployment that has been a hallmark of America’s global technological advantage for decades.

Under the CSDDD, American companies could be forced to conduct expansive human-rights and environmental due diligence well beyond their direct operations simply to access the European market. These obligations would spike operational expenses and regulatory compliance burdens and could force some companies to lay off staff or scale back operations.

The requirements mandated by the CSDDD go far beyond U.S. law, substitute European policy preferences for American democratic decision-making, and impose legal uncertainty that discourages innovation.

It’s almost as if the CSDDD was specifically designed to hinder America’s competitive advantages over Europe.

Businesses in the natural resources and manufacturing sectors are the most at risk from Europe’s regulatory agenda. Agriculture, energy, mining, timber, and advanced manufacturing form the backbone of the U.S. economy; however, they are all under threat if CSDDD takes effect. These sectors are also essential for fueling the growth of advanced technologies, including AI, cloud computing, and data center infrastructure. Maintaining and, in some cases, expanding access to these supplies is critical to the economic survival of many communities across the country.

AI has the potential to improve lives through medical breakthroughs, safer infrastructure, smarter logistics, and more efficient energy use. Yet, by saddling U.S. innovators with vague, expansive obligations, Brussels risks slowing the very technologies that could deliver environmental and social benefits for people worldwide. Beyond the expansive compliance requirements imposed by the CSDDD, European AI regulations may force U.S. companies to face additional obligations due to the immense resources required to generate, store, and process high-volume, high-impact data necessary for AI systems. It will chill investment, delay deployment, and divert resources from innovation to bureaucratic compliance.

The stakes are particularly high for America’s energy-intensive AI infrastructure. Maintaining a robust U.S. energy supply is essential to the continued growth of data centers, computing hubs, and next-generation digital infrastructure, to say nothing of energy affordability. Foreign sustainability regimes with extraterritorial reach like CSDDD pose significant risks to the United States’ competitiveness and technological leadership.

This is not cooperation; it is regulatory overreach. In fact, the trade agreement framework reached between the U.S. and EU back in August explicitly states that the Europeans would address American concerns about CSDDD. Yet as it currently stands, EU politicians are pressing forward with this extraterritorial regulation, violating an agreement they made with President Trump.

That’s why Members of Congress like Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY) are cautioning against CSDDD which would force America to import “Europe’s green energy regulatory framework” that could harm the “all of the above energy approach needed to win the AI race.” With little hope of changing the direction EU politicians are going, it’s time for Congress to act on legislation to protect U.S. businesses from having to adhere to CSDDD. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) and Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) have such legislation in the works and policymakers should prioritize its passage before European laws begin to harm American companies.

Leadership in AI will not be achieved by importing Europe’s regulatory model. It will be secured by unleashing American ingenuity, backed by reliable energy, clear rules, and a regulatory system accountable to the American people—not foreign bureaucracies.

Every few years, some brave souls in Congress propose immigration reform — and every time it happens, critics react with the same knee-jerk accusation: “Amnesty!” But this radioactive charge is inaccurate when lobbed against the Dignity Act (H.R. 4393), a bipartisan proposal that gives Congress a chance to do what it seems to have forgotten how to do — legislate to solve a problem.

Calling the Dignity Act “amnesty” is not just wrong — it reveals a misunderstanding of what amnesty is. This isn’t semantics — it’s political history. A brief look at two of the most famous American amnesties — Jimmy Carter’s pardon of Vietnam draft dodgers and Ronald Reagan’s 1986 immigration law — makes the distinction clear.

Start with Carter. In 1977, on his first full day in office, he issued a blanket pardon to those who had evaded the Vietnam draft. It was unconditional. No fines, no penalties, no requirements to “make things right.” The pardon applied regardless of whether individuals had been prosecuted or even admitted wrongdoing. 

A fight is underway for the economic future of the United States, and some of our own politicians are siding with global competitors over domestic interests.

Artificial intelligence — and the data center infrastructure that powers it — represents the defining economic opportunity of this generation. JPMorgan recently reported that in the first half of 2025, “AI-related capital expenditures” contributed 1.1% to GDP growth, more than consumer spending contributed to overall expansion.

The nation that builds the most robust AI infrastructure will anchor the industries, jobs and wealth creation of the next half-century. That nation should be the United States. The question is whether policymakers—and those who influence them—will allow that future to take shape.

A damning new report from the American Energy Institute should be required reading for every member of Congress, state legislator, and local official. The report exposes more than $39 million in foreign funding flowing from European billionaires and foundations based in Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Denmark into a coordinated network of activist groups whose mission is to block American data center construction.

A fight is underway for the economic future of the United States, and some of our own politicians are siding with global competitors over domestic interests.

Artificial intelligence—and the data center infrastructure that powers it—represents the defining economic opportunity of this generation. JPMorgan recently reported that in the first half of 2025, “AI-related capital expenditures” contributed 1.1% to GDP growth, more than consumer spending contributed to overall expansion.

The nation that builds the most robust AI infrastructure will anchor the industries, jobs and wealth creation of the next half-century. That nation should be the United States. The question is whether policymakers—and those who influence them—will allow that future to take shape.

A new report from the American Energy Institute should be required reading for members of Congress, state legislators and local officials. It documents more than $39 million in foreign funding—from billionaires and foundations in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Denmark—flowing into a coordinated network of activist groups working to block U.S. data center construction.

These are not isolated local protests. They represent a manufactured opposition campaign funded from abroad, with the goal of shifting America’s AI future elsewhere.

Foreign interests, watching the United States on the cusp of further technological leadership, are spending tens of millions of dollars to ensure we stumble. Meanwhile, some elected officials—wittingly or not—are amplifying that effort by calling for moratoriums, imposing regulatory hurdles and lending credibility to what is presented as a grassroots movement.

Before calling for a pause on data center construction, policymakers should ask a simple question: Who benefits? Not American workers who would build and operate these facilities. Not communities that would attract investment and tax revenue. Not the broader economy that stands to gain from the next wave of industrial growth.

The beneficiaries are America’s competitors—countries eager to capture the economic activity and strategic advantages that hesitation leaves behind.

A deeper concern is that some organizations traditionally associated with free markets and limited government have aligned, intentionally or not, with this foreign-backed campaign. Framing opposition in terms of property rights, local control or energy concerns may sound principled, but it can serve the same end as foreign-funded efforts to stall development.

Advocates of free markets should be wary of any movement that, however inadvertently, advances the goals of foreign interests seeking to constrain U.S. economic growth.

The debate over data centers is not merely environmental; it is strategic. Either the United States builds the infrastructure needed to lead in artificial intelligence, or it cedes that ground. There is no neutral position. Delays do not stop development—they redirect it.

Every moratorium, lawsuit or zoning fight tied to foreign-funded activism risks pushing investment and capability elsewhere.

Policymakers owe the public transparency about who is shaping the opposition they choose to support. Americans for Public Trust has warned that foreign actors are exploiting disclosure loopholes to influence domestic debates—raising concerns about transparency, accountability and sovereignty.

The United States has earned its place at the forefront of AI. Maintaining that position will require the political will to resist well-funded foreign interference. America’s economic future should not be outsourced.

Today’s TechByte was written by Bartlett Cleland, Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for Policy Innovation

The Trump administration has reworked the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program with an eye toward greater efficiency and less top-down regulation. As a result, states are projected to come in roughly $21 billion under budget on broadband deployment. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration is actively soliciting ideas for how those funds should be used.

If the administration wants an easy political win and a solution to a real problem, the funds should be used to radically modernize our air traffic control systems.

Policymakers should seize the moment and invest in something the country desperately needs — something that would deliver real, tangible benefits to the flying public and the broader economy.

The FAA’s own administrator, Bryan Bedford, has been blunt: Roughly 80% of FAA infrastructure is considered obsolete or unsustainable. Controllers are still using paper flight strips and radar systems that date to the Vietnam War era.

The $5 billion Congress appropriates annually for ATC operations sounds substantial until you learn that 85% to 90% of it goes to sustaining legacy systems — patching roofs, repairing elevators, and keeping aging equipment limping along.

Congress did take a meaningful step last year, allocating $12.5 billion in the reconciliation bill toward ATC modernization. Fiber optics are beginning to replace copper wire. Radar upgrades are being compressed from a 20-year timeline into a few years.

The early results are encouraging. But by official FAA estimates, an additional $19 billion is needed to fully complete the job — to build a genuinely modern, integrated national airspace system rather than an expensive patch on a broken one.

This is where BEAD’s leftover $21 billion could make a real impact.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee and has long championed both infrastructure investment and Texas’ status as one of the nation’s busiest aviation hubs, is well positioned to recognize the strategic alignment here.

Texas is home to two of the nation’s largest airports — Dallas Fort Worth and Houston Bush Intercontinental — and its economy runs on the efficient movement of people and commerce. ATC modernization would be a huge benefit for Texans.

The legal question of whether this use fits within the BEAD statute’s framework is one that the NTIA will need to address carefully. The statute is written broadly enough to accommodate creative interpretation, and the administration has already demonstrated it is willing to read BEAD’s parameters with fresh eyes.

A next-generation ATC system — replacing copper with fiber, analog with digital, fragmented local computers with integrated national architecture — looks a great deal like the kind of advanced communications infrastructure BEAD was designed to fund.

Ironically, it’s easier to make the case that the federal government should be ensuring airline safety than subsidizing broadband deployment.

The BEAD funding was part of the massive infrastructure legislation, and our airline infrastructure is in dire need of investment. And unlike many government spending programs, ATC modernization has a defined scope and measurable milestones. This is not a slush fund — it’s a known project with a known price tag.

The alternative uses being floated for BEAD’s unused funds range from the reasonable to the fanciful: broadband adoption programs, rural mobile coverage, returning funds to the Treasury, and various state-level wish lists.

Some of those ideas have merit. But none of them represent the kind of once-in-a-generation infrastructure opportunity that a modern ATC system would deliver — one that improves safety for millions of air travelers daily, reduces delays that cost the economy billions annually, and positions the United States to lead in the airspace of the future.

The Trump administration’s 2027 budget request is going to include millions of dollars in additional ATC funding, but the BEAD funds are already there, waiting to be invested. That’s the beauty of budget reform — eliminating waste and finding savings can free up funds for other critical public needs.

Random observations on this most ominous of days—Tax Day.

So much for broader, flatter, simpler. President Trump’s (and Congress’) 2017 tax reform included significant simplification of the tax code, lowering rates and broadening and flattening the base. All that was great.

But the 2025 tax bill backslid on 2017. Free-market tax philosophy since 1980 has stressed making the tax code as simple, flat and broad as possible, and not using the tax code to create loopholes for favored political constituencies.

In 2025, special tax favors narrowed the tax base and added more complications. No tax on tips, convoluted rules on the taxation of Social Security benefits and other changes made taxes more complicated, raising compliance costs.

American-style tax rates, European-style government spending. Europeans receive a high level of government services and pay high tax rates for it. In the U.S., we are trending toward European level spending but keeping our tax rates at lower levels more typical for the U.S.

Steady revenue, increasing spending. But the problem isn’t our low tax rates. In the postwar era, federal revenue has remained surprisingly consistent, around 18% of GDP, regardless of changes in tax policy. The problem is, in 2025 the federal government spent 23% of GDP. In 2020, the feds spent an astonishing 35.3% of GDP, the highest level since 1945.

The result is that interest payments servicing our national debt in 2026 will exceed $1 trillion dollars for the first time in American history.

Who pays the taxes? For 2025, the top 10% of income earners will pay 60% of all federal income taxes. Meanwhile, 44% of U.S. households will pay zero in federal income taxes. The U.S. has the most progressive, i.e. most distorted, tax system in the developed world.

All but the top 10% of income earners will pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes.

What constitutes the top 10% of income earners? For individual earners, $149,000 puts you in the top 10%. For households, it’s $251,000. (These are national averages and vary by both the location and age of earners).

Many Americans profit from the tax code. The lowest 20% of income earners have a negative federal tax liability, which means they receive income from the tax code. This happens because of refundable tax credits such as the earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, Obamacare tax credits, etc. For some households, the refundable tax credits even offset their payroll tax liability. Most tax fraud involves tax returns that fraudulently claim refundable tax credits.

Happy Tax Day!

On Wednesday, April 1, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on President Trump’s attempt to change birthright citizenship policy through executive order. We’ll be listening to the oral arguments here, and so can you.

There are two issues. The first is the procedural question: Can a president change the interpretation and application of the Constitution through executive order?

Now, the almost immediate answer is going to be an emphatic “no,” but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Each branch of the federal government has an obligation to interpret the Constitution. Officials in each branch take an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”  And since the executive branch is tasked with enforcing the 14th Amendment, it’s not crazy for the executive branch to interpret its constitutional obligations as it enforces them.

On the other hand, the “major questions doctrine” that this Supreme Court has thankfully been applying to disputes means major changes in federal policy should be decided by the legislature, not the executive or judicial branches. It wouldn’t be a surprise for the Court to conclude that this applies to the interpretation and application of the 14th Amendment.

The Court can, and probably will, limit itself to the procedural issue, since that’s the only question the Court must address in this case. The Court often decides only the minimally necessary questions posed to it.

So, the Court probably won’t choose to settle the question of birthright citizenship, though it could. This would leave the debate open, in theory to be settled by Congress or in a future Supreme Court decision.

The best solution is a clarifying amendment to the Constitution. No one thinks it was the intention of the 14th Amendment to provide citizenship to birth tourists, who cross the border for no other purpose than to bestow U.S. citizenship on their newborn. We know this happens, and it isn’t just illegals crossing the southern border—it’s also wealthy couples from South America, Europe and Asia who return home with trinkets from Disney World and citizenship for their newborn.

IPI will be proposing a clarifying amendment on birthright citizenship as part of our Renewing America 250 set of proposed constitutional amendments later this year. In our view, it’s long past time to update elements in our system left over from the horse and buggy days when it took weeks for Congress to convene, and to deal with current problems not previously anticipated, including birthright citizenship.

This week courts have given us two different and contradictory verdicts about intermediary liability.

In a case going all the way back to 2018, Cox Communications, the cable and broadband company, was accused of failing to live up to its legal obligation to limit music piracy.

To simplify, Cox had an obligation to cancel the accounts of users who had been warned multiple times about engaging in music piracy, but Cox did not. Cox of course had a financial interest in not cancelling users accounts.

So Cox was sued by the major music labels, and the labels won in lower courts. But this week the Supreme Court continued its skepticism of intermediary liability by finding that Cox was not liable, because Cox did not “actively encourage infringement.”

According to the New York Times, “in its opinion released on Wednesday, the court said a company was not liable for “merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights.”

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said a provider like Cox was liable “only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement” and if it, for instance, “actively encourages infringement.”

So, an intermediary has to intend for something to happen, and actively encourage that thing to happen, in order to incur liability.

The Court’s unanimous 9-0 decision is of course definitive, even if it seems to fly in the face of some provisions of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).

At IPI, we’ve never been comfortable with intermediary liability, even though we’re also uncomfortable with copyright piracy.

But that leads us to two other cases this week, where in Los Angeles on Wednesday, a jury decided in favor of a plaintiff who had claimed that Meta and YouTube hooked her with addictive features — a verdict validating a novel legal strategy holding the companies accountable for personal injury. And a day earlier in New Mexico, a jury found Meta liable for failing to safeguard users of its apps from child predators.

So, let’s get this straight: Intermediaries are not liable for their users’ illegal activity unless they intend it and actively encourage it, but they are liable for harm to their users, including self-harm, even if they don’t intend it and don’t actively encourage it.

Now, of course the details of the cases are different, and details matter.

Still, the Supreme Court is not a fan of intermediary liability, and that’s a good thing. Which means if Meta and Google appeal all the way to the Supreme Court, there is a reasonable chance that they will succeed.

The tragedy unfolding this week at New York’s LaGuardia Airport hints at human error. We shouldn’t jump to conclusions based on early reports, but in this case we have audio of the air traffic controller saying, “I messed up.”

Nothing but complete sympathy here for everyone involved, including the air traffic controller. Air traffic control is recognized as one of the most difficult, stressful and pressure-filled jobs on offer. And by all accounts it’s been decades since our corps of air traffic controllers was fully staffed.

But we must acknowledge the reality of human error. In many tragedies, human error is the No. 1 cause:

• Traffic accidents: 90 to 95% are attributed to human error.
• Aviation accidents: 70 to 80% are attributed to human error.
• Maritime accidents: 75 to 96% are attributed to human error.
• Medical errors: Human error is a leading cause of death in medicine, including misdiagnosis, medication errors, and surgical mistakes.
• Nuclear power and major industrial accidents: Both the Chernobyl disaster and the Three Mile Island incident were attributed to human error.
• General industrial/workplace accidents: Most are attributed to human error.

Human error is also a major factor in cybersecurity breaches, IT system failures, construction accidents, structural failures, power grid failures, and even in other areas such as business failure, including risk management errors and so-called “fat finger” trading errors.

Human error is neither a character flaw nor a lack of intelligence or integrity. It’s just a known element of human nature. That’s why in tragic cases like a child left in a backseat by a distracted parent, the proper reaction is compassion, not judgment. We all make mistakes.

Though human error may be inevitable, we are creating tools to help us compensate.

Human error is a perfect place to implement tools like AI to protect us from our own mistakes and compensate for our frailties. Implementing AI could substantially contribute to our quality of life by reducing preventable tragedies.

It’s likely that implementation of AI could eliminate most accidents due to human error. Chips and software don’t get tired, don’t get distracted, and make decisions in millionths of a second that a human might take 5 or 10 seconds to make. Studies suggest that humans can keep track of 3 to 5 independent variables at the same time, while AI can manage orders of magnitude more.

Humans are attention-constrained, while AI is computation-constrained. And while we can’t do anything to improve the former, we’re reducing the computational constraints on AI every day.

After the air traffic controller said, “I messed up,” some kind soul immediately responded with “No, man, you did the best you could.” And that’s entirely possible. It’s likely advanced AI could have prevented the accident, both pilots could have returned to their families, and an air traffic controller could be able to sleep tonight.

The political furor of the moment is over the SAVE Act, or the “Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.”

Based on that title, you would think that the bill is about voting.

And it started out that way, with a voter ID requirement for federal elections.

Voter ID is an 80-20 issue. Republicans, who have been championing voter ID for two decades, have won the argument.

So, Republicans should bank the easy win, pass the bill and move on, right? Well, no.

Winning policy arguments, solving problems and preserving those solutions in law is no longer what Congress does. You must fight. So, they threw in requirements that voters prove citizenship when they register to vote.

Now, of course only citizens should be permitted to vote. But voter ID solves 99% of that problem. Regardless, the proof of citizenship requirement gives us more to fight over, even though it loses some votes in both the House and Senate, and it advances the nationalization of elections.

Then President Trump insisted that Republicans eliminate vote by mail, which many states have long implemented, and which almost certainly violates state power over time, place and manner of elections.

But maybe, just maybe, even that bill might still pass.

Then Republicans throw transgender culture war issues into what started as a voter ID bill. Elements that are utterly non-germane to the bill, and that ensure that the bill is impossible to pass.

Now, of course men shouldn’t be allowed to compete in women’s sports. But what does that have to do with elections? Is it worth losing voter ID?

But it gets everyone kung fu fighting online, and it gets people ranting on cable shows.

The final genius move was insisting that the Republic is at stake if the SAVE Act doesn’t pass.

The truth is that the SAVE Act contains elements that would be nice to have, but none of which are critical to the survival of the Republic.

And now the Republican grassroots are furious that Republicans can’t pass the SAVE Act. Do they want men in women’s sports? Do they want illegals voting?

But the votes aren’t there, and the votes won’t be there, because the SAVE Act was designed to not pass. To prolong the fight, not solve the problem.

Our representatives no longer want to solve problems through legislation. They want to prolong problems and prolong frustration, because their brands are built on voter frustration.

The Founders designed a system where our representatives would come to the Capitol, debate and discuss issues, compromise with each other to solve problems, and then go home. That system increasingly looks like a dream.

While the headline-grabbing topic in the affordability debate is the cost of home ownership, the rising cost of electricity in certain markets is a close second.

However, rates aren’t exploding everywhere; they’re spiking in California and the Northeast. In California, in addition to all the normal California distortions like high taxes and regulations, the main factor is wildfire-related costs.

That leaves the Northeast, and the spike in power costs there is real and consequential. There are lessons to be learned.

In many parts of the country, rates have remained relatively stable due to the right balance of competition, regulation and the right mix of generation and transmission. In others, especially in the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection (PJM), spiking rates serve as a price signal, alerting us that something is wrong.

The way we incentivize power generation, transmit it, and regulate it is one of the most complicated, arcane subjects in public policy, and we aren’t going there (whew). So let’s simplify.

Investor-owned utilities are the backbone of the U.S. electrical system, serving 250 million Americans. In many states, these utilities are vertically integrated, which means they own generation and transmission. They thus operate under state oversight with a simple mandate: plan for the long term, build what’s needed, recover costs from qualified investments in new infrastructure, and keep power reliable and affordable. It’s not glamorous, but it works. Vertical integration plus long-term planning smooths out volatility. That’s why most areas have seen relative price stability even as demand rises.

However, in places exposed to wholesale capacity auctions that spike when supply tightens, where utilities don’t own generation and must buy at market rates, those spikes flow straight through to customers.

We need market reform in places such as PJM to promote proper transparency and oversight with trusted utility partners. Investor-owned utilities have a legal obligation to serve everyone in their territory — urban, rural, wealthy, poor. These utilities have access to lower-cost capital, which reduces the financing costs that customers ultimately pay. And investor-owned utilities plan across decades, not news cycles or quarterly reports. That kind of boring competence is underrated, right up until you don’t have it.

In regions where we offloaded long-term responsibility to an opaque capacity market and hoped price signals alone would summon new power generation on command, things have not gone so well.

A terrible example occurred during the Great Texas Freeze of 2021, when wholesale electricity prices spiked to $9,000 per megawatt-hour, the maximum cap set by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. This price surge, which was 400 times the typical rate, was intended to attract additional generation by offering extreme market rewards.

However, the spike failed to achieve its intended effect because many natural gas facilities had frozen or lost their fuel supply, rendering them unable to generate electricity regardless of price.  The result was a $52.6 billion price hit on consumers. While the price mechanism was intended to function as a market signal, it instead caused catastrophic financial harm.

Some have identified data centers as the culprit for high energy prices in the northeast, but data centers are being built everywhere. That fails to explain why the price spikes seem limited to areas where utilities can only purchase power from wholesale capacity auctions and cannot connect additional power to the grid. The problem is a poorly designed market, however well-intended.

So, what’s the solution? First, it’s a regional, not a national, problem. Second, barring utilities from owning their own generation has turned out to be a mistake. Instead, grid authorities should be encouraging investor-owned utilities to invest in new generation to ensure abundant, robust sources of power for the future. 

A February 2026 analysis by Charles River Associates modeled PJM’s 2028–2029 delivery year and found that expanding state-regulated, utility-owned generation could reduce total customer supply costs by $9.6 billion to $20 billion in that single delivery year. In Charles River Associates’ scenario, “utility-owned generation” means operating alongside merchant generation, not replacing markets, but adding planned, accountable supply.

When it comes to ensuring a reliable source of power at affordable rates, the evidence suggests that investor-owned utilities are not the problem; they’re a big part of the solution.

When claims are made that one of the most widely used medications during pregnancy may cause autism, the public understandably pays attention. Scientists, healthcare professionals, and even judges, however, must ask: What does the evidence actually show?

That question is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.

The court is reviewing whether to revive more than 500 lawsuits brought by parents alleging that prenatal acetaminophen exposure caused their children’s autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

In 2023, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote correctly excluded key expert testimony supporting those claims, concluding that they failed to meet the reliability requirements under Federal Rule of Evidence 702.

Rule 702 requires judges to ensure that expert testimony presented to juries is grounded in sufficient data, reliable methodology, and a sound application of those methods to the facts of the case. In other words, courts must act as gatekeepers to prevent speculative or methodologically unsound scientific claims from being treated as fact.

Now, plaintiffs are asking the appellate court to reverse that ruling.

The Second Circuit’s decision will test judges’ authority to prevent questionable scientific claims from reaching a jury before they satisfy established reliability standards.

This judicial gatekeeping role is essential. When expert opinions are admitted without rigorous scrutiny, litigation can amplify assumptions that have yet to meet the standards of the broader scientific community.

One reason the plaintiffs’ expert testimony was dismissed is the issue of confounding variables. Neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and ADHD have strong genetic components. Disentangling whether a condition stems from a medication exposure or from shared familial and hereditary factors is extraordinarily complex.

None of this means the question should not continue to be studied. But when the vast majority of high-quality studies find no causation between prenatal acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental conditions, careful gatekeeping must be exercised.

This case’s potential impact on public health makes gatekeeping even more important.

Acetaminophen is one of the most widely used medications in the world and remains the only generally recommended pain and fever reliever during pregnancy when used as directed. That guidance reflects decades of regulatory review and clinical experience.

Several studies have reported an increased likelihood of birth defects and other adverse outcomes from untreated maternal fever. Physicians routinely advise pregnant patients to treat significant fevers promptly because unmanaged fever itself can pose risks to fetal development.

If pregnant women avoid acetaminophen based on unproven claims, they may turn to alternatives such as ibuprofen or aspirin, which carry known risks later in pregnancy, including potential complications affecting fetal kidney development.

By upholding the gatekeeping responsibility of judges under Rule 702, the Second Circuit can reaffirm that scientific claims must meet established thresholds before being presented as reliable proof in court.

February 12th, 2026

The Honorable Members
United States Congress
Washington, D.C. 20515

RE: Coalition Opposing the Codification of Most-Favored-Nation Prescription Drug Pricing

Dear Members of Congress,

We, the undersigned organizations, write in opposition to codifying a Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) prescription drug pricing model into law.

In addition to doing nothing to address foreign freeloading, MFN would reduce access to new cures and reduce U.S. global competitiveness, ceding ground to China.

While supporters of this proposal correctly identify the unique problems facing the American health care system – namely, wealthy countries paying artificially lower prices for prescription drugs than the U.S. and the fact that this depresses innovation and inflates our costs – MFN would not solve these problems. In fact, it would exacerbate them.

Instead, lawmakers should focus on reforms that unleash the free market and protect intellectual property rights, encouraging competition and innovation. These policies lower drug costs over time while expanding patient choice and preserving incentives for lifesaving medical breakthroughs. Diplomatic pressure should be brought to bear on foreign governments to insist that they begin to pay their freight.

MFN would do nothing to stop foreign freeloading.

MFN would surrender to foreign freeloading by basing U.S. prices on the prices of countries with socialist policies. Supporters of MFN hope that it will incentivize manufacturers to negotiate better deals. However, this is based on the flawed assumption that American manufacturers are not already fighting as hard as they can against foreign price controls.

There is little or no negotiation between foreign governments and manufacturers, forcing innovators to accept lower prices in a “take-it-or-leave it” proposition. The fact is that European countries would likely retaliate if pharmaceutical manufacturers took offensive action to try to negotiate away from government-set prices. For example, if a pharmaceutical company withdrew from a market, a European government could revoke its patents. Article 5 of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property allows for compulsory licensing if a company declines to sell its product.

Additionally, if multiple companies were to withdraw from a market, the European Commission could accuse said companies of “cartel-like strategy” to manipulate prices, a violation of EU competition law. In the EU, “cartel participation” carries high penalties, including fines up to 10 percent of the company’s worldwide, total revenue over a year. In certain cases, it could also result in fines and imprisonment of specific individuals.

MFN would reduce access to new cures.

If the U.S. implements the same price controls utilized by foreign countries, companies cannot expect to recuperate the R&D costs for the medicines they create. This will depress innovation and reduce cures available to patients while causing an unacceptable degree of drug shortages.

According to a study by the Galen Institute, patients in the U.S. had access to nearly 90 percent of new medical substances launched between 2011 and 2018. By contrast, other developed countries had a fraction of these new cures. Patients in the United Kingdom had 60 percent of new substances, Japan had 50 percent, Canada had 44 percent, and Spain had 14 percent.

The drug development industry already faces a high level of risk in recouping R&D costs. During an average drug development process, a manufacturer must invest an average of $2.6 billion and spend 11.5 to 15 years in research and development. In addition, most drug development programs fail. As detailed by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), for 5,000 to 10,000 compounds screened during basic drug discovery phases, 250 molecular compounds (2.5 to 5 percent) make it to preclinical testing. Of the 250 molecular compounds, 5 make it to clinical testing. Thus, as little as 0.05 percent of drugs make it from drug discovery to clinical trials. Of the few medicines that make it to clinical testing, only about 12 percent of medicines that begin clinical trials are approved for introduction by the FDA. Even if a drug is approved, it is likely that the profits from said drug will not recoup its R&D costs.

MFN would reduce the United States’ global competitiveness in medical innovation.

Not only is this lack of innovation a threat to patients and the health of future patients, but it would cause the United States to be a follower, not a leader, in medical innovation. At a time when China is rapidly narrowing the innovation gap, causing our research and development to stagnate or fall would seal our fate as second-best in biotechnology.

ITIF describes the ways in which China is catching up to the U.S. in biotech:

• Clinical trial activity in China more than doubled from 2,979 trials in 2017 to 6,497 trials in 2021. Alternatively, the United States saw only a 10 percent increase during this time, from 4,557 to 5,008 trials.
• Chinese oncology trials grew 146 percent from 1,040 in 2017 to 2,564 in 2021, the highest for any country. In the United States, oncology clinical trials grew from 1,664 in 2017 to 1,690 in 2021, a 1.56 percent increase.
• China increased its global share of value-added pharmaceuticals output from roughly 5.6 percent in 2002 to 24.2 percent in 2019.
• From 2013 to 2023, the number of biotech PCT patents awarded to Chinese entities increased by more than 720 percent, from 266 to 1,920, exceeding the European Union’s annual number starting in 2021. The number of patents awarded to U.S. filers over the same period increased by 67 percent.
• China’s share of global biotechnology venture capital raised grew from a mere 3.5 percent in 2010 to 18.9 percent in 2020. At the same time, the U.S. share declined from about 68.6 percent to 62.1 percent.

We urge all members of Congress to oppose codifying an MFN drug pricing model.

Unfortunately, this policy would not cause other countries to pay their fair share of the cost of prescription drugs. Instead, it would import socialist price controls and values into our country. Medical innovation in the U.S. would take a significant hit, harming patients and ceding the U.S.’s position as the world’s biotech leader to China.

Signed,

Grover Norquist
President, Americans for Tax Reform

Tim Chapman
President, Advancing American Freedom

Saulius “Saul” Anuzis
President, American Association of Senior Citizens

Marty Connors
Chair, Alabama Center Right Coalition

Phil Kerpen
President, American Commitment

Tirzah Duren
President, American Consumer Institute

Dee Stewart
President, Americans for a Balanced Budget

Richard Manning
President, Americans for Limited Government

Rea S. Hederman Jr.
Vice President of Policy, The Buckeye Institute

Anthony J. Zagotta
President, Center for American Principles

Ryan Ellis
President, Center for a Free Economy

Daniel J. Mitchell
President, Center for Freedom and Prosperity

Jeffrey Mazzella
President, Center for Individual Freedom

Ginevra Joyce-Myers
Executive Director, Center for Innovation and Free Enterprise (CIFE)

Bob Johnson
Senior Advisor, Commitment to Seniors

Jeremy Nighohossian
Senior Fellow and Economist, Competitive Enterprise Institute

James Edwards
Executive Director, Conservatives for Property Rights

Matthew Kandrach
President, Consumer Action for a Strong Economy

Elizabeth Hayes
Head of External Affairs, Consumer Choice Center

Sal Nuzzo
Executive Director, Consumers Defense

Joel C. White
President, Council for Affordable Health Coverage

Tom Schatz
President, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

Kendall Cotton
President and CEO, Frontier Institute

George Landrith
President, Frontiers of Freedom

Mario H. Lopez
President, Hispanic Leadership Fund

Stephen Ezell
VP for Global Innovation Policy, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

Bartlett Cleland
Executive Director, Innovation Economy Alliance

Tom Giovanetti
President, Institute for Policy Innovation

Andrew Langer
President, Institute for Liberty

Annette Olson
Chief Executive Officer, The John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, Inc.

Brian Balfour
Senior VP of Research, John Locke Foundation

Alfredo Ortiz
CEO, Job Creators Network

Carlos F. Orta
President & CEO, The Latino Coalition

Charles Sauer
President, Market Institute

Emily Stack
Executive Director, Moms for America Action

Chris Cargill
President, Mountain States Policy Center

Pete Sepp
President, National Taxpayers Union

Gerard Kassar
State Chairman, New York State Conservative Party

Sally Pipes
President and CEO, Pacific Research Institute

Daniel J. Erspamer
Chief Executive Officer, Pelican Institute for Public Policy

Lorenzo Montanari
Executive Director, Property Rights Alliance

Paul Gessing
President, Rio Grande Foundation

James Erwin
Executive Director, Digital Liberty
Interim Director, Shareholder Advocacy Forum

James L. Martin
Founder/Chairman, 60 Plus Association

Karen Kerrigan
President & CEO, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

Kerri Toloczko
Chair, Southwest Florida Center Right Coalition

David Miller
Chair, Center Right Southwest Ohio

David Williams
President, Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Kent Kaiser, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity

Steve Moore
Co-Founder, Unleash Prosperity Now

Morton Blackwell
Virginia Republican National Committeeman

Kevin Riffe
Chairman, West Virginia Center Right Coalition

Warner Bros. Discovery owns the Warner Bros. studio and cable brands, including CNN, HBO, and the Discovery Channel. Paramount Skydance, the parent company of CBS, recently made several offers to buy the company. However, Warner executives are waiting for competing bids. Netflix, Comcast, and Amazon are among the potential bidders, reports say.

Conservatives warn that a sale to Netflix or Comcast would further concentrate power in the media industry. 

Former U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colorado, said mergers with Big Tech often lead to fewer competitors and less diversity of viewpoints, and that federal regulators should tread carefully.

“No doubt, Big Tech will marshal their resources to fight authorities — as they have before  — but regulators can, and should, use this moment to carefully examine mergers in the entertainment industry that will have an impact on free speech,” he wrote in a Newsmax column.

Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, said competition helps preserve balance in news and entertainment. 

“But consumers also need media to end its leftward slant on news and entertainment, and Paramount Skydance intends to correct biases in its media properties,” he wrote in a column for the Daily Caller. “Viacom stagnated for decades because of family and corporate infighting, but the newly invigorated Paramount Skydance wants to correct the leftward leanings of some of their properties like CBS News and 60 Minutes. There would certainly be a benefit to the public in that, as would extending those changes to CNN.”

Analysts note the Trump administration has previously criticized Comcast and NBC for bias in its political coverage. In 2023, Trump pledged to investigate NBC for “knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage.” More recently, he posted that Comcast and its chairman, Brian Roberts, were “a disgrace to the integrity of broadcasting.”

Craig Moffett of Moffett Nathanson said a successful Comcast bid is “nearly unthinkable.”

“Given past commentary against all-things-Comcast from both the White House and the FCC over the past year, a successful Comcast acquisition of almost anything seems nearly unthinkable,” he told Deadline.

Additionally, Blair Levin of New Street Research told CNBC that “it is almost certain that the Trump DOJ would not allow Comcast to buy WBD and the result would be decided in court.”

Netflix may also face skepticism. Company chairman Reed Hastings is a longtime Democratic donor, and Netflix employees sent 98% of their political donations to Democrats in 2020. Analysts warn that a merger with Warner Bros. would make Netflix more than twice the size of its nearest competitor.

By contrast, Paramount’s ties with the Trump administration may work in its favor. 

“Paramount Skydance got on Trump's good side to get the Paramount deal closed so there's still some of that good will that they could use … Not everyone has that good will,” Raymond James analyst Brent Penter told BBC.

Dear Representative/Senator,

We appreciate your leadership in advancing President Trump’s agenda to reduce government spending and restore accountability by reining in bureaucracy and rooting out waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement in Washington.

That work is essential, and as you move forward to build on your success for the remainder of the 119th Congress, there is a clear opportunity to deliver more meaningful results by eliminating the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI).

CMMI was created in the Affordable Care Act with a narrow mandate to test limited payment “models” for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program that would reduce costs and improve care. The Congressional Budget Office originally projected that CMMI would save $2.8 billion between 2011 and 2020. Instead, it lost $5.4 billion during that period and is projected to lose another $1.3 billion by 2030.

A June 2021 report found that only four of 174 CMMI models sufficiently met the required standards of reduced spending or improved quality to be expanded across Medicare nationwide.   Common sense dictates that any federal program with such an abysmal rate of success should not be given any further opportunity to waste the taxpayers’ money.

Yet CMMI’s defenders argue the agency will eventually “get better.” Fifteen years of failure prove otherwise. No private enterprise with this record would be allowed to continue operating, let alone expand its authority.

Rather than correcting course, CMMI has expanded the scale, scope, and coerciveness of its models. They interfere with the decisions of doctors and patients about the best course of care, and override policy decisions made by Congress. They also disrupt care delivery and burden providers with administrative complexity and undermine patient choice.

CMMI has a guaranteed source of funding that gives unelected bureaucrats broad authority to make healthcare policy decisions without any obligation to succeed. The lack of accountability and transparency and disregard for outcomes are costly for taxpayers and dangerous for patients.

CMMI is a failure. It is time for Congress to shut it down.

Sincerely,

Tom Schatz
President
Council for Citizens Against Government Waste

James L. Martin
Founder and Chairman
60 Plus Association

Tim Chapman
President
Advancing American Freedom

Saulius Anuzis
President
American Association of Senior Citizens

Phil Kerpen
President
American Commitment

Dee Stewart
President & CEO
Americans for a Balanced Budget

Grover Norquist
President
Americans for Tax Reform

Rebecca Weber
CEO
Association of Mature American Citizens

Melissa Ortiz
Founder & Principal
Capability Consulting

Anthony Zagotta
President
Center for American Principles

Ryan Ellis
President
Center for a Free Economy

Jeff Mazzella
President
Center for Individual Freedom

Ginevra Joyce-Myers
Executive Director
Center for Innovation and Free Enterprise

Andrew Langer
Executive Director
Coalition Against Socialized Medicine

Bob Johnson
Senior Advisor
Commitment to Seniors

Jeremy Nighohossian
Senior Fellow & Economist
Competitive Enterprise Institute

James Edwards
Executive Director
Conservatives for Property Rights

Gerard Scimeca
Chairman
Consumer Action for a Strong Economy

Joel White
President
Council for Affordable Health Coverage

Eunie Smith
President
Eagle Forum of Alabama

George Landrith
President
Frontiers of Freedom

Beverly Gossage
President
HSA Benefits Consulting

Carol Davis
Chair
Illinois Conservative Union

Tom Giovanetti
President
Institute for Policy Innovation

Brian Balfour
Senior Vice President of Research
John Locke Foundation

Seton Motley
President
Less Government

Colin Hanna
President
Let Freedom Ring

Tim Jones
Former Speaker
Missouri House of Representatives
Founder
Leadership for America Institute

Pete Sepp
President
National Taxpayers Union

Tami L. Fitzgerald J.D.
Executive Director
NC Values Coalition

Sally C. Pipes
President & CEO
Pacific Research Institute

Drew White
Founder & CEO
Palisade Policy Group

Paul Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation

Trent England
Executive Director
Save Our States

Karen Kerrigan
President & CEO
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

Kerri Toloczko
Founder & Chair
Southwest Florida Center-Right Coalition

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Paul Teller
President
Teller Strategies

Bob Carlstrom
President
The Carlstrom Group

Kent Kaiser
Executive Director
Trade Alliance to Promote Prosperity

Steve Moore
Co-Founder
Unleash Prosperity Now

Kevin Riffe
Chairman
West Virginia Center-Right Coalition

Mario H. Lopez
President
Hispanic Leadership Fund

Andrew Langer
President
Institute for Liberty

Tom Giovanetti
President
Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI)

Ian Adams
Executive Director
International Center for Law and Economics

Seton Motley
President
Less Government

Matthew Gagnon
Chief Executive Officer
Maine Policy Institute

Charlie Sauer
President
Market Institute

Patrick A. McLaughlin
Research Fellow, Hoover Institution*
Visiting Research Fellow, Pacific Legal Foundation*
*Affiliation for identification purposes only

Roslyn Layton
Senior Fellow
National Security Institute

Pete Sepp
President
National Taxpayers Union

John Tamny
President
Parkview Institute

Daniel J. Erspamer
Chief Executive Officer
Pelican Institute for Public Policy

Paul Gessing
President
Rio Grande Foundation

Karen Kerrigan
President & CEO
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

Patrick Brenner
President and CEO
Southwest Public Policy Institute

Ross Marchand
Executive Director
Taxpayers Protection Alliance