© Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
© Lauren Petracca for The New York Times
I read and much enjoyed—and highly recommend—my Stanford colleague Diego Zambrano's book, How Americans Enforce the Law. He was kind enough to write up for us this post that captures the core of his argument, and I'm delighted to pass it along (though I encourage people to read the whole book):
The headlines are full of stories about a federal government retreating from enforcement. Agencies are dropping investigations, abandoning regulations, shrinking staffs and changing enforcement priorities. One week, the EEOC drops discrimination cases. The next week, the SEC and CFPB wind down investigations into securities fraud and wrongdoing affecting consumers. Critics fear that the Department of Justice's antitrust division will overlook mergers when it is convenient for the administration. And the DOJ has abruptly reduced enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Facing these changes, Americans might worry that a wide range of laws will go unenforced.
But that concern misses something unique about the American system of government. We have never relied only on bureaucrats to enforce our laws.
All the way back to the colonial period, American legislators have repeatedly done something unusual: they have given ordinary people the right to sue alongside government officials. In almost every regulatory area that most Americans care about—be it regulation of wages and hours, environmental pollution, consumer protection, or securities fraud—statutes allow both government officials and private parties to file suit to enforce the law. All of this happens through little-known provisions called "private rights of action," which is just a technical name for a right to sue. Thousands of these provisions build a second enforcement system alongside the bureaucracy, turning employees, consumers, competitors and their lawyers into co-enforcers of public law.
This system of private enforcement of the law is highly unusual. In much of the rest of the world, whenever a government faces a regulatory problem, it typically empowers government officials and bureaucrats to police legal violations. In France, Germany, Japan, and even the UK, legislators are far less likely to let anyone sue over, say, environmental pollution or employment discrimination.
Consider the case of oil spills. In 1989, the United States faced the Exxon Valdez oil spill off the pristine waters of Alaska. Millions of gallons of oil laid waste to coasts, waters, and fisheries for hundreds of miles. What most Americans don't know is that a decade later, France also faced a catastrophic oil spill, caused by a ship called the Erika. So how did governments react? In the United States, private plaintiffs sued Exxon directly under existing tort and maritime law, eventually winning substantial damages. Congress, meanwhile, enacted a statute called the Oil Pollution Act with a new right-to-sue those responsible for oil spills. By contrast, in France, the oil spill led primarily to a major criminal prosecution and, eventually, to new national and European regulatory measures (including a new bureaucracy called the European Maritime Safety Agency). When France finally adopted a right to sue in 2016, it paled in comparison to the American version.
Why is the United States so different? Part of the answer, as I argue in a new book, is that Americans have always done this. Back in the colonial period, state legislatures adopted what they called "penal statutes," that empowered any person to enforce regulatory statutes and collect a bounty. So when Massachusetts wanted to regulate the storage of gunpowder, it allowed private informers to sue neighbors who stored it improperly. And this model applied across many areas of colonial life: alcohol consumption, trade, taxation, public morals, church attendance, and more. The Founders used the same tool across the board: Thomas Jefferson and James Madison co-wrote Virginia statutes full of penal statutes, and John Adams handled these suits routinely as a colonial lawyer.
The key feature of this system is that even though private parties file suit for their own aims—the employee wants their full wages paid or the consumer wants a refund for a shoddy product—they inevitably enforce the law. And those lawsuits benefit everyone else because employers and manufacturers may change their behavior with respect to other employees and consumers. In that sense, every single plaintiff is a little bureaucrat or, as some courts call them, a "private attorney general."
This system has the added benefit of reducing political disruptions in enforcement. Even though any single administration can change the enforcement priorities of the EEOC, SEC, CFPB, or Department of Justice, the president cannot control thousands of lawyers and their clients. Private enforcement, then, makes enforcement less dependent on what the bureaucracy and president want.
Right. So you might think that when the bureaucracy won't pursue wrongdoing, the obvious solution should always be new rights to sue. Indeed, many news stories decrying a lack of government enforcement immediately call for more private lawsuits.
But there's a problem with that solution. Private enforcement is not tailor-made for every regulatory area. It makes the most sense to empower private parties when the bureaucracy is truly faulty, under-resourced, politically vulnerable, or likely to be captured by regulated entities. When this isn't the case, private enforcement can cause more problems than it solves.
Consider, then, the enormous problems that rights to sue pose in the environmental context and in the construction of housing and infrastructure. There, broad rights to challenge government approvals can let private parties oppose the construction of housing, mass transit, green energy, and other projects. Examples of ruinous lawsuits abound. Neighbors in a Maryland suburb—backed for years by a nearby country club—sued to delay the Purple Line light-rail project over concerns for a microscopic organism, while the Sierra Club sued to stop a major Mojave solar energy project over the potential impact to a desert turtle. So even if a city government has approved a project that might benefit thousands of people, a single crank can use a right-to-sue to stop the project. In these settings, rights to sue have contributed to delays and increased costs of housing and infrastructure.
We need a careful approach to rights to sue. Yes, we need more of them in some areas. Especially if the government won't enforce anti-corruption or consumer protection statutes. And yes, in employment law, securities, and antitrust, private enforcement often makes a lot of sense. But this is not necessarily the case in environmental law and construction. There, we need better bureaucracies, not thousands of people with the ability to oppose construction projects for any number of reasons.
When the bureaucracy retreats, Americans should rest assured that private parties will still enforce the law. But that power to enforce the law should be given carefully.
The post "The Three Words That Explain American Government: 'Right to Sue,'" by Stanford Law Prof. Diego Zambrano appeared first on Reason Magazine.
While Jennifer Balkcom and Jamie Ager both come from Western NC farming families, the issues on which they are running are quite different.
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One of the unfortunate quirks of the American system is that you can't lie to the government, but the government can lie to you. Samuel Tunick found himself on the receiving end of this setup last year at Atlanta International Airport. When agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for his phone password, he allegedly gave them a self-destruct code that wiped his data. Tunick now faces five years in prison for destroying evidence.
It turns out that the feds were lying to Tunick the entire time. A new court filing, first reported by 404 Media, shows that the DHS had sent out an order to seize Tunick's phone over his involvement in environmentalist protests in Atlanta. When he landed at the airport, however, agents told Tunick that they were looking for "kiddie porn" and he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated. They also repeatedly denied him access to his lawyer when he asked.
"There can be no real debate that if law enforcement had acted similarly elsewhere in Atlanta, their actions would be unconstitutional. But the government says it was entitled to act this way because Mr. Tunick was returning from an international vacation" in the Dominican Republic, his lawyers wrote in the filing, which includes internal DHS communications and excerpts from his interrogation video.
U.S. law recognizes a "border exception" to Fourth Amendment privacy rights, allowing federal agents to search incoming travelers for contraband. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) claims that this exemption also allows them to hold travelers for questioning and search their electronic data. Tunick's case reveals just how widely the agency stretches this loophole.
A few hours before Tunick landed, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Travis Mcghie emailed the CBP station in Atlanta with his photo and information, stating that he is under investigation for "suspected terrorist activities." (Tunick is involved in Save the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a local police training center.) The email asked CBP to "conduct a 100% baggage exam, retain all electronics and collect passcodes," stating that the HSI will be at the airport to conduct an interrogation.
Pulled into the secondary screening room, Tunick "almost immediately" told CBP officers that "I don't really want to speak without a lawyer any more," according to the filing, which cites the interrogation tape. He would ask for a lawyer multiple times.
The agents asked Tunick if he had "kiddie porn" on his phone and stated that "because you're refusing to talk, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for." One of them, Latoya Castro, told Tunick that "either you can give us your password so that we can go through it no problem, or you can refuse to do that, unfortunately, we will have to seize your phone."
Both of those statements were a lie, of course. The HSI's email had asked CBP to take Tunick's phone, whether or not he cooperated.
The lie about child porn may not only have been meant to intimidate Tunick. While there are contradictory lower court rulings about the border search exemption, some courts have ruled that the CBP can only search electronics for "digital contraband," or files that are themselves illegal. A search for child sex abuse material would be on stronger legal ground than a search for mere evidence of other crimes.
Tunick was using GrapheneOS, a secure phone system that allows users to set both a real password and a "duress password" that wipes out all data when entered. The interrogation tape shows his phone appearing to reset after he gave the officers a passcode. HSI agent Nathan Burnham and FBI agent Andrea Coble then entered the room.
"You are not under arrest. Once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave," Burnham said, referring to the CBP officers.
Tunick's lawyers argue that the judge should throw out the phone password Tunick provided and everything that resulted from entering it as an "involuntary" response made under "unlawful interrogation," because the CBP agents did not read Tunick his Fifth Amendment rights and ignored his multiple requests to consult with his lawyer before answering their questions.
The CBP claims that secondary screening at the border doesn't count as a criminal investigation, so detainees don't have the same rights as criminal suspects. "Since the international arrivals inspection is an administrative function, CBP policy and federal regs do not permit the presence of lawyers during secondary examinations," a spokesman told Reason earlier this year.
But Tunick's lawyers insist that his experience was "far outside" a normal border crossing: He was accused of a serious crime to his face, faced an investigation for a different serious crime he didn't know about, and clearly could not leave the situation until he gave information to government agents.
"I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy," Tunick told 404 Media.
Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that Tunick is involved with, has been a major nuisance for authorities in Georgia. Protesters attacked and burned construction equipment throughout 2022, and police shot a protester in 2023 under unclear circumstances, claiming that they were fired at during a raid.
The Trump administration has brought down the federal government against the movement. In June 2026, the Department of Justice brought federal charges against two alleged arsonists, citing National Security Presidential Memo 7, which directs the feds to go after left-wing domestic terrorism.
But beyond the email line about "suspected terrorist activities," there is no indication of what specific crimes the feds suspected Tunick of, or why they suspected him. And the whole setup of the interrogation was designed to hide those answers. In fact, instead of charging Tunick under typical obstruction or evidence-destruction laws, federal prosecutors chose a rarely-used statute that doesn't require them to disclose what the underlying investigation was about.
"Many times the government wants to highlight what it was trying to investigate because that ups the stakes on what the defendant was doing," former prosecutor Daniel Richman told The New York Times. "This is a case where I think they're trying to avoid exactly that by focusing only on the destruction, and not what the investigation was about."
The post Homeland Security Lied About Child Porn To Search Activist's Phone appeared first on Reason Magazine.
© Reuters
If you have to pay a regular fee to maintain control and use of a home or other parcel of property, do you really own it? Or are you just renting it from whoever collects the money? That's the question behind a growing movement against property taxes, which is winning support across the country and may see its next big test in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment on the Florida ballot that would significantly trim taxes on owner-occupied homes.
Advocates of reform understandably champion the inviolability of private property, which is threatened by continuously rising levies. Opponents predictably include people who fear reduced government revenues, but also those who worry that cutting property taxes will shift power to state governments at the cost of local autonomy.
"Property is the foundation of liberty," argues economist Vance Ginn. "It represents the right to the product of voluntary exchange, investment, and saving—not a privilege granted by government. To tax property again every year after it has been bought with after-tax income is to deny genuine ownership. Property taxes operate like an annual wealth tax or unrealized capital-gains tax, applied regardless of income or ability to pay."
Opposing Ginn's argument in the debate is the Tax Foundation's Jared Walczak, who is not so much a fan of property taxes as a believer that they suck less than the alternatives.
"Spending restraint can reduce property tax burdens," argues Walczak. "But with property taxes accounting for 70 percent of local tax collections nationwide and upwards of 90 percent in some states, any discussion of property tax elimination must grapple with revenue alternatives."
"It is axiomatic that whatever you tax, you get less of," he adds. "Taxing income means less income-producing labor and investment, for instance. But because land is an immobile asset, taxing property does less to distort market decisions than taxing income or even sales."
Walczak also points out that while property taxes are usually imposed by local governments, most alternatives to property taxes come at the state level. That would move power further up the political food chain, away from the property owners worrying about their tax bills.
To this, Ginn responds that governments at all levels cost more than they should and that "the moral and fiscal failure of property taxes lies not only in how the money is raised, but also in how much government spends."
That means the debate over property taxes isn't just a struggle between those who want to trim the state's take and those who prefer larger government, but also between anti-tax activists and their frequent allies among advocates of local power. In a piece this week on the groundswell against property taxes, Politico's Liam Dillon notes that "the uprising's most pitched battles are being fought in Red States where the issue has emerged as yet another dividing line on the right."
The debate over property taxes is fierce partially because governments have come to rely so heavily on them. "In fiscal year 2023, property taxes comprised 28.9 percent of total state and local tax collections in the United States, more than any other source of tax revenue, despite being levied almost exclusively at the local (not state) level," Janelle Fritts wrote for the Tax Foundation.
Property taxes in the U.S. range from roughly half a percent to just under 2 percent of assessed home value. States that rely most heavily on them, like New Hampshire (1.5 percent in 2024) and Texas (1.4 percent in 2024), also tend to leave a lot of government responsibility in local hands that might be exercised at the state level elsewhere. It's worth noting that Cato's Freedom in the 50 States ranks New Hampshire as having the second least burdensome tax regime among states, with Texas in fourth place.
The lowest taxed states in property terms are Alabama (0.37 percent in 2024), Arizona (0.48 percent), Hawaii (0.29 percent), and Utah (0.48 percent). Some states, such as Illinois (1.88 percent in 2024) and New Jersey (also 1.88 percent), tax the hell out of many things to support large and intrusive governments. Hawaii, despite low property taxes, is ranked as the most tax-burdened state by Cato.
As mentioned above, economists tend to like property taxes because they are efficient, minimally distort economic decisions, and empower localities relative to state and federal authorities. But as Politico's Dillon emphasizes, "everyone who is not an economist seems to hate property taxes."
Property taxes rise with assessed property valuations that homeowners have no control over, as the market shifts with supply and demand. They require what feels an awful lot like an annual rent payment to keep a roof over people's heads many already paid for. That reduces the sense of security that owners feel in their homes, since their habitation remains conditional on meeting local authorities' demands. The bite of sales taxes can be reduced by buying less, and income taxes are dependent on earning paychecks, but property taxes (with some local exceptions) come due no matter what.
Soaring property valuations in recent years drove property tax bills higher for Americans who did nothing but remain at their established addresses, though localities can and sometimes do adjust tax rates to offset rising values. USA Today reported that "between 2019 and 2023, the median value of annual property taxes increased nearly 25%." That has energized the movement to cut or abolish the taxes.
Efforts to reform property taxes have been effective in more than a dozen states, according to Governing. Most of these efforts involved reducing taxes, though eyes are currently on Florida where Amendment 3, a proposed change to the state constitution, would incrementally raise the homestead exemption to $250,000. It also would require "the Legislature to prescribe a uniform procedure for counties and municipalities, for their respective levies, to increase the homestead exemption up to full assessed value," effectively abolishing property taxes on owner-occupied dwellings.
As a constitutional amendment, the measure requires 60 percent of votes to pass. Polling shows more support than opposition, but not necessarily at the supermajority level necessary for victory.
According to the Tax Foundation, in Florida, "the statewide average sales tax rate would have to rise from 7.02 to 15.34 percent to replace the property tax" with equivalent revenue. Rates could widely vary if localities implemented sales taxes instead of leaving them to the state.
Of course, that assumes state and local governments continue spending and providing services at the same level. But as economist Ginn points out, the problem lies not only in how property taxes raise money "but also in how much government spends." If the property tax revolt represents revulsion not just at the tax, but at the expense of large government, that may require less revenue to fund a smaller Leviathan.
The post Grassroots Revolt Targets Unpopular Property Taxes appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Niculescu secured 280 votes in favour and 58 against, comfortably exceeding the 233 required for confirmation. His ministers were sworn in before President Nicuşor Dan at the Cotroceni Palace in Bucharest later that evening, formally ending the prolonged government formation process.
The new administration comprises 18 ministers, including two delegated ministers. The Social Democratic Party (PSD) controls the majority of portfolios, while independent specialists hold several important positions, including finance and foreign affairs.
The appointment represents a political success for President Dan, who nominated Niculescu on 5 October following three unsuccessful attempts to assemble a functioning government.
EU Today reported earlier this month on Niculescu’s nomination, which followed the collapse of previous negotiations and growing pressure on Romania’s political institutions.
The new cabinet is heavily dependent on agreements between parties that have frequently disagreed over economic policy and public spending. Although the parliamentary vote demonstrated sufficient support for its installation, the arrangement does not provide the government with a permanent majority.
The National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) supported the investiture while remaining outside the administration.
The arrangement gives Niculescu an opportunity to govern, but each major legislative proposal will require continued cooperation between parties with competing priorities.
The Social Democrats, who hold 11 of the ministerial positions, will exercise substantial influence over domestic policy, particularly decisions involving public-sector spending, welfare and taxation.
Romania’s public finances represent the government’s most urgent problem.
The previous administration, led by Ilie Bolojan, collapsed in May following unpopular austerity measures. Political opposition to fiscal consolidation has complicated efforts to stabilise the budget and meet Romania’s commitments under the European Union’s fiscal framework.
Niculescu has indicated that addressing the deficit will be an immediate priority. Finance Minister Alexandru Nazare, appointed as an independent, faces the task of establishing a credible budget programme without provoking another parliamentary crisis.
The choices are politically difficult. Spending reductions risk resistance from public-sector employees and households already affected by higher living costs, while substantial tax increases could place further pressure on businesses and consumption.
Failure to establish a credible fiscal programme would prolong uncertainty over Romania’s borrowing requirements and its ability to comply with European budgetary obligations.
Brussels has a direct interest in the outcome. Romania remains subject to EU fiscal oversight, and the European Commission will assess whether the new administration’s financial plans are consistent with the country’s obligations.
The government’s credibility will depend on whether its parliamentary supporters are prepared to approve the measures that fiscal consolidation requires.
The change of government also comes at a sensitive moment in Romania’s relationship with European institutions.
Romania has faced scrutiny over reforms linked to the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility, particularly legislation concerning public integrity and institutional accountability.
EU Today previously examined the European Commission’s assessment of Romania’s integrity legislation and its implications for recovery funding.
Although the EU recovery programme reached its principal implementation deadline in August, outstanding assessments and financial decisions continue to carry consequences for national budgets.
A functioning government is therefore important not only for domestic legislation but also for negotiations with Brussels over fiscal commitments, investment and the wider EU budget.
Romania must also address longer-term weaknesses in public administration, infrastructure financing and the implementation of European legislation.
Niculescu takes office against the background of Romania’s unusually turbulent political history since the annulment of the 2024 presidential election amid allegations of Russian interference.
The subsequent institutional disputes damaged confidence in the political system and contributed to the fragmentation of parliamentary support.
Opposition parties, including the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), are positioned to challenge the government’s legitimacy and economic measures as the administration begins work.
Romania’s strategic importance extends beyond its domestic political difficulties. As an EU and NATO member bordering Ukraine and Moldova, it plays a substantial role in Black Sea security, military logistics and regional infrastructure.
Prolonged instability in Bucharest has therefore affected a country whose decisions carry consequences for European security and cross-border economic cooperation.
For the new prime minister, the immediate objective is to translate Tuesday’s parliamentary majority into support for legislation. His first serious test will come when the cabinet presents the fiscal measures that its supporters have so far struggled to agree upon.
The parliamentary vote has ended Romania’s government formation crisis. It has not resolved the disagreements that produced it.
A potentially strong challenge to a state senator and an open contest for a state House seat make New Hanover worth watching in 2026.
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Bringing Order to Anarchy: Governing the World to Come, by Charles Kupchan, Yale University Press, 328 pages, $32.50
In popular rendering, international politics since 1945 has been shaped by the so-called "liberal order." Led by the United States, a bundle of international institutions, rules, and norms intended to limit interstate competition and facilitate cooperation were widely embraced, contributing (per this narrative) to a peaceful and prosperous world. Today, that system seems to be breaking down, leaving policymakers, pundits, and scholars grappling with what a future order should entail and how this system should be orchestrated.
Rivers of ink have already flowed in service of this foundational question. To the mix we can now add Charles Kupchan's Bringing Order to Anarchy. Kupchan, a professor of government at Georgetown University and a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, is interested in both how the present crisis of order arrived and what should be done about it—as he puts it, "How did we get here?" and "What do we do now?" In his telling, we arrived at this moment because of the diffusion of power abroad, combined with shifts in domestic priorities among key members of the post-1945 order (especially the United States). The post-1945 order, he concludes, is thus irredeemably broken.
Going forward in what he sees as an increasingly multipolar world, Kupchan advocates a "global system of concerts" modeled on the Concert of Europe—the international order established after the Napoleonic wars. His proposed system would prioritize relations among the great powers, creating "informal and flexible steering groups" that would emphasize "building consensus, establishing lateral lines of authority across power centers, and providing top down governance." In practice, influence and authority would devolve to different regions, within which local great powers would play leading roles in shaping regional affairs. Meanwhile, the great powers would meet as part of a global concert, sitting atop regional orders as a kind of deconfliction and organizing body.
The most welcome contribution here is Kupchan's call to accept the end of the post-1945 order and to work within the constraints of a new distribution of power. For all that policymakers and analysts recognize that change is needed, the debate over the future of international order tends to focus on preserving whatever elements of the existing order we can. It also tends to attribute the need for change to shifts in U.S. domestic politics. Kupchan, on the other hand, helpfully reminds us that order depends first and foremost on the distribution of power. States, after all, are the building blocks of any international system, just as relative power affects both what they want and their options for pursuing their interests. The creation and maintenance of an order therefore hinges on whether it broadly reflects the distribution of power, allowing states to get some of what they want, through means most can accept.
It follows that pronounced shifts in the distribution of power require adjustments in the larger system. The greater the shift, the greater the change. And since the power shift underway today is foundational—with China emerging as a peer competitor to the United States, American power in relative decline, and power diffusing away from the West (broadly conceived)—it would be extremely foolhardy to try to preserve an order created at a very different historical moment. With a new distribution of power, Kupchan recognizes, a new system is required. Hard stop.
Still, Kupchan's call for creating a concert to replace the extant order is not entirely convincing. Two problems stand out.
First, the very same power shifts that require change to the current system leave the efficacy of the concert approach open to question. If great powers are to play the leading role in a concert system, it matters both which states constitute the great powers and how their relative power compares to one another. But amid a power shift, these are the very issues that are likely to be intensely contested, if not fundamentally uncertain. It's inauspicious for the envisioned concert, for instance, that scholars of international politics cannot agree whether the world today is unipolar, multipolar, bipolar, or something else altogether. Absent some baseline understanding of the distribution of power, it is difficult to see how a concert would form, gain buy-in, and operate successfully.
Kupchan's invocation of the Concert of Europe itself alludes to the problem. It is no accident that the Concert formed only after 25 years of warfare clarified the European distribution of power, and waned as power shifted (due heavily to the emergence of Germany). Nevertheless, Kupchan doesn't seriously engage with this core requirement for a concert model when he makes the case for a concert today. The result is a tension between the book's underlying logic and its top-line policy prescription.
Second, and relatedly, it is not completely clear what the concert's remit would actually entail. On one hand, Kupchan argues that the "Global Concert would be a consultative body, not a decision-making one"; it would "tee up decisions that could be taken and implemented" by other ordering bodies. Yet Kupchan also notes that a key virtue of concerts writ large is their ability to "lower the bar to reaching and abiding by agreements"; similarly, he calls for concert diplomacy that would set up "bespoke steering groups to tackle specific challenges," particularly in security affairs. This suggests something grander than a consultative body. "Reaching and abiding by agreements" and setting up ad hoc fora to tackle specific challenges are decisions. Indeed, even "teeing up" ideas and decisions that could be tackled by subordinate international institutions and structures is a kind of decision.
One gets the sense that Kupchan is not totally comfortable with the implications of his own reasoning. If new great powers are emerging and are poised to dominate international politics, and if these states are to coordinate with one another in small group settings, it seems likely that the concert would be a decision-making body. Alternatively, if the concert is to truly function as a consultative body, it is unclear why new great powers eager to assert influence over the international agenda would sign up and give credence to this exercise.
Beyond the logic of the concert system itself, no review of Bringing Order to Anarchy would be complete without some reflection on the volume's discussion of U.S. politics. The book contains a lengthy list of proposed domestic changes, including calls to encourage civility, forge bipartisan consensus, put the U.S. fiscal house in order, and avoid ideological excesses at home. No doubt many readers would agree with these recommendations. Still, it is not really clear what these proposals do to advance Kupchan's core arguments. Rather than directly affecting the creation or operation of a concert order, the domestic challenges he wants to remedy act as constraints on U.S. power: They impede the translation of U.S. material capabilities into international influence. Accordingly, a concert system could operate even with a domestically dazed and confused United States—the U.S. would simply be a less effective participant. Changing the domestic status quo may be a good thing, but it is not central to the mission of explaining what a future international order entails. The book's domestic discussion ends up being an odd discursion.
Still, this is an important book. In calling for casting the former order aside, Kupchan brings needed clarity to a meandering discussion. By the same token, it is very useful to bring insights from the Concert of Europe into the policy conversation. Whatever gaps there might be in its ideas about the logic and operation of a concert system—or the relationship of domestic politics to a concert—the book raises a new set of options, and that in itself is a valuable contribution to the discussion.
The post After the International 'Liberal Order' appeared first on Reason Magazine.
The U.S. Supreme Court's 2026–2027 term just got a whole lot boozier. On Monday, the justices agreed to hear arguments later this year or next in the case of Department of Justice v. McNutt. At issue is whether the 1868 federal ban on distilling liquor at home is unconstitutional because it exceeds the lawful regulatory power of the federal government. If any modern Supreme Court case ever deserved its own drinking game, this one is it.
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found the federal ban on home distilling to be unconstitutional because Congress lacked the proper authority to issue such a ban in the first place. It was not a legitimate exercise of the congressional authority "To Lay and collect Taxes," the appellate court reasoned, because "the purpose of a tax is to raise revenue for the government;" yet this law "amount[s] to an anti-revenue provision" that only "prevents distilled spirits from coming into existence." And if it does not exist, of course, the government cannot tax it.
The 5th Circuit also denied that the federal ban on home distilling could be saved by the government's appeal to the Necessary and Proper Clause, which says that Congress has the authority "To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
But the federal ban on home distilling cannot be "necessary" to the execution of the enumerated taxing power, the 5th Circuit argued, because the provisions of federal law at issue "tax nothing, and are distinct from the regulation of distilling alcoholic products that is permitted by federal tax law."
Nor did the 5th Circuit find the ban to be "proper." "By purporting to ban activity without a plain connection to the exercise of Congress's taxation power," it held, "Congress has essentially—and 'improperly'—invaded the reserved police and regulatory power of the states."
The Trump administration lost this case at the 5th Circuit and has now successfully urged the justices to hear its appeal. In its petition seeking review, the Trump administration faulted the 5th Circuit for its overeagerness to "second-guess" the "legislative judgment" of Congress. Instead, the Trump administration argued, the federal judiciary owes a great deal more deference to the federal government's regulatory priorities in a case like this. "A law is necessary and proper if it is 'convenient' or 'useful' for carrying an enumerated power into effect, and 'plainly adapted' to that legitimate end," the Justice Department's brief argued. "That is the case here."
This case may lead to an interesting divide among the Supreme Court's more conservative members. In United States v. Comstock (2010), a 7–2 Supreme Court embraced the Necessary and Proper Clause as sufficient constitutional grounding for the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which had empowered federal officials to order the indefinite civil commitment of "sexually dangerous" individuals who had already finished serving their prison sentences. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority opinion in that case, while Justice Samuel Alito voted in concurrence. In other words, they both endorsed a broad view of congressional power under the Necessary and Proper Clause. By contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, voted in dissent. The Comstock ruling, Thomas protested, "comes perilously close to transforming the Necessary and Proper Clause into a basis for the federal police power that 'we always have rejected.'"
Are we about to see a similar Alito-Thomas split over the proper reach of federal power in this case? And what about Justices Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh? Will one or more of them play the Scalia part and similarly reject the Trump administration's broad reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause?
Stay tuned.
The post Trump Administration Urges SCOTUS To Uphold Federal Ban on Distilling Liquor at Home appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Fairfax County, Virginia, police officer Scott Abram was charged with two counts of misdemeanor shoplifting for stealing merchandise from two Target stores. Police say that while using the self-checkout at a Target in Burke, Abram scanned a cheaper item's barcode to pay less for another item, then left the store with both products despite only paying for one. Abram was in uniform and on duty at the time. Police say he had committed a similar theft at a Target in Springfield the day before, while off duty. A 23-year veteran of the Fairfax County Police Department, Abram chose to retire rather than face termination. Each charge is a misdemeanor that can carry up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine if convicted.
The post Brickbat: Sticky Fingers appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Frequently asked questions about early voting for the 2026 midterm general elections in North Carolina in 2026.
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Cabinet ministers are turning on Ed Miliband, accusing him of blocking AI investment to protect Net Zero – while families pay the price in lost jobs and holidays.
The post Ministers Turn on Ed Miliband Over Net Zero Block on AI Investment appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Walking through East Cleveland, Ohio, feels a touch like you've wandered onto the set of a postapocalyptic film noir. Grand, gilded homes announce themselves on neighborhood streets, some crowned with turrets, many with windows punched out like missing teeth. Often, no one is home, because no one lives there. It is safer than 1 percent of U.S. cities.
So why did local law enforcement pour considerable time and resources into pursuing a man for a sound truck?
That question is not really a legal one, at least not in the most technical sense. But it is the driving force behind a thorny case a federal court recently resuscitated: Fambrough v. City of East Cleveland, a saga concerning a man whose vehicle became an obsessive target of the East Cleveland Police Department (ECPD) after he used it to campaign for a mayoral challenger.
Some of the facts are in dispute. But the basic gist is as follows: William Fambrough, long a politically engaged East Clevelander, campaigned for Juanita Gowdy—a challenger to then-Mayor Brandon King—by broadcasting messages around the city with his sound truck. That ultimately came to an end after law enforcement impounded the car, cited him for parking and noise violations, and prosecuted him for the latter.
Fambrough sued, alleging the complex legal odyssey set into motion over his step van amounted to First Amendment retaliation, an unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, and a violation of the 14th Amendment's proscription against selective enforcement. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit rejected some of those claims. But it resurrected claims against King and his chief of staff, Michael Smedley—depriving them of qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that inoculates state and local government officials from facing lawsuits if their alleged misconduct was not "clearly established" as illegal in prior case law. It also revived Fambrough's retaliation claim against the city.
As the 6th Circuit summarizes: King "says he received a phone call from a resident who complained about Fambrough's sound truck and someone else's box truck being parked in a residential area," so he told someone to take care of it. Scott Gardner, then the city's chief of police, "was concerned about selectively enforcing" the parking ordinance—which prohibits parking a truck in front of residential property, except for loading or unloading—because it is indeed almost never enforced. This was the beginning of a long pursuit, which ultimately saw a swarm of officers dispatched to Fambrough's house in August 2021 to confiscate the vehicle, allegedly resulting in $6,000 in damage. Fambrough also had to pay $528 in fees to get the damaged truck back.
"All the attention City officials gave Fambrough struck Gardner as unusual," the 6th Circuit notes. "The mayor's office wasn't this attentive even in homicide cases. And considering that the City had around only 50 police officers at the time and had 'serious crime problems,' Gardner thought it was odd to devote this much attention to permitting and parking issues." Based on available data, East Cleveland's violent crime rate is 1,409 per 100,000 residents, about four times higher than the national average.
Yet Gardner ultimately got on board. Smedley phoned him on August 9 "extremely upset," according to Gardner, and told the police chief he was "incompetent" for failing to "take care of" Fambrough's sound truck. Smedley wanted the "utmost enforcement as possible." So Gardner sent an email. "Please, find this vehicle and tow it," he wrote to all of ECPD. "Cite the operator with disturbing the peace and loud music. Please contact me as soon as this is complete to claim a surprise." A surprise!
Police succeeded. "On its face, the email told officers to tow Fambrough's truck regardless of whether it was parked illegally," writes the 6th Circuit. "And the Noise Ordinance authorizes seizure only of 'the sound device used,' and only upon conviction. So Gardner's instruction to tow the truck wasn't authorized by municipal law." The court still held that the seizure did not violate the Fourth Amendment. It also gave Gardner qualified immunity, ruling it is not clearly established that someone who acts as a conduit for someone else's alleged retaliation—which here came from the mayor's office—is a "responsible party."
Heather McCollough, the city's assistant law director, subsequently prosecuted Fambrough for allegedly violating the noise ordinance. According to a sworn declaration from Fambrough's attorney, McCollough outlined some of Fambrough's offenses on a call: that he "made complaints about the police department" and filed "public records requests," among other issues. Notably, it is legal to do those things. McCollough was typically willing to resolve minor noise complaints, she added, but not so much in this case, because Fambrough needed to "stand down." (He ultimately pleaded no contest to disorderly conduct, a reduced charge.)
"Only after [Fambrough] began supporting Gowdy's election was the weight of the law thrown against him," the 6th Circuit writes in its analysis of potential municipal wrongdoing. "And the City's police officers didn't uncover Fambrough's violations of their own accord. Instead, City decisionmakers sent them to Fambrough's home each time to enforce the Parking Ordinance. So the timing of the parking-related enforcement actions supports an inference that Fambrough's political speech was the motivating factor—as does the fact that the City rarely enforced the Parking Ordinance against anyone else despite having plenty of opportunities to do so." Incredibly, a photo of another truck can be seen down the street on the same day law enforcement came to fetch Fambrough's vehicle. (The law also includes pickup trucks, so the city arguably has a lot of enforcement to do if it sincerely believes this law matters.)
King allegedly set the chain of events into motion while Smedley took the driver's seat. "Smedley's pattern of incessantly calling and berating Gardner," the 6th Circuit adds, "clashes with the idea that Smedley was chiefly concerned with minor permitting, noise, or parking issues." After all, if that were true, why would the problem appear to begin and end with one person?
Over five years have passed since the ordeal. Although Fambrough is now potentially closer to getting in front of a jury, he has yet to actually state his case, still burdened by the onerous process government actors invoke to kill such suits before the community can assess the merits. King, meanwhile, won that election. He left office in May 2025, however, after he was found guilty of one count of theft in office, four counts of having an unlawful interest in a public contract, three counts of representation by public official or employee, one count of filing a false disclosure statement, and one count of soliciting improper compensation.
The post He Campaigned for the East Cleveland Mayor's Opponent. Then Police Came for His Truck. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
From a press release last month, just posted on Westlaw:
N.C. Detective Agency, a Durham-based security company, will pay $65,231 in compensatory damages and back pay, and take other corrective actions to voluntarily resolve a religious discrimination investigation by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.
The EEOC's investigation found reasonable cause to believe that an employee requested to be excused from work due to a Muslim religious holiday, but the request was denied. The company was aware of the employee's need for a religious accommodation but did not engage in the legally required interactive process, and instead terminated her in June 2025 when she did not report for duty.
And from another press release two weeks later, also just posted on Westlaw:
Reynolds IGA Foodliner, Inc., owner and operator of a chain of grocery stores, will pay $65,000 and provide other equitable relief to settle a religious discrimination and retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.
According to the suit, shortly after she was hired as a deli clerk at the Piggly Wiggly store in Hazlehurst, Georgia, the employee requested Sundays off to observe her Sabbath. The employee's supervisor denied the request, claiming that, if the store gave the employee Sundays off, it would have to do the same for all other employees. The employee continued to request the accommodation, and the company fired her in January 2025.
More from the second press release:
"Employers cannot deny religious accommodation requests simply for fear of upsetting other employees," said Marcus G. Keegan, regional attorney for the EEOC's Atlanta District. "The EEOC remains committed to enforcing federal anti-discrimination law and protecting employees' rights to religious freedom."
Darrell E. Graham, director of the EEOC's Atlanta District, said, "Employers must thoughtfully consider each request for religious accommodation on an individual, case-by-case basis and otherwise make good-faith efforts to accommodate their employees' religious beliefs. Employers must be aware of their obligations under federal law to provide reasonable religious accommodations absent undue hardship."
Finally, from a third press release from last month (it was published in between the first two, but was again just posted on Westlaw); this one involves a lawsuit and not a settlement:
Blue Bell Creameries, Inc., a Brenham, Texas-based frozen snack manufacturer and distributor with a production facility in Sylacauga, Alabama, unlawfully terminated a Jewish body shop technician soon after he requested a beard‑related religious accommodation, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit announced today.
Even supporters of bans on religious discrimination by private employers might debate whether employers should be required to give religious exemptions from generally applicable rules (exemptions that could themselves be seen as discrimination in favor of religious observers). But Congress has indeed mandated such exemptions: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended in 1972, generally requires employers to accommodate religious objectors' requests for exemptions from generally applicable work rules, unless doing so would pose an "undue hardship" for the employer.
That extends to time off for religious holidays: Indeed, the leading recent case on the subject, Groff v. DeJoy, involved a Christian employee's request for an exemption from having to work Sundays. And of course it extends, as it must, to all religions.
The post $65K Settlements with EEOC Over Failure to Accommodate Muslim and Christian Employees' Religious Days Off appeared first on Reason Magazine.
Andy Burnham's Government has been accused of waging a £500 million "class war" on wealthy councils, slashing funding from rural Tory and Lib Dem areas to bankroll urban Labour Party strongholds.
The post Burnham Declares £500 Million War on Tory Councils appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
In recent years, one of the predominant policy initiatives of the progressive left has been raising the minimum wage in locales around the country. At the same time, left-leaning politicians have sought the elimination of what's known as the tip credit, which allows employers to pay restaurant servers and other tipped employees a lower hourly base wage that they then bolster with gratuities.
Just a few years into this experiment, however, policymakers are showing signs of an about-face on the tip credit's abolition as they grapple with the unfortunate, and predictable, economic results.
In 2022, Washington, D.C., made news headlines when voters passed Initiative 82. As originally designed, it would have repealed the tip credit and required servers to be paid the District's full statutory minimum wage by 2027. (D.C.'s minimum wage was $16.10 per hour in 2022, but has since risen to $18.40 due to inflation indexation.) Prior to Initiative 82, D.C. servers could be paid a $5.35 tipped wage, so long as they earned enough tips to make up the difference between the lower tipped wage and the higher traditional minimum wage.
D.C.'s Initiative 82 was just the beginning. One Fair Wage, a progressive group that lobbies against subminimum wages, quarterbacked an all-out push to eliminate the tip credit in jurisdictions across America. Chicago became the second prominent city to follow suit. States like New York, Connecticut, and Illinois also quickly saw legislation introduced to eliminate the tip credit at a statewide level. (Apart from this recent wave, a small handful of American states—including California, Oregon, and Alaska—have long operated without a tip credit).
But just when it seemed like momentum against the tip credit had reached its apex, progressive politicians started to see the writing on the wall. In the aftermath of the tip credit's repeal, D.C. saw a close to 5 percent decline in full-service restaurant jobs. Tipped worker earnings also dropped by just under $12 million—likely a result, at least in part, of restaurants reducing hours for staff in the face of higher labor costs. At the same time, many D.C. restaurants began implementing service fees or so-called auto-gratuity policies that added mandatory 10-20 percent charges onto customers' bills.
Mugged by this economic reality, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called for the full repeal of Initiative 82. Ultimately, the D.C. Council settled for a partial repeal in 2025, maintaining at least some semblance of a tipped wage that sits below the traditional minimum wage into the years ahead (although the tipped wage eventually rises to 75 percent of the traditional wage by 2034). This was a familiar story: The council had previously repealed Initiative 77, a near-identical attempt to abolish the tipped wage that voters passed in 2018.
After Chicago moved to eliminate the tip credit, the Illinois Restaurant Association found that 89 percent of Windy City restaurants raised menu prices; another 79 percent responded by reducing worker hours. Again bowing to economic reality, the progressive Chicago City Council voted to freeze the tip credit's planned elimination, only to see the effort vetoed by Mayor Brandon Johnson. Eventually, a compromise was brokered to at least pause the tip credit at its current level for two years—which punts the issue until after Johnson stands for election again, allowing a potential successor to endorse a more lasting reversal.
In Michigan, a 2024 state supreme court ruling set the tip credit on the path toward elimination by 2030. But state lawmakers intervened last year, deciding to maintain a 50 percent tip credit in perpetuity after 2031. Notably, Michigan is currently governed by a Democratic trifecta in the governorship and both houses of the Legislature. The tip credit's revival garnered key support from Republican lawmakers to pass in a bipartisan fashion, before being signed into law by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
While progressive efforts to eliminate the tip credit may be motivated by an earnest desire to ensure waiters are paid more, the math isn't that simple. Requiring a server to be paid a $16 traditional minimum wage—up from a $5 tipped wage—might appear to raise their pay on paper. But this fails to consider several important factors.
Under our "No Taxes on Tips" new normal, raising the minimum wage for servers could lead to a partial reduction in tips, which under certain scenarios can result in less take-home pay for waiters once the taxman takes his cut. If more server earnings come in the form of "auto-gratuity" policies—which are treated as taxed wages under the law—then the tax repercussions may grow even grimmer.
But more broadly, these laws attempt to subvert basic economics. As of 2025, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that D.C. restaurants shed over 1,600 jobs in aftermath of Initiative 82; meanwhile, between 2022 and 2025, restaurant job growth in the District declined by more than 8 percent. This is just one example. The fallout is the inevitable result of restaurants responding to labor costs that suddenly skyrocket, forcing establishments to cut worker hours and sometimes transition to quick-service models that require less hourly staff. And that's to say nothing of the diners who bear the cost with higher prices and new service fees.
"We're watching a beloved bar back, a beloved busser, a dishwasher have their jobs taken away," D.C. restaurant worker Valerie Graham told Reason in 2024. "Not because our owner-operator is an evil billionaire but because they're an independent business owner who had to make some business decisions and there's a callousness with which our industry is talked about."
To be sure, the tip credit has only survived in modified and reduced form in D.C., Chicago, and Michigan—and in the case of Chicago, the about-face is only temporary. But the partial reversals show the tip credit's elimination is not a foregone conclusion. Economic reality continues to rear its head.
The post Some Progressives Tried To Abolish the Tipped Minimum Wage. Now They're Backtracking. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates running for the House of Representatives and endorsed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani are all but guaranteed to win their general elections this November, but that does not mean the midterm drama is over in New York. In the state's 17th congressional district, which includes the lower Hudson Valley, Democratic challenger Cait Conley, a combat veteran who served on the Biden administration's National Security Council, could unseat incumbent Republican congressman Mike Lawler in one of the most consequential races of the midterms.
The highly contested purple district voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election while reelecting Lawler for his second term. Now, Lawler is attempting to win a third term as support for President Donald Trump wanes ahead of the midterms. As of Friday, The Cook Political Report lists the race, which could determine control of the House, as a toss-up.
If elected, Conley would have far more in common with the "Badass Women" coalition of security state and military veterans than with DSA types (think more Sen. Elissa Slotkin from Michigan than Darializa Avila Chevalier). As Judge Street Journal's Timmy Facciola notes, "Conley's candidacy is testing the viability of a tactful centrism that rebukes left-wing positions like abolishing ICE or restricting weapon shipments to Israel." Lawler is also vying for moderates, pitching himself as "one of the most bipartisan members of Congress" and emphasizing his willingness to break with Trump occasionally while still welcoming Trump's support.
While Lawler and Conley certainly are not pure MAGA acolytes or DSA members, both have leaned into a tech-critical position, much like that of more radical populists like Lina Khan or Steve Bannon, revealing how pervasive anti-tech sentiment has become in mainstream politics.
This tech skepticism was on full display during an October 14 debate, when each candidate made the case for why they were the most equipped to regulate AI, insisting that the industry needs guardrails.
Conley said members of Congress do not want to regulate AI because "they want to look out for their billionaire and trillionaire backers like Elon Musk, who is pouring over $260 million into this midterm election." She then added that Musk backed Lawler in his 2024 race.
Lawler then accused Conley, who previously consulted for Primer AI, of being "the AI candidate for the AI industry."
While Lawler and Conley disagree on specific data center regulations (Conley supports Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul's data center moratorium while Lawler supports local zoning control over data centers), neither wants to pitch themselves as an explicitly pro-data center candidate. During the debate, Conley claimed that, "On Mike Lawler's watch there have been five data centers built in Rockland County." Lawler has said that he had no say in the decision to build the data centers, and during the debate, he pointed out that the facilities were built for financial services. Lawler also attempted to attack Conley over data centers, slamming her in an ad for saying "we need data centers." Regardless of the candidates' specific policies on data centers, their attacks on one another demonstrate that cheerleading hyperscale data center development is a political liability. In their district, data center has presumably become a dirty term.
The candidates' tech-skeptical rhetoric did not end with unchecked data center development. After the debate, Reason asked both candidates about their positions on age-verification laws for social media and AI, since such regulations raise significant privacy and censorship concerns by age-gating the internet. Unsurprisingly, both Lawler, who voted for the controversial KIDS Act, and Conley, who has proposed stricter age verification for AI tools, parroted platitudes about why such online safety regulations are necessary to protect children.
"We have watched how social media is literally hurting the mental health of children," Conley told Reason. "And when you talk about the power of AI and what that power could do, we have to regulate this."
Lawler gave a similar response, telling Reason that he respects free speech but that protecting children "is paramount."
This bipartisan consensus over social media regulation has long been brewing in Congress. The mainstream political conversations about AI and data centers, however, are relatively new this midterm election cycle. And it appears both Lawler and Conley have figured out which way Americans' sentiment toward AI is leaning, and they have waged their campaigns accordingly.
The post Nobody Wants To Be the Pro-Tech Candidate in This New York Race That Could Flip the House appeared first on Reason Magazine.
As the Trump administration's short-lived Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project implemented its plan to downsize the federal workforce, there was much wailing from the liberal institutions in Washington, D.C.
Federal employee unions filed lawsuits to block the effort. NPR ran profiles of federal workers who, for the first time, faced the prospect of potentially not having absolute job security forever. The Brookings Institution wondered how many jobs the federal government could shed before it crashes.
The answer: plenty. The Trump administration has cut more than 10 percent of the federal workforce, and the government hasn't crashed. Indeed, it hasn't even shrunk—if you're counting by dollars spent instead of people employed.
In a new article for City Journal, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Judge Glock highlights the tremendous gap between the dire predictions about DOGE's cuts and the reality that has emerged, more than a year after DOGE was shut down. Despite having only a modest impact on spending, Glock writes, DOGE "had a massive impact on the federal civil service."
This is true—to a point, more on that in a moment—and notable. Aside from a modest downsizing in the 1990s, the number of people employed by the federal government has been steadily growing for decades. Reversing that trend is one of the few genuinely libertarian accomplishments by the Trump administration.
The cuts to the federal workforce prove that "DOGE worked," argues Glock.
Well, hold on.
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (who departed the DOGE project before Trump's inauguration and is now running for governor of Ohio) set some very ambitious goals after being appointed DOGE co-chairs in late 2024. In an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in November 2024 where they promised "we won't just write reports or cut ribbons. We'll cut costs."
Musk repeatedly attached some rather absurd numbers to that promise. He said DOGE would cut $1 trillion or even $2 trillion in federal spending. In the end, it didn't come close. By DOGE's own (questionable) accounting, it cut $170 billion. Meanwhile, overall federal spending has increased in each of Trump's first two years in office, and the budget deficit has widened as well.
Yes, Musk and Ramaswamy also said they would reduce the federal workforce. But that was presented as a natural consequence of cutting spending, not as the primary goal.
Think about it like this. If I spent months promising my friends and family that I would lose 50 pounds on a new diet, and then didn't lose any weight, would it be fair to say the diet worked?
What if I reduced the number of donuts I eat every day, but still didn't lose any weight? Sure, that might be good for my health in some way—just like reducing unnecessary workers in the federal government is good for America's fiscal health—but it certainly wouldn't mean I had achieved the goal of losing weight.
Finally, even the claim that DOGE cut the federal workforce requires an asterisk. As Glock also notes in his report, the decline in federal workers has been offset by an increase in federal contractors.
It's not a one-for-one trade, of course. The new contractors are overwhelmingly concentrated in places like the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon, while the cuts mostly targeted other areas, like the Department of Health and Human Services.
"Most of that increase came from the buildup in homeland-security and defense contracting, including purchases such as surveillance aircraft and tanks, rather than substitutes for government workers," Glock writes. "DOGE achieved real contract savings, but these were more than offset by higher spending elsewhere, reflecting a shift in priorities rather than an overall reduction in contracting."
So, the government is eating fewer donuts but more pizza.
There might be libertarian reasons to prefer contractors over government employees. They are less likely to hold those jobs for life, for one. But there's nothing inherently good about a government policy that cuts jobs in some areas just to create more room in the budget for poorly trained immigration enforcement agents and defense contractors. That may even be a negative outcome for liberty.
In the end, the DOGE project looks less like a meaningful attempt at cutting government spending or employment levels and more like a way to purge parts of the federal workforce likely to get in Trump's way during his second term. "As long as [Trump's] larger commitment is to extending his power rather than rolling back power itself, you shouldn't expect the government to stop growing," as Reason's Jesse Walker wrote last year in comparing DOGE to President Richard Nixon's attempted purge of the civil service.
Did DOGE work? Only if you grade it on a pretty dramatic curve.
Yes, it proved that a president can slash bureaucratic jobs—particularly the bloated managerial and administrative types—without doing much damage to the government's core responsibilities. That's a lesson future administrations should remember.
Maybe, someday, a president will try applying the same logic to government spending too.
The post DOGE Worked? Only If You Grade on a Curve. appeared first on Reason Magazine.
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