The Supreme Court ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s extensive use of tariffs during his first year back in office were illegal. The court responded to escalating protests from small businesses saddled with higher costs and a large portion of Americans who are skeptical as to the benefits of Trump’s tariff regime. But by striking down part of Trump’s trade agenda, the judges might send America’s ever-widening deficit soaring even higher.
The national fiscal outlook is already on an unsustainable trajectory. As the Congressional Budget Office projected earlier this month, federal debt is set to reach 120% of GDP by 2036, but that forecast assumes current policies will remain in place. A perfect storm of other factors could align to send debt climbing to even greater heights.
One of those forces is the fate of Trump’s tariffs. The severity of America’s fiscal path has been somewhat “mitigated” in part by tariff-driven revenue, according to a report published Thursday by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). Removing this revenue stream would contribute to an “alternative scenario,” one with an even steeper debt burden than the one projected by the CBO.
Assuming Trump’s tariffs are not replaced, and certain government spending programs are either made permanent or revived, the deficit would reach nearly $4 trillion, debt could climb to 131% of GDP in 2036, and the additional interest burden would hit $820 billion, according to the report.
The mechanism by which vanishing tariff revenues fuel the deficit is straightforward but massive in scale. Currently, the CBO’s baseline fiscal projections are softened by the assumption that significant revenue from tariffs unilaterally imposed by the Trump administration will continue to flow into the Treasury. But the administration’s legal foundation for these collections crumbled before the court. Most of these tariffs were authorized under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a tool that has never before been used to implement tariffs and that the U.S. Court of International Trade already ruled illegal last year.
If the administration fails to replace the revenue with other taxes or offsets, the CRFB estimates that federal revenue would fall by $1.9 trillion through 2036. This loss represents roughly 0.5% of the nation’s total GDP over the next decade. While the administration could theoretically attempt to use alternative trade maneuvers to replicate the tariffs, there is no guarantee such a transition would be seamless or legally bulletproof.
That lost revenue would presumably be evident immediately. The government is now on the hook to refund $175 billion of its tariff revenue, according to recent analysis by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn-Wharton Budget Model. But the costs would be even greater over the long run. Losing $1.9 trillion in expected income does more than just widen the immediate gap between spending and revenue; it triggers a compounding interest effect that worsens the overall debt.
When the government loses a primary revenue stream like tariffs, it must borrow more to cover its existing obligations. Under the report’s alternative scenario, this loss of revenue, combined with the permanent extension of temporary tax provisions from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act and a potential revival of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which expired earlier this year, would raise the deficit by $4.2 trillion over the next decade. This deficit, worsened by higher interest costs, could risk crowding out other forms of essential spending as the federal government becomes increasingly consumed by its own debt burden.
“The alternative scenario does not account for dynamic effects on interest rates and the economy, which could worsen the fiscal outlook by pushing the economy further into a debt spiral,” CRFB researchers wrote in the report.
The report outlines a more upbeat scenario, where debt rises more slowly than in the CBO’s forecast. In this version, lawmakers would either allow temporary tax policies to expire or fully offset their costs, while also ensuring that tariff revenues are either preserved by the courts or replaced by new legislative measures. Coupled with reforms to stabilize trust funds like Social Security, this path could see debt stabilize at a much lower 111% of GDP by 2036.
For now, however, the nation’s fiscal health remains on a deteriorating path. Removing Trump’s tariffs might be greeted favorably abroad and by most Americans, given that up to 90% of tariff costs are now paid for by American companies and consumers, according to a recent New York Fed report. But striking down the tariffs without replacements could come with hidden costs further down the road, as the alternative scenario of an even greater debt burden gets closer to becoming the new reality.
Rumors of an affair between Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump administration political adviser Corey Lewandowski have been flying for months.
And all that flying, it turns out, might come with a big price tag for taxpayers.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that Noem and Lewandowski have recently been traveling together aboard a luxury Boeing 737 MAX jet that includes a private cabin in the rear. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is “leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million,” the Journal reports, citing people familiar with the plane.
That is just one small detail amid the explosive and deeply reported piece, which details a pattern of behavior that is both self-aggrandizing and petty. In one incident, Lewandowski reportedly fired a Coast Guard pilot for leaving Noem’s blanket on a plane (it is unclear whether that was the 737 MAX or a different plane), only to reinstate the pilot when a replacement could not be found. The report comes at a time when Noem is under intense scrutiny for her role in ordering the high-profile and aggressive immigration enforcement tactics in Minneapolis that led to the deaths of two American citizens at the hands of federal officers.
The salacious rumors of an affair between Noem and Lewandowski—both of whom are married to other people—surface repeatedly in the Journal’s article but have been denied by the two officials.
The deeper, indisputable truth is that taxpayers are being forced to support an aircraft-buying binge at the DHS that goes beyond the alleged adultery airplane used by Noem and Lewandowski.
Last year, the department purchased a fleet of six commercial jets, ostensibly to carry out deportation flights, at a cost of $140 million. It is unclear whether Noem’s plane with the private cabin is one of those or an additional plane.
The aircraft in question was apparently identified last year by The War Zone, a blog covering the national security state. The plane has a cabin configuration designed to accommodate 17 passengers and was being marketed at the time for its “extremely luxurious interior layout that includes two suites with full-size beds and a master bathroom with a shower stall, among many other amenities,” according to a brochure reviewed by The War Zone.
Even if Noem and Lewandowski are not using the plane for, um, activities that go beyond their official duties, there ought to be hard questions asked about whether taxpayers are getting screwed.
Indeed, there was a time—not even a year ago—when the Trump administration was promising to cut wasteful spending and hold government officials accountable to taxpayers. If the Journal‘s reporting turns out to be accurate, the mess at DHS looks a lot like the complete opposite of that.
This week, guest host Eric Boehm is joined by J.C. Bradbury, an economist at Kennesaw State University and one of the leading critics of taxpayer-funded sports stadiums. Bradbury is the author of a forthcoming book, This One Will be Different, on the “false promises and fiscal realities” of stadium subsidies.
Boehm and Bradbury discuss why stadiums rarely deliver on the economic benefits touted by team owners and local politicians, and how public officials, media outlets, and hired consultants help create the illusion that these projects pay for themselves. Bradbury explains why these deals often amount to a reallocation of existing local spending rather than genuine economic growth, and why taxpayers end up footing the bill for facilities that primarily benefit private sports franchises.
The conversation also touches on the Super Bowl, the Olympics, and the surge of new stadium proposals across the country. Bradbury makes the case that America is on the verge of another stadium building boom, driven by political incentives and public enthusiasm rather than sound economics, and argues that cities would be better stewards of tax dollars if they resisted the pressure to subsidize major sports projects.
The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie goes deep with the artists, entrepreneurs, and scholars who are making the world a more libertarian—or at least a more interesting—place by championing free minds and free markets.
In the February/March 2026 issue of Reason, we explore Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s policy goals and what they mean for New York City. Click here to read the other entries.
Central to Zohran Mamdani’s 2020 campaign for New York State Assembly was a pitch to radically constrain law enforcement. “Queer liberation means defund the police,” he posted two days after securing his seat representing Astoria, an apt coda to that election season.
It was November 2020, just months after the George Floyd protests began—a time when calls to defund the police were more common. Such a plan was arguably always a tougher sell in a mayoral campaign where candidates have to court a more politically diverse electorate than the one in western Queens, a district that overlaps with that of the socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.).
Which helps explain why Mamdani pivoted fairly dramatically on criminal justice in his run to be mayor of America’s most populous city. “I am not defunding the police,” he said on the campaign trail. “I am not running to defund the police.” One way he has tried to show he is serious about that promise: asking Jessica Tisch, who was an ally of Mayor Eric Adams, to stay on as New York City police commissioner.
That type of law enforcement partnership would have been difficult to imagine with the Mamdani who made his political debut just over five years ago. What might their differences mean for New York City?
On one hand, not much. A great deal has been made, for example, of Mamdani and Tisch diverging considerably on New York’s state bail law, which bars judges from contemplating a defendant’s dangerousness when making decisions about bond. It is the only state with that ban. While Tisch’s skepticism of that policy has merit—nearby New Jersey successfully eliminated cash bail in 2017 but did so in favor of a risk-based system—neither she nor Mamdani has the power to alter the legislation.
The same goes for their disagreements on New York’s Raise the Age law, which diverted most 16- and 17-year-old alleged offenders out of adult court. Mamdani likes the law; Tisch is against it. That debate is important, but it ultimately rests with state legislators.
Other differences are more consequential, or at least have potential to be. Currently, the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) can recommend disciplinary action after investigating allegations of misconduct at the New York Police Department (NYPD). The final say, however, belongs to the commissioner—something Mamdani campaigned on revoking.
The dispute over where that power should reside reached a fever pitch this summer, right in the heat of the New York mayoral campaign, when Tisch rejected a CCRB finding that an officer should be fired in connection with a fatal 2019 shooting. In that case, Lt. Jonathan Rivera inserted himself into a vehicle as a suspect, Allan Feliz, attempted to drive away from a traffic stop. When the car sped forward, Rivera shot Feliz in the chest.
At trial, a judge did not buy Rivera’s testimony that he feared Feliz was poised to run over his colleague, Officer Edward Barrett. Tisch instead cited a report from New York Attorney General Letitia James, who wrote that Rivera had “a reasonable perception—or at least not an obviously unreasonable one” that deadly force was justified. (James declined to prosecute Rivera in criminal court.)
Whatever you think of Tisch’s decision, her record on law enforcement misconduct may surprise those whose impression was formed solely by the headlines about Rivera. “Not only has Tisch signaled a greater willingness to discipline officers more frequently” than her predecessors, reportedGothamist last year, but “she’s also imposing tougher penalties.” And despite Mamdani’s campaign emphasis on depriving the commissioner of veto power over officer discipline, he praised Tisch’s efforts to “root out corruption” as something that united the two.
They are decidedly not united on how many NYPD officers there should be and, in some sense, on what they should be doing. Tisch expressed support for Adams’ plan to add 5,000 officers to the force, which has decreased in recent years, whereas Mamdani wants to keep the current head count.
Perhaps more notable are their differing enforcement priorities. A hallmark of Tisch’s tenure has been her focus on low-level offenses—including open drug use, prostitution, and fare evasion—to crack down on public disorder. “When neighborhoods are plagued by issues such as aggressive panhandling, unruly street vending, public urination, abandoned vehicles, it gives the impression of an unsafe community,” she said in January 2025. The NYPD has credited that strategy, often referred to as broken windows policing, with the city’s recent crime decline.
Mamdani also prefers a prevention-oriented approach, but it bears no resemblance to Tisch’s. He has said that police officers should be free to target major crimes. To accomplish that, he campaigned on creating a Department of Community Safety, with a budget over $1 billion, that would seek to address poverty and inequality; it would also divert lower-level calls to mental health specialists and social workers. While focusing police resources on serious offenses is an appealing idea, it’s worth noting that New York City already has a hefty social safety net.
Which ideological vision for the NYPD will win out will become clearer with time. Shortly after announcing Tisch would stay on, Mamdani unveiled his public safety transition team. Among others, it includes Alex Vitale, a sociologist who has argued we should abolish police.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Will Mamdani Defund the Police?.”
The 2020s, so far, have been one long and often painful lesson in what happens when policymakers tell economists to shut up and go away.
From the COVID-19 pandemic through Bidenflation and onto the Trump 2.0 trade wars, each successive administration to occupy the White House during this decade has made a critical error by assuming it could ignore economic principles—or simply substitute them for a different set of underlying assumptions. Those errors have been made in different ways and for different reasons, yes, but they share this common characteristic: a belief that economics is optional, and that tradeoffs can be eliminated if your motives are in the right place.
But that is simply not true, as circumstances have shown again and again.
Start with COVID, which is undeniably the defining story of the first half-plus-one-year of the 2020s. When the Trump administration and myriad state and local officials implemented lockdowns under the “15 days to slow the spread” promise in March 2020, it was largely at the behest of public health advisers.
The dominant attitude driving lockdown policies that closed schools, businesses, churches, playgrounds, and more was well articulated by Jon Allsop in the Columbia Journalism Review‘s newsletter. There is “no choice to be made between public health and a healthy economy—because public health is an essential prerequisite of a healthy economy,” he wrote in April 2020 as debate over “reopening” was ongoing.
That all-or-nothing approach reveals how little the economists were involved in the early decisions over COVID. “There are no solutions; only tradeoffs,” is how Thomas Sowell once put it, but during the early months of the pandemic, solutions were overly promised and tradeoffs were routinely ignored. That was a tremendous error.
“At its most basic, economics is about analyzing choices made under constraints. Politicians and government agencies made a vast range of public health decisions this past year that violated principles that good economists take for granted,” wrote Ryan Bourne, an economist with the Cato Institute, in a 2021 review of early COVID policies. “These decisions made the public health and economic welfare impacts of the pandemic worse than they needed to be. In that sense, the poor response to COVID-19 represents a failure to think economically.”
As the pandemic waned, the Biden administration repeated that mistake.
Soon after taking office, President Joe Biden’s team pushed for a “run it hot” approach to economic policy and openly dismissed fears of rising inflation. That came to fruition with the American Rescue Plan, a $1.9 trillion spending package that included $1,400 stimulus checks to households earning as much as $160,000 in joint income.
Larry Summers, a Harvard economist and veteran of the Biden administration, warned in a Washington Postop-ed that the American Rescue Plan would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.” Other top economists, including a former chairman of the International Monetary Fund, offered similar warnings.
Biden and Democrats in Congress did not listen. The result? Inflation of a kind America had not seen in a generation. The annualized inflation rate hit 9.1 percent in June 2022 and still has not returned to the 2 percent annualized rate that the Federal Reserve regards as its target.
Indeed, inflation has in some ways supplanted COVID as the dominant political narrative of the 2020s. Even though the current inflation level (2.7 percent annualized) is well below that 2022 peak, it is significantly higher than anything Americans experienced during the first two decades of the 21st century. No wonder everyone seems to be mad about how much things cost.
There were consequences to the Biden administration’s “run it hot” economic policy, and ignoring the economists did not make those tradeoffs go away.
The same can now be said for President Donald Trump’s tariffs, which his administration implemented over the objections of many economists. Vice President J.D. Vance took to X in July to declare that “the economics profession doesn’t fully understand tariffs.”
Trump and his allies promised that tariffs would usher in a “golden age” for American manufacturing. On the contrary, economists warned that tariffs would harm rather than help American manufacturing firms because the majority of all imports are raw materials and intermediate goods that go into making other products.
The proof is in the pudding. Higher taxes on those inputs caused the manufacturing sector to fall into a recession during 2025, and the sector has been shedding jobs. The trade deficit continues to grow. Meanwhile, tariffs have also pushed prices higher.
Economists can be frustrating to advisers in the policymaking process. The impulse to point out the inevitable tradeoffs in any policy can make it seem like their only purpose is to blow holes in the high-minded plans of the nation’s elected officials. But throwing them out of the room does not make foolish ideas more perfect. Six years of dismissing economic reality have not brought us utopia.
If our elected officials are looking for a handy New Year’s resolution for 2026, here’s an idea: Start listening to the economists again.
Did the Department of Government Efficiency deliver on its promise to cut government spending?
Did the Department of Government Efficiency deliver on its promise to cut government spending?
President Donald Trump’s DOGE has disbanded, but not before it cut hundreds of thousands of federal jobs in record time. But while the number of positions cut is one for the record books, Cato Institute Senior Vice President for Policy Alex Nowrasteh said that when it comes to government spending, it really didn’t make a difference.
In the first 10 months after Trump took office, DOGE reduced federal employment by about 271,000 jobs, which is about 9% of all federal workers.
“This is a faster and steeper decline in federal employment at any time since the demobilization of the U.S. military and economy at the end of World War II and at the Korean War,” Nowrasteh said. “It’s the biggest in peacetime, ever decline in federal workers over a 10-month period.”
DOGE brought down federal employment to late 2014 levels over that time period, but with almost 60% of the decline in October, according to the analysis.
“DOGE reduced federal employment enormously. It did not cut spending, and it couldn’t possibly cut spending just by firing people,” he said. “It just doesn’t show up when you take a look at the budget figures. So, for instance, spending went up in 2025 compared to 2024 and went up by about $250 billion.”
Nowrasteh said the only likelihood to close the deficit “is by cutting the biggest programs. The biggest programs are Medicare and Social Security, Medicaid and the military.”
In 1955, U.S. and Canadian officials established the Great Lakes Fishery Commission—a bilateral treaty organization intended to root out what was often referred to as the “vampire fish.” Since then, the sea-lamprey population has been slashed by more than ninety per cent, thanks to annual treatments and ongoing research. Controlling the species has saved the region’s fishing industry, now worth six billion dollars a year.
Pull back the curtain on even the most natural-seeming landscapes and there is often a government initiative invisibly maintaining business as usual. But, for many public programs, success can bring problems of its own. “If no one really knows of the threat, it makes it harder, in lean times, to say, ‘Hey, we need this money,’ ” Ethan Baker, the chairman of the G.L.F.C., told me.
Early this year, as part of what many federal workers came to refer to as the Valentine’s Day Massacre, the lamprey-control program was unceremoniously gutted by the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency. Twelve probationary workers—some of whom were long-tenured employees who had recently transitioned into new positions—were fired. Presented with an uncertain future, other longtime staff members took buyouts. The roughly twenty-five seasonal workers who are the backbone of the annual control effort couldn’t be brought on, because of Trump’s government-wide hiring freeze. Spending on federal credit cards was capped at a dollar, making it impossible to book travel arrangements to and from treatment sites.
The commission—which is not itself a public agency but an international organization that contracts with federal employees in the U.S. and Canada—pleaded with local congressional representatives. Residents did, too. In 2020 and 2021, when COVID-era travel restrictions had reduced treatments, lamprey populations exploded. In Lake Ontario, treatments stopped entirely for one year, and the number of lampreys increased tenfold.
Eventually, the lamprey program was granted an exemption from the DOGE cuts, and allowed to restaff. But crucial treatments were delayed, and early-season assessments—which, ironically, make the effort more efficient by determining exactly where to treat—had to be reduced. Across the country, many similar programs, and the research they depend on, are being bled dry, as billions of dollars are hacked from the federal budget.
Of the more than five thousand tributaries that empty into the Great Lakes, about one in ten is infested with lampreys. Every year, crews treat about a quarter of the offending streams. Upper Michigan’s Manistique River system, which has about three hundred infested miles, is the site of this year’s biggest deployment. In two weeklong purges, crews killed an estimated one million lamprey larvae there, at a cost of $1.4 million. (In total, the program costs about twenty million dollars annually.)
To determine where to treat, federal workers must first figure out where the lampreys are. They pace the shallow banks of the tributaries—where lampreys live and breed, before going to the lakes to hunt—and shock the bottom with handheld electrified paddles. If any lampreys are present, they will wriggle out of their muddy burrows. The workers must then expose the ecosystem to a specific concentration of poison, perfectly calibrated to kill lampreys and not many other fish, for nine uninterrupted hours. Treatment supervisors generate a unique model for each river, adjusting for variables as seemingly inconsequential as the appearance of a new beaver dam, which can completely alter the flow. “We were lucky this time,” Lori Criger, a fish biologist who oversees treatments, told me. “It rained right before we got here, and not during the treatment.”
The lamprey-control program is the world’s only purchaser of 3-trifluoromethyl-4-nitrophenol, also known as T.F.M., or, simply, lampricide, which was identified in 1956 at a research lab at the northern tip of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. As the lamprey crisis worsened, various chemical companies sent compounds to the lab, which was searching for a panacea. “They would get a chemical, sometimes in a plain brown envelope from the Defense Department or something—‘Here, try this,’ ” Marc Gaden, the G.L.F.C.’s executive secretary, told me. The research team ran “pickle jar” tests: they’d leave lampreys, native fish, and a chemical in a vessel together overnight. In the morning, they’d record the outcome—usually something like “Dead trout, dead lamprey,” or, occasionally, “Dead trout, live lamprey.”
The final group of counties to implement the eCourts conversion, which began in February 2023, went online Oct. 13. All 100 North Carolina counties now have online access to court records and services.
NC Administrative Office of the Courts
Raleigh
North Carolina courts this month crossed a major threshold into the digital age, shifting court records from a final batch of 13 counties from the courthouse to the cloud.
It’s a pivotal moment for state courts and their years-long effort to digitize an archaic system that relied on paper filings and a mainframe.
While AOC officials have been touting the system’s successes, they haven’t shared much publicly about the increased costs or expanded services included in what started out as a 10-year, $85 million contract with Texas-based Tyler Technologies in 2019.
A News & Observer review of contract amendments and add-on agreements indicates the total cost could be more than double that — at least $188.8 million — through 2034.
That is just the amount the state could pay Tyler, the company selected to digitize and integrate the many facets of the court system used by thousands of state employees, law enforcement and millions of residents.
State pay records obtained by the News & Observer indicate AOC has also spent millions of dollars on overtime, with the amounts climbing in 2023 and 2024 after AOC launched the conversion. In addition, AOC has spent at least $8.7 million on equipment and IT services related to the transition, excluding Tyler.
When asked about the costs outlined in Tyler’s now 15-year contract and its amendments, AOC communications director Graham Wilson noted that changes to the contract added new services and customizations, including a digital warrant and appellate case management systems, “rather than cost escalations of the original agreement’s scope.”
He also wrote that it “is not consistent with the terms of the contract” to say that AOC has committed to paying Tyler at least $188.8 million through 2034.
“The contract provides a fixed cost structure for prospective software services that limits escalation fees over the 15-year period from 2020-2034,” wrote Wilson. The statement stressed that AOC can terminate the contract and will only pay for services provided in compliance with the contract.
That said, AOC has given no indication it plans to walk away from the cloud-based system it has spent years — and tens of millions of dollars — building and integrating.
Signs announcing that eCourts would soon debut at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in Charlotte in September 2023. Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez mrodriguez@charlotteobserver.com
From courthouse to keyboard
Work on the new system began about a decade ago, aimed at replacing stacks of courthouse paper with a digital system accessible anywhere with an internet connection.
A committee of court officials from across the state spent months reviewing bids from potential vendors before unanimously backing Tyler’s plan, The News & Observer reported.
AOC signed the 10-year, $85 million contract with Tyler in the summer of 2019. North Carolina became the most populous state to use the company’s Odyssey software, according to a Tyler press release.
In July 2022, the state rolled out a new digital warrant system. By February 2023, Wake and three other counties became the first to pilot online access and filing through eCourts, giving residents the ability to file documents, pay fines and look up civil, criminal and traffic cases online.
Kevin Spruill holds up release paperwork that he carried in case he was stopped and detained by law enforcement on an arrest warrant that should have been recalled. Spruill is one of several plaintiffs who in 2023 signed onto a potential class action lawsuit alleging that the rollout of the state’s eCourt system violated their civil rights. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com
AOC officials did not pursue the evaluation. They instead urged patience as court workers adjusted to the changes and Tyler made fixes. And it took steps to expand and increase Tyler’s contract.
The now statewide record management system does more than improve the public’s access to records previously available only in courthouses across the state. More than 47,000 people in law enforcement use it to send citations, warrants and magistrate orders straight to court officials. So do state Department of Motor Vehicles, Health and Human Services and Department of Justice staff, according to information from AOC.
As recently as last month, district attorneys from the three Triangle counties stated that the new system remains cumbersome and difficult to use, resulting in slow data entry, delays, and other challenges.
“People in the field have stopped attempting to report issues because issues reported never seem to be resolved,” wrote Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman in an email.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman in administrative traffic court in the Wake County Justice Center in Raleigh in September 2023. Ethan Hyman ehyman@newsobserver.com
How the contract evolved and expanded
Documents that The N&O obtained with public records requests show how the Tyler contract expansion unfolded before and after the conversion started:
February 2020: Tyler signs a $14.5 million contract with AOC for an eCitation program to integrate a digital solution system for citations.
July 2020:Tyler signs a $24 millioncontract with AOC to establish an electronic warrant processing system, which was launched in July 2022.
February 2023: Pilot counties, including Wake, Johnson, Lee and Harnett, implemented the digital eCourts system.
September 2023: Contract amendment number seven added $1.6 million in “post implementation custom development.”
December 2023: AOC extended the length of the Tyler Technologies contract from 10 to 15 years, according to contract amendment number eight, which included an optional $3.2 million for customer support account management fees. The potential cost: an additional $76.9 million through fiscal years 2030 and 2034.
January 2024 to September 2025: Contract amendments nine through 16 added nearly $2 million in “post-implementation custom development” fees.
Scanned cases for Superior Court on a shelf in the criminal division of the clerk’s office at the Mecklenburg County Courthouse in 2023. The courthouse started using the new digital system that year. Melissa Melvin-Rodriguez mrodriguez@charlotteobserver.com
The contract and its amendments were signed and expanded over a period where AOC was run by three directors appointed by two North Carolina Supreme Court chief justices, a Democrat and a Republican. Boyce, the current director, was appointed in 2023.
The News & Observer asked AOC multiple times how much they have paid Tyler to date, but officials did not respond.
An N&O analysis of records obtained from the Office of the State Controller, however, shows it has paid Tyler Technologies $63.2 million for “software subscriptions” and “automation services” from January 2020 to Sept. 10, 2025.
In addition, AOC has paid $8.7 million to other vendors from Oct. 16, 2023 to April 29, 2025 out of two designated eCourts accounts for IT services, computer/printer equipment, workshops, lodging, transportation and meals.
More than half of those expenses — $5.2 million — was paid to one company, Computer Aid Inc., for “IT project management analysis services,” according to the expense records.
Other vendors include: 1st Run Computer Services Inc, $993,435; Mainline Information Systems, $443,468; and Lenovo Inc., $317,776.
A true accounting of the overall cost is a complex task, Wilson, the agency’s communications director, wrote in an email. An accurate analysis would weigh short- and long-term savings, as well as the project’s overall scope and longevity, Wilson said.
“It would be difficult to analyze comprehensively the inestimable value of online services for the state compared to paper processes, or to predict the potential future savings from automation, digital access, and other modern technologies that the new system supports,” Wilson wrote.
The Wake County Justice Center, the building on the right, was one of the first to pilot the new digital court transformation in February 2023. ssharpe@newsobserver.com
What records show about overtime pay at AOC
An N&O analysis of employee compensation records obtained from the Department of State Treasurer shows overtime pay for AOC employees started rising as the state prepared to launch eCourts in the pilot counties in October 2022, which was eventually delayed until February 2023.
Overtime costs, mostly paid to deputy clerks and assistant clerks, totalled $4.7 million in 2023 and reached $6.3 million in 2024.
That’s a significant contrast to the $2.3 million in overtime AOC paid over a decade, from 2010 to 2020.
When asked about overtime costs, Wilson provided information indicating that AOC authorized $4.78 million in overtime in 2024 and $1.1 million in January and February for overtime pay to employees related to the digital transition.
“The Judicial Branch authorized some employees to work limited overtime in recent years. This authorization equipped clerks, district attorneys, and judicial offices with resources to address the COVID-19 shutdowns and the implementation of digital courts,” Wilson said in an email response.
AOC did not provide any explanation of the difference between the authorized overtime costs and the overtime pay in the Department of State Treasurer’s records.
Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The N&O maintains full editorial control of its journalism.
Virginia Bridges covers what is and isn’t working in North Carolina’s criminal justice system for The News & Observer’s and The Charlotte Observer’s investigation team. She has worked for newspapers for more than 20 years. The N.C. State Bar Association awarded her the Media & Law Award for Best Series in 2018, 2020 and 2025.
It’s day 10 of the government shutdown, and the Trump administration is finally starting to make good on its plans to permanently lay off federal workers.
“RIFs have begun,” Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought wrote in a X post on Friday, using the acronym for “reductions for force”—the technical jargon for government layoffs.
The administration has offered no details on the layoffs, beyond the OMB’s comment to Semafor that they will be “substantial.”
Any permanent firings of government workers during a shutdown would also be unusual. Typically, federal workers are temporarily furloughed when Congress fails to agree on appropriations bills to keep the government open, and then given back pay once funding resumes.
In September, as Politico first reported, Vought circulated a memo to government agencies instructing them to prepare more permanent “reduction in force” plans should a shutdown occur.
In the event of a shutdown, agencies were told to eliminate employees working on “programs, projects, or activities” whose funding had lapsed during the shutdown, and which were not “consistent with the President’s priorities.”
Once funding resumes, Vought’s memo instructed agencies to “revise their RIFs as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions.”
In short, the Trump administration is hoping to use the shutdown to permanently reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, with an immediate focus on eliminating employees who might be working on programs that conflict with President Donald Trump’s agenda.
This is just the latest example of the Trump White House arm-twisting Democrats during the shutdown. Last week, federal departments announced they’d be pausing the release of funds for transportation and energy projects in Democratic states.
Whether the president has the legal power to unilaterally fire employees en masse during the shutdown is controversial.
Vought asserted in his RIF memo that since funding has lapsed for discretionary programs, there’s no statutory requirement that they be carried out. Staff dedicated to those programs can therefore be let go at the executive branch’s discretion.
In a lawsuit filed at the beginning of the shutdown, the major public sector unions rejected this argument. They asserted that a temporary lapse in funding for a program does not mean the legal authorization for the program has lapsed.
Additionally, they argued that since federal law prohibits the executive branch from devoting resources to activities for which there’s no funding, the Trump administration can’t devote resources to firing employees during the shutdown.
In short, this is yet another battle in the constant war Trump and Vought have been fighting with government employees, their union representatives, and liberal litigants more generally, over the extent of the president’s power over executive branch employees.
Vought has consistently asserted that the president has effectively unlimited authority to hire and fire at will. Laws to the contrary are unconstitutional and can more or less be ignored.
His critics argue that Congress has substantial power to shape and regulate the federal bureaucracy, including on matters of personnel, and that creates significant legal limits on the president’s personnel decisions.
Government unions are already preparing to challenge the shutdown layoffs. The AFL-CIO, which already sued over Vought’s initial memo, intimated on X that they’d sue to challenge the actual layoffs as well.
Reducing federal headcount has been one of the few areas where the Trump administration’s government-slashing efforts have produced significant results.
Trump took over a federal bureaucracy numbering some 2.4 million civilian federal employees in January. Between firings, retirements, and the administration’s deferred resignation program, it’s estimated that there are 201,000 fewer federal workers as of September 23.
The layoffs Vought announced Friday would be in addition to that figure.
The Trump administration has said it plans to end the year down some 300,000 employees, which would amount to a 12 percent cut in the federal workforce. Depending on how many workers are let go during the shutdown and whether their firings are allowed to stand, the federal workforce could end up being even smaller still come 2026.
That’d be much to the good. The federal government does too many things. By definition, it employs too many people as well.
A smaller federal workforce equates to a smaller government. Workers who leave non-productive federal employment for productive private sector work enrich the entire economy.
To be sure, there’s only so much firing federal workers can achieve in the pursuit of a leaner state. Reducing federal headcount doesn’t by itself eliminate federal laws, regulations, or programs.
It also has a relatively marginal impact on the cost of government, given that the vast majority of government spending is not going toward civil servants’ pay and benefits.
Still, most shutdowns end with no real change to the size or scope of the federal government. Eventually, appropriations are passed, spending resumes, and government employees go back to work.
This time, if the Trump administration’s shutdown layoffs are allowed to stand, the government that reopens will be smaller than the one that closed down.
Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas), who recently announced that he is running to replace Ken Paxton as Texas attorney general, has carved out a reputation as one of Washington’s most unflinching fiscal hawks. His political career began as an aide to then–Texas Attorney General John Cornyn on his Senate campaign; he subsequently served as chief of staff to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. First elected to Congress in 2018, Roy distinguished himself as a lawmaker willing to buck party leadership, most notably by opposing spending bills favored by both Republicans and Democrats.
Today, Roy is a critic of runaway federal spending and at times a thorn in the side of political leadership, which has led President Donald Trump to call for primary challenges against him. He has taken high-profile stands on the debt ceiling, entitlement reform, and what he calls the “tyranny” of a government that funds itself by mortgaging future generations.
He also voted for the president’s budget-busting One Big Beautiful Bill Act, arguing that its reductions to Medicaid were better than nothing. In August, at a 90th birthday celebration for former Rep. Ron Paul (R–Texas), Roy sat down with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie to explain that vote, as well as to discuss Social Security, health care reform, immigration, whether his state’s controversial redistricting plan is legitimate, and why he believes Texas still embodies the American dream.
Reason: You are a rare voice of fiscal shrinking in Washington, D.C. That has put you in the crosshairs with Donald Trump in particular. You don’t want to raise the debt ceiling unless there’s a reduction in spending. You pushed back against the Big Beautiful Bill, although you did cave and support it.
Chip Roy: We’ll come back to the word cave, but OK.
Well, you voted for it. Talk a little bit about your general philosophy. Why is it so important that government spending be either held constant or reduced?
My view is that the power of the purse is the central power of Congress, and we’ve abdicated it for as long as I can remember. If you don’t constrain that power of the purse, then you’re funding the very bureaucracy that was predicted by the Founders—and has proven to be true—to be at odds with our liberty.
To say Congress is asleep at the switch is an understatement. You came into office in 2019, but this has been going on for at least 20 years before. Why?
My observation is that we’re actually at a moment where more members of Congress get it than I’ve ever seen in the past. That’s the good news. But the bad news is, it’s still a woefully inadequate group of people to change it.
I think members of Congress believe that they get more popularity in votes by spending money. I actually disagree with that. I’m a cancer survivor. I have cancer groups who come in and ask me for money. I say, “God bless you. I know what you’re trying to do. Research is great. But do you have a pay-for [for] that?” No. Well, then I can’t support it. Farm Bureau comes in. I love the farmers. I want to protect small farmers against corporate [agriculture]. But they come in and they want their money on the farm bill. I’m like, “Well, are we fixing the food stamps?” No. Well, then I can’t support it. They get that.
It’s important to not fund the tyranny that’s turned on us. I think more people are seeing that now in ways that they didn’t in the past.
Going to the heart of the Big Beautiful Bill debate: We were told in January, “You’re not going to touch anything in Medicaid or any kind of health care.” Well, we got a trillion dollars of Medicaid. We were told we weren’t going to be able to do much on the Green New Scam subsidies. We were able to get 3, or 4, or $500 billion worth of cutbacks to those. Did we get everything we need? No.
There’s no question that the Big Beautiful Bill is going to increase the debt, right? There’s no realistic scenario where it doesn’t.
I think that is likely the case based on the following facts: Medicare was not touched. Social Security was not touched. Interest payments are going up.
But understand that part of the agreement, and we got to deliver the agreement, was holding discretionary [spending] flat or lower. That was a part of the deal, which by the way, will pay dividends if we do it.
That’s a part of the deal, which I’m going to fight for. And also, remember that tax cuts. I had libertarian friends who were like, “Hey, I love the no tax on tips.” Well, OK, but what about no tax on the guys in the back of the restaurant? We all want lower taxes. You, I, every person who wants a limited government.
I want lower spending.
But you want lower spending to go along with that. What I would argue is, we fought to get lower spending on things that people never thought we could get, Medicaid being huge among those. Is it enough? No. Is it likely going to create front-loaded deficits? Yes.
You took a lot of heat from Trump on the debt ceiling bill. He was calling you out by name. And you also got leaned on in the Big Beautiful Bill debates. What is it like when Donald Trump, the president of the United States—a guy who, whatever else you can say about him, has the power to destroy the political careers of politicians who are very popular in their districts—says, “What the hell are you doing? You’d better get in line!”
I view it slightly differently because I don’t worry about whether I’m in office or not. Come after me, it’s fine.
What I do care about is what can we do in this window of time when we have some people in the administration willing—clunkily, not always what you and I and others who are fiscal stewards would do. What are you going to do when you’ve got that opportunity?
Whatever he’s doing—scaling back some of the spending at the Pentagon, or getting the $9 billion of the rescissions package—there are things that are in process. Are they peanuts and crumbs? Kind of. But are they trending in the right direction? So far. Did we get material changes on spending? Yes.
The political pressures don’t matter much to me. What matters to me is, how can you assemble people to build a coalition to deliver? I’m proud of what we delivered on Medicaid reforms. I’m proud of what we delivered on the subsidies, which are horrid.
Medicare and Social Security are things that Trump has taken off the table for as long as he’s president. Interest on the debt, Medicare, and Social Security are the biggest chunks of the federal budget. How do you get to a smaller budget without addressing those?
We’re legally prohibited from touching Social Security. You got to come up with some sort of bipartisan way to address Social Security, or you can’t really get to it.
I fundamentally believe for Medicare and Medicaid, and frankly, [Veterans Health Administration], [Children’s Health Insurance Program], and these other health programs, you have to have fundamental health care reforms from top to bottom that starts with the individuals, doctors, and liberty. I’m not saying liberty because I’m talking to you; that’s what I mean.
One of the first bills I introduced was the Healthcare Freedom Act, which would do that. By the way, we did force into the Big Beautiful Bill DPC—direct primary care—being able to be used within your health savings accounts.
Look, fighting the health care swamp is brutal because the insurance companies, pharma, big hospitals, they’re all colluding to make it where you and I can’t go to the doctors of our choice.
I’m a member of Congress and I’m on Obamacare. If my cancer comes back, which I had 13 years ago, I can’t go to MD Anderson [Cancer Center], which is an hour up the road right here in Texas, because Obamacare won’t let me go to MD Anderson. That’s asinine. And yet, millions of Americans are on that system. We’ve got to blow that up to get people control.
Why didn’t the Republicans—and this is before your time in Congress, but when you were chief of staff for Sen. Ted Cruz—do any of this during the first Trump administration? We heard, “When we take over, we’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare.” Then they were like, “Yeah, we didn’t really mean that.”
Republicans in Congress suck on this and are running afraid to touch and deal with health care. To the credit of the administration, we were told that we weren’t going to touch health care at all, and we did touch Medicaid in a very big way. I think that’s a baseline to now give us some offense.
Is there anybody in Congress doing anything about Social Security? Or are they all just going to wait and then blow out the cap on earnings that are taxed to pay for Social Security?
I think [Sen.] Rand [Paul (R–Ky.)] has been right for a long time: this penny plan, which now probably has to be the nickel plan for all I know. You have to have something where, across the board, you’re shrinking everything, and then force everybody to deliver.
This is actually really important. For what everyone thinks about the Big Beautiful Bill, we broke the orthodoxy in Washington that we can just have all the tax cuts we want without spending restraint. We forced that in the budget committee. Myself, [Reps.] Ralph Norman [R–S.C.], Josh Brecheen [R–Okla.], Andrew Clyde [R–Ga.]. The four of us took down the bill in the Budget Committee; we killed it. That brought everybody back in. I can tell you, those were some intense meetings where we said, “We’re not doing this if we don’t get this level of spending restraint at least as a model to guide what we do on the floor.” That was before we sent it to the Senate.
That’s actually a big shift. The fights we’ve had to have inside the Republican Party to say, “I know we’re products of the ’80s, and we believe in the Laffer Curve, and we believe in lower taxes, of course we do. I do. But you also have to do math. You can’t just keep cutting taxes and then not do the spending side, because the inflation/turning over of all our freedom to government is eating up any of the value you get.”
How do you define the American dream?
The ability to live free. The right to live your life, work, produce for your family, own a home, get a doctor. Right now, if I look at my staff in their 20s or 30s, can they buy a house? They don’t know. Can they go get a doctor and get health care? Increasingly limitedly. Can they buy a car? Can they send their kids to a school of their choice? Those things are at the center of existence.
I think we’ve got to reclaim that ground. I think we’re too corporatist. Free trade, I believe in, but you’ve got to be smart about what we’re doing here in this country, in making sure that we’ve got workers here who have jobs in the United States. You don’t have corporatists that are buying up every farm in the state of Texas, and I’m unable to actually go have the small farm that my parents passed down to me.
It gets complicated, but what’s wrong with corporate farms? Especially if they can run more acreage cheaply and produce more crops on it.
I’m all for the freedom to move capital around and make it efficient. But there is still something about your home and your community. There is still something about being able to say, “I own this dirt, this farm. I’m building and growing for the people here.” The overcorporatization, frankly it’s not pure free enterprise. The federal government is subsidizing big ag at the expense of local farmers. The big government that’s subsidizing massive hospitals at the expense of local doctor-owned facilities. We put all these bans in place, and we funnel all this money, and now it’s no longer the balance of a market. I think that’s where we’ve gone awry.
I’m not asking for restrictions. I’m just believing that community and the American dream are tied together. You want to be able to have an investment in your local area. And the free flow of capital is important. But you also have to have the non-government-interfered-with free flow of capital.
Should those small farmers be able to hire who they want, or should they need to go through the federal government? What is your view about legal immigration and about letting people come here who want to and who can get jobs here?
In a gathering of my libertarian friends, I’m a little more “protect our sovereignty as our country.” It’s important that we know who’s here and why they’re here. And making sure that Americans have jobs.
In a perfect utopian libertarian world, where free flow of capital is unfettered by government regulation, government interference, or crony capital, then things would work out much better with respect to that flow. But you still have to have borders. You still have to know the bad guys are coming.
Sure. Nobody’s questioning that.
Well, some do. I’ve had some pretty good fiery responses from some of my Cato [Institute] brothers when they’ve been at hearings. It’s fine, and I get it. Should you be able to go get labor if you can’t get it? Sure. But there still has to be a component that is factoring in things like anchor babies and birthright citizenship. Again, erase all the public programs. I think it was Milton Friedman who said very famously in the ’70s, “I’m all for open borders if you get rid of the social welfare state.”
Actually, he basically just said, “I’m all for open borders.” He said to build the wall around the welfare state, not around the United States.
But the component being with a welfare state, which we massively have, which then completely alters the culture of our country. We in Texas are the ones that are sitting here with elementary schools where we have to do English as a second language, we have to do all of the things that cost with that, the hospitals, the health care locally. It’s a real issue.
But at the end of the day, we have a problem right now where there are American workers who are not working because we’re subsidizing them not to work, while we’re then complaining about needing labor. We’ve turned it all upside down is my main point.
Is there a libertarian flavor to the MAGA movement? With Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012, the rise of the Tea Party in 2010, which included Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, [former Rep.] Justin Amash [L–Mich.], it really seemed like a libertarian version of the Republican Party: anti-war, end the Fed, limit the government. Gears shifted heavily with the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA.
Well, that’s an interesting question and I haven’t really thought about it. I’ll give you my gut response, and then I’ll think about it a little bit. I think where we are right now is in a blend of different factors. We’ve had this evolution from 2008 onward. Now we’re 17 years into the post–Tea Party, where all of those factors are a part of where we are. Obviously, the overriding dominant force is the president and MAGA, but all of that is a piece of the fabric.
I do think the part about immigration right now is just recognizing we’re at a point right now where we have, depending on which reports you look at, 51.5 million people who were foreign-born. People will say, “Well, who cares? We often have that.” That’s the highest percentage as an overall population we’ve had in at least the modern era, if you go back to the early 20th century.
When America became great, yeah.
But we also had a culture at that time that was assimilating, and saying learn English, and join in the American dream. Now, we’ve had this counterculture saying, “No, you don’t have to do that.” How does that produce a unified nation with an overall environment for success?
Is it immigrants’ fault that we don’t have a robust conception of what it means to be American? Because when I grew up, America was a nation of immigrants. That was our whole thing—that what is great about us is we can take people from shithole countries and turn them into great Americans.
Trump got in trouble for saying that.
Because he meant it, whereas I’m ironic about it.
Of course, we’re a nation of immigrants historically speaking, but understand that we’re still a nation. And that has to matter. I actually don’t care where people are from. What I care about is whether they’re proudly putting the American flag up instead of another nation’s flag, whether they’re proudly joining in with our cause.
But bringing this back to the point, there are a lot of hard-working American families that are hurting right now. They need to be able to have access to jobs. They need to be able to have access to their schools, and to their hospitals, and to their police.
I’d love to have the free flow of trade, people moving about being able to work. But you’ve got to have barriers, in the sense of restrictions and processes that work. At the end of the day, what you really need to do is have a smaller federal government focused on its core responsibilities. Because if it was actually doing the basic job of defending the country and defending the borders, instead of meddling with all aspects of our lives, then I think they would do a better job of that.
Let me ask you about foreign policy. At various points you have said that we should not be intervening, we shouldn’t be giving any countries a blank check. But you also say we should be supporting some countries. Can you explain your foreign policy? And do you think you’re reflecting a new Republican consensus that may not be a Ron Paul anti-interventionist but is certainly not a George Bush neoconservative?
Funny you say it that way. When I was Sen. Cruz’s chief of staff, we talked about it in terms of a third way of thinking about foreign policy and national security.
I grew up a child of the ’80s. I was a proud American. It was like, beat the commies, let’s tear down the wall, all that stuff. Then fast-forward, and you have these wars that are ongoing, and I’m studying the Middle East, and then 9/11. Then you’re backing the president. He’s standing on the rubble. You’re all there, patriotic, wanting to say, “Yeah. What the hell? Get the bad guys.” Then somewhere in that timeframe, I started to go, “What are we doing? We’re in endless conflict with no clear mission.” That reset my thinking.
I took a rule-of-law trip to Baghdad in the middle of the war. I was getting a tour from a three-star general. He’s taking me up and showing me soccer fields they’re building. I’m going, “This is all well-intended, but what the hell are we doing?” It just became very clear to me that there was this whole industry built around this.
Where I am today, I just generally believe we should be highly skeptical of—I’ll use “endless wars” as the moniker. Our driving policy should be, what do we need to do to defend our interests as a nation? If you’re going to intervene, what is the mission? When can it be done? Can it be done quickly with the least amount of cost, loss of life, etc.? Defend our position, and then get out. But we shouldn’t be out meddling in nation building.
We can’t own every skirmish or conflict around the world. I think when we do, we sometimes make them worse: notoriously, Afghanistan, the Soviet Union.
But that all being said, where I break from some of my libertarian brothers and sisters is, I do think there are things where we have very specific national security interests where we should be engaged. I think that they [pay] long-term benefits. I do think the work with Israel and Iron Dome is beneficial for us. But obviously, there’s some different tensions going on now after the October 7 issue. I hope that’ll get drawn down and get to peace, and that they can get busy rebuilding and dealing with what they’re going to do.
By and large, the United States needs to focus on its own house. We have not done that. We’re $37 trillion in debt. We’ve spent, what, $10 trillion-plus, at least, on whatever we’ve done in the Middle East in all of our engagements over the last 20 years. That doesn’t even count the burn pits, by the way [the PACT Act, which pays for health claims related to personnel exposed to trash pits on military bases]. Which I didn’t vote for because it was a $600 [billion] or $700 billion entitlement. That’s what we do though. That’s a perfect example. Overextend, endless wars, our guys and gals get hurt, then we create a massive entitlement that we can’t afford. Then our kids and grandkids are paying high interest rates and inflation.
Let’s talk about Texas. As we’re speaking in August, the Texas Legislature is doing a novel mid-decade redistricting. How do you feel about that? Is this legitimate, or is this the worst kind of politicking?
Gerrymandering goes all the way back to the founding. Texas is not as gerrymandered as some of our blue states. I think representation matters to match the culture and the community that you represent. Those are my driving principles, but politics are part of it.
Is it OK to redistrict anytime, rather than every decade, based on the Census?
There’s nothing that says we can’t. It’s very clearly political. Not saying anything anybody doesn’t know. Gerrymandering is political. I think there are seats to be gained there. In full disclosure, we were probably a little soft in how far we could have gone in 2020. I say “we”; we have no vote in that in Congress. It’s the Legislature in Texas. They’re taking it up. I think in light of the very close divisions and wanting to make sure that they’ve got a majority in the House, and also in light of, without reopening the immigration debate, a Census issue about noncitizens represented…I think when we factor all that in, I do think that there’s room here for the Legislature to redistrict. My personal philosophical bent is cleaner lines, less gerrymandered districts. But you can’t unilaterally disarm, so I get the political desire of the Legislature to act. But I don’t get a say.
Texas is becoming the destination. Florida can say whatever it wants, but Texas is going to become the most populous state in the country by 2050, if not before. It is also increasingly the cultural heart of America. It has an identity in a way that California and New York do. Why do you think people are coming to Texas? Is it the weather? Is it the fire ants? Is it the floods?
You picked the three things not to come here.
When my great-great-great-grandparents moved out to Dripping Springs, Texas, it was 1853-ish. They came from Georgia. Then my Roy side of the family came via Tennessee, Arkansas, in the 1870s. The reason I bring that historic perspective up is, it was tough living. You had to want it. It was tough, so you had tough people. I think that bred a culture that was mixed with a great historic culture that was the Tex-Mex mix. Then the Germanic mix that came in—somewhat illegally too at the time.
Texas has been under six flags. Different countries. It’s one of the great mixing pits of America.
I think all of that has combined to create a culture that people are proud of. They want to adopt that.
Importantly, I worry about preserving that culture. That culture of independence, of personal responsibility, where government isn’t providing for you. I’m very worried. The Texas government is bigger than it should be. We spend more than we should. Texas isn’t as free as it should [be]. It is highly regulated. Cato has done some big studies on that.
I don’t think we’re safe enough. I don’t think we’re free enough. There are things that we need to do to improve. But the reason people come to Texas is because of what it represents.
I think we’re at a crossroads. I think in order to maintain that Texas spirit and that Texas culture, we’re going to have to double down on the things that made us great. That means, in my opinion, a hard move to freedom; a hard move to a truly limited government. You can’t go around saying that Texas is the best thing since sliced bread and the federal government’s the problem when our state government is bureaucratic. We’ve got work that we need to do there, but it’s a great state with a great mix of people, and people who respect what it means to work hard and to make their own lives.
I think from a free enterprise standpoint, Texas is pretty free. I think from a regulatory, compliance standpoint, property taxes, there are things that we need to do to improve freedom in Texas and be the beacon of hope for the next century.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
White House tells agencies to draft mass firing plans ahead of potential government shutdown
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is telling agencies to prepare for large-scale firings of federal workers if the government shuts down next week.
In a memo released Wednesday night, the Office of Management and Budget said agencies should consider a reduction in force for federal programs whose funding would lapse next week, are not otherwise funded, and are “not consistent with the President’s priorities.” That would be a much more aggressive step than in previous shutdowns, when federal workers not deemed essential were furloughed but returned to their jobs once Congress approved government spending.
A reduction in force would not only lay off employees but also eliminate their positions, which would trigger yet another massive upheaval in a federal workforce that has already faced major rounds of cuts this year due to efforts from the Department of Government Efficiency and elsewhere in the Trump administration.
Once any potential government shutdown ends, agencies are asked to revise their reduction-in-force plans “as needed to retain the minimal number of employees necessary to carry out statutory functions,” according to the memo, which was first reported by Politico.
This move from OMB significantly increases the consequences of a potential government shutdown next week and escalates pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The two leaders have kept nearly all of their Democratic lawmakers united against a clean funding bill pushed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans that would keep the federal government operating for seven more weeks, demanding immediate improvements to health care in exchange for their votes.
In statements issued shortly after the memo was released, the two Democrats showed no signs of budging.
“We will not be intimidated by your threat to engage in mass firings,” Jeffries wrote in a post on X. “Get lost.”
Jeffries called Russ Vought, the head of OMB, a “malignant political hack.”
Schumer said in a statement that the OMB memo is an “attempt at intimidation” and predicted the “unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back.”
OMB noted that it held its first planning call with other federal agencies earlier this week to plan for a shutdown. The budget office plays point in managing federal government shutdowns, particularly planning for them ahead of time. Past budget offices have also posted shutdown contingency plans — which would outline which agency workers would stay on the job during a government shutdown and which would be furloughed — on their website, but this one has not.
The memo noted that congressional Democrats are refusing to support a clean government funding bill “due to their partisan demands,” which include an extension of enhanced health insurance subsidies set to expire at the end of the year, plus a reversal of Medicaid cuts that were included in Republicans’ big tax and spending cuts law.
“As such, it has never been more important for the Administration to be prepared for a shutdown if the Democrats choose to pursue one,” the memo reads, which also notes that the GOP’s signature law, a major tax and border spending package, gives “ample resources to ensure that many core Trump Administration priorities will continue uninterrupted.”
OMB noted that it had asked all agencies to submit their plans in case of a government shutdown by Aug. 1.
“OMB has received many, but not all, of your submissions,” it added. “Please send us your updated lapse plans ASAP.”
The state of Florida has asked the federal government to reimburse it for the costs of its “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention camp, despite a recent appeals court ruling that receiving federal funds would trigger environmental reviews that the state ignored when it hastily built the camp.
“The State of Florida submitted an application for reimbursement to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson says. “FEMA has roughly $625 million in Shelter and Services Program funds that can be allocated for this effort.”
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit lifted a lower court’s preliminary injunction shutting down the Everglades detention camp, allowing operations there to resume. It was a victory for Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, but it also complicated the state’s plan to be reimbursed by the federal government for hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses, as DeSantis repeatedly promised would happen.
The appeals court panel ruled, in response to a lawsuit by the environmental advocacy nonprofits Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity, that the detention camp is not subject to environmental impact studies required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) because it has so far been entirely paid for by the state of Florida.
“Here, no federal dollars have been expended on the construction or use of the Facility,” Judge Barbara Lagoa wrote in the majority opinion. “So, the Florida-funded and Florida-operated detention activities occurring at the Site do not conceive a ‘major federal project’ either.”
“There may come a time when [the Florida Department of Environmental Protection] applies for FEMA funding,” Lagoa continued. “If the Federal Defendants ultimately decide to approve that request and reimburse Florida for its expenditures related to the Facility, they may need to first conduct an [environmental impact statement]. But, having not yet formally ‘committed to funding that project,’ the Federal Defendants have taken no ‘major federal action’ subjecting them to the procedural requirements of NEPA.”
As the Associated Press reported Wednesday, the ruling created an apparent predicament for the state: “The state can either pass up federal reimbursement for hundreds of millions of dollars spent to build and operate the facility, or take the money and face an environmental review, which would risk halting the center’s operations,” the A.P. reported.
But Florida has already applied for such funding, according to DHS’ statement to Reason.
DHS and FEMA did not respond to requests for a copy of Florida’s application. No funds are reported to have been disbursed yet.
DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment. The Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM), which is the state agency in charge of the detention camp, responded by sending a link to a DeSantis press conference from last month.
Friends of the Everglades argues that, although no money has changed hands, the tacit agreement between the federal government and the state of Florida, and the repeated public statements by Florida and DHS officials, clearly show that the federal government has committed to pay for the project.
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Adalberto Jordan agreed, writing that “the notion that Florida decided to build the detention facility without a concrete funding commitment from the federal government is squarely contradicted by the preconstruction statements of [DHS] Secretary [Kristi] Noem and Governor DeSantis that the United States will pay for the facility.”
Friends of the Everglades says Florida’s reimbursement application only adds to the pile of evidence that the federal government has always intended to pay for the project.
“Time will prove the trial judge and Judge Jordan correct—and this evidence will support our case when we return to the trial court,” says Paul Schwiep, the lead counsel for Friends of the Everglades in its lawsuit.
Federal and Florida officials have had a tacit reimbursement agreement for months.
In a June 20 email, disclosed last month in a court filing, the Trump administration’s nominee for DHS general counsel, James Percival, wrote to the Florida Attorney General’s Office regarding Florida’s plan to detain aliens under an agreement with the federal government. “If you go forward, we will work out a method of partial reimbursement,” Percival wrote.
At a June 25 press conference, DeSantis said the federal government would fully reimburse Florida. “This is something that was requested by the federal government, and this is something that the federal government is going to fully fund,” DeSantis said. “From a state taxpayer perspective, we are implementing it…but that will be fully reimbursed by the federal government.”
Noem also said in public statements over the summer that FEMA funds would be used to reimburse Florida.
The FDEM estimated in August that a shutdown of the facility would cost it more than $218 million it had already invested.
By now, most of us who pay attention to politics have grown accustomed to tuning out the word-salad responses that former President Donald Trump frequently offers when asked a specific, policy-oriented question.
But even by Trump’s standards, the answer he gave on Thursday when asked to explain how he’d propose to lower child care costs was a doozy.
“It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about—that, because, look, child care is child care—you know, there’s something you have to have it in this country. You have to have it,” Trump began. “But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to—but they’ll get used to it very quickly—and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us.”
It goes on from there. Read the whole thing here or watch it here.
If you’re being very generous to Trump, you might conclude that he’s proposing to use tariff revenue to cover child care costs—though it’s not clear how much he’d spend or what the mechanism for redistributing that money would be. In short, what it seems Trump is promising here is a huge expansion of taxes on Americans to somehow pay for child care costs: growing government on the revenue side to pay for an expansion of government on the spending side.
Of course, it’s hard to tell exactly what he was saying there, so let’s not get bogged down in the specifics. Trump certainty isn’t.
It may be tempting to simply write this off as “Trump being Trump” and move on. But the Republican presidential nominee’s consistent inattention to the details of policymaking does matter—even if it has no bearing on the election—and the child care issue is a perfect example of why.
This sort of issue is a liability for Trump because he can’t just bluster or pander his way through it. Trump excels when he can turn complex policies into simple, partisan us-vs.-them arguments that allow him to avoid any attention on the specifics. On issues like taxes and immigration, this technique works because one party broadly wants the policy to shift in one direction, so Trump can simply promise to do the opposite—never mind the details.
But no one wants higher child care costs. Both sides want to reduce them. The argument, then, must turn on which side can offer the better plan for accomplishing that goal. As Thursday’s answer makes obvious, Trump has no such plan.
That’s a problem because Vice President Kamala Harris can offer at least the semblance of a plan—and it’s a bad one. Harris has “signaled that she plans to build on the ambitions of outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration, which sought to pour billions in taxpayer dollars into making child care and home care for elderly and disabled adults more affordable,” the Associated Press summarized last month.
Harris has not offered sufficient policy details to say exactly what she supports, but Biden’s plan mostly involved throwing more money at child care providers. In a supplemental budget request last year, for example, Biden asked Congress to approve $16 billion in additional subsidies for child care. Both Biden and Harris also support an expansion of the child tax credit—which many parents would presumably use to pay for rising child care costs.
There are a number of alternatives that a conservative presidential candidate could discuss—even if many of them depend on state and local policymakers. Ease zoning laws to allow more child care facilities to open. Eliminate foolish barriers to entry like occupational licensing laws or requirements that child care providers have college degrees. Loosen rules that require certain staff-to-child ratios. The goal of those proposals is to increase the supply of child care, which is what the country actually needs.
At the very least, a more capable candidate would explain why subsidizing demand—by redistributing more money into parents’ pockets or having taxpayers prop up providers—is a terrible way to reduce costs. Just look at what decades of similar federal subsidies have done to the cost of college! Why would you want to repeat that mistake?
But the Republican Party does not have a candidate capable of or interested in making that argument. And if the Republican presidential candidate can’t articulate supply-side alternatives and a rhetorical counterweight to costly, counterproductive Democratic proposals, then what good is he?
Again, Trump’s inability to discuss child care policy in a serious way may not affect the outcome of the election. Certainly, his lack of policy specifics did not hinder him from winning in 2016.
In the bigger picture, however, this matters. Millions of Americans are worried about soaring child care costs. For the next two months, they will hear lots of bad ideas from Harris’ campaign about how to allegedly fix those problems. Many won’t seek out alternatives, and they will come away from this election cycle with the idea that more subsidies and more spending are the only things that can be done, and the question is which party will be more effective at delivering those things.
As a result, child care costs will continue to rise, the government will get more expensive, and the efforts to solve both those problems will face a steeper climb.
The Republican National Committee just released its 2024 platform. While calling it a platform is a stretch, the list of bullet points gives an idea of what the potential next Trump administration’s goals are. Here’s one issue that should be front and center: End inflation and make America affordable again.
To be sure, “make America more affordable” would be a great slogan and a great objective. It’s similar to what many have called an “abundance agenda.” While there is plenty to dislike in a platform that at times feels unserious and destructive, this part I like.
Abundance isn’t achieved by the same old subsidies or tax breaks for special interests, price controls, or spending loads of taxpayer money on transfer payments. It’s achieved by freeing up the supply side of our economy. That means freeing producers and innovators from excessive regulatory obstacles and heavy tax burdens (including tariffs) so they can provide more of what Americans need.
The Trump administration platform assures us it will move in this direction. For instance, it wants to increase America’s dominance as an energy producer, which will only be achieved through a deregulation agenda. Apart from counterproductive tax incentives for first-time homeowners, it expresses a commitment to lowering housing costs through deregulation.
The platform states it will “cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations” as well as “end the Socialist Green New Deal.” I assume that means ending the expensive subsidies and tax breaks in the Inflation Reduction Act. Great idea, but get ready to hear all the recipients of these handouts cry that they won’t be able to do what they were already doing before being given the subsidies.
A deregulation agenda would serve the Republicans’ goal of boosting manufacturing much better than tariffs, which former President Donald Trump continues to love despite overwhelming evidence that they don’t do what he claims. Most tariffs raise the prices of inputs used by American firms, including manufacturing, to produce outputs that serve their customers.
Something similar could be said about Republicans’ swipes at immigrants. Fewer immigrants will create labor supply shortages, hurt manufacturing, and slow the economy.
Still, even with their disastrous trade and immigration agenda and the many contradictory goals espoused by this platform, implementing the deregulatory part of the agenda will make some strides at freeing the supply side and hence lowering prices. Indeed, President Joe Biden has not only maintained many of Trump’s tariffs, but he’s added some of its own. He’s also systematically favored subsidizing the demand for certain things—nudging customers to buy what he wants them to buy—while taking actions that restrict supply. That’s a recipe for affordability failure.
But as far as affordability goes, I’m less optimistic about the prospect of the next administration ending inflation. That’s because Trump and other Republicans are firmly embracing fiscal irresponsibility and excessive debt. The platform contains no mention of a plan to get government debt under control. Instead, it pledges to “fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age.”
Many voters love hearing this promise. But maintaining these two objectively underfinanced programs will inevitably explode the debt burden over the next 30 years. In the entire history of the United States so far, Uncle Sam has accumulated roughly $34 trillion in debt. Under the Trump plan, the government would need to borrow another $124 trillion for these programs alone.
Leaving aside the question of who will lend us all this money when foreign buyers are already scaling back purchases of U.S. Treasuries, remember that most of the inflation we’ve recently suffered is the product of massive Biden administration spending on top of the COVID-19 spending without any plan to pay for it. As such, announcing that the U.S. will simply go on another borrowing spree sends a poor signal, and it might even increase inflation.
This is made more important because Trump wants to make permanent the tax cuts that are set to expire after 2025, end taxes on tips, and more. If Congress and the president do this without any offsetting spending reductions, it will add at least another $4 trillion in debt over 10 years. With more inflationary fuel, we could easily see the Federal Reserve raise interest rates again, making borrowing money even more expensive than it already is.
The bottom line is that Trump’s deregulatory agenda could have a shot at lowering some prices. But it will only be a game-changer if he becomes serious about fiscal responsibility. Right now, he isn’t, so I wouldn’t count on it.
Last week, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked me to moderate what he called “The Real Debate.”
Kennedy was angry with CNN because it wouldn’t let him join its Trump-Biden debate.
His people persuaded Elon Musk to carry his Real Debate on X, formerly Twitter. They asked me to give RFK Jr. the same questions, with the same time limits.
I agreed, hoping to hear some good new ideas.
I didn’t.
As you know, President Joe Biden slept, and former President Donald Trump lied. Well, OK, Biden lied at least nine times, too, even by CNN’s count.
Kennedy was better.
But not much.
He did acknowledge that our government’s deficit spending binge is horrible. He said he’d cut military spending. He criticized unscientific COVID-19 lockdowns and said nice words about school choice.
But he, too, dodged questions, blathered on past time limits, and pushed big government nonsense like, “Every million dollars we spend on child care creates 22 jobs.”
Give me a break.
Independence Day is this week.
As presidential candidates promise to subsidize flying cars (Trump), free community college tuition (Biden), and “affordable” housing via 3 percent government-backed bonds (Kennedy), I think about how bewildered and horrified the Founding Fathers would be by such promises.
On the Fourth of July almost 250 years ago, they signed the Declaration of Independence, marking the birth of our nation.
They did not want life dominated by politicians. They wanted a society made up of free individuals. They believed every human being has “unalienable rights” to life, liberty, and (justly acquired) property.
The blueprints created by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution gradually created the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world.
Before 1776, people thought there was a “divine right” of kings and nobles to rule over them.
America succeeded because the Founders rejected that belief.
In the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason wrote, “All power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.”
By contrast, Kennedy and Biden make promises that resemble the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” U.N. bureaucrats say every person deserves “holidays with pay…clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”
The Founders made it clear that governments should be limited. They didn’t think we had a claim on our neighbor’s money. We shouldn’t try to force them to pay for our food, clothing, housing, prescription drugs, college tuition.
They believe you have the right to be left alone to pursue happiness as you see fit.
For a while, the U.S. government stayed modest. Politicians mostly let citizens decide our own paths, choose where to live, what jobs to take, and what to say.
There were a small number of “public servants.” But they weren’t our bosses.
Patrick Henry declared: “The governing persons are the servants of the people.”
Yet now there are 23 million government employees. Some think they are in charge of everything.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), pushing her Green New Deal, declared herself “the boss.”
The Biden administration wants to decide what kind of car you should drive.
During the pandemic, politicians ordered people to stay home, schools to shut down and businesses to close.
Then, as often happens in “Big Government World,” people harmed by government edicts ask politicians to compensate them.
After governments banned Fourth of July fireworks, the American Pyrotechnics Association requested “relief in the next Senate Covid package to address the unique and specific costs to this industry,” reportedThe New York Times. “The industry hopes Congress will earmark $175 million for it in another stimulus bill.”
Today the politically connected routinely lobby passionately to get bigger chunks of your money.
For some of you, the last straw was when the administration demanded you inject a chemical into your body.
When some resisted vaccinations, Biden warned, “Our patience is wearing thin.”
His patience? Who does he think he is? My father? My king?
At least Kennedy doesn’t say things like that. But he does say absurd things. In a few weeks I’ll release my sit-down interview with him, and you can decide for yourself whether he’s a good candidate.
This Fourth of July, remember Milton Friedman’s question: “How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?”
COPYRIGHT 2024 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.
Watch The Real Debate as it was meant to be with all three candidates — Kennedy, Biden, Trump.#TheRealDebate has already been seen more than 11 million times. pic.twitter.com/W27pXIOLkd
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 30, 2024
In this week’s TheReason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Nick Gillespie welcome back sudden special guest (and former Roundtable host) Andrew Heaton! The editors reflect on President Biden’s recent State of the Union address and look ahead to the unavoidable slog of eight more months of election coverage.
04:11—President Biden’s feisty, yet empty, State of the Union address
Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.
Check out Andrew Heaton’s podcast The Political Orphanagehere.
Today’s sponsor:
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“I have a history of being the only vote that was a ‘no,’” says Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.). “I’ve developed some trust with my constituents on those lone votes.”
In the second episode of Reason‘s new video podcast Just Asking Questions, Massie joined hosts Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe in mid-December to talk about his recent votes against aid to Ukraine and Israel and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Reform and Reauthorization Act, as well as his attempt to force an in-person congressional vote on a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief bill in March 2020, a move that prompted former President Donald Trump to label Massie “a third-rate grandstander.”
Reason: In light of the vote on the FISA Reform and Reauthorization Act and the reauthorization of Section 702, which essentially allows the government to surveil communications between American citizens and foreign targets without a warrant, there is a push to attach it to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) with a temporary extension. What is at stake for Americans?
Massie: We’re not trying to eliminate the FISA 702 program. It was established to allow our intelligence agencies to spy on foreigners without a warrant. In order to qualify to be spied on without a warrant, you have to be outside of the country and you have to be not an American citizen. If you’re inside the country or if you’re an American citizen outside of the country, you can’t be spied on by this program. Sounds great, right? But we’ve got 250,000 people on that list that we’re collecting information on.
If you talk to a businessperson in France, for instance, your emails may get caught up in this data collection. What they’ve been doing is going into this giant ball of data and they put in your name and search it without a warrant, without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. They are using this not to investigate suspects, but to create suspects.
Let’s say that you are at a protest and they develop some nexus. They say, “Well, we think these protesters were inspired by Russia. We’re just going to run all the protesters’ names through this database.” Now, even though the intel community doesn’t concede that they need a warrant for this, they’ve admitted that they violated their own protocols hundreds of thousands of times when they searched for U.S. persons’ data in this haystack. They say, “Well, it was created legally, so we don’t need a warrant to go search it.”
There are two proposals to reauthorize this program. By the way, the only chance you ever get to reform these programs is when they expire. So it’s important that they do expire occasionally, and this one expires in January. In the Judiciary Committee, which [Rep.] Jim Jordan [R–Ohio] chairs, and on which I serve, we’ve marked up a bill that would require them to get a warrant. It would create criminal penalties for people in the executive branch who abuse the program. Because there’s never any culpability or blowback for anybody that’s abused this program.
And then the Intel Committee has created a bill that is less than ideal. It doesn’t have a warrant requirement. It doesn’t have many of the reporting requirements back to Congress that the Judiciary bill has. In fact, it expands their ability to collect information. For instance, if you had free Wi-Fi at a café, that service provider would be treated like Google or Verizon now and they would have to create a direct pipeline to the intel agencies for any of the communications that go through that.
So you’ve got two proposals out there, and we’re running out of time.
In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about inappropriate government surveillance a decade ago, there were some lonely dissenters, but most just rubber-stamped this stuff. Now, it seems there’s more resistance, possibly influenced by the way FISA was used against the Trump administration. Do you feel the political tides have shifted to the advantage of people who care about privacy?
The tides haven’t just shifted; the stars have aligned. We’ve never had a chairman of either the Intel Committee or the Judiciary Committee who made reforming this program one of their priorities. So with Jim Jordan, we’re very lucky to have him as the chairman of this committee. One of his signature agendas is to get this reform because we have seen abuses that have been used against President Trump.
A lot of conservatives have woken up to the fact that this program is being used against them. You have liberals who are upset about the program. Obviously, the FBI’s using this against Black Lives Matter as well.
So you do have this coalition of the left and the right. It used to be a coalition of a dozen people. It was me and [former Rep.] Justin Amash [L–Mich.], [Rep.] Zoe Lofgren [D–Calif.], and [former Rep.] Tulsi Gabbard [D–Hawaii] who were concerned about this. We used to come together and we would offer amendments to try to fix this in the funding bills. We would try to defund some of this stuff, which is a really blunt instrument. It’s a lot easier to write legislation that affects the laws than it is to just defund something. And they would pat us on the head and say, “Well, you know, we appreciate the sentiment, but this isn’t the time or place to do what you’re doing. And you shouldn’t be mucking around with the funding.” But now is the time and place: The program is expiring. We’ve got a chairman who’s sympathetic to the cause. This reported out of the Judiciary Committee 35–2. There were only two dissenters.
During his recent visit to Washington, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sought more U.S. funding to support Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion. There’s also a complex foreign policy situation in the Middle East right now between Israel and Hamas. You have called funding Ukraine and Zelenskyy “economically illiterate and morally deficient.” Why oppose this form of funding?
The economic illiteracy is in reference to a letter that the White House sent to the House of Representatives. In two or three of the paragraphs of the letter, they espouse the virtues of spending money with the military-industrial complex and sending that to Ukraine as a job creation program. That it would reinvigorate our military-industrial complex. You’ve got to believe in the broken window fallacy to think this will be an economic stimulus for the United States.
Meanwhile, the moral deficiency comes from some of the senators who have said that this war is a great deal for America because all we have to do is supply the weapons and Ukraine supplies the soldiers, and we’re grinding down the Russian army. We’re degrading their capacity to do this elsewhere or to commit war against us. The problem with that is the number of people who are dying. Zelenskyy allegedly told the senators that he’s raising the draft age to 40 and admitted that they are running out of soldiers either through attrition on the battlefield or from people who’ve defected and left the country.
You would think if this were a war about the existence of Ukraine and protecting a democracy and such a fine government that people would sign up, would volunteer to fight for their country. But the reality is that hundreds of thousands of them who had the means and the money got out of the country. Some are dying, trying to escape over mountains and through rivers to get out of the country. And far too many have died on the battlefield. We can keep supplying them with weapons. We can keep depleting our treasure. But they’re going to run out of fighting-age males pretty soon.
Regarding individuals leaving Ukraine, do you take that as an indictment of Ukraine’s democratic system or a perception that the war is unwinnable?
I think it’s both. They lived in a country where they know that bribery and corruption are part of the culture and the current government isn’t immune to that. If you’re fighting for your country, that’s one thing. But fighting for the government that’s in charge of your country is another thing. I believe that’s part of it. Obviously, self-preservation is going to be part of it as well.
When it’s over, there’s going to have to be some negotiated peace settlement. Nobody, I think, believes Crimea is going to go back to Ukraine. So why spend all the lives when the lines are going to be where they were when it started? Realism is a third factor in that.
You’ve been on the lonely end, certainly on the Republican side, of several votes pertaining to Israel, including House Resolution 771, which is entitled, “Standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.” Could you explain your stance on Israel, where you’re coming from, and what you think some of these critics might be missing about your position?
Today, we’re going to take our 19th virtue signal vote here in Congress. I guess I got off on the wrong foot early and have been voting consistently ever since. The title of that bill is wonderful. I have no disagreement with the title of that bill, but there are four or five pages that go after that title.
The first objection I had was that there is an open-ended pledge of military support for Israel. We never declare wars anymore. The administration just kind of goes and does it. And Congress keeps funding it, but they find the imprimatur for their activity right there in these resolutions. The open-ended guarantee of support for that war that’s contained in the text of that bill, but not the title, could have implied boots on the ground. And that may be the only vote we get to take in Congress on whether we’re going to do that or not. So, number one, I don’t support that notion.
Number two, in that resolution they mentioned Iran. In the very first resolution, they’re already trying to expand the war and incorporate as much of the Middle East as they can. There’s some people that just can’t wait to attack Iran, and they want to use this as the nexus to get there. So that was in the resolution, a condemnation of Iran. I think we should be trying to constrain the conflict, not to expand it in the first resolution of support that we passed.
Part of that resolution wanted stronger sanctions on Iran. I don’t support sanctions, never voted to sanction a sovereign country in the 11 years that I’ve been in Congress. I think it leads to war. Sanctions actually create crimes only for U.S. citizens, because we’re not going to put somebody in jail in another country who trades with Iran. What we’re proposing to do when we pass a sanction is to make a federal law that would result in the imprisonment of a U.S. citizen who trades with Iran. And it hurts the people who are in the country. I think it actually edges us closer to war instead of getting us out of war. Even though I support Israel and I condemned Hamas, I did that on my own. I put out a statement. I support Israel’s right to defend itself and I condemn these attacks. But that wasn’t enough.
You’ve taken heat for what you would describe as a “virtue signal” bill that is essentially the House reaffirming the state of Israel’s right to exist and recognizing that denying Israel’s right to exist is a form of antisemitism. Where are you coming from on these sorts of bills that aren’t directly tied to any sort of military aid?
I recognize Israel’s right to exist. I have to preface all of this stuff with that because people would imply from a vote that I don’t. But when they passed that, I said, “You’re basically saying that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” And people argued with me about that.
What’s interesting is the next week they passed almost the same resolution and they replaced Israel’s right to exist with Zionism. Maybe I’m just giving them clues for how to write their bills more directly because the next resolution said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. There are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who disagree with that statement. In fact, [Rep.] Jerrold Nadler [D–N.Y.], who’s the most senior member of Congress who’s Jewish, went to the floor and gave a five-minute speech, which is a long speech in the House of Representatives, on why that’s untrue to say that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
There are a lot of people who are antisemitic who are also against the state of Israel, but you can’t equate the two. I think these 19 votes, after today, are sort of part of the war effort for Israel to make it hard for anybody in the United States to criticize what they’re doing.
Every two or three days here in Congress, we’re taking these votes. A lot of what’s in the resolution is just obvious and doesn’t need to be stated. It’s kind of like Black Lives Matter. You have to say “black lives matter.” They’re doing the equivalent with Israel. Now Israel matters. I agree that Israel matters, but we don’t have to take all these votes. And some of them are going into campuses and trying to limit free speech by withholding federal money if you allow things that are considered antisemitic.
I’ve been called antisemitic for merely not supporting the money that goes to Israel. [The American Israel Public Affairs Committee] spent $90,000 in my district running ads implying that I was antisemitic, then in a tweet said that I was antisemitic for not voting for the $14.3 billion to go to Israel, even though I’ve not voted for foreign aid to go anywhere.
You have a reputation as the guy who’s willing to take the unpopular vote. One of the prime examples of that is back during the depths of COVID-19, in March 2020, when everyone was pushing for a $2.2 trillion COVID relief bill, including the president. It was you who said, “If we’re going to have a $2 trillion vote here, let’s follow the Constitution and have everyone come back to D.C. and actually do it in person.”
President Trump’s response to that was, “Looks like a third-rate grandstander named Rep. Thomas Massie, a congressman from, unfortunately, a truly great state, Kentucky, wants to vote against the new Save Our Workers bill in Congress. He just wants publicity. He can’t stop it.” He goes on to say that “the Republicans should win the House, but they should kick out Thomas Massie.” What was that like having the Eye of Sauron on you for insisting on an in-person vote in March 2020?
I’ll have to write a book someday. Those tweets happened about 60 seconds after a phone call ended between me and President Trump, where he basically burned my ear off, screaming at me for probably three minutes and said he was coming at me, he was going to take me down. That’s a sobering proposition when you’ve got a primary election eight weeks away and you’ve been trying to keep the president out of your race. The person running against you says you don’t support the president enough. The president had a 95 percent approval rating among the primary voters who were going to vote in my election. But I just stood strong. I said, listen, if truckers and nurses and grocery store workers are showing up for work, then Congress should show up for work too. And that was, I think, an unassailable message. Ultimately, I was just trying to get people on record.
The reason I was trying to get people on record is because I knew this was one of the worst votes in history and nobody was going to be accountable for it. Here we are three years later, and every bad thing that I said would happen as a result of doing that has happened. And even my colleagues here in Congress, a lot of them admit to me that they were wrong about that. They won’t say it too loudly lest anybody hear it.
The reporters came up to me as I walked out of the chamber that day and said, “Your own president just called you a third-rate grandstander. What do you have to say?” And I said, “I was deeply insulted. I’m at least second-rate.”
How much COVID policy remorse is there among your colleagues in Congress?
Not enough. Not nearly enough. The policy isn’t just the spending, the vaccine mandates, the shutting down of our economy, the compulsory masking, the way people were treated like cattle. There should be far more remorse. But frankly, that’s a reflection of the voters as well. If you poll this, most people have moved on. Even a year ago, most people had moved on and it wasn’t in the top five issues that people care about in any congressional district.
Look at [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis. That was part of his signature issue. He most famously opposed a lot of this COVID nonsense after it became obvious what we were dealing with. He rode that wave and he was polling better than Trump. But I think people have moved on and they’ve got other issues to think about now. So have my colleagues. I think it’s really unfortunate. I wished that I had been able to get that recorded vote that day. We’d have a lot more people who wouldn’t be back here in Congress perpetrating bad ideas like FISA.
You were elected during the era of the Tea Party’s emphasis on reining in government spending: “We can’t have the money printer constantly printing forever. We have to be prudent because the bill always comes due.” Do you think that message has any hopes of having any sort of revival in the coming years, especially given the runaway inflation that we’ve seen? Is it a lost cause?
Let me assign a 95 percent probability to that last proposition. I’m here with a 5 percent chance that we can save it. And in the 30 percent chance that if it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I can still be here and have some credibility to put it back together.
I think what’s starting to curb the appetite for spending and bring some realism into the discussion is the only thing that was ever going to curb our appetite for spending, and that is our creditors are starting to balk. The rates at which the government can borrow money now aren’t what we want them to be. When we go out to do an auction or a sale for treasuries or bonds, what we’re finding is the appetite isn’t there, even at 4.5 percent. To get a guaranteed 4.5 percent return on your money from the government backed by the U.S. military? That’s not enough to loan that money to the government. They want 5 percent. The private sector and the other countries, the sovereign funds, usually have the appetite for our debt—when they’re losing their appetite, that’s a sign that things are going south.
I wear this debt clock that I built in Congress to remind people of it. One side effect of me wearing this is that I’ve noticed the rate at which the debt is increasing is going up. For the math nerds, that’s the second derivative. Today, the debt per second is an average of $78,000. I don’t think people realize. It feels like we’re going over Niagara Falls right now. The rate of these bad things happening is increasing now.
This interview has been condensed and edited for style and clarity.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline “Against The ‘Virtue Signal’ Vote”.
Higher levels of immigration are boosting America’s economy and will reduce the deficit by about $1 trillion over the next decade.
In its semi-annual forecast of the country’s fiscal and economic conditions, released this week, the Congressional Budget Office slightly lowered its expectations for this year’s federal budget deficit. The CBO now expects the federal government to run a $1.5 trillion deficit, down from the $1.6 trillion deficit previously forecast.
That reduction is due in part to higher-than-expected economic growth, which the CBO attributes to “more people working.” The labor force has grown by 5.2 million people in the past year, “mostly because of higher net immigration.”
More immigrants will also help reduce future budget deficits—which are expected to average $2 trillion annually over the next 10 years, meaning any help is desperately needed.
The changes in the labor force over the past year will translate into $7 trillion in greater economic output over the next decade, the CBO estimates, “and revenues will be greater by about $1 trillion than they would have been otherwise.”
“The higher growth rate of potential GDP over the next five years stems mainly from rapid growth in the labor force, reflecting a surge in the rate of net immigration,” concludes the CBO, which expects higher than normal levels of immigration through at least 2026.
Of course, this isn’t exactly rocket science. More workers equals more economic output and more growth, which in turn leads to more tax revenue to help offset some of the federal government’s seemingly insatiable appetite for spending. Sometimes economics can be quite confusing, but that formula is about as straightforward as can be.
America’s current population is trending older, which strains old-age entitlement programs and means fewer productive workers in the economy. Thankfully, that’s not true of the country’s immigrants: “A large proportion of recent and projected immigrants are expected to be 25 to 54 years old—adults in their prime working years,” the CBO reports.
Unfortunately, the very same Congress that bears most of the responsibility for the federal government’s poor fiscal state is also a major hurdle to increasing legal immigration that could help solve some of that fiscal mess. This week’s stunningly fast collapse of a proposed immigration bill is only the latest example.
Meanwhile, the CBO’s assessment of how immigration has boosted economic growth further underscores the problems with how the CBO assesses the economic impact of immigration proposals. As Reasonreported last week, the CBO is systematically underestimating the benefits of immigration when it scores legislation because Congress does not allow it to use a more sophisticated method of projecting how immigrants contribute to the economy. This is hardly the sole reason why comprehensive immigration reform struggles to get passed, but it certainly does not help.
Indeed, this arrangement amounts to the CBO only being able to account for economic growth created by immigrants who are already here—but then being prohibited from assuming that future immigrants will similarly help grow America’s economic pie. That’s just silly.
With a national debt of over $34 trillion and another $20 trillion in borrowing expected over the next decade, Congress needs a plan for addressing the budget deficit that goes well beyond simply increasing immigration.
Still, it is impossible to deny that greater levels of immigration are an economic win for the country—and for taxpayers who have to shoulder the burden of federal borrowing. Anyone saying otherwise is not being serious.
Javier Milei campaigned with a chainsaw, promising to cut the size of government.
Argentina’s leftists had so clogged the country’s economic arteries with regulations that what once was one of the world’s richest countries is now one of the poorest.
Inflation is more than 200 percent.
People save their whole lives—and then find their savings worth nearly nothing.
Milei understands that government can’t create wealth.
He surprised diplomats at the World Economic Forum this month by saying, “The state is the problem!”
He spoke up for capitalism: “Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state…. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution.”
Go, Milei! I wish current American politicians talked that way.
In the West, young people turn socialist. In Argentina, they live under socialist policies. They voted for Milei.
Sixty-nine percent of voters under 25 voted for him. That helped him win by a whopping 3 million votes.
He won promising to reverse “decades of decadence.” He told the Economic Forum, “If measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade, and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty.”
Right.
Poor countries demonstrate that again and again.
The media say Milei will never pass his reforms, and leftists may yet stop him.
But already, “He was able to repeal rent controls, price controls,” says economist Daniel Di Martino in my new video. He points out that Milei already “eliminated all restrictions on exports and imports, all with one sign of a pen.”
“He can just do that without Congress?” I ask.
“The president of Argentina has a lot more power than the president of the United States.”
Milei also loosened rules limiting where airlines can fly.
“Now [some] air fares are cheaper than bus fares!” says Di Martino.
He scrapped laws that say, “Buy in Argentina.” I point out that America has “Buy America” rules.
“It only makes poor people poorer because it increases costs!” Di Martino replies, “Why shouldn’t Argentinians be able to buy Brazilian pencils or Chilean grapes?”
“To support Argentina,” I push back.
“Guess what?” Says Di Martino, “Not every country is able to produce everything at the lowest cost. Imagine if you had to produce bananas in America.”
Argentina’s leftist governments tried to control pretty much everything.
“The regulations were such that everything not explicitly legal was illegal,” laughs Di Martino. “Now…everything not illegal is legal.”
One government agency Milei demoted was a “Department for Women, Gender and Diversity.” DiMartino says that reminds him of Venezuela’s Vice Ministry for Supreme Social Happiness. “These agencies exist just so government officials can hire their cronies.”
Cutting government jobs and subsidies for interest groups is risky for vote-seeking politicians. There are often riots in countries when politicians cut subsidies. Sometimes politicians get voted out. Or jailed.
“What’s incredible about Milei,” notes Di Martino, “is that he was able to win on the promise of cutting subsidies.”
That is remarkable. Why would Argentinians vote for cuts?
“Argentinians are fed up with the status quo,” replies Di Martino.
Milei is an economist. He named his dogs after Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Lucas, all libertarian economists.
I point out that most Americans don’t know who those men were.
“The fact that he’s naming his dogs after these famous economists,” replies Di Martino, “shows that he’s really a nerd. It’s a good thing to have an economics nerd president of a country.”
“What can Americans learn from Argentina?”
“Keep America prosperous. So we never are in the spot of Argentina in the first place. That requires free markets.”
Yes.
Actually, free markets plus rule of law. When people have those things, prosperity happens.
