Michael F. Cannon Pharmaceutical giant Merck is suing Medicare, claiming new drug‐​pricing reforms that Congress enacted in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act coerce the company into selling its wares to the program at below‐​market prices. In the Wall Street Journal, attorney Daniel Troy opines that the new rules violate the First and Fifth Amendments. Big, if true. What’s really happening here is that Merck is making tons of money off the taxpayers and wants to keep the gravy train rolling. So the company is offering whatever bad arguments it can to prevent any reductions in its Medicare su ..read more

Jack Solowey and Jennifer J. Schulp While the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) leans into regulating crypto by enforcement, lawmakers in the House are looking to lay a foundation for rationalizing U.S. crypto policy—releasing a Digital Asset Market Structure Discussion Draft last Friday and holding a pair of hearings this past Tuesday and next. The Discussion Draft, while in early days, gets the big question right: it would determine whether crypto tokens are securities or commodities largely based on whether the networks over which they operate are decentralized. In add ..read more

Clark Neily Reports that Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges of mishandling classified documents, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy raise a host of mind‐​boggling questions, including whether it is possible for someone to run for president while incarcerated, whether a newly elected president can pardon himself, and whether President Biden will, in order to avoid the spectacle of the federal government prosecuting a declared presidential candidate during an election, pardon Trump preemptively. Other questions include whether prosecutors can induce Trump to—as ..read more

Colleen Hroncich Oklahoma parents will soon have an easier time affording the educational options that work best for their children. On May 25, Governor Kevin Stitt signed legislation creating the Oklahoma Parental Choice Tax Credit Program. Previously, Oklahomans had access to vouchers for students with disabilities and tax credit scholarships that were limited to students who met income guidelines or were assigned to a lower performing public school. The new tax credit program, which will take effect in 2024, is different from the existing tax credit scholarship program. With tax credit ..read more

Thomas A. Berry In 2020, Netflix began streaming the French film Cuties. The film follows an 11‐​year‐​old Senegalese immigrant, Amy, torn between her family’s conservative culture and a more progressive French society. In the film, Amy is shown joining a pre‐​teen dance group (the “Cuties”), whose sexualized routines are heavily influenced by social media. The film’s message is critical of the influence of social media on young girls, but the film itself attracted significant controversy for its scenes depicting the dance group’s provocative performances. There is room for reasonabl ..read more

Neal McCluskey In Iowa, Holy Family Catholic Schools announced that they would be raising prices 10 to 40 percent, depending on a families’ relationship to the parish, given the state’s new education savings account program. In Florida, St. Paul Catholic School announced an increase in tuition for parish members from $6,000 to $10,000, and from $7,000 to $12,000 for nonmembers. Both generated consternation from school choice opponents, who decried “gouging” and a “cash grab.” Concern about aid translating into skyrocketing prices is well founded—just look at higher education. It is not, h ..read more

Jeffrey A. Singer I have written often about the so‐​called Iron Law of Prohibition: “The harder the law enforcement, the harder the drug.” Prohibition incentivizes purveyors of the prohibited substance to develop more potent forms that can be smuggled more easily in smaller packages and subdivided into more units to sell. As I explained to members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Government Surveillance in March, doubling down on law enforcement was largely responsible for fentanyl replacing heroin as the dominant black market opioid, and will only serve to fuel the devel ..read more

Patrick G. Eddington I think it’s fair to question whether or not the current House Oversight Committee inquiry into allegations against the President and his son, Hunter Biden (with respect to questionable business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company), is the kind of issue the committee should be spending its time on. It’s not fair to question the legitimacy of the subpoena and related document demands the committee has made of the FBI for an FD-1023 Confidential Human Source (CHS) report allegedly related to the Biden matter. You can find an example of a previously released FB ..read more

Adam N. Michel and Scott Lincicome In the last few years, Congress has authorized as much as $2.1 trillion in domestic subsidies for preferred industries such as steel, semiconductors, and electric vehicles—a flood of taxpayer cash that supporters have cheered for boosting U.S. manufacturing and the economy more broadly. As Cato scholars and others have long cautioned, however, a proper assessment of industrial policies’ efficacy requires considering far more than a simple correlation between new government spending and new private investments, jobs, and products. Among the necessary ..read more

Chelsea Follett Reading the news or listening to politicians and pundits speak, one could easily get the impression that global inequality is getting worse. But is the widely held belief that the world is becoming less equal true, or is it mistaken? The overwhelming majority of long‐​term trends regarding living standards—ranging from rising life expectancy to declining rates of poverty and hunger—show considerable improvement, even accounting for recent pandemic‐​related setbacks. You can explore the evidence for yourself on websites such as Human​Progress​.org. Have those improvements been w ..read more