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Neal McCluskey

Last week my new Policy Analysis on public school library holdings was published. A major reason I wrote it was that it felt to me that over the last few years Americans had been expending a huge amount of energy on books challenged in libraries while basically ignoring how books are selected.

To check if my feeling was amiss, CEF’s crack research team looked at all of the “reading material” conflicts on the Public Schooling Battle Map, determining how many focus on items already stocked or assigned in schools, and how many are about materials not yet acquired. The former swamp the latter: 556 conflicts are over material already in schools versus five district fights over acquisitions – and those mainly about processes, not specific books or other items – and twelve state conflicts over legislation prohibiting certain acquisitions.

Note that battles categorized as “curriculum” were not counted, but many probably would incorporate prohibiting books. Also, if proposed district policies examining acquisitions led to no disagreements, we did not catalog them. Finally, as always with the Map, if conflicts occurred but were not reported in the media, or were reported but escaped our notice, they are not on the Map.

So these numbers are likely rough approximations of what’s happening, but they support my basic conclusion: People have been focusing much more on challenging stocked books than on possible acquisitions.

This seems illogical. People should want to know what is being purchased, and why, in the first place, not wait to see what eventually hits shelves and then fight over it. At the very least, it is a waste of money to buy books only to see them removed.

But there is a major reason people focus on the back end instead of the front. As my paper discusses, the acquisition process is opaque. It is often unclear who is in charge of selecting books – school boards? superintendents? librarians? – and how they decide which books are worthy and which are not. Acquisition processes have also rarely been examined by researchers.

If ever there were a time to start assessing acquisitions, this is it. Based on the Battle Map collection, the last three years have seen big increases in conflicts, likely spurred by overall frustration with the COVID-19 pandemic that struck in 2020, as well as ongoing demographic, social, and political transformations. Notably, the number of battles in 2020 was small, but that was because the national education debate was dominated by how to attend school at all.

Of course, what these battles emphasize is that no one system can satisfy all people with diverse values and needs. Diving deeper into the acquisitions process would likely highlight the same, inescapable reality.

Colin Grabow

It has become conventional wisdom among many in Washington that a once‐​vaunted US manufacturing sector has become a shell of its former self. Language used by members of the commentariat and politicians to describe the state of US industry is often bleak, sometimes bordering on the apocalyptic. In August, for example, columnist David Brooks flatly stated “we don’t make things anymore.” Talk of rescuing the so‐​called “Rust Belt” and American manufacturing have been staples of recent presidential campaigns, and once in office President Biden and President Trump have both pushed a spate of protectionist measures to resuscitate the allegedly beleaguered sector.

But aside from the economic harm inflicted by such actions, the underlying premise that American manufacturing needs saving doesn’t square with the facts. As I explain in a new essay, reports of the sector’s demise are greatly exaggerated—if not entirely fictitious.

Simply put, the United States remains a manufacturing powerhouse. In 2020 it was the world’s fourth‐​largest steel producer and in 2021 was the second‐​largest automaker and largest aerospace exporter. Accounting for nearly 16 percent of global manufacturing output in 2021—second only to China, which has four times the population of the United States—the US had a greater share than Japan, Germany, and South Korea combined. By itself, the US manufacturing sector would constitute the world’s eighth‐​largest economy.

Such facts perhaps come as a surprise to Americans accustomed to regularly purchasing consumer products that are made overseas. If the United States is such a manufacturing stronghold, they might reasonably wonder, where is all the stuff that American firms make? The answer: all around us. US manufacturers make many of the products we use, ranging from the gasoline in our cars (not to mention the cars themselves) to the sophisticated medical instruments in our hospitals to the advanced commercial aircraft that transport us to destinations around the globe.

Even many of the products Americans consume from overseas still have a considerable US influence. Nike shoes, for example, are produced abroad while design work takes place at its headquarters in Oregon. Similarly, numerous designers are employed by Apple in the United States as a key part of the production process for devices sold worldwide. Such highly skilled work may not take place on the assembly line, but manufacturing would be impossible without it.

Beyond our everyday shopping experiences, perceptions of US manufacturing decline may also be due to the declining number of Americans who work in factories. From a peak of 19.5 million workers in 1979—22 percent of the nonfarm workforce—manufacturing employment has dropped to approximately 13 million today and just 8.3 percent of nonfarm workers. But employment is not the same as output—far from it. While manufacturing employment has declined by about one‐​third, output is only slightly off its record high. Manufacturing’s value‐​added, meanwhile, last year stood at an all‐​time high.

This ability to produce more stuff with fewer workers reflects the incredible productivity of US workers. Measuring manufacturing value added on a per‐​worker basis shows Americans to be the world leader at over $141,000. That’s 45 percent higher than second‐​place South Korea and over seven times that of workers in China. Such high productivity helps explain why manufacturing attracted over $55 billion in foreign direct investment last year—more than any other sector.

Along with higher productivity, reduced manufacturing employment reflects Americans’ increased appetite for services over stuff. Instead of buying proportionately more manufactured products as they become more prosperous, Americans are spending their money on services and experiences such as dining out, travel, and entertainment.

This is hardly a uniquely American phenomenon. Across a range of highly developed countries the same pattern holds, with countries seeing less manufacturing employment as they become richer. Germany, a country long synonymous with manufacturing prowess, has seen its share of workers employed in the sector nearly halved from approximately 37 percent in 1973 to barely 19 percent as of 2016. Japan, another long‐​time manufacturing titan, had just 16 percent of its workers employed in manufacturing as of 2016.

It’s not clear that this should be a source of distress given the relatively low wages of such employment. As a 2018 Congressional Research Service report points out, “…production and nonsupervisory workers in manufacturing, on average, earn significantly less per hour than nonsupervisory workers in industries that do not employ large numbers of teenagers, that have average workweeks of similar length, and that have similar levels of worker education.” Other sources comport with this finding, as I note in my new essay:

A senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis pointed out that, while the average manufacturing worker earned $0.50 more per hour than the average private‐​sector worker in 2010, by 2022 the average manufacturing worker was earning $1.12 less. This finding comports with a 2019 Bureau of Labor Statistics report noting that in 1990, production workers in manufacturing had hourly earnings approximately 6 percent greater than those of production or nonsupervisory workers in the total private sector ($10.78 versus $10.20) but that by 2018, such workers were earning about 5 percent less ($21.54 versus $22.71). In addition, a 2022 paper found that the wage premium for manufacturing jobs has disappeared and noted that manufacturing wages rank in the bottom half of all jobs in the United States.

Of course, none of this is to suggest that manufacturing employment is somehow bad or that the sector should be looked down on, but those calling for a manufacturing renaissance and to put more Americans to work in factories should perhaps first take a deep breath.

This is also not to say that the state of manufacturing cannot be improved. While there is certainly no reason for doom‐​mongering, plenty of scope exists for eliminating obstacles that hinder the sector’s growth and competitiveness. Removing tariffs on steel and aluminum, for example, would boost the fortunes of manufacturers that rely on these metals as key inputs, while scrapping Jones Act shipping protectionism would bolster the US steel industry (among others). Changes to the tax code that allow for full, immediate expensing of capital investment and a more sensible, streamlined immigration system would benefit both manufacturers and a range of other industries.

But perhaps the best assistance legislators can offer is to back off and resist temptations to engage in new misadventures in protectionism or industrial policy.

Contrary to common perception, US manufacturing continues to be a vibrant source of growth and economic dynamism. Provided Washington can avoid ill‐​advised schemes to “rescue” the industry it should remain so for many years to come.

Scott Lincicome

Today we’ve published three great new essays for Cato’s Defending Globalization project:

Globalization and Growing Global Equality, by Chelsea Follett, documents how—contrary to the conventional wisdom—the last few decades of globalization have seen unambiguous declines in global inequality across a variety of metrics, including income inequality, education inequality, and more.
The Reality of American “Deindustrialization”, by Colin Grabow, debunks the myth of American “deindustrialization” and shows instead that the US manufacturing sector remains a global powerhouse and vibrant part of the US economy.
Globalization Has Propelled India to Prosperity, by Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar, traces India’s opening to the global economy and subsequent economic growth, while cautioning that much work remains to be done.

We also have a new video of Cato Senior Fellow Johan Norberg and me discussing his Defending Globalization essay on the supposed “race to the bottom”:

This content joins fourteen other essays and other multimedia features on the main Defending Globalization project page. Be sure to check it all out, and stay tuned for more to come.

Jeffrey A. Singer

As of 2022, all 50 states and the District of Columbia allow nurse practitioners (NPs) to prescribe medications. However, many states’ “scope of practice” laws do not allow NPs to prescribe medications unless supervised by a physician. As of October 2022, 27 states plus the District of Columbia grant “full practice authority” to NPs, permitting them to practice and prescribe independently of physicians.

Critics of full practice authority, usually advocates for entrenched incumbents such as the American Medical Association, contend that NPs provide poor quality care. They lobby against state legislation aimed at expanding NP’s scope of practice.

We previously reported on a large quasi‐​experimental study of Veterans Health Administration patients in 530 VHA facilities:

After comparing patient conditions pre‐ and post‐​reassignment and between primary care providers, the study found NP‐​assigned patients had similar total costs and clinical outcomes to physician‐​assigned patients and were less likely to require hospitalization.

Today, a study by researchers at the University of California Los Angeles, Stanford University, and Yale University appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine that further debunks claims that NPs provide poor‐​quality care.

The researchers examined data from Medicare Part D beneficiaries aged 65 or older between 2013 and 2019 in the 29 states that had granted NPs prescriptive authority by 2019. Using the American Geriatrics Society’s Beers Criteria, they measured the rate of “inappropriate prescriptions,” defined as drugs that should not generally be prescribed to adults over age 65.

The researchers concluded:

Nurse practitioners were no more likely than physicians to prescribe inappropriately to older patients. Broad efforts to improve the performance of all clinicians who prescribe may be more effective than limiting independent prescriptive authority to physicians.

With a worsening shortage of primary care physicians, an overall shortage of health care workers, and an aging population, lawmakers and policymakers can help expand access to primary care services by allowing NPs to practice to the full extent of their training in the remaining states and territories that restrict their scope of practice.

Walter Olson

Over the years I’ve appeared as a guest 82 times on everyone’s favorite podcast, Caleb Brown’s Cato Daily Podcast, discussing all manner of issues. (You can browse those shows here.) Today, however, I wanted to give a nod to some of the other podcast hosts who’ve had me on as a guest. Voting and election law, the Supreme Court, and big legal cases have been among the most frequent topics. Some dates and topics starting with the most recent, from three days ago:

Ranked choice voting on Future of Freedom [America’s Talking Network] with Scot Bertram — I’m the “pro” in paired pro and con interviews.
Election law, emergencies, and the pandemic in retrospect on the Conduit Street Podcast [Maryland Association of Counties] with Michael Sanderson and Kevin Kinnally, following up on a March 2020 show that explored some related themes.
14th Amendment disqualification and other topics on Beg to Differ [The Bulwark] with Mona Charen. Earlier (2022) appearances on the same podcast included shows looking at the FBI Mar‐​a‐​Lago raid, as well as voting rights battles and President Biden’s first year.
The Trump prosecutions on Zooming In [The Unpopulist] with Aaron Ross Powell.
School district lawsuits against social media companies on Tech Policy Podcast [TechFreedom] with Corbin Barthold.

2021–22:

Voting issues, Roe v. Wade, and freedom to marry on Kibbitzing with Kagan with Maryland Sen. Cheryl Kagan.
Election fraud and security on The Great Antidote [Adam Smith Works] with Juliette Sellgren.
Minimum wage laws on Legal Talk Today with Laurence Colletti, first and second parts, and an earlier appearance on legal accountability for Seattle’s CHAZ/CHOP protests.

Before 2021:

Supreme Court developments on free speech on So to Speak [Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression]
Brett Kavanaugh nomination and freedom to marry on The Score [Bearing Drift] with Rick Sincere in two parts: first, second, and an earlier appearance with the same host on Inside Charlottesville.
Medical liability on Radiology Firing Line [Journal of the American College of Radiology] with Saurabh Jha, episode 32.
What it’s like to work at a think tank on Interesting People [WFRE] with Patrick Hanes.
How to amend the constitution on Civics 101 [New Hampshire Public Radio].

I’ve also appeared on many podcasts to discuss redistricting, gerrymandering and issues of Maryland politics, including You Don’t Have To Yell with Dan Sally, I Hate Politics with Sunil Dasgupta, Policy for the People [Rainey Center], at least three episodes of Frederick Uncut and In the Booth [Frederick News Post], A Miner Detail with Ryan Miner, Elevate Maryland with Candace Dodson Reed and Tom Coale, and Eye on Our Community [WTHU] with Kai Hagen.

Travis Fisher

“There’s been this move afoot in which markets have become something closer to a mechanism by which to harvest … subsidies, rather than what they were intended to do, which is ensure least cost dispatch of available resources and to incentivize new investment.” –James Danly, Commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Counting the many reasons to repeal the energy subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has become my favorite activity. In earlier posts, I examined 1) how the energy tax credits in the IRA could cost taxpayers $2.5 or $3 trillion, 2) why policymakers should remove those subsidies before expanding the high‐​voltage transmission system, and 3) the role of the IRA in enabling regulatory overreach at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Another reason to dislike the IRA is that, as written, it hurts the justification for establishing competitive wholesale electricity markets in the first place: economic efficiency. Under the IRA, the role of wholesale electricity markets could be diminished from that of the guarantor of an efficient industry to that of a subsidy clearinghouse.

The Promise of Electricity Markets

Roughly two‐​thirds of the electricity generated in the United States is dispatched through wholesale markets called Independent System Operators (ISOs) or Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs). For this piece, let’s call these organized markets RTOs. The RTOs were conceived to accomplish one simple but profound task: harness competition to ensure electric reliability at the least cost to consumers.

The 1999 rulemaking by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that established FERC’s pro‐​RTO policy—titled Order No. 2000—clearly stated the purpose of the rulemaking and RTOs: “The Commission’s goal is to promote efficiency in wholesale electricity markets and to ensure that electricity consumers pay the lowest price possible for reliable service.”

The seven RTOs across the United States are listed below and shown in the following image from the FERC website:

California Independent System Operator (CAISO)
Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT)
ISO New England (ISO-NE)
Midcontinent ISO (MISO)
New York ISO (NYISO)
PJM Interconnection (PJM)
Southwest Power Pool (SPP)

The other regions of the country—Northwest, Southwest, and Southeast—are served by vertically integrated utilities or federally‐​owned systems that have not joined RTOs.

Source: https://​www​.ferc​.gov/​e​l​e​c​t​r​i​c​-​p​o​w​e​r​-​m​a​rkets

An explainer published by Resources for the Future outlines the key role RTOs play in achieving the economic efficiency promoted by FERC on behalf of consumers:

“RTOs use energy markets to decide which units to dispatch, or run, and in what order. In the day‐​ahead market, RTOs compile the list of generators available for next‐​day dispatch and order them from least expensive to most expensive to operate. For example, since wind plants operate without fuel, they are able to bid $0 into the energy market and get dispatched first. Dispatching units by lowest cost allows the market to meet energy demand at the lowest possible price.”

There is ample debate about whether RTOs have delivered on the promise of reducing consumer costs. No one has conducted a comprehensive analysis of RTOs versus non‐​RTOs and evaluated their success (or failure) in ensuring reliability at the lowest possible cost. However, one thing most observers agree on is this: the least‐​cost dispatch of generation assets over a large region brings substantial economic efficiency. If we add the long‐​run benefit of deferred investments in new generation assets because neighboring utilities can share reserve margins, the economic case for RTOs is strong.

Although there is a compelling economic case for competition in the electricity industry, RTOs are not free markets. They are FERC‐​regulated wholesale markets that operate under a federal regulatory framework of mandatory open access. RTOs promise to deliver savings by optimizing a large fleet of generators. In contrast, utilities operating in silos under cost‐​of‐​service regulation have less incentive to optimize operating costs and face a strong incentive to overbuild generation capacity. Hence, RTOs represent a different regulatory approach that attempts to create better incentives to deliver lower‐​cost reliable electricity.

The Essential Role of Market Prices

Friedrich Hayek won the Nobel Prize in Economics for (among other things) the crucial observation that market prices convey essential information about the ever‐​changing state of the world. Market prices are necessary for the full and free use of knowledge in society—Hayek understood this well before the planned economies of the Soviet Union floundered and fell.

As the Nobel Prize website summarizes, Hayek’s “conclusion was that knowledge and information held by various actors can only be utilized fully in a decentralized market system with free competition and pricing.”

RTOs are the closest thing we have to a Hayekian, price‐​driven market in the electricity sector. The genius of wholesale electricity prices set in many different locations—called Locational Marginal Prices (LMPs)—is that they convey much‐​needed information about the state of supply, demand, and transmission congestion on the power grid. The time‐ and location‐​specific prices in wholesale markets can be visualized in an LMP contour map. Below is the MISO map from approximately 5:00pm on October 19, 2023, and the units are US dollars per megawatt‐​hour of electricity.

Source: https://​api​.mis​oen​er​gy​.org/​M​I​S​O​R​T​W​D​/​l​m​p​c​o​n​t​o​u​r​m​a​p​.html

On the supply side, prices not only reflect generator availability in real time but also signal the need for resources in the years ahead. Demand‐​side participation remains relatively low in electricity markets, but LMPs enable economic engagement from the demand side, either through direct participation in wholesale markets by sophisticated buyers or through “demand response” programs. Recent rulemakings at FERC also extend wholesale market access to distributed energy resources connected at the retail or distribution level, which broadens the influence of LMPs. In a dynamic market, these price signals create the foundation for economic efficiency.

What Will IRA Subsidies Do to the Economic Efficiency of Markets?

For the most part, RTOs have embraced the goal of economic efficiency for the past 23 years (since Order No. 2000). However, some RTOs have begun to include the “clean‐​energy transition” and “environmentally sustainable power system” in their mission statements. Advocates of economic efficiency should be concerned that the IRA will push RTOs further into a new era in which the goal of economic efficiency is secondary to environmental goals or ignored entirely.

As a refresher, the IRA extends the Production Tax Credit (PTC) that is already available to wind generators and, in 2025, applies an inflation‐​adjusted PTC to all resources that do not emit greenhouse gases at the point of generation (essentially every form of electricity generation that does not break a hydrocarbon bond as its energy source—nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, etc.). This PTC‐​for‐​all will have profound impacts on wholesale electricity markets and their ability to promote economic efficiency. It has no end date and could cost trillions of dollars.

One predictable impact of a PTC‐​for‐​all will be an increase in the frequency and magnitude of negative prices. When prices in other industries go negative—such as the brief negative pricing of crude oil futures in April of 2020—it sends an appropriate level of extreme, “visceral” panic to producers. Not so in wholesale electricity markets. Negative prices can emerge as a natural consequence of transmission constraints, inflexible generation resources, or due to large subsidies. They can also reflect the willingness of generators to keep producing—to claim a lucrative subsidy—even if the price of electricity is negative.

The value of the PTC today is $27.50 per megawatt‐​hour. In the price contour map above, several of the indicated hubs were trading below that amount (in the range of $25–26 per megawatt‐​hour). Again, in most other industries, a federal subsidy larger than the price of the commodity would be unimaginable—people familiar with the industry would sound alarms about the distorting effects of large subsidies. People would be justified in losing their temper, for example, if Congress implemented a new federal subsidy of $70–90 per barrel of crude oil produced in the United States (the going rate over the last year or so). With subsidies larger than the commodity price, will RTOs trade as much (or more) in federal subsidies as they do in electricity?

As researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory wrote in 2021, “monetary production incentives such as renewable energy credits or tax credits also enable negative bids; indeed, negative prices predominantly occur when demand levels are low and wind production levels are high.” Likewise, Professor Bill Hogan at Harvard recently explained the perverse incentives negative prices provide to market participants:

“Subsidies produce unintended consequences and undermine the incentives provided by markets. To illustrate, the production tax credit is well known to create a perverse incentive for the wind generator which turns the real zero variable cost into a perceived negative variable cost equal to the amount of the subsidy. The results can be negative energy prices. This, for example, creates an incentive for storage operators to charge and discharge simultaneously, making money while dissipating energy by operating the battery as a radiator and thereby increasing load.”

Being paid to waste energy should be a clear sign that IRA incentives are all wrong. But will it be corrected?

Some champions of organized wholesale markets have more faith in Congress than I do to recognize the problem and enact reforms. One observer stated in a recent piece titled In Defense of Electricity Markets: “it is hard to believe that Congress won’t cut back subsidies if Inflation Reduction Act bills start skyrocketing while government interest payments are stacking up.” One can hope. However, let’s weigh that optimism against the observation that the companies receiving IRA subsidies are not only growing richer but also more influential in politics—the R Street Institute says the “non‐​utility renewable energy industry has increasingly been able to compete for influence against incumbent monopolies.”

Providing a PTC for everything could trigger a subsidy contagion. Coal and natural gas are dispatchable generation resources that presently provide 60 percent of our electricity. They are also essential if grid operators are to maintain reliability. Subsidies for intermittent generation will lead to the retirement or bankruptcy of dispatchable resources, which will not only create challenges in maintaining grid reliability but will open the door for subsidies for dispatchable resources (whether or not they are truly needed for reliability). Such a subsidy spiral could be endless and could pit federal subsidies in the IRA against state subsidies for preferred resources, all paid for by American taxpayers or electricity customers one way or another.

Joseph Bowring, the independent market monitor for PJM, offered this wisdom in 2017: “Subsidies are contagious. Competition in the markets could be replaced by competition to receive subsidies.”

Likewise, FERC Commissioner James Danly presented the dilemma facing RTO advocates as follows (at minute 35 of this hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in June):

“If we’re going to set up an electric system in which the success or failure of a generation asset relies not upon the efficiency with which it’s run or the cost of the fuels that powers it but instead the availability of subsidies, then one questions whether or not we need to have markets at all, since the market’s very premise is being undermined ….”

Conclusion

Supporters of wholesale electricity markets should join me in seeking repeal of the energy subsidies in the IRA. Economic efficiency demands it. And if economic efficiency is no longer the goal of wholesale electricity markets, what is?

Gabriella Beaumont-Smith

In December 2020, Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), issued a decree banning genetically modified (GM) corn for human consumption. Mexico is the US’s third top trading partner for agricultural products and the number two export market for US corn. The ban poses concern for many American corn farmers because more than 90 percent of US corn is genetically modified.

The original decree was very vague and created uncertainty around the definition of “for human consumption.” In February 2023, AMLO modified the decree but the updated version does not clear up much.

The new decree explicitly states that GM corn for human consumption through “nixtamalization” (a traditional corn preparation process) or flour production for dough and tortillas is prohibited. However, it remains unclear whether GM corn used as animal feed and for industrial uses for human food would be affected by the ban. The use of GM corn for these purposes is not explicitly prohibited—the updated decree only states that GM corn used as animal feed and in products intended for human consumption should be gradually substituted.

Since Mexican law already requires permits for the use of GM corn, the decree states that the agencies administering permits for the release of GM corn seeds and GM corn for human consumption should revoke the permits and refrain from granting new ones. However, the decree provides no clarity or guarantee that permits provided for GM corn used as animal feed or for industrial uses for human food will not be revoked or granted in the future.

Although the decree is intended for the use of GM corn for tortillas, most tortillas are made with non‐​transgenic white corn that is already primarily supplied by Mexican production. However, Mexican production cannot completely satisfy demand. Nonetheless, in June 2023, Mexico announced it would temporarily apply a 50% tariff on white corn imports, which was initially suspended last year to help ease inflationary pressures.

Complicating matters is that the GM corn ban and the application of these tariffs is likely illegal under the United States‐​Mexico‐​Canada Agreement (USMCA). The ban could violate the agriculture and sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) chapters, while the tariffs could violate the national treatment and market access for goods chapter.

The agriculture chapter specifically lays out agricultural biotechnology provisions. These were not included in USMCA’s predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and likely added to the USMCA given the problems around agricultural biotechnology and trade with Mexico. Mexico has been inactive on food and feed products biotechnology applications since May 2018, and in 2019 ceased and rejected applications for genetically modified cotton seeds, citing the precautionary principle. This principle dictates that action should be taken before there is necessarily complete scientific proof of risk. In fact, the principle is codified in the USMCA and states provisional action can only be taken to mitigate risk to human, animal, or plant life or health when scientific proof of risk is insufficient.

Moreover, the trade agreement specifically includes provisions for standards that are “science‐​based.” The Mexican government has not provided any scientific evidence that GM corn poses a risk to human, animal, or plant life or health, and it cannot legitimately argue that the scientific evidence about the safety of GM corn is insufficient. Mexico’s reasoning for the ban is to “reach self‐​sufficiency and food sovereignty,” thus it is seemingly a pretext for a protectionist scheme to keep out US corn and prop up Mexican corn production.

Some even posit that Mexico’s actions against GM corn are a retaliation against the US government’s heavy subsidization of domestic corn production, particularly since Mexico eliminated most direct subsidies to its agriculture sector when it joined NAFTA.

The US and Mexico attempted formal consultations to resolve differences on the ban but the talks failed, so the US Trade Representative, Katherine Tai, announced the establishment of a dispute settlement panel under the USMCA, in August 2023. The decision from this third‐​party panel remains to be seen. In the meantime, Mexican farmers, American farmers, other businesses, and consumers face uncertainty about how this decree affects their future, which undoubtedly will have consequences for US‐​Mexico trade.

The longer that this matter goes unresolved, not only will Mexicans and Americans lose but the disruptions to North American trade will cost Canadians too. Bypassing important trade rules only serves to create turmoil while providing little (if any) new value for Mexicans.

Jordan Cohen and Dominik Lett

The Biden administration is asking for a $100 billion supplemental spending package for Israel, Ukraine, Indo‐​Pacific allies, border security, and more. This legislation would evade spending limits agreed to back in May and spend future taxpayer money that is not necessarily in US interests. By tying together more than a dozen separate issues, this request uses an all‐​or‐​nothing approach.

Congress should reject tying together fundamentally unrelated priorities and consider the Israel emergency request as a standalone. If Ukraine, Indo‐​Pacific allies, border security, or any other issue merits additional funding, they should be considered as part of the ongoing appropriations process.

Biden’s latest emergency funding request arose after the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel in early October. The administration has framed Israel’s need for military assistance as an emergency and has requested $14 billion in Israel‐​related assistance. The attacks by Hamas and Israel’s military retaliation certainly demand an urgent response, but the current military situation does not justify a massive surge in emergency military aid.

Israel’s early bombing campaign has forced Hamas underground and on its heels. To achieve its mission of ending Hamas, Israel will need to fight through Hamas’s extensive tunnels and in an area where the Israel Defense Forces are more unfamiliar with the territory than their opposition.

In its most limited version, this war will be an isolated ground invasion where Israel uses ground sensors, navigation technology, and ground‐​penetrating munitions alongside armed troops to fight a war against Hamas in the terrorist organization’s tunnels. In this scenario, Israel needs few weapons from US stockpiles.

The weapons it does need do not require extra spending on the defense industrial base and tend not to be in limited supply or in high demand with other partners, like Ukraine and Taiwan.

Take “bunker buster” munitions like GBU‐​28s. Israel will need these specialized bombs to penetrate Hamas’s tunnels. But neither Taiwan nor Ukraine require them, the US has some available in its inventory, and they are not particularly expensive. There are some exceptions, however. Stinger and Avenger anti‐​aircraft missiles used against drones and aircraft are in high demand with limited inventories. Here Israel would compete directly with Taiwan and Ukraine.

Thus, if Congress wants to support Israel’s campaign, any emergency effort to ensure that Israel receives necessary weapons for this operation should be focused and not particularly costly.

Israel does not need expansive emergency military aid. Israel already has most or all the weapons it needs to carry out a limited campaign. If the scale and scope of the conflict change dramatically, such as other actors getting involved (Iran, Syria, or Hezbollah), then Congress and the administration can reassess. Otherwise, barring some near‐​term need for their defense, giving Israel a de facto blank check with Iron Dome and offensive weapons funding is senseless and could escalate to a more expansive war.

In the case of Ukraine, the Indo‐​Pacific, and the border, new funding cannot be justified as responding to unexpected, sudden, and non‐​permanent emergencies. Thus, the necessity for more US funding is questionable.

The Biden administration requests $61 billion in funding for Ukraine, double the administration’s previous Ukraine supplemental request. Most of the new funding is for military aid and replenishing US weapons stockpiles. It is irresponsible to increase military assistance to Ukraine without mandating accountability to successfully use and track these weapons, especially as Ukraine is suffering from a less‐​than‐​effective counteroffensive and is losing US weapons.

Without stricter monitoring of US weapons transfers, Washington will inevitably accidentally arm groups that will act against US interests. It is not in America’s interest to continue to arm stalled offensives that reduce US weapons stockpiles without meaningfully bringing the Ukraine conflict any closer to an end.

Biden requests a further $7 billion in assistance for the Indo‐​Pacific, with much of that funding aimed at supporting US allies near China. Competing with China through an emergency supplemental budget is absurd. There is no active conflict in East Asia, and emergency funding is not necessary to deter China. If the administration and Congress agree that China is an upcoming threat, they should plan for it accordingly in the base budget. Relying on supplementals to implement longer‐​term foreign policy objectives results in worse strategy and overspending.

Across multiple issue areas, the administration brags that the supplemental provides over $50 billion for the defense industrial base. Legislators should be skeptical of the need to use taxpayer dollars to “strengthen” the defense industrial base. The undue influence of defense lobbyists on a Congress eager to create jobs has resulted in a mismatch between budget and strategy. Overreliance on emergency appropriations is part of the problem – not the solution.

Washington needs to prioritize its goals in key foreign policy areas. The US does not have the existing weapons or military inventory to successfully fund wars in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East while maintaining the strongest military and the world’s largest weapons stockpile.

Finally, the administration is asking Congress for $14 billion for increased border security, three times the annual Border Patrol budget. Some of those funds will go towards hiring additional border patrol agents and countering fentanyl‐​smuggling efforts. Stronger border enforcement did not stop marijuana smuggling in the 2000s. It won’t work for fentanyl either, especially given that a vast majority of convicted fentanyl smugglers are US citizens.

If the administration and Congress are serious about tackling illegal immigration, they should focus on creating legal pathways for immigrants to live and work in the United States. Stop‐​gap border security funding is the wrong approach and is very likely to do more harm than good.

The grand total in Biden’s supplemental funding request is $105 billion. That’s more money than the Department of State, Department of Labor, or Environmental Protection Agency received in funding this year. Any new emergency funding should be heavily scrutinized because it bypasses the normal budget process. Congress has a bad habit of using emergency designations in supplementals to evade spending limits and avoid the trade‐​off considerations involved in good budgeting.

Excessive emergency spending reduces oversight at the expense of the taxpayer. To address this broader problem, Congress should consider adopting emergency accounts and offset today’s emergency spending with future spending reductions to avoid further adding to the already excessive federal debt.

Emergency funding should be used only for priorities that are vital, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and non‐​permanent. Taking the most charitable reading of Biden’s proposed funding, questions need to be raised about whether the current situations with Ukraine, the Indo‐​Pacific, and the border qualify as unforeseen, sudden, and non‐​permanent. There is no reason that these issues cannot be integrated into the regular budget. At best, only Israel meets these criteria. Even then, the United States already sends billions in military aid to Israel every year.

Packaging these issues together is a budget trick to fund the administration’s priorities. In essence, it forces members of Congress—who likely find one of these many issues necessary to fund—to vote for all of them. This hostage‐​taking is a way for the Biden administration to override the traditional democratic process. Instead, these issues should stand on their own merit and face separate votes in Congress.

There is no doubt that Biden’s supplemental request is smart politicking. Nonetheless, hostage‐​taking key foreign policy issues in a massive supplemental spending request is bad budgeting and promotes bad strategy. The last two decades are replete with examples of well‐​intentioned alternate funding paths (read: slush funds) becoming budgetary and strategic nightmares. Accordingly, Congress should consider the issues the administration highlights separately and, wherever possible and necessary, incorporate this spending as part of a base budget that reflects US national priorities.

Walter Olson

As I’ve noted before, there are many genuine reasons to be concerned about the practice of so‐​called ballot harvesting, in which political operatives collect signed ballots from many voters, perhaps hold them at campaign headquarters for a while, and then drop them off in batches. In particular, the practice “poses real dangers to voter privacy, security, and freedom from improper pressure, especially when there is no feasible way to keep collectors from seeing how a ballot was marked or even helping the voter mark it,” before or after the fact.

Ballot harvesting has been at the center of numerous scandals, from North Carolina to Arizona to California to the United Kingdom. The latest has arisen in corruption‐​plagued Bridgeport, Connecticut, where a judge will consider whether to set aside the results of a Democratic primary for mayor decided by 251 votes out of 8,173 cast. (Despite what one hears from #StopTheSteal enthusiasts, most systematic election irregularities appear to occur in local party primaries rather than national partisan contests, for the simple reason that these local races can sometimes be swung by dozens of votes, and it’s harder to keep conspiracies quiet if they get much bigger than that.)

Videotape evidence suggests that a party official dropped off more ballots than could plausibly have belonged to her immediate relatives, in likely violation of Connecticut’s relatively restrictive rules on the practice. (There do not appear to be allegations that the ballots were from persons not qualified to vote, and courts often take the position that misconduct by a third party should not stand in the way of counting an otherwise lawfully cast ballot.)

Some Connecticut lawmakers reacted by attempting unsuccessfully to ban lock boxes, which seems to me to draw exactly the wrong lesson from the episode. Assuming that absentee voting remains legal, this would place on wayward campaign operatives in the future at most the minor burden of buying stamps and dropping the same ballots in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. As a bonus, conventional mailboxes almost never come with video monitoring, which is how the Bridgeport episode came to light. In what sense does this make anything more secure?

Indeed, if improved security is the goal, we should want to encourage wider use of drop boxes in place of conventional post boxes. As I argue in a forthcoming paper on omnibus election reform for the Nevada Public Research Institute, drop box receipt of ballots can readily be made much more secure than postal delivery. To quote from my forthcoming paper:

[D]rop boxes, unlike the postal system, can be heavied up, protected and surveilled with the specific goal of election security in mind. New technologies for monitoring, anti‐​tampering, and secure transfer are developed regularly, in distinct contrast with the relatively static technology of conventional mail (which, again, is never optimized for the needs of election security). Even mediocre drop box setups start out with real advantages over mail, such as ensured delivery to the election office, and there is no reason to settle for mediocre amid continually improving security options, from sensors to chain of custody protocols and other user‐​integrity controls.

There is evidence that user preference in some vote‐​from‐​home environments is in fact leaning toward drop boxes over mail. In Oregon, the state with the longest experience of vote‐​by‐​mail, ballots dropped off in boxes or at offices substantially outnumber those sent by mail. “According to the Oregon secretary of state’s office, from 2012 to 2018, slightly more than 36 percent of ballots were returned by mail; 63 percent of voters put their ballots in drop boxes or returned them directly to county officials,” reports Vox.

We should also be glad that opponents managed to block the misnamed For the People Act in the last Congress, an omnibus bill that among dozens of other provisions would have required states to adopt liberal rules on ballot harvesting.

Colleen Hroncich

When you visit a Montessori school, there’s a unique feel to it. The multi‐​age classrooms are full of hands‐​on materials that allow children to explore and learn in a very natural way. Rooms are ordered in a purposeful way designed to give students a lot of freedom to learn individually and collaboratively. Teachers are called guides and are there to support the children in their learning journeys rather than directing them down pre‐​set paths. This is exactly what I saw when I recently toured St. Joseph Montessori School in Columbus, Ohio.

SJMS started in 1968 as a preschool program attached to St. Joseph Academy. When the Academy was closing in 1977 due to declining enrollment, parents worked to transition it into a private pre‑K through eighth grade Catholic school with a Montessori approach. St. Joseph Montessori is now home to around 270 students from eighteen months through eighth grade.

The Montessori method of education is based on the research and teachings of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). She emphasized a child‐​led approach that respected individual differences and aimed to educate the whole person rather than teaching a specific content. One of her more famous quotes is, “Our care of the child should be governed, not by the desire to make him learn things, but by the endeavor always to keep burning within him that light which is called intelligence.”

Melanie Steadman, Director of Operations, was my tour guide when I visited St. Joseph. She explained how the design of a Montessori classroom is geared toward the developmental stage of the children in it. Each classroom is divided into multiple learning areas that are dedicated to language, mathematics, practical life, or culture. Within an area, there are shelves full of materials that are organized from simple to complex. Once students have had a lesson on a subject, they can choose to use the materials related to it. Many of the resources have a dual purpose—for example a shape tray that teaches children shapes also has a small nub to hold that mimics the fine‐​motor skill needed to hold a pencil.

“Our parents are seeking something other than a traditional education for their child,” Melanie explains. “They’re drawn to Montessori because of the child‐​focused and individualized approach to education. Montessori meets the child where they are developmentally and lessons are presented to the child as they demonstrate readiness. We teach to the needs of each child and provide them with the independence to experience learning in a nurturing, fun, and collaborative environment. Montessori isn’t focused on the teacher and what they can do for each child, but rather on what the child is capable of doing for themselves.”

Melanie’s youngest daughter attends SJMS, so she has seen the effects of the school first‐​hand. “She has morphed from the shy child hiding behind my legs into a confident and enthusiastic individual. She can speak with an extensive vocabulary and talk about the solar system, equivalent fractions, and the fundamental needs of humans,” says Melanie. “But more importantly, she loves to learn and is excited to go to school. We drive past a traditional elementary school every day on our way to school. A few weeks ago, my daughter looked out the window and said, ‘I hope that school is fun.’ I asked her what she meant and she said, ‘SJMS is so much fun, when my teacher gives me a lesson or shows me how to do a work, it’s just really fun.’ To me, that’s the most amazing part of her Montessori journey, at seven years old she has the awareness and compassion to recognize the educational experience she has had and wish for a similar experience for children she’s never met.”

Apparently, a lot of parents agree with Melanie on the benefits of St. Joseph Montessori School’s approach. The school is bursting at the seams, with most levels at capacity. The student body is diverse; only around 30 percent are Catholic.

Ohio’s school choice programs are helping families afford SJMS. Melanie says 65 percent of the students use one of the scholarships—including EdChoice, Ohio’s newly universal voucher. While the school is not a provider for the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship or the autism scholarship, SJMS students can use the scholarships to receive services provided by a third party. The school also participates in Ohio’s tax credit scholarship program through the Diocese of Columbus.

As the long history of Montessori education shows, the desire for education alternatives beyond an assigned district school isn’t new. Parents have always known one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to education. In recent years, the growing awareness of other options and the expansion of school choice have helped more parents find and afford the learning environment that works best for their children.