5/17/17  //  Commentary

Trump already has eviscerated U.S. climate policy. Leaving the Paris Agreement would thus do little harm, while remaining would provide Trump with a fig leaf to obfuscate the damage he is doing. From an environmentalist point of view, the U.S. might be better off if Trump withdraws.

5/12/17  //  Commentary

President Donald Trump is known for changing his political views after a ten-minute history lesson. In this continuing feature, I encourage the president to take a few minutes to learn about the historical background of things he says. This first edition, on his signing statement regarding HBCUs, concerns one of his favorite historical topics: A nineteenth-century general who saw the Civil War coming, was angry, and did something about it.

5/11/17  //  Commentary

Higher graduation rates nationwide have left students with disabilities even further behind.

5/5/17  //  Commentary

Yesterday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s most recent Executive Order, “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty.” While there has been muted reaction to Trump’s executive order, the FFRF complaint makes two important points that have been mostly unappreciated.

5/5/17  //  Commentary

Waivers granted by HHS are critical to the design of the Republican healthcare legislation and may have a huge effect on how it works in practice. Here's a preliminary analysis of how HHS Secretary Tom Price is likely to exercise his discretion with respect to waivers.

5/4/17  //  Uncategorized

An executive order to be issued today likely will direct the IRS to exercise “maximum enforcement discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits religious leaders from speaking about politics and candidates from the pulpit.” Here's what that means and why it matters.

5/4/17  //  Commentary

To corral some last-minute votes, the House leadership has endorsed the Upton amendment to the American Health Care Act. That’s a shame: the amendment works at cross-purposes with other parts of the AHCA, is arbitrarily structured, and is ambiguous on a key point. It’s another example of the perils of doing health policy on the fly.

5/4/17  //  Commentary

The House will vote today on the American Health Care Act. Yet amendments to the bill were published only last night, there has been no updated score from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and no public hearings have been held. This is not an appropriate process.

5/3/17  //  Quick Reactions

In an executive order last week, President Trump purported to rewrite the text of two of President Obama’s decisions that withdrew millions of acres of the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans from future oil and gas speculation. Today, a group of environmental organizations has argued in court that Trump can’t just pretend the past never happened.

5/3/17  //  Commentary

If a President does not understand what he is signing into law, how can he possibly “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”?

5/2/17  //  Quick Reactions

FCC's action welcomed by industry but will trigger (another) massive legal fight.

5/1/17  //  Commentary

The GOP health care bill would result in millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions losing their insurance. Statements by Trump to the contrary just aren't true. Whether he doesn't understand his own plan or is misrepresenting it, Trump has an obligation to be honest about what he has proposed for the nation's health care system.

4/28/17  //  Commentary

Trump issued an order directing Interior Secretary to review a generation's worth of national monument designations. That order is likely illegal.

4/26/17  //  Commentary

Just 100 days into the Trump Administration—the Administration that gave rise to the concept of #AlternativeFacts—there is reason to worry that facts don’t matter to the Justice Department now led by Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions.

4/25/17  //  Commentary

The March for Science reminded us that cutting funding to science today harms generations to come. Yet there is also another, subtler way the Trump Administration threatens to impose future costs on young people: the way in which it calculates costs themselves in cost-benefit analyses essential to our administrative state.