Homelessness in the United States has grown by nearly 19 percent since its low point in 2016. In 2023, the unhoused population reached its highest levels since we began tracking homelessness, but with the new year and new administration come opportunities to reverse this troubling trend. To do so, President-elect Donald Trump must reverse Obama’s Housing First mandate that has guided homelessness policy for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) since 2013.

Elon Musk’s and Vivek Ramaswamy’s support for increasing high-skilled immigration visas has stirred up a political storm within conservative circles. Although Trump has supported Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s comments, his words conflict with his first-term immigration policies. If his change in rhetoric is matched by a change in policy, it would help make America great.

The last several days have been dubbed a “Sputnik moment” for Americans, who are discovering that foreign software engineers are much further ahead than previously thought. On January 20th, the Chinese company DeepSeek announced the release of their newest large language model (LLM) “DeepSeek R1.” Reportedly trained for just $6 million, DeepSeek R1 achieves capabilities that more than rival the output of American AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI, Meta and Google, whose models have required billions in investment. 

President Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports and a further 10% tariff on Chinese imports, to take effect on Feb. 1. In doing so, Trump built on tariffs he put into effect during his first term—tariffs that President Joe Biden largely kept in place or added to. This resurgence of tariffs provides a good reason for revisiting economic history and what the science of economics tells us about international trade.

Austrian economist Gene Callahan likes to remind us that fantasy is not an adult policy option.

We are often reminded of his words in national debates and handwringing over potential budget cuts, whether by the Republican-led Congress, or President Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—or attempts to address the $36 trillion debt elephant in the room.

Legislators—Congressmen and Senators—routinely receive material non-public information that is crucial to crafting legislation for the US government to operate efficiently and meet the needs of the American people. Unfortunately, many legislators use this information to enrich themselves at the expense of the very people they are elected to represent. Using privileged information for personal gain is a tremendous abuse of power and tantamount to graft. Service in the Congress is an honor. Legislators, senior officials in the executive and judicial branches, and their families should be prohibited from trading in individual securities. Those officials who have profited from this abuse of power have revealed their lack of moral fiber and should no longer serve in government. 

The offices where Washington D.C.’s bureaucrats work were largely empty on Monday, January 20, 2025, as Donald Trump was inaugurated as U.S. President for the second time.

As a child, I was told by many people that the United States was the only free country in the world, the land of the free, which implicitly suggested that every other country was somehow not free. I thought that other countries were tyrannical states, which subjugated their citizens and treated them like slaves. As I grew older, I realized that nothing was further from the truth. A myriad of free societies exist throughout the world, many of which are free in ways that are completely different from the United States.

Neoliberalism is a myth. The concept suggests that starting in the 1970s Western economies have been shaped by free-market principles, the state has retreated, and markets have reigned supreme. And yet, the last fifty years were not about liberalizing, but about strengthening the state. Neoliberalism never happened. Instead, what unfolded was neostatism—a strategy where governments restructured their role to protect and expand their power. From the late 1970s onward, policies branded as “neoliberal” were crafted not to relinquish state control but to reassert it. And today, as overt state intervention returns with a vengeance, it becomes clear that the “neoliberal era” was a carefully managed illusion.

After his approval rating plummeted, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his intention to resign as prime minister and leader of the Liberal Party. How people will remember Trudeau’s legacy is likely to be contentious, but he may very well go down in history as one of Canada’s worst executives. He championed the idea of “sunny ways,” yet he leaves behind a country grappling with serious economic challenges, including substantial deficit spending and a recession on a per capita GDP basis. Additionally, Canada is facing protectionist policies from the incoming Trump administration.