RealClearPolicy Articles

Amid shaken trust in U.S. institutions, information is our most valuable currency. Enter artificial intelligence, which is revolutionizing our access to information and informing Americans in ways once thought unimaginable. From politics to law and media, everyday Americans are on a quest to harness AI to get more informed than ever. And yet, “AI doomerism” dominates the headlines. As AI shows advances from medicine to market research, fearmongering is easy to come by, with skeptics criticizing Silicon Valley and questioning the need for this next frontier of...

Coyotes are invading urban America. I don’t mean guides for illegal immigrants. I mean the four-legged cousin to wolves and dogs. But, as with two-legged predators, progressives blame the victims and protect the aggressors. The U.S. coyote population is steadily increasing and expanding, particularly in suburbs and cities. All states except Hawaii report coyotes, with the largest concentrations in Texas (860,000), California (250,000 to 750,000, an obscure range), Arizona (200,000), Kansas (150,000 to 200,000) and New Mexico (125,000). Cities with growing coyote populations include...

Wildfires keep showing up in the news these days, and they’re getting scarier and scarier.  As we continue to burn more fossil fuels, we’re accelerating global heating, which is in turn making broad swaths of land hotter and dryer than they’ve been in our lifetimes – and with that change is coming more and more fire. The names of recent fire catastrophes pass in front of our collective consciences like ghosts: the Texas Smokehouse Creek Fire which burned 1.1 million acres; the Palisades fire which ripped through Los Angeles; the Lahaina fire that leveled a...

America is about to run up on the anniversary of the first votes being cast in the 2024 election, a contest in which lingering ire over high inflation scuppered Kamala Harris’ chances. A year on, incredibly enough, inflation is just a tick higher than it was at the same point last year, and still close to a percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target rate. Worryingly, it does not appear likely to fall. A new poll shows that 47 percent of Americans—including 34 percent of Republicans—say groceries are harder to afford than this time last year. Another...

Small business owners grasp accountability. If they take out a loan, they must pay it back. If they spend money to expand and invest, there has to be a return on that investment. And if they mismanage their resources or make poor financial decisions that prevent them from paying bills or employees, very likely they will end up shutting their doors. Government agencies and entities seem to play by different rules. The Federal Reserve is case in point. FedNow is the Fed’s recently launched real-time payments system, despite the fact that a private market...

The semiconductor (chip) supply chain, though essential, remains one of the most vulnerable aspects of U.S. national security. President Donald Trump’s proposed 100% tariff on imported chips expected any day now could play a powerful role in bringing this vital industry back to American soil—but only if domestic firms and global competitors aren’t allowed to stall progress behind vague commitments and hollow promises. For years, both private companies and government agencies have grown dependent on sourcing semiconductors from factories overseas, particularly in Taiwan. This...

The United Nations General Assembly this week serves as an important time for us to reinforce and continue building our relationships with allies from around the world. Among those whose relationship has proved critical and must continue to be strengthened is with the Republic of Korea. South Korea is one of our most important partners in the Asia-Pacific region. The mutual benefits of our relationship are numerous – from protecting against threats through joint military cooperation to enhancing each other’s economies through a robust trade of high-tech goods and the establishment...

China’s just released Opinions on Deeply Implementing the “Artificial Intelligence Plus” Action emphasizes embedding AI into daily life, government, products, manufacturing, and society. The comparable U.S. AI Action Plan emphasizes AI innovation and infrastructure, cybersecurity, safety, and national security. China is delivering products. America is delivering software and safety. The World Robot Conference (Aug. 8–12) and Humanoid Robot Games (Aug. 15-17) in Beijing are a wake-up call that the AI revolution will be felt in...

This fall, the European Union’s (EU) government in Brussels is set to finalize a sweeping ESG “due diligence” directive that will attempt to reshape global business in Brussels’s image. The controversial law, several years in the making, has faced stiff resistance from companies and policymakers both within and outside the EU because the directive forces large companies—including non-EU multinationals—to meticulously audit their human rights, emissions, and environmental footprints across entire value chains. Faced with energy and defense realities in the...

Small businesses are the engine of the American economy. The vast majority – 99.9 percent of all businesses in America – are small businesses, and 98 percent have less than 100 employees. Small businesses employ almost half of the private sector workforce, create the most new jobs, and generate almost half of the U.S. GDP. Small businesses owned by women are a growing power, but the numbers show women-owned businesses have plenty of room to keep growing. The American Small Business League has launched a new campaign targeting President Trump, congressional lawmakers and 2026...

During President Trump’s recent U.K. trip he signed a deal that will turbocharge nuclear reactor development in both countries. But there’s a paradox. While the administration is working with London to accelerate the production of new plants, the U.S. is simultaneously destroying its own stock of uranium-233, otherwise known as U-233. Shockingly, the elimination of this essential asset for nuclear reactors has been occurring for two decades. It’s the relic of fear-driven policies from a bygone era. To lead, America must immediately stop this self-inflicted constraint on its...

America’s entrepreneurs are resilient. They’ve endured inflationary headwinds, persistent labor shortages, tighter capital conditions and new regulatory burdens. Yet business owners and their teams have continued to find paths and use new technologies to innovate and anchor local economies in every corner of our nation. Now, with favorable tax and regulatory policies being delivered by President Trump and Congress, entrepreneurial innovation has the potential to be unleashed in unimaginable ways. With his signing of the One Big Beautiful Bill, President Trump has delivered...

Following key policy wins in Austin this year, Texas is emerging as a model for the nation on housing affordability. The next frontier is reforming our punishing property tax system. All across the state, hardworking families are seeing their tax bills climb, even as wages struggle to keep pace. If we want Texas to remain the national model for prosperity, we need to ensure that growth doesn’t come at the expense of affordability. Texas is booming. Under Governor Greg Abbott’s leadership, families and businesses continue to leave high-tax, overregulated states like California and...

As former senior members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, we sparred on many policy issues. But we agreed that First Responders needed the most innovative, interoperable communications technology the competitive marketplace had to offer. When a 911 call gets placed, when an emergency siren cries out, when our communities are in their greatest need, public safety communications must work without fail. And that means Congress must again ask tough questions about policies supporting those technologies – in this case, whether FirstNet is fully achieving the goals we...

Bankers are relentless in their efforts to tear credit unions down. The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), in a new “report”, claimed that credit unions harm communities. And the American Bankers Association’s (ABA) witness, during Senate testimony on deposit insurance, questioned credit unions’ tax status. Bankers falsely claim that credit unions misuse their tax status by serving more people, or that they don’t do enough to serve the communities they’re in. How can both be true? Credit unions meet their mission as not-for-profit financial...

The Charlie Kirk tragedy again reminds me of how similar our current times are to the late 1960s. Then, we were getting ever more deeply involved in the Vietnam War. Today, the same pivotal questions confront us in the Near East and Ukraine. Should we increase our commitment to support another democracy? Would such an increased commitment risk WWIII? In April 1968, the preeminent civil rights leader of the 20th Century, Martin Luther King , Jr. was gunned down in Tennessee. In June 1968, Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate who had a very good chance of being elected, was killed in...

In an era dominated by quantum computing, self-driving cars, LLMs, and dancing robots, you probably aren't seeing much TikTok content about PC web browsers. You should be. The PC browser enables you to communicate, shop, bank, learn, work, all in one place, and is very much part of the technological shift we're all experiencing right now. Entirely new takes on the browser, like Perplexity’s Comet and OpenAI’s Operator, are reimagining the tool for the AI era. And hundreds of other companies and organizations are building unique tools they know consumers want. For example, some...

Unless you’re an industry analyst or work at the Surface Transportation Board (STB), you likely did not notice this week’s one-two punch which knocked the wind out of proposals for merging America’s few remaining major railroads. After a long history of consolidation, just four big American and two Canadian-owned railroads serve the freight transportation needs of the entire United States. Two of them – Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern – sent shock waves through the transportation sphere when they announced their intention to merge, creating what would be a...

Nearly two years have passed since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Nearly two years since families were butchered in their homes, since babies were taken hostage, since thousands of rockets rained down on Israeli cities. And nearly two years into this war, Israel has achieved much. And yet, the war is not over because Hamas is not yet destroyed. True, Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the massacre, is dead. So is Mohammed Deif, his chief engineer. So is Ismail Haniyeh, the suave terrorist politician. The tunnel systems in Khan Yunis and Rafah have been collapsed, although, as a...