RealClearPolicy Articles

A new controversial proposed rule by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would seem to make the delivery of sensitive financial documents easier. Right now, the process requires paper delivery unless the recipient affirmatively declares otherwise. The problem with the proposed rule is that the delivery option should be the choice of the consumer to get those documents via electronic or postal delivery. This is a regulation that would impact investors right to choose how to access important financial documents. Although the SEC’s justification for the change sounds...

It’s a depressingly familiar story: taxpayers lost a massive amount of money to waste, fraud, and abuse during the pandemic. On unemployment benefit checks alone, official government estimates suggest almost $200 billion in “improper payments,” which doesn’t include losses under the most abused federal program. Counting those losses, private sector experts estimate $400 billion in misspending, or over 40 percent of all unemployment benefits paid. That’s the equivalent of over a decade of typical spending on unemployment benefits, up in smoke. Those are nationwide...

Over the summer, a coordinated cyberattack targeted operational technology at more than 30 community water systems in Minnesota. The FBI later reported similar incidents in at least seven states. The ramifications were significant enough for Congress to get involved, prompting the introduction of the “Water Cyber Shield Act” last week, which would increase cybersecurity funding and empower the EPA to help prevent future attacks on water infrastructure. These incidents should serve as a wake-up call. Protecting critical infrastructure is fundamentally a homeland security mission,...

The push for automatic phone unlocking has moved from industry filings to Capitol Hill. Phone locking is a software restriction that a carrier installs on a device so it will work only on that carrier's network. Insert a competitor's SIM card into a locked phone, and it simply will not connect, even though the hardware is fully capable of running on the other network. Understanding the challenge, Senators Katie Britt, John Barrasso, Roger Marshall, Pete Ricketts, and Bernie Moreno wrote to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr, urging the agency to establish a uniform...

There is a small but revealing moment in the debate over the proposed Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern merger, and it comes from a senator no one would accuse of carrying water for the railroads. Asked in July whether the deal would be good for agriculture, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley did something careful. He said he is a member of the Iowa Farm Bureau, and that the Iowa Farm Bureau thinks the merger would be bad for agriculture. Then he added that he did not want to say he had made up his mind. Grassley also said what any farm state senator should say: that he expects the Surface...

Americans don’t need politicians to tell them that things are expensive. They know it every time they fill up the gas tank, buy groceries, take the family out to dinner or call a contractor to fix something around the house. Washington’s usual response is to spend more taxpayer money: create another government program, offer another subsidy or send another check. But there is a simpler way to make life more affordable: let Americans keep more of the money they earn. Taxes are an important and often overlooked part of the affordability problem. We tend to think of taxes as...

The first air raid siren of my life went off two days after I arrived in Kyiv. I had heard that sound in a thousand video clips, but it hits different firsthand — when people walking down the street quietly check Telegram to diagnose the missile's origin and likely target. One day before I arrived, a Russian strike on Kyiv killed six people. Another killed more than ten while I was there. I owe my readers the truth: I was wrong about Ukraine. For years, I used my platform to ignore the brutality of Russia's invasion, to minimize the existential fight of the Ukrainian people, and to...

Families are gearing up for their annual school supplies shopping trip.  Supporters of interchange fee regulation have seized on this tradition, arguing that such rules would boost competition and save families money better spent on lunchboxes than on hidden fees. But those savings are far from guaranteed. Consumers will likely end up paying for the proposed regulations indirectly, with no assurance that the savings merchants promise will ever actually reach their wallets. Interchange fees, sometimes referred to as swipe fees, occur when a credit card is used at checkout. The fees vary...

The conviction of famed short seller Andrew Left in June, days before SpaceX's IPO drew Elon Musk into a public fight with the industry, has reopened an old argument about whether short sellers keep the market honest or seek to profit from the destruction they inflict. With Mr. Left’s sentencing due later this August, it is important to reexamine the role these companies play in the marketplace.  A federal jury convicted Mr. Left of securities fraud. He was accused of using his reputation and media position to manipulate shares in a way that rewarded his trades. Short...

Eighty years ago, the uranium that powered America's victory in the Second World War did not come from Nevada or New Mexico. It came from Congo, specifically the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga, in the country I hope to lead. American and Congolese effort, joined together, helped end the War. That partnership is one of the great untold stories of the twentieth century. This week, it became a warning for the twenty-first. A new investigation by Lighthouse Reports, covered by Semafor, alleges that between 2,000 and 5,000 tonnes of uranium were exported from the Democratic Republic of Congo to China...

In today’s digital world, it might be surprising to hear that checks have become one of the most vulnerable entry points for fraud in the U.S. financial system. Fraud losses in the U.S. totaled at least $16 billion in 2025. Check fraud accounted for a growing share. A decade ago, most people assumed checks were becoming obsolete.  Direct deposit, Venmo, and tap-to-pay seemed likely to make paper payments a niche tool for landlords and grandparents. But that’s not the case. Checks are still used a lot. A check-fraud scheme is embarrassingly simple. Basically, it involves a...

Four years after TotalEnergies vacated its Afungi site in northern Mozambique amid civil unrest, the company restarted its $20 billion liquefied natural gas project. The gas had not moved. The geology had not improved. What changed sat 8,000 miles away at the U.S. Export-Import Bank, where a newly appointed board reauthorized a $4.7 billion loan that had been gathering dust. With every day, a surge in oil and gas development is becoming the norm across Africa. Two factors are responsible for the change in the continent’s energy politics. The first came from Washington. The...

The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most significant scientific breakthrough since man split the atom. It has the potential to revolutionize the way we live, do business, even think in ways that heretofore have been the stuff of science fiction. Predictably, as is usually the case with changes of this scale, its arrival has generated a climate of fear into which the guardians of our culture tap, then spread, so they can drive the narrative that the only wise course for us to follow is to allow them to regulate what happens. No thank you. Even though I understand well the...

Under U.S. federal policy, wood pellets are classified as carbon neutral renewable energy. That label, assigned in an overlooked 2018 rider buried in a massive appropriations bill, is worth billions of dollars. The people who lobbied hardest to put it there were not scientists. They were investors who may make billions as a result of that controversial decision. Enviva, the world's largest wood pellet producer, was built with private equity money. Riverstone Holdings first invested in 2010 through its $4.3 billion Riverstone/Carlyle renewable energy fund, then led a recapitalization worth...

The September Effect says the stock market tends to slump after Labor Day. This year’s Effect would likely be triggered by the bond market. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon says the stock market is overvalued and overleveraged. In July, he said bonds were overvalued too, with 10-year U.S. Treasury Notes yielding only 4.5%. Since then, it has hit 4.75%. Stock prices are based on prevailing U.S Treasury rates used to discount future company earnings; the higher the rate, the lower stocks’ value. Also, Treasuries are competitive investments; the higher their yield, the more attractive they...

Planet Earth is as dangerous place as it’s been since World War II, with hostile powers convinced that the Pax America is ending, thereby opening the door for all kinds of mischief. China’s saber-rattling about taking over the world, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey’s desire to rebuild the Ottoman Empire, the Iran’s attacks on, well, everyone. The way to prevent wide-scale conflict is for America to maintain its military superiority – particularly air dominance. It’s not 2005: defense contractors can’t continue gorging themselves at the trough...

The Clarity Act, which would bring a regulated Crypto market to the United States, would help reduce theft, collusion, and close regulatory and ethical loopholes for consumers and investors. Yet while it passed by the Senate Banking Committee on May 14, 2026 by a vote of 15-9 it has been met with a blind eye, causing it to be stalled in the Senate. Some of that delay is driven by a misconception that this bill somehow weakens law enforcement's ability to police digital asset markets. However, that is not the case. The Clarity Act gives law enforcement more flexibility to respond to...

In late April, United Steelworkers (USW) members got a text message that should have been reassuring but, instead, raised more questions than it answered.  Union leaders told members U.S. Steel had floated the idea of starting bargaining early, that the two sides had gone “back and forth” over what that would take and, in the end, bargaining would “take place as usual, starting later this summer.”  Reading between those careful lines: An opportunity to get ahead of the clock came and went.  Reporting later showed the sticking point...

After failing its past eight audits, the Department of War is on track to pass an audit by 2028, the Pentagon said recently. Achieving this goal will meet a statutory requirement and demonstrate sound stewardship of the half-trillion dollars American taxpayers annually entrust to the Pentagon. On the way to achieving this goal, defense officials have rooted out mistakes and wrangled massive numbers of independent operations. In one case, a capital O typed in place of a zero caused the Army to believe it had more trucks than it actually did. Until recently, the Navy and Air Force operated...