ArcaMax

One of the most important insights of public policy is the understanding that most laws are predicated upon a (stated or unstated) quid pro quo.

Take, for example, the roiling monthslong debate about President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda. Prior to the media uproar over the much-ballyhooed MS-13-tied "Maryland man," the since...Read more

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump abruptly announced a 90-day pause on most of his planned country-specific "reciprocal" tariffs -- with the notable exception of the People's Republic of China. In so strikingly singling out China as the focus of America's economic and geopolitical ire, Trump was not merely clarifying that the United States ...Read more

Whenever the subject of trade comes up, many right-leaning free traders and left-leaning neoliberals alike trot out the same talking point: "The economists all agree tariffs are terrible!" And perhaps they do -- or at least most of them do. Barriers to free and unfettered trade may well appear "inefficient" as a matter of an economic model's "...Read more

The venerable logical principle known as "Occam's razor," attributed to the 14th-century English philosopher and theologian William of Ockham, asserts that when confronted with multiple possible explanations for a causal phenomenon, the simplest explanation is -- absent persuasive evidence to the contrary -- usually correct.

Although hardly ...Read more

At his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing to be chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Roberts famously invoked America's national pastime in describing his view of the judicial role in our constitutional order: "Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules, they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical....Read more

The stock market of late has been on a veritable roller coaster, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency continues to ruffle feathers, Iran marches ever harrowingly closer to a nuclear weapon, and Russia and Ukraine get tantalizingly close to a ceasefire. But the national political conversation this week has curiously tended to focus ...Read more

Yogi Berra, the mid-century New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher known for his pithy and often humorous life observations, once famously quipped: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." It was sound advice, perhaps, for a traveler on the go and in search of a quick meal. But the modern Democratic Party, rudderless and confused and ...Read more

On Thursday, disgraced "manosphere" influencer Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, boarded a private jet from Romania, where they have lived for years, to Florida. That these moral monsters have been welcomed to our shores with open arms is appalling and shameful. The saga also exposes an unfortunate fault line on the American Right -- one ...Read more

Vice President JD Vance's speech Feb. 14 at the Munich Security Conference was not merely the most important speech the precocious young second-in-command has delivered in his political career. It was also a speech that encapsulates an entire geopolitical era -- that of a return to prudence, sobriety and nationalism as the hallmarks of ...Read more

America, unfortunately, has long been suffering from a crisis of civics. Put simply, many Americans are woefully ignorant about the structure and features of their government. But every so often, an opportunity emerges to reteach some basics. The media's predictable shrieks and howls of "constitutional crisis" notwithstanding, we are in the ...Read more

Days after shocking the world with his upset victory in the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump espoused his hope of negotiating the "ultimate deal" between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs to resolve the "war that never ends." As Trump told The Wall Street Journal at the time: "As a deal maker, I'd like to do ... the deal that can't be ...Read more

Less than two weeks into this second Trump presidency, the fearmongering has already reached fever pitch. "He can't do it!" the critics have invariably howled in decrying President Donald Trump's landmark day-one executive order upending the status quo on birthright citizenship for the children of illegal aliens, "Protecting the Meaning and ...Read more

The civilizational inflection point in our cold civil war happened sometime between Donald Trump's second inaugural address on Monday and the end of his new presidency's second day on Tuesday. At some indeterminate moment between Monday's soaring midday speech, in which the first nonconsecutive two-term president in over 130 years artfully ...Read more