The first solar cell ever made was built in the United States. Tesla, based in the US, was once the largest EV manufacturer in the world. The lithium-ion battery was codeveloped in the US. But today, China — not the US — is the largest manufacturer of solar cells and batteries. China’s BYD — not Tesla […]

To hear many smart AI observers tell it, the day of Wednesday, June 25, 2025, represented the moment when Congress started to take the possibility of advanced AI seriously. The occasion was a hearing of Congress’s “we’re worried about China” committee (or, more formally, the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States […]

I’ve always found something charming about Canada Day, the July 1 national celebration, landing just three days before America’s Independence Day. The two holidays are ideologically opposed: Canada Day celebrates the country’s 1867 confederation under British law, while July Fourth celebrates a violent revolution against the crown. Yet after centuries of peace, with the two […]

There are two big winners in the Supreme Court’s most recent term. One is social and religious conservatives. In the last two days of its term, the Court imposed heavy new burdens on public schools at the request of religious conservatives, and it rendered much of federal Medicaid law unenforceable in a case lashing out at […]

President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is the centerpiece of his legislative agenda, and the stakes are high. The bill has four major pillars: renewing his 2017 tax cuts, implementing new tax cuts, spending billions on a border wall, US Customs and Border Protection, and the military, and increasing the debt ceiling. The bill itself […]