President Donald Trump’s defenders often frame his trade policies as prioritizing economic development over the free market.  In their telling, America has an interest in manufacturing valuable goods domestically, even if producing such wares in the US is not maximally profitable right now. Our nation might not currently make semiconductors as well as Taiwan or […]

Editor’s note, August 7, 10:30 am ET: On August 7, Trump’s tariffs went into effect for about 90 countries. The story below was originally published on April 2. President Donald Trump has said that “tariff” is the “most beautiful word in the dictionary.” And throughout his first months in office, he has given Americans plenty […]

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a jobs report that upended the narrative pundits, journalists, government officials, and the White House had been repeating for months: The economy is doing just fine. The numbers showed that the US economy added a modest 73,000 jobs in July, several thousand under what economists had forecasted. […]

On summer evenings in the Midwest, the muggy air comes alive with a chorus of crickets, cicadas, and frogs — especially bullfrogs. Their booming mating calls sound like something between a foghorn and a didgeridoo.  As far as we know, summer here has always sounded like this. Bullfrogs are native to most of the Eastern […]

A new Gallup poll finds public approval of the Supreme Court falling below 40 percent for the first time in the poll’s history. The poll aligns with many others, which have shown public support for the Supreme Court collapsing since Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s 2020 confirmation gave Republicans a 6-3 supermajority on the high Court. […]