New US Census Bureau statistics released October 29 show that the immigrant share of the US population remained essentially flat from July 2024 to July 2025, but the Latin American immigrant population fell by nearly half a million. Despite a significant increase in immigration during President Biden’s term, the immigrant share of the US population has grown more slowly since 2010 than during any comparable period since the 1960s. 

• In 2025, the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) estimated that there were 50.4 million immigrants, legal and illegal, in the United States—up from 50.2 million in 2024.
• In 2025, the share of the US population who were immigrants, legal or illegal, was 14.7 percent—effectively unchanged from 14.8 percent in 2024.
• From 2010 to 2025, the immigrant share grew by 1.8 percentage points, an average of just 0.12 points per year, the slowest pace since the 1960s.
• Since 2006, effectively all immigrant population growth has come from Asia (47 percent), Latin America (41 percent), and Africa (13 percent).
• Without high immigration rates going forward, the total US population will decline.

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The shabby practice of recruiting decoy candidates is old hat in American politics, although it is unusual for it to surface in a race for an office as high-profile as that of a US senator. New York Times reporting has now confirmed what I agree with National Review’s Dan McLaughlin is the year’s least surprising scoop: Democratic operatives recruited an obscure schoolteacher named Daniel J. Sullivan to appear on the ballot alongside incumbent Republican Sen. Daniel S. Sullivan. Narrowing the risk of voter confusion, the ballot added “Incumbent” and “registered Republican” alongside the name of the “real” Dan. 

What legal issues are in play here? 

To begin with, nothing about this changes the meritless nature of the Trump DOJ’s federal lawsuit, discussed in this space last week. 

Some have demanded criminal prosecution, although at this point I have not seen anyone point to any criminal law, Alaska or federal, that prohibits the central act involved here, recruiting a same-name candidate. Focus would then naturally shift to the question of whether criminal laws were broken in the course of ancillary acts, such as making false sworn representations or paying campaign actors who cannot lawfully be paid.

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Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden (D‑OR) recently released draft legislation to raise taxes on data centers, following up on a white paper he posted in August.

The first part of the bill is a new excise tax on data center revenue. As I’ve explained, the “low single-digit rate,” which is still to be determined, could push total tax rates on data centers above 100 percent of profits in some parts of the country and near that in many others. 

The second part of the bill denies data centers four widely available tax provisions: 100 percent bonus depreciation, Opportunity Zones, private real estate investment trust (REIT) status, and the research credit. Under current law, each is available to any business that meets criteria unrelated to AI or data centers.

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In my latest column for The Dispatch, I documented the billions of taxpayer dollars the Trump administration is handing to American farmers to paper over the costs of US tariffs and the Iran war—and to help with the midterm elections in rural states. In the last two weeks, for example, President Trump went to Kansas to announce an $8 billion “Harvest Fuel Relief” fund to offset high diesel prices, and Vice President JD Vance traveled to Nebraska to offer up another $573 million to boost fertilizer supplies. In both cases, the underlying problem was US government policy. And the government’s “solution” was—as one disgruntled Nebraska farmer put it—“more election candy.”

By my count, these new payoffs are part of a whopping $46 billion in “emergency” aid both Trump administrations have unilaterally handed farmers to offset policy-related costs since 2018—aid that comes atop roughly $67 billion in new farm subsidies approved by Congress:

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In most areas of life, when something isn’t working, we look for a better option. In K–12 education, though, children are assigned to public schools based on where they live—and if that school isn’t a good fit, the child is generally seen as the problem. School choice is changing that by expanding access to alternative learning environments. But educational freedom changes lives only if parents and teachers know what options exist, which is why Cato’s Friday Feature highlights the schools, policies, and organizations bringing those choices within reach.

When Jill Haskins stepped away from leading a microschool and decided to homeschool her son in January 2025, she had no intention of starting another microschool. But other families began asking if she could teach their children, too. Before long, she had five students learning in her living room.

“I literally started in my living room with five desks, two textbooks, a handful of novels, and a really junky 10-year-old printer,” she recalls.

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Halloween draws near, and it’s the season for scary stories. I have a true one for you. The gruesome reality of ordinary life throughout much of history, which is the subject of my new book, The Grim Old Days: An Introduction to the Preindustrial Past.

Economic history is encapsulated by the famous “hockey-stick chart”: centuries of barely perceptible progress bordering on stagnation, followed by a sudden, dramatic surge in economic growth and real incomes. Yet people often belittle this extraordinary increase in global wealth over the past two and a half centuries.

On social media, memes mocking the idea that rising GDP signifies progress attract thousands of likes, reducing the argument to the deliberately mangled slogan “line go up, means things gooder.” Left-wing French presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon made a similar point during a campaign rally that went viral: “I dig a hole, GDP goes up. I fill it in, GDP goes up.” Nor is the critique limited to the left: Vice President JD Vance has questioned whether economic indicators reveal anything about well-being, writing, “Maybe economics is just fake.”

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Improving bank liquidity rules is a focus for some of Washington’s top policymakers. In prepared remarks for a March roundtable, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called bank liquidity “the next big-ticket item” in the administration’s regulatory reset. Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman has warned that the current framework leaves banks “hoarding high-quality liquid assets rather than lending.” 

They are correct: liquidity coverage ratios (LCRs) are overly restrictive, and the entire banking regulatory infrastructure is too archaic, complex, and burdensome. However, simply easing the LCR won’t significantly reduce banks’ demand for reserves, because the Fed still pays banks interest to hold them through the interest on reserves (IOR) program. Liquidity reform that leaves IOR in place is likely to fall short of its goals, which is one more reason Congress should revoke the Fed’s authority to pay IOR.

LCR Requirements Are Too Restrictive

The LCR requires large banks to hold enough high-quality liquid assets—such as Treasury securities and reserve balances at the Fed—to cover projected net cash outflows over a 30-day stress period. Bessent’s remarks note that safe assets now account for about 25 percent of large banks’ balance sheets, a big increase from roughly 10 percent before the 2008 crisis. Bowman made a parallel case about capital rules at Cato days later, arguing that excessive requirements “impair the banking system’s fundamental function of providing credit to the real economy.” 

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