According to Census Bureau and United Nations data, the immigrant share of the US population (14.8 percent) ranked 54th worldwide among 206 countries in 2024. Among the 51 wealthiest countries—nations with a GDP per capita PPP greater than $50,000—its ranking has fallen from the 43rd percentile in 2000 to the 24th percentile in 2024. Its ranking for per capita growth in its immigrant population since 2015 was similarly low: the 29th percentile. The US accounted for most of the net increase in the worldwide immigrant population in the 1990s but accounted for only 17 percent of it since 2020.

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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.

“I think I always was looking to create a more flexible model,” says former public school teacher Jill Perez. “In my mind, I was always thinking, ’ How do we get this model to evolve?” 

Jill didn’t start out in education. She studied anthropology and nonprofit management in college and began working on fundraising at the YMCA. When she discovered how much she enjoyed children’s programming, she went back to school to become a teacher. Throughout her career, she taught middle school math and social studies in public schools, taught at Rutgers and Seton Hall, and supervised student teachers. Throughout it all, she kept thinking there should be a more flexible approach. 

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Come January, Democrats will control both chambers of Congress. The final margins will not be known until the remaining House and Senate races are called, but Democrats won overwhelmingly. Several issues moved voters, but trade and tariffs were a major animating force. In the NBC News exit poll, which surveyed nearly 80,000 voters, 65 percent said President Trump’s tariff policies hurt the national economy, while a mere 22 percent believed they helped. 

The warning signs were there well before Election Day. An August Cato Institute/​Morning Consult survey of more than 4,100 registered voters found that 75 percent said tariffs would matter in their midterm vote, and those voters preferred Democratic congressional candidates by 19 percentage points, 55 percent to 36 percent. Meanwhile, 74 percent said the president’s tariffs had raised prices at the checkout counter, including two-thirds of Republicans. Democratic House campaigns spent more than $58 million on ads attacking tariffs, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis; Republicans spent nothing defending them. President Trump once called “tariff” the most beautiful word in the dictionary, but as the Journal’s Greg Ip recently observed, he “has somehow made it one of the most hated words in politics.” 

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This fall, the Cato Institute launched Your Verdict Counts, a nonpartisan civic education campaign. It is meant to educate the public about how the jury is the most direct form of democratic power ordinary people hold. This power arises from the often overlooked, and sometimes controversial, prerogative of jurors to acquit defendants in criminal cases based on concerns about injustice. The Constitution guarantees trial by jury as a way of preventing oppression. Juries can only serve that role if they ameliorate unjust laws by acquitting those accused of violating them—a task jurors have done at crucial points in American history, including the struggles against slavery and Prohibition.

Some critics have expressed concern that Your Verdict Counts urges jurors to violate the oaths they swear when they begin to serve. This is simply not true. First, and most importantly, nothing in any of our materials—which include a dedicated website, a documentary video, and public communications—in any way urges or suggests to prospective jurors that they should violate any oath they may be required to take as a condition of jury service or that they should take such an oath in bad faith, with their fingers figuratively (or literally) crossed behind their backs.

President Trump, who often campaigned on the slogan “too big to rig,” has told reporters he will accept rather than try to overturn the midterm election results. That would be welcome. If so, he might want to offer a token of seriousness by asking the Department of Justice to drop the meritless litigation it is still pursuing, seeking to overrule the state of Alaska’s authority to certify a winner in its Senate race. 

The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal is already suggesting that there was no need for “all the hyperventilating about what Mr. Trump might do” to meddle with the midterms—after all, they went forward without incident. The “wildly speculative nightmares about mass election theft,” it avers, were “another partisan panic attack, promoted to gin up interest and enthusiasm”—that is, were promoted insincerely.

The editorial’s chosen narrative requires a great forgetfulness about the actual record. It is clear that for the past 18 months, Trump has indeed been intent on messing with the midterms. 

Republicans repeatedly tried to buy votes this election cycle. It doesn’t seem to have worked. But the wide margins for Democrats in the House and Senate also didn’t come with strong support for new and significantly higher taxes. If anything, the lesson is the opposite. 

The most memorable recent example of attempted vote buying was President Trump’s promise to send every adult citizen $5,000 if Republicans kept Congress. This $1.2 trillion promise was never a serious gambit, but it illustrates how Trump and some in his Republican Party think about policymaking. 

Using the fiscal system to reward political constituencies is a losing strategy, particularly for Republicans. One problem is that Democrats can always outbid them. For example, Republicans touted the $200 increase to the child tax credit in the 2025 tax and spending reconciliation bill; however, $200 seems paltry compared to the more than $1,600 increase many Democrats want to restore from the one-year 2021 COVID-19 expansion. 

In addition to expanding existing tax programs, Trump ran his 2024 campaign on adding new deductions for tips, overtime, car loan interest, and seniors. The massive 2025 reconciliation bill delivered all four. There is little evidence any of these helped his party in the election.