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. 

We should have learned by now that good politics depends not so much on good institutions as on the moral sentiments supporting them. If bad or unwise people take over your country by coup or by vote, you can’t rely on your institutions to save you. “Add institutions and stir” has never been a consistent recipe for success; good and wise people are.

It is ethics, good or bad, that guides pretty much all human relationships, from a marriage or a small circle of friends to a sports team, a business, or a nation-state. A meaningful conversation depends on what philosophers call Gricean maxims. A good marriage depends on love and mutual respect. A winning sports team depends on team spirit. A lasting business depends on intrinsic motivations. A successful gang of thieves depends on a code of silence.

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Dr. Frank Parasmo is an 80-year-old physician who practiced in New York for decades. A federal jury convicted him of unlawfully distributing controlled substances based on his prescription of opioids to patients experiencing chronic pain. The case was close. Unlike in many other cases, Dr. Parasmo was able to put forward extensive evidence that his practice was not a so-called “pill mill.” As a dissenting judge later noted, Dr. Parasmo “ordered numerous tests, referred his patients to a wide variety of specialists to treat their pain inducing conditions, tried to wean them off the controlled substances, and looked for alternative treatments to control his patients’ pain, including prescribing medications other than a controlled substance—all behaviors suggestive of a good faith effort to help his patients.” But over Dr. Parasmo’s objection, the jury was instructed that his intent turned on whether he “was (objectively) ‘acting reasonably’” rather than whether he subjectively intended to overprescribe. Applying that objective standard, the jury issued a split verdict, convicting him on some counts while acquitting him on others.

Following the trial, the Supreme Court held in another case that a conviction requires proof that the defendant subjectively knew he was acting in an unauthorized manner. On appeal, the Second Circuit acknowledged that the district court’s intent instruction was wrong but, in a divided decision, deemed the error harmless. It reached that conclusion by reviewing the government’s evidence presented at trial and determining that it “overwhelmingly” supported a finding of subjective intent. But as Judge Robinson explained in her dissent, that was not the appropriate inquiry. The panel should have instead looked to the “ample evidence” the defense put forward and asked whether a “jury could have concluded” that Dr. Parasmo lacked the requisite intent.

As AI capabilities increase, calls for know-your-customer (KYC) requirements to be imposed on actors across the AI tech stack will become more frequent due to concerns about bad actors leveraging AI for nefarious ends. Such proposals ought to be met with a significant degree of skepticism. 

Though KYC mandates may make sense in limited domains, such as granting an actor early access to state-of-the-art systems for deployment in critical areas, broader obligations will introduce a bevy of potential negative outcomes, including hindering speech, quashing innovation, and introducing privacy risks.

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A new survey by the DeFi Education Fund found that 74 percent of Americans value financial privacy. This result aligns with what the Cato Institute found in 2022. Back then, 83 percent of Americans said the government should need a warrant to get your financial information. 

Yet, despite the values of the American people, the American government thinks differently. Financial surveillance is everywhere. The Bank Secrecy Act, the PATRIOT Act, the geographic targeting orders, the know-your-customer requirements, the third-party doctrine, and more all add up to mean that the government has sweeping access into our financial lives. 

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The Department of Defense, specifically under the direction of Undersecretary Elbridge Colby, is looking to increase the number of “tactical” nuclear weapons in America’s nuclear arsenal. Many hear “tactical” and think that these nuclear weapons aren’t so destructive, that they’re more usable than other nuclear weapons. The Department of Defense also aims to deploy more of these weapons throughout Europe. It’s seen as a go-between of putting US boots on the ground or withdrawing from these continents entirely. 

But tactical nuclear weapons aren’t the golden ticket to solve this dilemma, and the United States should refrain from adding more of them to its nuclear arsenal and should refrain from relying upon them for defense.

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Democrats won control of the House and Senate last night. Although many causes will be identified for the “stunning blue tsunami,” no one should miss the fact that Republicans spent most of the last two years going all-in on the most extreme anti-immigrant agenda in American history. We can now confidently say that—whatever people think of those policies—the strategy failed to prevent their electoral defeat.

Among many other policies, Republicans and the Trump administration: 

• Pre-funded ICE for the entirety of Trump’s term, avoiding oversight or any potential limits on mass deportation; 
• Appropriated nearly $250 billion for immigration enforcement—more than all other federal law enforcement combined and a decade of funds in two years; 
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