The big news on September 30 was that the Fed’s Inspector General released its report on the Eccles building renovation project. That’s the project that, back in 2025, President Trump and Senator Tim Scott (R‑SC) used to bash Fed Chair Jerome Powell. They criticized him for cost overruns, but it was clearly a political move to pressure Powell because Trump wanted “lower interest rates.”

As my colleagues and I wrote at the time, the Fed’s interest rate target shouldn’t be set based on anyone’s whims or desires, even if that person is the president of the United States. Powell was put in an unprecedented position and was right to stand his ground, regardless of anything else.

Ultimately, Powell decided to remain on the Fed Board of Governors until the criminal investigation was “well and truly over.” And that’s exactly where Powell remains, even though the new chair, Kevin Warsh, is now in charge. But the IG’s report finds “no evidence of administrative misconduct and no grounds to refer anyone for criminal prosecution,” so it could signal the end of Powell’s Fed tenure. (And who wouldn’t want to read his memoirs?)

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Two more federal equity deals with private companies were announced in September. That brought the total figure in Cato’s tracker to 34 companies, almost triple the number at the start of the year. (See the full list of companies at the bottom.) 

Elmet Group, which went public earlier this year, is a Portland, Maine-based producer of tungsten and molybdenum materials used in a range of defense products, including missiles and submarines. On September 14, the Department of Defense (DOD) committed $450 million to the company, with $200 million paid at closing. A separate Defense Logistics Agency supply contract sets a $150 million minimum for purchases of tungsten materials for the National Defense Stockpile, with a $2 billion ceiling.

The Pentagon says the deal was made through the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment (IBAS) program, working with the Economic Defense Unit (EDU). It’s important to note that the statute underpinning IBAS authorizes support for defense production and supply chains but does not expressly authorize the Pentagon to acquire equity stakes in private companies.

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On September 14, DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg ruled on the Cato Institute’s long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the FBI—a case seeking the Bureau’s records about Cato itself. The opinion is mixed, though the court ruled against the Bureau on several points.

Boasberg rejected as “flimsy” the FBI’s claims that revealing the location of the Los Angeles Field Office’s Counterterrorism Division that investigated Cato (revealed in January 2025 in documents at issue in the lawsuit) would assist others in circumventing the law. 

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At the end of August 1976, in the lingering patriotism of America’s bicentennial celebrations, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, a bill meant to rein in past delegations of emergency power and ensure that the legislature maintains control over the use of such authorities going forward. President Gerald Ford, who had turned back Ronald Reagan’s challenge at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City earlier that month, signed the NEA into law on September 14.

The law was the culmination of a years-long process initiated to study the implications of terminating a 1950 national emergency proclamation, issued by President Truman during the Korean War, that was still in force and in use throughout the Vietnam War. The special committee soon realized that there were, in fact, four extant national emergencies, the oldest dating back to 1933. Dismayed that a majority of Americans had “lived their entire lives under emergency rule,” the committee was clear-eyed about where blame belonged: “This dangerous state of affairs is a direct result of Congress’ failure to establish effective means for the handling of emergencies and its willingness to defer to Executive branch leadership.” 

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Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court injunction that had barred the federal government from taking action on Trump’s second executive order from March 2026 (“Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections”).

The internet freaked out, as it is prone to do, both in despair and jubilation (e.g., “Supreme Court upholds Trump EO allowing USPS to withhold ballot sends in states that don’t verify voter rolls,” Jack Posobiec, X post).

But the reality is much more mundane. As stated in the first three sentences of Justice Sotomayor’s dissent:

Today’s decision does not address whether the President’s attempts to interfere with States’ administration of the November 2026 elections are lawful. Nor does it suggest that the Executive Branch has any constitutional or statutory authority to implement the President’s directives. Instead, today’s decision merely postpones adjudication of those challenges. 

As quarterback Aaron Rodgers once told Green Bay Packers fans: “R‑E-L-A‑X.”

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Congress is vastly overspending, and federal debt is rising by $2 trillion a year. Without major spending reforms, the government is headed toward a financial crisis. But it is also true that even if the federal budget were balanced, many spending programs would continue undermining the economy because their costs outweigh their benefits. 

Such negative-value spending is the focus of my recent “Leaky Bucket” study with Ryan Bourne. We argue that the federal budget is riddled with wasteful “leaks.” The government scoops up trillions of dollars into its budget bucket, but many of them spill out due to inefficiencies and policy mistakes. The Trump administration has focused on reducing fraud, but that is only one type of leak from the federal budget bucket.

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My colleague Stephen Richer has already weighed in with observations on the New Jersey voter registration fiasco, in which a software error mistakenly registered roughly 6,600 persons to vote between June 12, 2023, and June 25, 2024, even though they had affirmed they were not US citizens. Of these, somewhat fewer than 400 later voted. 

So far as I am aware, this is by far the biggest instance of unlawful noncitizen voting in the US unearthed in the past generation, so it may matter that it seems to be widely agreed that the mistaken registration did not result from intentional misconduct by the persons added to the rolls, the state, or its software vendor. Damningly, however, when the error was found and the software fixed, the state “never notified affected residents or removed their names from the rolls,” according to the NYT account. Incoming Gov. Mikie Sherrill at a press conference called this “unacceptable.” That’s for sure. 

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