A new Wall Street Journal investigation reports that companies are comparing notes about the extra cost of doing business in Washington these days. Its most revealing section concerns companies with business before the federal government.

Several CEOs and board members told the Journal they believe their contributions and access to Trump are linked. When a company’s problem reaches him, the president reportedly wants to know how much it has given. Many companies being solicited are seeking federal contracts or lobbying on trade, defense, regulation, and appropriations.

The Journal’s analysis puts the amount raised through Trump-linked political committees and projects at more than $800 million. 

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$37.5 billion. A huge sum of money for most people, but pocket change for the Pentagon. This is the amount that Secretary Hegseth, as he pleaded with the Senate to pass a $60 billion defense supplemental and a $1.15 trillion Pentagon budget, claimed that the Department of Defense has spent in its war with Iran. Hegseth defended these requests by stating, “This is a new request based on new realities of a world we face, stepping up to meet that moment.”

Yet, Hegseth’s $37.5 billion price tag obscures reality. None of Hegseth’s remarks checks out.

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Many stalwart defenders of President Trump’s tariffs cite China as the primary motivation for the import taxes. Yes, so the theory goes, the tariffs impose economic costs, but they are a small and necessary price to pay for de-risking—or even decoupling—the US and Chinese economies to reduce American vulnerabilities to future coercion (or worse) by Beijing. As others and I at Cato have patiently explained, there have long been reasons to question this view, including, but not limited to, the fact that the president’s tariffs and trade deals often advantage China over alternative suppliers like Vietnam or Mexico, or otherwise bring the two economies closer together rather than further apart.

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“It can’t be about money,” says Achieve Academy founder Tara Pvel when people ask for advice about starting a microschool. “You have to love doing this.”

Tara had no intention of starting a school when she moved from England to Georgia nearly 30 years ago; she had a background in business. But after watching her son, an early reader, spend his kindergarten days coloring without making any progress, she knew something had to change.

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When the Framers devised our Constitution, they envisioned a federal government of finite, enumerated powers, expressly reserving all remaining authority to the states under the Tenth Amendment. Over the decades, however, aggressive expansions of the Commerce Clause have steadily eroded this division, drawing local matters into the net of federal law enforcement. To understand how a localized issue like staged auto fraud ends up as a federal crime, one must go to the historic Hemingway Home and Museum in Key West.

For nearly a century, six-toed cats, rumored to be descendants of Ernest Hemingway’s polydactyl cat Snowball, have roamed the grounds as local icons. But in 2003, the US Department of Agriculture claimed that pursuant to the Animal Welfare Act—a law meant to regulate traveling circuses and zoos—the Hemingway Home is essentially a zoo, and the cats are functionally an exhibit. Applying an expansive view of the Commerce Clause, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that because the museum sells cat-themed merchandise and advertises to tourists online, the cats substantially affect interstate commerce, authorizing the federal government to regulate their living conditions. That ruling established a precedent where virtually any local activity could be regulated by Washington.

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Most members of Congress know that the government’s $39 trillion debt may trigger a financial crisis as it continues soaring. But lawmakers keep hiking spending, with increases currently in the pipeline for defense, farm subsidies, and transportation.

Why does Congress spend so much? Members are lobbied to spend, of course, but they are also naively optimistic about government. They seem to think they can solve every problem in society by enacting programs and then flooding the zone with cash.

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“Open banking” is a system in which data providers (e.g., banks) allow third-party services (e.g., fintechs) to access a consumer’s data upon the consumer’s request. In 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau passed an open banking rule requiring data providers to share data with third parties for free. In 2025, the bureau backed off and is now considering alternatives. Early reports say that the new rule will allow data providers to charge third parties for data access over a certain threshold (i.e., third parties can access small amounts of data for free). 

Letting banks charge for data access is good policy because it gives data providers control over their own resources and (hopefully) negotiates market prices (“hopefully” because the bureau has not yet revealed if it will regulate the charges). Markets are founded on property rights and freedom of contract. An open banking rule that stops data providers from charging for data access does not respect either and will not bring market benefits.