In this case, a family in Parksley, Virginia, ran into an onslaught of opposition to their food truck from their local government. This resulted in an October 2023 ordinance specifically banning food trucks. But in enacting this ordinance, the town committed to the plaintiffs that they could continue to operate their food truck until May 2024, when their business license expired.

Plaintiffs then dared to complain about the food-truck ban to the press. The mayor saw this as a “betrayal” and became “angry … for the media attention that depicted Parksley’s government in a negative light.” In direct response to plaintiffs’ protected speech, the mayor instructed the town attorney to renege on the town’s commitment and send plaintiffs a cease-and-desist letter requiring them to immediately shut down their business. As the town attorney was drafting the letter, he stumbled across a previously unknown catch-all zoning ordinance that prohibited anything not expressly permitted (including food trucks).

Read the rest of this post →

Note: The payroll tax calculator was updated on October 1, 2026, to reflect the CBO’s 2026 Long-Term Projections for Social Security.

Republicans have resisted broad tax increases for decades. Social Security’s approaching insolvency may be testing that commitment.

The Washington Post recently reported that several prominent Republicans are becoming more receptive to raising taxes to avoid Social Security reform. While much of the current debate concerns raising or eliminating the limit on earnings subject to Social Security taxes, Rep. Tom Cole (R‑OK), chair of the House Appropriations Committee, said he is “willing to look at the [payroll] tax rate” and “willing to raise the amount of income through tax.”

Read the rest of this post →

74% Say President Trump’s Tariffs Have Raised Prices; 53% Say Tariffs Have Weakened the Economy, 70% Say the President Needs Congressional Approval to Impose Tariffs

A new Cato Institute/​Morning Consult survey of 4,150 registered voters finds that three in four (75%) say tariffs will be important to their vote in this November’s midterm elections.

Nearly the same share—74%—say that Trump’s tariffs increased the prices of things they buy at the store, including 66% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats. Majorities say the tariffs are a tax on Americans (57%) and believe they have weakened the US economy (53%), while just 23% say the tariffs have improved their personal quality of life. 

Read the rest of this post →

Since the capture and removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro by the United States on January 3, chavismo, the socialist movement launched by Hugo Chávez in 1999, has tried to cling to power under the leadership of Delcy Rodríguez, formerly vice president and a longtime senior official of the regime. But 27 years of “21st Century Socialism” have left behind a legacy of destruction that is impossible to ignore. The following charts help explain that record and why more than 65 percent of Venezuelan voters rejected chavismo in the 2024 election—the last one held in the country and one the regime rigged to stay in power.

Read the rest of this post →

The federal debt is on pace to rise uncontrollably, driven by rapidly escalating spending. Bond markets are demanding higher interest rates on Treasuries. Economic growth will no longer be sufficient to address mounting fiscal pressures.

Against that backdrop, one might expect Congress to prioritize reining in the growth of spending. Instead, the House has cancelled planned session days, leaving just six weeks in session for the remainder of 2026. Worse, both the House and Senate have set up the fiscal year (FY) 2027 budget reconciliation package, or Reconciliation 3.0, to facilitate new appropriations rather than generate savings. 

Read the rest of this post →

The House of Representatives will likely vote this week on the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, after the Senate passed the bill 86–11 in August. The bill seeks to put more economic pressure on Russia due to its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, including by increasing tariffs on countries buying Russian energy products. Whether this effectively squeezes Russia indirectly—an assessment best left to national security experts—this grant of authority would result in a major tax hike for Americans.

Section 113 of the bill directs the president to increase the duty rate on every good from the five largest buyers of Russian crude oil or natural gas that continue purchasing after the bill’s enactment, as well as countries found to be helping Moscow evade oil sanctions, to up to 100 percent. As we’ve previously explained, one problem with the bill is that it does not specify how to construct the official list of targeted countries, thus giving the president wide authority to pick and choose new US tariff targets. Nevertheless, we can get an idea of the magnitude of the president’s new unilateral tariff powers by examining historical import volumes from the five countries most likely to top the crude list—China, India, Türkiye, Slovakia and Hungary. 

Read the rest of this post →