Elizabeth Watkins, director of Ascend Micro School in Colorado Springs, didn’t set out to run a school. She set out to find the right one for her son.

The oldest of five kids, Elizabeth grew up homeschooled in northern Maine and credits that upbringing with giving the close family bonds she still values today. She always assumed she’d homeschool her own children. What she didn’t anticipate was how hard it would be.

Her oldest was “very independent, very wanting to do things his own way,” she says. He also had some learning challenges that meant his way of learning was “180 degrees different than the way I learned,” she adds. After two years of homeschooling him, which left them both in tears, Elizabeth enrolled him in public school. That wasn’t quite right either.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren claims that the Trump administration’s cutbacks at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) cost consumers $26.5 billion. But the method she used to calculate this scary number is hopelessly oversimplified. Regulation has costs, and those costs need to be balanced against benefits. Indeed, the Dodd-Frank Act calls for the bureau to consider the costs and benefits of its actions, especially how these actions affect consumers’ access to credit. Senator Warren seems to have forgotten this basic instruction.

Under the Biden administration, the CFPB capped credit-card late fees and limited bank overdraft fees. Senator Warren claims that these rules would have saved consumers over $20 billion. But both the caps on late fees and on overdraft fees would also have harmed consumers. Late fees discourage consumers from making late payments and overspending. And if fees are capped, card issuers are likely to limit the costs of late payments by lending less to consumers in need or charging higher fees elsewhere—a well-known effect of regulating credit card charges. The CFPB’s limit on overdraft fees would have saved people who bounce checks some money in the short run—but other consumers would lose out, as overdraft fee caps would lead banks to reduce overdraft coverage and raise minimum account balances. 

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Today, the Trump administration made public two new rules limiting legal immigration: one, a massive overhaul of the international student visa system; the other, a rewrite of the public charge ground of inadmissibility that will primarily hit relatives of US citizens—overwhelmingly their spouses and minor children. 

As I have detailed, Trump had already cut legal immigration far more than illegal immigration—2.5 times as much. These two rules will exacerbate that trend. Neither targets anyone who crossed the border illegally. Both target people who did exactly what the law asked of them.

The Student Rule: Banned from Changing Your Mind 

Previously, international students on F visas, exchange visitors on J visas, and foreign media on I visas were granted admission for their “duration of status”—that is, for as long as they were in status or following the rules of the visa programs. DHS’s final rule replaces that with a fixed period of entry of no more than four years (for international students and exchange visitors). But it does far more than end open-ended admission. Littered throughout it is a set of unprecedented restrictions with no statutory basis. 

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Last night during his national address, President Trump claimed that key documents he ordered declassified demonstrate that the US Intelligence Community (IC) withheld or otherwise soft-pedaled evidence of foreign election interference or voting machine vulnerabilities. The documents at issue—released in a process that can be charitably described as irregular at best—tell a different story.

One very recent CIA document (dated June 29, 2026) had this to say about allegations of Venezuelan government efforts to manipulate electronic voting systems:

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A recent study points out the dearth of historical research on the macroeconomic effects of tariffs, especially as a tool to analyze modern-day tariffs. The study

addressed this challenge by analyzing all major US tariff rate changes from 1840 to 2024. Drawing on historical research, congressional records, and statutes, we identified … 21 tariff rate changes, which we used to examine the macroeconomic effects of tariffs.

These examples

reveal that increasing tariff rates contracted the US economy. … [T]ariff increases did not shield domestic industry despite their protective intent. Additionally, trade contracted markedly. 

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When Richard Hershey stood on a public sidewalk outside the Brookshire Grocery Arena in Bossier City, Louisiana, to hand out pamphlets promoting the Chirstian Vegetarian Association outside a Christian rock concert, he was doing what many generations of Americans have done before him: peacefully exercising his First Amendment rights in a traditional public forum. Yet, local police and arena security officers threatened him with arrest and forced him to leave, even as they left a nearby representative of a commercial radio station entirely unbothered. Seeking justice for this blatant display of viewpoint discrimination, Mr. Hershey filed a federal civil rights lawsuit under a statute commonly known as Section 1983. But rather than vindicate his rights, the federal district court granted the officers qualified immunity, and the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed.

This week, Reuters and Politico reported that the White House plans to expand the Ratepayer Protection Pledge by encouraging utilities, data center developers, and Republican governors to join the effort. The pledge rests on a simple principle: The technology companies driving the AI boom should pay the full cost of the electricity infrastructure they require, rather than shifting those costs onto American families.

That’s the right objective. The next step is finding a policy that actually achieves that.

Public concern over data centers has grown rapidly, driven less by opposition to artificial intelligence than by fears of higher electricity bills. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently responded by imposing a statewide moratorium on new data center construction. Other states are considering similar restrictions. Whether those concerns are justified or not, the political reality is clear: If policymakers cannot protect consumers from rising costs, they will eventually protect them by slowing development instead.

America needs a better option. The Trump administration should champion reforms that accomplish both goals at once: accelerate AI infrastructure while ensuring American families never have to subsidize development. Consumer-Regulated Electricity (CRE) offers exactly that solution by allowing developers to build and operate entirely private electricity networks outside the traditional regulated grid.