This summer, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in history. Supporters celebrated the trillions in market value and the thousands of jobs he helped create, pioneering electric cars and reusable rockets. Critics treated the milestone as a referendum on inequality. Senator Bernie Sanders invoked the “greed and power of a ruling class.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren renewed demands to tax extreme wealth. Then SpaceX shares fell back below their IPO price, and Musk’s fortune dropped to a humble $850 billion, down from its brief peak of $1.4 trillion.

The decline provoked almost no commentary. When Musk “gained” hundreds of billions in unrealized wealth, politicians spoke as if the money had been taken from everyone else. When more than half a trillion dollars disappeared, no one proposed that wealth had been restored to the public. If anything, millions of shareholders, including blue-collar employees holding equity and the retirement accounts of ordinary Americans, lost money.

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Looks like someone has leaked details to the New York Post about a plan led by appointees of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to go after the tax exemptions of major nonprofits perceived as being at ideological odds with the Trump administration. These include George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); civil penalties and “massive back payments” are also envisaged. (Separately, the federal government is also pressing a criminal case against SPLC based on particular factual contentions unlikely to have a parallel for most other groups.) Treasury would be the lead agency in an attempt at mass revocation because it houses the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

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In most areas of life, when something isn’t working, we look for a better option. In K–12 education, though, children are assigned to public schools based on where they live—and if that school isn’t a good fit, the child is generally seen as the problem. School choice is changing that by expanding access to alternative learning environments. But educational freedom changes lives only if parents and teachers know what options exist, which is why Cato’s Friday Feature highlights the schools, policies, and organizations bringing those choices within reach.

Emily Harber Williams began her career in education in 2001, serving as a coach and teacher at a small private school before becoming a special education teacher in the public school system. Working with students with special needs became incredibly important to her. “All my life, I’ve been one of those social justice kind of people,” she explains. “So working with a special population became dear to my heart.”

While she loved her work, it was very time-consuming. One weekend, Emily and her husband, a teacher and coach, were working at home when their fourth-grade son said something that was like a knife to her heart. “I get that y’all gotta do work,” he said. “But I mean, when are y’all gonna spend a little time with us? It’s the weekend.” 

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Last week, President Trump used the official White House social media account to once again claim that he’d won the 2020 election (“I WON THE ELECTION!”). This time, his declaration stemmed from a seven-page Census Bureau report alleging at least 24,000 noncitizens voted in the 2020 general election (in which 154.6 million Americans voted).

At the risk of indulging the absurd: Trump’s claim isn’t supported. Even if we accept the report’s findings as facts (more on that below), it still doesn’t change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Of the states with the closest margins of victory for Joe Biden: Arizona (10,457 votes), Georgia (11,779), Wisconsin (20,682), Nevada (33,596), the Census report only alleges 1,100 (AZ), 400 (GA), 500 (WI), and 250 (NV) alleged noncitizens. And of course, we know that not every alleged unlawful noncitizen vote went for Biden.

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With the public generally supportive of the government’s role in funding transportation infrastructure, elected officials are eager to be seen announcing an upcoming project or attending a ribbon-cutting ceremony upon its completion. This can lead officials to ignore concerns about a project’s cost, especially when some of that cost is put on Uncle Sam’s credit card.

Struggling rail projects on opposite sides of the country show that problems with unnecessary federal activity and the misuse of other people’s money are endemic to both political parties.

In California, a high-speed rail project has been in trouble for years. Originally approved in a 2008 referendum, the initiative was expected to cost $33 billion and begin service in 2020. However, presently, the initial operations for California’s high-speed rail are not expected until at least 2033, and the full system could cost more than $100 billion.

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Andrew Duehren argues that the fiscal consequences of a potential AI boom largely depend on how effectively the federal government transforms productivity gains into new tax revenues (“An AI Tax Boom Could Curtail America’s Debt. But Not Solve It,” New York Times, August 18). But America’s fiscal deterioration stems primarily from unsustainable spending growth on health care and Social Security, not insufficient tax revenue—and AI could make that problem worse.

Duehren correctly notes that AI could increase average life expectancy, which would raise spending on senior transfers. Medicare and Medicaid are open-ended entitlements whose commitments grow faster than the economy and inflation, as advances in technology and new drugs increase spending without cost-benefit analysis. And because Social Security benefits rise with real wages, faster productivity growth quickly translates into higher benefits for new retirees.

Rather than looking for ways to capture AI-driven gains through higher taxes, legislators should focus on slowing the growth of unsustainable health care and Social Security spending. That would strengthen the fiscal outlook while allowing Americans to benefit directly from the productivity gains AI generates.

Romina Boccia

The writer is the director of federal budget and entitlement policy at the Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

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