Every few weeks, fresh speculation emerges about when the Federal Reserve will change its interest rate target, followed by confident claims that this decision will drastically alter the mortgage, auto, or credit card rates that weigh on American households. The assumption beneath the coverage is that the Fed sets the cost of borrowing, so its next move matters more than anything else. People don’t want to hear that the Fed matters less than “everyone” thinks, but at the very least, the past seven months are enough to question exactly how much the Fed controls rates.

The Fed has held its rate target steady since its December cut. But as this table shows, nearly every rate Americans actually borrow at has climbed over the same stretch.

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The current outbreak of cyclosporiasis has Americans cutting back on salads and other raw vegetables. Such outbreaks have become routine in recent years, with leafy greens providing the most common pathway for nasty bugs like E. coli, Salmonella, Listeria, and cyclospora. 

Seizing on the latest outbreak, the New York Times recently ran an op-ed by food safety expert Timothy Lytton explaining how such outbreaks occur and what can be done to reduce their occurrence. In Cato’s Regulation magazine last fall, Lytton argued that civil action and private incentives can be used to combat them. In “How Nuisance Law Can Improve Food Safety,” he points out that manure runoff from cattle feedlots and dairy operations sited near produce fields is often the contamination source. 

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Cato scholars have argued for years that Congress should take back some of the tariff powers it handed to the executive branch over roughly the last hundred years. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the authority to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Throughout President Trump’s two terms in office, Congress has watched from the sidelines while the administration unilaterally imposes one legally dubious (to say the least) and economically destructive tariff after another, most recently reviving a nearly 100-year-old, never-before-used law (Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930) to heavily tax imports from Canada. Yet a recent bill introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D‑OR) is a positive sign that Congress may soon finally take this constitutional role seriously.

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In 2022, Lloyd Muldrow, a Marine veteran and self-defense instructor, stopped an attack by an armed assailant in a Baltimore bar. For his heroism, he would later receive the Carnegie Medal, which recognizes those who perform extraordinary acts of heroism in civilian life. But before that recognition, he suffered the humiliation of arrest and prosecution solely because he carried a firearm in Maryland with a Virginia carry permit, which Maryland refused to honor. As reported, “Police thanked him—and then they arrested him.” 

Mr. Muldrow would eventually receive probation for his “crime.” His experience underscores that the issue of interstate carry rights is not limited to this case. Rather, it threatens responsible, licensed carriers nationwide.

A recent analysis warns that evaluating the impact of free-market reforms too early can obscure their true effects.

The study used 

data from the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World index for 1950–2023 … [and] identified one reform episode in each of 30 countries by finding the shortest window over which its index score increased by two or more points.

Californians will vote on a 5 percent tax on billionaire wealth this November. In Congress, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D‑MA) and Bernie Sanders (I‑VT) are pushing plans for an annual wealth tax. And abroad, Norway and Spain have expanded their wealth taxes, and some countries want to impose a global wealth tax.

Our new Cato study, “Failures of Wealth Taxation,” discusses why these efforts are misguided. The study describes how a dozen European countries have tried wealth taxes but then repealed them in failure. Wealth taxes raise little revenue, drive out investment and entrepreneurs, and become riddled with loopholes.

The Constitution’s treaty ratification process, which requires the consent of two-thirds of the Senate, covers a shrinking share of the promises the United States makes to other countries. The rest are concluded as executive agreements under varying degrees of congressional authorization. For decades, the Case–Zablocki Act’s (Case Act) reporting requirements have been Congress’ main window into the executive branch’s growing practice of striking international deals outside the treaty process. But it’s a poor substitute for affirmative consent, and as a recent US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report makes clear, administrations routinely flout even those modest obligations, resulting in Congress learning about US commitments sometimes months after they’ve been finalized.