The Trump Administration recently weakened the Endangered Species Act. 

A new paper suggests that, for advocates of increased housing development, these lessened restrictions could provide an opportunity. 

The paper

examines how environmental land-use regulation under the ESA affects housing construction. The findings indicate that an additional endangered species listing reduced annual housing permits by … about 9–10 percent of the average annual permitting rate. … [A]pproximately 70 percent of the local permit decline represents housing that was deterred altogether rather than displaced.

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Congress requires that the Federal Reserve submit a Monetary Policy Report semiannually. Along with the report, the Fed chair testifies on the state of monetary policy before the House Financial Services and Senate Banking Committees. These practices date back to 1975, when Congress began requiring the Fed to announce its targets for money growth in advance and report back on its progress. The Humphrey-Hawkins Act formalized the arrangement in 1978, and today Section 2B of the Federal Reserve Act requires a written report on “the conduct of monetary policy and economic developments and prospects for the future.” Presumably, the point of these rules was for Americans, through their elected representatives, to maintain some oversight over the Fed and check its progress towards good monetary stewardship.

Aside from the chair’s testimony, the monetary policy report no longer serves that purpose and is borderline useless. As it stands today, the report is mostly a summary of information already in the public domain. Its sections on inflation, employment, and output restate figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Its balance sheet tables come from the Fed’s own weekly H.4.1 releases, and its economic projections are reprinted from a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting held weeks earlier. Members of Congress preparing for the Chair’s hearings learn little from it that isn’t already available elsewhere.

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Today, October 1, the Treasury Department and IRS issued proposed regulations for the new federal scholarship tax credit (FSTC), which was created by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” last year. While this program goes beyond the federal government’s role and shouldn’t have been created, it’s crucial that its implementation maximize educational freedom. 

Last week, I wrote about a potential problem in how Treasury was planning to define school. That definition matters because the FSTC law defines eligible students as an individual who “is eligible to enroll in a public elementary or secondary school” and meets certain income criteria. It then defines qualified expenses by pointing to the Coverdell Education Savings Account law, which includes expenses—such as tuition, tutoring, and services for students with special needs—“incurred in connection with the enrollment or attendance … at a public, private, or religious school.” 

The FSTC law does not define school or education.

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The 10-year Treasury yield exceeded 5.3 percent yesterday—its highest intraday level since 2002. It has risen by roughly half a percentage point this month. Given the scale of the US debt that needs refinancing and projections for ongoing annual federal deficits, such a surge in government borrowing costs could be a big deal for US interest spending levels and, ultimately, the path of the debt itself.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), in its September 2026 forecasts, projects that Social Security (OASI) faces a shortfall of 4.55 percent of taxable payroll. The Social Security Administration also projected earlier this year that Social Security faces a shortfall of 4.55 percent of taxable payroll. This is a departure from previous years, when the CBO has typically projected a larger long-term shortfall than the Social Security Administration, and thus warrants a closer look.

Our analysis finds that much of the decline in CBO’s headline estimate reflects higher projected interest rates, which change how future shortfalls are valued in net present value terms. The smaller estimated payroll tax gap does not imply that the actual financing shortfall, the difference between what Social Security collects and what it is scheduled to pay, has narrowed.

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Number 31 in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy, this time focusing on ongoing court action with Election Day five weeks away: 

• No, Trump can’t lawfully curtail anti-terrorism funds to states and cities to pressure them to adopt his preferred election practices [DC federal court ruling this week finding that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) overstepped statutory authority, also invoking the major questions doctrine and citing “serious constitutional questions”; Reed Shaw, Just Security (previewing issues in case); and Steve Cavendish, Nashville Banner]. 

• Long-standing Department of Justice (DOJ) policy limits investigative actions late in an election season that could influence the vote: “Doing otherwise runs the risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities and of interjecting the investigation itself into ongoing campaigns and the adjudication of any ensuing election contest,” says DOJ’s manual. But—surprise—DHS isn’t DOJ and is free to do all that [Priscilla Alvarez, Tierney Sneed, and Gabe Cohen, CNN; and Associated Press]. The months of ongoing strenuous effort haven’t thus led to much in the way of prosecutions, however [Election Law Blog; and ProPublica].

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Today marks the 25th anniversary of one of the most important articles in health economics. In 1963, the American Economic Review published economist Kenneth Arrow’s “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care.” Since then, Arrow went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics (for other work), and people have cited his market-failure analysis in support of countless government interventions in health care. As a health reform discussion lengthens, the probability that someone will cite Arrow approaches unity. Close behind is the probability that they will cite him inaccurately.

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