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.

Elizabeth Dean, a high school teacher turned instructional coach in Fairfax County, Virginia, was researching student voice and leadership in secondary schools for her dissertation when she learned about the Acton Academy network. As soon as she realized one was opening right down the street from where she and her family lived, she stopped what she was doing and learned all she could about it. 

“I was very intrigued by the model and excited that it was something that maybe my own kids could go to,” she recalls. Her oldest daughter was about to enter kindergarten, so they put down a deposit at The Village School and figured they’d make the logistics work. 

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The average price of diesel fuel in the US shot up from about $3.69 earlier this year to a high of $6.53 per gallon on Wednesday, September 23. Beyond the sticker shock at the pump, higher-priced diesel means the cost of transporting just about anything by heavy-duty truck, rail, or marine transport will rise, deepening the affordability crunch affecting American households. 

Politico reported that the Trump administration was planning to ban diesel exports for 90 days, while a White House official denounced the report as false. Although we understand the urge to address diesel prices, banning exports will do little to reduce prices in the short run and could backfire spectacularly in the long run. We support the view expressed by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, who told a New York audience on Wednesday that banning diesel exports is a blunt tool that won’t work.

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When the Trump administration announced broad, high tariffs in early 2025, importers rushed to bring goods into the United States before the duties took effect. The impact of this import “rush” went beyond causing a brief spike in monthly US imports; firms’ stockpiling of imports helped mitigate cost increases for importers and delay price increases for final consumers. In other words, in the absence of stockpiling, the administration’s import taxes would have proven even more costly for Americans, and consumers would have likely shouldered a higher share of those costs. 

The administration is cracking down on importers stockpiling imports of polysilicon and polysilicon derivatives (most notably solar cells and modules) that will be subject to new tariffs and price floors beginning on December 4. Though narrow in scope, this measure—published in the Federal Register two days after its effective date (September 22)—may pave the way for more expansive restrictions in the future, given the legal basis the administration is relying on to pursue it. 

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Some political elites hold the longstanding view that pursuing a protectionist trade policy could help bolster the American working class. For instance, as Katherine Tai, Biden’s US trade representative, put it: “Tariffs and trade can—and in our view must—be used as part of a strategy for growing the middle class and empowering the working class.” The Trump administration has a similar perspective and has pursued a trade and tariff policy that it claims will help American workers.

However, recent polls from the Cato Institute/​Morning Consult in March of 2,002 registered voters and in August of 4,150 registered voters found that tariffs have not been well received among working-class American voters.

On September 21, the House Budget Committee held a field hearing in Dallas, TX, on the need for a fiscal commission. My ears perked up when former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta started speaking about BRAC, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, as a model for overcoming politically difficult budget choices:

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How will America’s distinctive body of defamation law shape what we hear about the forthcoming election? Will we all be subjected to another firehose of stolen-election lies because the New York Times v. Sullivan doctrine, as one Supreme Court Justice has claimed, generates “an ironclad subsidy for the publication of falsehoods by means and on a scale previously unimaginable”? (I try to straighten out some election untruths in a new Cato podcast.) Or, conversely, does Sullivan leave even big media organizations so legally exposed that even flimsy lawsuits and threats can inhibit their investigations and reporting? (Plenty of dubious suits keep getting filed.)

Or maybe both? One of the paradoxes of US defamation law—which combines Sullivan’s relatively press-friendly “actual malice” standard with a lack of the loser-pays principle found in many other countries—is that it simultaneously puts coercive leverage in the hands of those who want to bully writers and speakers even as it leaves many defamed parties with no practical legal recourse. 

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Obamacare’s history is one of policymakers disregarding the law to achieve greater control over their fellow citizens. So the Trump administration’s recent announcement that it will stop issuing unlawful and often fraudulent Obamacare subsidies is a welcome departure from that history. The administration has also taken worthwhile steps to curb Medicaid fraud. 

The administration should go further, and not just in Obamacare. Fraud occurs at intolerable levels throughout government health programs. The New York Times cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate that there are perhaps 2.3 million cases of the federal government issuing improper Obamacare premium subsidies, but the administration is canceling just 750,000. Likewise, every year since 1990, the Government Accountability Office has warned Congress that Medicare poses a high risk of “waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement.” 

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