After six months of President Donald J. Trump’s audacious initiatives, the economic data tells the story: The United States should avert any semblance of a recession this year, a downturn many liberals not only predicted but hoped would eventuate. Despite global uncertainties, a new tariff policy, and global trade tensions, the U.S. economy showed an impressive comeback in the second quarter of 2025. An advance estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that the U.S. economy grew at a rate of 3 percent, following an unfortunate but understandable performance of less than 1 percent in the first three months of the year. The handwringing, the posturing, and the hyped rhetoric of an “impending” recession should now subside. Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine. If one surveys this year’s economic indices, nearly all the indications of a strong economy are present. The Federal Reserve reported that civilian unemployment in July stood at a low 4.2 percent. And although the downward revisions concerning job growth were a surprise, they shouldn’t have been. Given the media’s relentless claims of impending doom regarding Trump’s tariff proposals, both Main Street and Wall Street had trepidations. Yet over the twelve months leading up to the end of July, average hourly earnings for U.S. workers have increased by 3.9 percent.  Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print magazine. The central measure of inflation from the Consumer Price Index held steady at 2.7 percent over the twelve months ending in July, far below the forty-year high recorded under the auspices of President Joe Biden. And, as a sequitur to subdued inflation, consumer spending reached an all-time high in the second quarter — growing at an estimated annual rate of 3.7 percent. Moreover, if economic parameters remain unchallenged, retail spending should continue to grow in 2026. It is therefore not surprising to see that consumer confidence climbed from 60.7 in June to 61.8 in July. The University of Michigan’s confidence survey reached its highest point in five months in July as inflation expectations began to recede.  Even the bellwether average price of eggs dropped precipitously in August to $2.15 per dozen, down from its high of $8.17 in March. August also witnessed stock market indices rallying toward record highs after a better-than-expected inflation report. They recovered from the sell-off this spring that was driven by hyped uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both reached record highs. The Tariffs’ Least-Discussed Advantage By executive order, the Trump administration set a baseline 10 percent levy on a broad array of goods from nearly all U.S. trading partners. Some categories of imports as well as goods from certain nations (e.g., Brazil and India) face substantially higher rates (up to 50 percent). If rates are implemented as announced, the average U.S. tariff rate will rise to 15.2 percent, according to Bloomberg Economics. That’s significantly higher than the 2.3 percent levy that was in place before Trump took office.  The president’s new trade deal with the European Union could itself be a predicate for continued economic growth, particularly in energy and construction. The agreement secures the purchase of $750 billion in energy and investments of $600 billion in the U.S. economy, plus additional sales of military hardware. Given that America and the European Union constitute the two largest economies globally, these are modest though not insignificant sums. Trump’s tariffs already constitute a significant source of revenue for the federal government. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated in August that the revenue could be equivalent to creating a new payroll tax or cutting the defense budget by nearly 20 percent. The committee estimates that Trump’s assessed tariffs produced roughly $25 billion in collections in July, likely a fraction of what subsequent months will yield. The budget watchdog estimates that tariff revenue will generate an estimated $1.3 trillion through the end of Trump’s current term and $2.8 trillion through 2034. That represents a $600 billion increase from what was estimated under the old tariff regime.  National Debt Reduction A word of caution. The federal government plans to spend a total of $7 trillion in 2025 while bringing in $5.16 trillion in revenue. That leaves a deficit of approximately $1.8 trillion, meaning the government is spending significantly more (26 percent) than it’s earning. The last surplus for the federal government was in 2001. Since then, the federal budget has remained in deficit, with the highest deficit — $3.13 trillion — recorded in 2020, the year the COVID pandemic struck. One of the most disconcerting components of this year’s federal budget is how much is being spent just on interest payments. The Congressional Budget Office indicates that Congress allocated a total of $952 billion, or 14 percent of total spending, toward paying the interest on U.S. Treasury obligations. As the debt grows and interest rates remain high, this category is becoming one of the largest in the budget. In theory, pouring trillions of dollars from tariffs into the U.S. Treasury should, Congressional Budget Office figures suggest, slow the growth of federal debt. “The recent tariff increases are likely to meaningfully reduce deficits if allowed to remain in effect,” the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget wrote in August. But the effect of tariff revenue on the debt remains limited when compared to the sheer scale of $7 trillion in U.S. government spending. However, that is not the primary purpose of the tariffs. What Really Matters Tariffs in the age of Trump are a lever used to increase foreign investment. From microprocessor facilities in Arizona to EV battery plants in North Carolina, foreign companies are pledging billions to get access to the world’s largest consumer market. The tariffs are more about real financial commitments than a new source of revenue.  By Bill Wilson for The American Spectator Skeptics assert that foreign direct investment is typically just acquisitions of existing capital — not new plants or jobs. That’s true, which is why Trump’s approach insists on building (not buying) something. It’s about factories, not finances. Trump’s economic policy should be judged by its results: steel and concrete infrastructure, goods produced, and Americans on payrolls. The typical investment model says: Take in capital and let financial markets sort out the details. Trump’s new model says: If foreign capital wants in, it has to build something real in America. From a purely financial vantage point, if accompanied by reduced government spending, the tariffs could help close the deficit, but bringing trade imbalances into a more equitable alignment is the real measure of success. And the data shows it’s working. Trump’s Critics Despite the abundance of robust economic data, Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in Rolling Stone that Trump and “MAGAnomics” were “destroying the economy and waging war on the middle class and the poor.” Vox was also busy in April publishing under a headline that read “The real reason Trump is destroying the economy.” Their take on Trump isn’t just that he is wrecking the economy, but that America’s supposedly declining democracy enabled this in the first place. Apparently, it is your fault. Bitterness from losing an election and then resenting your opponent’s success can produce the worst kinds of behavior — especially when millions of Americans around you seem to see what you refuse to. A robust economy under any president should be great news for all Americans — regardless of partisan preferences. When the economy under Biden slumped, it was not a reason to rejoice. A poorly functioning economy under any president threatens the trust of and confidence in the institutions of a functioning republic.  Well into Biden’s term in office, the inflation rate rose to 9 percent, the highest rate in forty years. Americans struggled with its effects: escalating costs of food, housing, and transportation.  It is no surprise that an October 2024 Gallup poll revealed that more than 50 percent of the American electorate said that the economy was the key issue for them in the election. Donald Trump garnered 77.3 million of that voting electorate and returned to the White House with a mandate to fix these stubborn economic problems. While the verdict is not final, the most recent economic data shows that Trump is delivering on this mandate, even if some people are unhappy about it.  Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our fall 2025 print magazine.

Maybe Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson hoped the media wouldn’t pick up on his recent appearance at a book event for Randi Weingarten’s Why Fascists Fear Teachers. There was a good chance journalists wouldn’t be looking — after all, between the government shutdown we’ve all forgotten about and Donald Trump’s Middle East peace deal, there’s a lot to pay attention to. More likely, he didn’t care, which is why he had no problem saying the quiet part out loud: “I believe Rahm Emanuel referred to the Chicago Teachers Union as a socialist conspiracy,” he told an audience last week. “Did I get the words? But little did he know, there was no conspiracy. We were just doing it.” (READ MORE: Brain Rot and the Crisis of Digital Late Modernity) Perhaps it’s a sign of just how loud the quiet part has gotten that Johnson’s comment didn’t make waves — other than in the editorial pages of the Chicago Tribune. The socialist bent of teachers unions (and not just Chicago’s specifically) hasn’t been a secret since the 1950s, when Bella Dodd testified on the matter to Congress. Johnson’s comment is only newsworthy because, despite our knowing that many of the nation’s public educators have been socialists for the last 75 years, nothing truly substantial has been done about it. To call that turn of events “unfortunate” would be to undersell it. Just a day after the Chicago Tribune complained about Chicago’s classroom socialists, the Atlantic published a seemingly unrelated piece about the abject failure of the American public education system to do the one and only thing it’s tasked with doing: educating children. “By some measures, American students have regressed to a level not seen in 25 years or more,” Idrees Kalhoon reported. According to recently released test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a third of eighth graders are “reading at a level that is ‘below basic’ — meaning that they struggle to follow the order of events in a passage or to even summarize its main idea.” Additionally, the gap between high-performing students (who are doing about as well as they’ve always done) and low-performing students has grown to be about as wide as it’s ever been: “The bottom tenth of 13-year-olds [eighth graders], according to NAEP’s long-term-trend data, are hitting lows in reading and math scores not seen since these tests began in 1971 and 1978, respectively.” Kalhoon wisely rejects the common lines touted by our educators. No, he says, the problem doesn’t seem to be COVID-era disruptions or the widespread use of smartphones among students in school — although those factors may have contributed to the problem. It’s not even that schools aren’t getting enough funding — a complaint teachers’ unions have repeatedly fallen back on, even as federal funding for schools has risen (and promptly been spent on HVAC systems and electric school buses). No, the issue is that schools and teachers simply expect less of students. Need evidence? Mississippi — which spends half as much per student as Massachusetts — has totally bucked the trend. How? By requiring students to pass exams at certain milestones (third grade, for instance) in order to advance to the next grade. In other words, Mississippi schools have standards for the fourth grade, basic literacy being one of them. There’s something else strange about Mississippi and the southern states following in its footsteps: It’s run by Republicans, and its teachers “are among the least unionized in the country.” Correlation hardly proves causation, but it does indicate that a little digging might be in order. The fact is, school districts run by educators who take part in the kinds of unions currently planning to go to bat for teachers who celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk and who are promoting maps erasing the state of Israel following Donald Trump’s landmark peace deal are failing to educate the kids. It seems fair to wonder if the ideology might have something to do with it. After all, Weingarten’s latest book doesn’t tell teachers that defeating fascist ideology requires reversing the current literacy trends, it tells them they need to create “safe and welcoming classrooms” while “promoting tolerance.” This, despite the fact that her thesis seems to be that so-called fascist ideologues fear teachers because they “foster an educated and empowered population that can see past propaganda and scare tactics … [and] teach young people how to think for themselves.” Weingarten is, of course, correct in arguing that ideology loves illiteracy. However, the dominant ideology infecting our schools isn’t fascism — a label the Left unjustifiably applies to its opponents without defining, and which it has been careful to stamp out. Nor is it the case that these educators are careful to instill a widespread suspicion of all ideology resulting in some form of non-ideology. Instead, the system of thought at fault for our kids’ inability to read a book critically or solve a math problem is probably the socialism that Johnson celebrated Chicago teachers for “doing.” READ MORE by Aubrey Harris: Brain Rot and the Crisis of Digital Late Modernity They’re Still Coming After the Kids

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The other day I searched for some of my articles regarding the housing issue and, much to my surprise, read an artificial intelligence summary of my position that misstated it entirely. It claimed I am associated with NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yarders), when my positions closely echo YIMBYs (Yes In My Back Yarders). I searched on another AI tool, which captured my position accurately. It’s an emerging technology, so it’s best to verify whatever it is you might read. That painfully obvious warning aside, AI offers stunning potential in every field of human endeavor. And it’s advancing so rapidly that it’s rather pointless to try to quash it. It’s foolhardy to believe governments, which struggle to efficiently provide age-old services (infrastructure, policing, budgeting) can get ahead of the curve of a technology so advanced that even the people who work in the field don’t entirely understand it. The most important fact to know about Luddites is how unsuccessful they were at stopping mechanized looms. Yet government officials (in liberal and conservative states, but mostly in the former) aren’t lacking in self-confidence with regard to AI regulation. As my R Street colleague and AI expert Adam Thierer wrote in July, the U.S. Senate’s failure to pass a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations cleared the way for blue-state lawmakers to push forward the Biden administration’s “fear-based” agenda that sought to tamp down on AI development. At the time, lawmakers had introduced more than 1,000 AI-related bills that would do little more than threaten “America’s global competitiveness, especially against China.” When it comes to tech regulation — or any other type of regulation, actually — California leads the way and usually not in the right direction. Our state’s role here is significant, not just because the AI industry largely is based in the Bay Area – but because California’s marketplace is so large that any state tech rules become de facto national rules. I can’t tell you how many times California lawmakers have proposed some new regulation (cap and trade, for instance) by bragging about the way it will influence the national or international regulatory framework. Because the U.S. Senate failed to control an avalanche of state bills, the tech industry is busy playing whack-a-mole. Fortunately, it stopped what could have been the most troublesome threat: California Assembly Bill 1064. The legislation would “prohibit a person, partnership, corporation, business entity, or state or local government agency that makes a companion chatbot available to users from making a companion chatbot available to a child unless the companion chatbot is not foreseeably capable of doing certain things that could harm a child.” How could any AI business be “foreseeably capable” of preventing its complex tools from “doing certain things” that could potentially cause harm to any child? Enforcing such vague and overly broad language would be a nightmare. The only logical result is that AI developers would have to figure out a way to keep chatbots off the keyboards of anyone under 18. I have many deep disagreements with the Trump administration, but its emphasis on letting the private sector do its thing with a pro-innovation strategy regarding technology is the right approach. It’s not like AI isn’t going to take off — and far better that American companies lead the charge rather than less-accountable Chinese ones. Despite his penchant for regulation, Gov. Gavin Newsom certainly isn’t about to crush the tech industry as he eyes a presidential bid. So his decision to veto AB 1064 wasn’t unexpected, but it was a relief. Last year, he vetoed Senate Bill 1047, which would have required “a developer, before beginning to initially train a covered model … comply with various requirements, including implementing the capability to promptly enact a full shutdown.” That bill was a convoluted mess. Unfortunately, he has signed several AI-related bills (including some problematic ones) and dozens others will surely make their way to his desk next year. In effect, Newsom and the California Legislature are now making AI policy for the entire nation instead of Congress, which is extremely troubling for the future of the industry. This year he waited until the deadline, but issued an unusually lengthy and detailed veto statement of AB 1064 that touched on the key points: While I strongly support the author’s goal of establishing necessary safeguards for the safe use of AI by minors, AB 1064 imposes such broad restrictions on the use of conversational AI tools that it may unintentionally lead to a total ban on the use of these products by minors. AI is already shaping the world, and it is imperative that adolescents learn how to safely interact with AI systems. … We cannot prepare our youth for a future where AI is ubiquitous by preventing their use of these tools altogether. Supporters expressed dismay that Newsom wasn’t protecting the children, but good intentions do not necessarily lead to good legislation. The tech industry ended up supporting — and Newsom signed — Senate Bill 243, which imposes a series of mostly reasonable safeguards on chatbot developers. Unlike others, it does so without obliterating the federal Communications Decency Act provisions that protect online platforms from facing the legal liability of publishers. Newsom mentioned SB 243 in his AB 1064 message by noting that it “requires operators to disclose to minors that they are interacting with AI … and prevent chatbots from producing sexually explicit material.” As with all regulation, it’s best to start slowly in a way that negates obvious harm rather than impose some massive revamping of an industry. California should have learned that overly broad efforts always have negative, unintended consequences. But I don’t expect that it has learned any such lesson. So, for now, California and the nation dodged a bullet. But, as Thierer noted, it might be a good time for Congress to disarm these meddlesome state legislatures. And, as usual, Americans need to verify all the information they read, with parents taking a lead role regarding their kids. It’s a fool’s errand to expect the government to do it for us. Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. READ MORE: Self-Driving Cars Becoming Unstoppable Another Transit Shakedown of Taxpayers Los Angeles Faces an Olympian Task

Over the past year, Gen Z has experienced an unprecedented shift to the right. In particular, Gen Z men shifted to the right by 13 percent from 2020 to 2024. More recently, the assassination of Charlie Kirk has become an inflection point for young conservatives. But where to now? The younger generation is not shifting to the right because of low taxes or deregulation. They are not shifting to the right for any concrete policy point. It is important to understand that the reason behind Gen Z’s right swing is that this generation, more than any other, has a front row seat to the visceral decay of America. (RELATED: The Role Model Generation Z Needed — Charlie Kirk) If Generation Z wants to seriously make a change to put America and her people first, they must have a seat at the table. Gen Z’s conservative bent stems from one event more than any other: COVID. The COVID lockdowns prevented my generation from engaging in social interaction during the most crucial developmental phases in our lives. Worse still, the COVID lockdowns coincided with a period of rampant social media use among my generation. When Gen Z was not forced to interact, they shelled up online. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Exposes a Generation in Crisis) COVID spawned four years of boys in girls’ locker rooms, shameless DEI initiatives, and unprecedented illegal immigration. The culmination of 2020-2024 was an erosion of the societal basis of America, the likes of which we have never seen before. My generation was on the frontlines of America’s cultural baptism in critical theory, DEI, and the products of the Frankfurt School. More than any other, Gen Z was exposed to the most shameless of these ideologies. At the ballot box, these uniquely un-American ideas were rejected. The zeitgeist of a Gen Z conservative is markedly different from older conservatives. We are based on one guiding principle: America is a uniquely amazing country; therefore, in every way, America and her people must be put first. For decades, this simple principle has been violated in every conceivable way. From endless foreign wars to economic policies that benefit elites who treat America as nothing more than a means to help amass their own power. The leaders of our nation have violated the sovereignty of the American people. This has resulted in a new consensus in my generation: what we are doing is simply not working. For many, this is a case for dismay and despair, a reason to write America off. This is fundamentally wrong; America, despite its recent flaws, has given each and every one of us a unique opportunity to succeed. The idea that the “American Experiment” has failed and should be written off should be repulsive to any American. This is because America is not simply an abstract idea or experiment, but a people, a nation, and a home. So we must regain the things that made America special. We must return to a guiding principle that every American is uniquely endowed by our founding principles and therefore should be the unparalleled focus of our government. While conservative energy has welled up online in my generation, the only way to accomplish our goals is to regain the reins of self-government, in modern terms: get involved. My message to my fellow young conservatives is exactly that: email your local GOP office, do the phone calls, meet your state representative, and express your viewpoint. You cannot expect your government to reflect your views if you are not collectively and intentionally involved. Social media can be helpful, but it cannot be a substitute for personal engagement because there is no accountability for bad ideas. There are multiple emerging campus organizations attempting to remedy this. For example, American Destiny is an up-and-coming nonprofit connecting right-wing college and high school students with right-wing campaigns and causes. More of this is needed. If Generation Z wants to seriously make a change to put America and her people first, they must have a seat at the table. Now, if you want that seat, you have to have a large amount of wealth or focused political capital. The only way to amass the second and effect change is to get involved early and often. Voicing your opinion on social media is no longer enough; it’s time to take action. Our founders were perfect examples of this. Our nation was founded because a group of highly engaged and involved young men were ready to sacrifice anything to preserve their right to govern themselves. We must regain our right to govern ourselves. READ MORE: Conservatism Can Help Gen Z Conquer Its Biggest Struggle Young Conservatives Cannot Afford to Be Neutral on Family Liberals Aren’t Pretending Education Is Value-Neutral, and Neither Should We Drew DiMeglio is a Freshman at Hampden-Sydney College, where he studies government. He is the President of the Hampden-Sydney College Republicans and a Fellow at the Wilson Center for Leadership. He has served as a field director on a congressional campaign and an Intern for Color Us United. His work is featured in Carolina Journal and American Habits.

When Russian tanks rolled toward Kyiv in 2022, it wasn’t Brussels or Berlin that held Europe together. It was Poland. Within days, a nation of 38 million absorbed more than a million Ukrainian refugees, not through theatrical gestures or bureaucratic paralysis, but through quiet competence. At train stations, volunteers waited with blankets; at the border, order reigned. While much of Europe performed compassion, Poland practiced it, proving empathy only survives when coupled with control. It was decency at scale: swift, disciplined, unadvertised. And it remains the rare example in free governments of how mercy can coexist with sovereignty. Today, Poland still shelters roughly one million Ukrainian war refugees, all granted legal status, work rights, and healthcare under its 2022 Special Assistance Law. That moral line — strict at the frontier, generous at the heart — is one too many capitals have lost. Tragically, Washington has begun to lose it too. As the war in Ukraine rages into its fourth year, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has suspended new applications for the Uniting for Ukraine program while conducting an internal review of its “effectiveness and long-term viability.” According to Visit Ukraine Today and the Ukraine Task Force, the decision leaves thousands of Ukrainians in limbo while USCIS “reviews the program’s implementation and impact.” What began as a humanitarian success — safely admitting more than 170,000 vetted Ukrainians since 2022 — now risks becoming a bureaucratic retreat. A lawful, secure, privately sponsored system has been frozen precisely when it is most needed. A country that demands strong borders should not lose sight of why those borders exist. It can be vigilant at its frontiers and still humane toward the truly displaced. Poland offers the template. When Belarus, acting as Moscow’s proxy, funneled migrants from Iraq and Syria toward the EU in 2021, Warsaw built a 116-kilometer steel barrier, deployed troops, and refused to yield. Brussels denounced it for “pushbacks”; Berlin scolded it for lacking compassion. But Poland’s policy was not anti-human, it was anti-blackmail. It separated war victims from opportunists weaponized by autocrats. The arithmetic vindicates the clarity. Poland’s homicide rate is 0.68 per 100,000, one of Europe’s lowest, according to Eurostat. Foreigners make up under 5 percent of inmates; in Germany, over 30 percent. As for Islamist terrorism, there was none in Poland in 2023 even as there were three attacks in Germany, according to Europol’s 2025 Terrorism Situation and Trend Report. Poland absorbed over a million refugees without crime waves, riots, or moral collapse. Germany, by contrast, stands as the cautionary mirror, the experiment Poland refused to replicate. A decade after former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s famous statement of “Wir schaffen das,” or “We can handle this,” the costs are visible. In 2023, German police logged 5.94 million crimes, a 5.5 percent rise; foreigners accounted for 41 percent of suspects while comprising only 15 percent of the population, according to the Federal Criminal Police Office. Knife attacks in Solingen, a murdered police officer in Mannheim, riots across North Rhine — each has been described as anomalous, but all are symptoms of drift. Germany blurred the line between moral duty and moral vanity; Poland kept it. Poland’s refusal to admit unvetted migrants from the Middle East or Africa was not hostility but foresight. It understood that compassion, to endure, must discriminate between the desperate and the deceitful. By 2025, its terror index remains zero, its public order intact, and its electorate — 70 percent of whom back strict enforcement — overwhelmingly supportive. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, hardly a nationalist, put it plainly: “Poland has already taken more genuine refugees than any EU member; we will not accept those forced upon us.” Brussels may threaten fines under the EU Migration and Asylum Pact, but Warsaw has something richer: moral coherence. America once possessed that same geometry. Under Donald Trump, immigration followed a sequence that seemed severe but worked: legality first, merit second, compassion third. It was mocked as harsh yet functioned as sanity. Enforcement deterred exploitation; deterrence protected space for the truly endangered. The system’s morality lay in its order. Today that order is eroding. Washington’s paralysis over Ukrainian parole and the continuing freeze on Uniting for Ukraine illustrate the inversion perfectly: a nation capable of vetting and welcoming the worthy instead suspends them. Poland proved structure enables mercy; America mistakes hesitation for strength. Poland’s restraint is not fear, it’s foresight. A nation twice erased from the map does not treat borders as abstractions. Its vigilance is the price of its survival. And that vigilance has bought what Western Europe has squandered: the ability to distinguish between the desperate and the deceitful, between refuge and intrusion. That is the clarity America has misplaced. The United States can enforce its laws with the same iron discipline Poland shows at its frontiers — but it must also remember why those laws exist. They are not there to harden the heart; they are there to protect the space in which compassion can still mean something. A border is not a wall against pity; it’s the line that gives pity its purpose. The paradox is simple. Poland guards its sovereignty and, in doing so, preserves its soul. America guards its virtue and risks losing both. To lead again, it must recover the moral geometry Poland has kept intact — mercy framed by order, strength guided by conscience. Because in the end, it isn’t the open door or the closed gate that defines a nation, it’s whether it still knows why either matters.

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