THREAD: There has perhaps never been a better time to discuss the legacy of the Never Trumpers, who warned of the gross incompetence we’d see from the Trump administration.
.@RobSaldin and Steve Teles have a new book which analyses why lifelong Republicans would repudiate their party due to the Trump presidency. It also weighs the movement to determine whether it failed or whether it will come to shape post-Trump politics. global.oup.com/academic/produ…
The book has sparked a conversation among several prominent thought leaders, each critiquing the book and lending their own analysis to the questions: “Why did Never Trumpers rebel against their party? What’s their legacy?
.@asymmetricinfo looks at who joined the Never Trump movement: “To a striking extent, the people who went #NeverTrump and stayed there are the people who had some way to support themselves outside the party now controlled by Donald Trump.” niskanencenter.org/the-price-of-n…
.@jon_rauch says that Never Trumpers failed in 2016 because they refused to support Clinton. In 2020, “Never Trumpers need to be pro-Biden, not just anti-Trump. No fiddle-faddle about supporting Biden privately or voting third-party.” niskanencenter.org/suddenly-never…
George Thomas posits that while the post-Trump GOP will be more nationalist and populist than before Trump took office, Never Trumpers have an opportunity to build powerful moderate factions in both parties. niskanencenter.org/will-never-tru…
.@DKarol is a bit more skeptical of the possibility of moderate factions either the Democratic or Republican parties. “The rise of social and partisan media and the resulting explosion in small donors has undercut elites in both parties,” he says. niskanencenter.org/in-defense-of-…
.@heritage publishes regular iterations of its “Mandate for Leadership” with an agenda for the next Republican administration. The prior Trump admin implemented nearly 64% of its recommendations in its 1st year.
First, the Mandate would effectively close many avenues of legal immigration by:
❌Halting H2 visa programs
❌Closing the H-1B visa program to most recent grads
❌Leveraging entire visa categories as collateral in foreign policy negotiations
It would sabotage U.S. humanitarian relief by:
❌Repealing all TPS designations, stripping almost 700,000 of legal protection + work authorization.
❌Forbidding use of DHS staff time on DACA, Uniting for Ukraine, etc.
❌Prohibiting refugee vetting, ending refugee resettlement.
NEW PAPER: Manufactured housing is an affordable option in rural areas where land prices are low. They even promise to ease the housing crunch in coastal cities where land prices are high!
To clarify, we’re not talking about vacation trailers, or 1970’s-era mobile homes. Modern manufactured homes have strict standards for structural integrity and safety. They often look like homes built on-site, but they were assembled in a factory, like a car or an airplane.
Benefits of manufactured homes include: (1) They’re safer and more efficient to make, their materials don’t have to be exposed to the elements until the house is fully assembled, and (3) they can help improve quality of housing while driving costs down.
Before we enact any reform, we have to understand the political economy of our system: whom it empowers, whom it enriches, etc.
Answering these questions will rally opinion shapers around reform, protect reforms against backlash, and help avoid unintended consequences.
Here's how the conventional wisdom explains the political economy of housing: single-family homes and large lot sizes restrict the availability of housing to buyers who will pay at least as much in local taxes as they consume in public services, such as schools.
THREAD: The cost of building public transit is out of control. We can do something about that:
Stop relying on outside consultants to do the work of government agencies. slate.com/business/2023/…
In the name of cutting costs, we’ve hollowed out government agencies, asking full-time employees to handle impossible tasks.
The result? Chaos. And lots of wasted taxpayer dollars. (After all, government contractors arguably cost even more money).
.@alon_levy produced a report for us outlining some solutions:
(1) The federal government should require that state/local transportation agencies demonstrate they already have the capacity to oversee big infrastructure projects before releasing funds. niskanencenter.org/report-so-you-…
THREAD: The U.S. far exceeds the murder rates in all of Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea COMBINED.
And if the left and right continue clinging to their current policy positions, Americans will keep dying. niskanencenter.org/taking-violenc…
The lowest rate of murder in the U.S. since WWII is higher than the highest rates of murder in Canada, Germany, Britain, and Spain.
No other democracy experiences routine mass shootings or suffers a comparable volume of homegrown, armed, far-right movements (that commit more violence than foreign terrorists).