Scott Winship challenges a new study from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that reinforces a controversial poverty measure, despite considerable evidence of its weakness. Winship contends that this report aims to change how the US government measures poverty “without regard to the fundamental question of what best informs public understanding of the needs of poor Americans.” The report’s worrying recommendations, Winship says, reflect the lack of ideological diversity on the panel of scholars that produced it.

According to Chris Miller, recent US export controls targeting China’s data center and chip industries have built an “unexpectedly durable” coalition with economic allies. Contrary to predictions of the chip controls’ failure, Miller outlines how an American-led semiconductor regime—including Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, and Taiwan—has started to emerge.

“Cities have been the most surprising source of useful insights for policy-makers over the past few years,” writes Ryan Streeter in National Review. While Streeter says many of these insights have gone unnoticed, especially by urban elites, he asserts that crucial lessons can be learned from cities and how their policies either attract residents or drive them away.

Why are some foster children living in government offices, hotels, and emergency rooms? Sean Hughes, along with Naomi Schaefer Riley and other cosigners, warn that widespread efforts to deinstitutionalize foster care are forcing children to live in inappropriate settings and impeding their placement into foster homes.

Social Security provides income support to almost one in five Americans, but looming financial shortfalls and barriers to reform threaten its long-term sustainability. Andrew G. Biggs and Gopi Shah Goda explain how the program works, why its finances are now at risk, and how reforms strengthened it before—and can again.