The Administrative State Is the Real Threat to Democracy

• Several presidential candidates have pledged to dismantle the deep state, and the conservative movement’s Project 2025 — a plan to gut the bureaucracy by making it easier to fire federal employees — could make their dreams a reality.
• Under the law, the presidential appointees at the top are supposed to control the levers while the civil servants act as neutral cogs in the machinery.
• In practice, however, an expert class of bureaucrats at the top control the true levers of power while the president’s men have been relegated to a ceremonial role.
• It’s not radical to want to cut nonessential bureaucracy, nor is it radical to restore the president’s control over the executive branch and eliminate agencies that have brought us closer to a dystopian socialism.
• To have a chance at successfully managing this system, the president needs an army of extremely knowledgeable, iron-willed, and highly competent political appointees.

Schedule an Interview: James Bacon

It’s the Wrong Time to Reinvent a Triad

• Senior U.S. Army officers proposed establishing a “new triad” comprised of cyber, special operations and space and missile defense.
• The stated goal: to integrate these capabilities to “conceptualize more complex and effective battlefield strategies for modern warfare.”
• Such a combination certainly has potential to help deter and defeat America’s enemies but calling it a “triad” is a mistake. The term “triad” was coined during the Cold War to explain how the nuclear arsenal deters America’s adversaries.
• With China and Russia on the warpath, actively expanding their nuclear arsenals, and engaging in nuclear coercion, now is the time for clarity in our terminology.

Schedule an Interview: Robert Peters and Victoria Coates

Biden's Inflation Roller Coaster Isn't Stopping Yet

• When President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) he promised it would bring down costs. Instead, the IRA has increased costs through burdensome taxation and regulation while doing nothing to address the true causes of inflation.
• Biden and a Democrat-controlled Congress used parliamentary tricks to ram through the IRA at a time when inflation was at 40-year highs. The inflation was fundamentally caused by the government spending too much money.
• That destructive process has devalued the dollar by 16 percent since Biden's inauguration.
• If we are to stop the bleeding, we must cut government spending. But the IRA did precisely the opposite, spending hundreds of billions, while adding insult to injury via higher taxes, plus additional costs through new regulation.

Schedule an Interview: EJ Antoni