Court Has No Legal Authority to Bar Trump From 2024 Ballot

• The Colorado Supreme Court last night ruled in an unprecedented, 4-3 decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
• This is a nakedly partisan, anti-democratic decision that ignores the law and prior precedent.
• Under the text and history of the 14th Amendment, as well as court precedent, Trump is not disqualified from running for office for numerous reasons.
• Section 3 of the 14 Amendment only applies to individuals who were previously a “member of Congress,” an “officer of the United States,” or a state official. Individuals who are elected—such as the president and vice president—are not officers within the meaning of Section 3.
• No federal court has convicted Trump of engaging in ‘insurrection or rebellion.’ In fact, the Senate acquitted Trump of that charge in his second impeachment. 
• Some scholars assert Section 3 doesn’t even exist anymore as a constitutional matter after the Amnesty Acts of 1872 and 1898–a matter completely ignored by the court today. 
• Finally, prior court rulings have held that Section 3 is not self-executing and Congress has never passed any federal law providing for enforcement, meaning that courts such as the Colorado Supreme Court have no legal authority to enforce Section 3. 

Schedule an interview: Hans von Spakovsky

The College Bubble Is Bursting. Good Riddance

• A college degree used to be a reliable passport to a better-paying career. To employers it signaled a level of knowledge and intellectual skills not shared by someone without a degree. That's why students and parents have been willing to pay increasingly higher tuition, taking out student loans and second mortgages before the graduates earn a dime.
• But a recent study finds that employers now believe colleges are not providing value. Indeed, many employers now see a college degree as a negative rather than a positive.
• When the survey asked employers if they were "more or less likely to consider a job-seeker with a 4-year degree from a major university or college," employers were four times more likely to answer in the negative (41 percent) than in the affirmative (10 percent), while an additional 42 percent said it made no difference.
• Amazingly, almost 20 times as many employers were said they were "strongly" less likely to hire the applicant with a college degree than "strongly" more likely.
• Employers aren't just complaining about the lack of value in a college degree. They're eliminating it as a requirement for many entry-level jobs.
• If a college degree is no longer an automatic passport to better employment, then colleges will have a very hard time persuading students and their parents to pay increasingly exorbitant tuition.

Schedule an Interview: Jason Bedrick and Adam Kissel

The Impossible Energy ‘Transition’

• After two weeks of negotiation, the United Nations climate conference in Dubai agreed last week to “transition away” from fossil fuels.
• Left unanswered is whether governments are supposed to do that by reducing supply, reducing demand or both. A lot rides on the answer, but neither would affect the climate much.
• In the demand-side scenario, technology saves the day with cost-competitive renewables. Yet even with fossil-fuel prices near historic highs, effective renewable substitutes are nowhere near cost-competitive. They’d have to get cheaper still to compete with $30-a-barrel oil. And in developed countries, especially the U.S., it’s impossible to get permits quickly enough for the staggering amount of renewable capacity that would be needed.
• In the supply-side approach, governments would slash oil production or impose rationing, hoping to make fossil fuels so expensive that renewables are the only option. But as long as renewable substitutes aren’t immediately available and oil and gas remain necessary, a small reduction in supply causes prices to soar.
• The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to require that all coal and natural-gas plants shut down or adopt unproven zero-carbon technologies by 2038. Another EPA proposal would require 62% of all cars sold in America to be fully electric by 2032.
• Assuming they survive court challenges and future administrations, they would impose soaring prices and reduced mobility on Americans. They would have almost no impact on global temperatures unless other countries, including China and India, also commit to energy poverty. The question is how much damage these policies will do before they’re abandoned.

Schedule an Interview: Mario Loyola