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AEI's weekly digest of top commentary and scholarship on the issues that matter most

Prosecuting a Presidential Candidate

Jack Smith Owes Us an Explanation

October 12, 2024

Last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a 165-page brief from Special Counsel Jack Smith, containing new revelations about Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Writing in the New York Times, AEI scholar and former Assistant Attorney General Jack Landman Goldsmith explains why this filing, so close to the election, violates Justice Department rules and damages trust in the legal process.

 

 

As global birth rates continue to plummet, the total human population will soon decline for the first time since the Black Death of the 1300s. In an essay for Foreign Affairs, expert on global demography and Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy Nicholas Eberstadt explores how this “age of depopulation” will shape the future.

 

One of the most striking aspects of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah has been the detonation of thousands of pagers secretly rigged with explosives. Chris Miller, author of Chip War, assesses the rising risk of hardware tampering against the US from our own adversaries in an age of increasing geopolitical competition and international supply chains.

 

The disastrous impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton have once again sparked claims that climate change is intensifying weather disasters. Benjamin Zycher looks at the data to show why media and scientists should be more cautious in making those claims.

 

This week marked the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attacks against Israel. AEI Foreign and Defense Policy scholars reflect on how October 7 changed Israel, the Middle East, and the world and assess the ongoing course of Israel’s war against Hamas and Hezbollah.

 

For a historical diversion, watch a recording of Thursday’s AEI book event on The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt. AEI President Robert Doar and author Edward O’Keefe, CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation, explore how Roosevelt’s mother, wives, sisters, and daughters shaped his singular life.

Presidential Candidates’ Dueling Child Credit Expansions Explained

Both the Trump and Harris campaigns have recently proposed large expansions to the child tax credit (CTC). JD Vance has promoted a fully refundable and universal CTC of $5,000, while Kamala Harris has proposed a $3,000 credit for households earning under $75,000 ($150,000 for married couples), with enhancements for children under 6 and under 1. In a new article for Tax Notes Federal, Alex M. Brill, Kyle Pomerleau, and Stan Veuger compare and contrast these plans and estimate the cost, distributional effects, and labor supply effects. They find that both would cost trillions over the next decade ($3.6 trillion for the Trump-Vance plan and $2 trillion for the Harris-Walz plan) and shrink the workforce (113,750 fewer workers for Trump-Vance and 210,000 fewer workers for Harris-Walz). Given the nation’s deteriorating fiscal outlook, maintaining the current $2,000 CTC or reverting to $1,000 in 2026 would be more prudent options.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Higher defense spending will not be easy in Washington or in any NATO capital, but the perceived politics of the moment must not prevent us from answering the real demands of the future. It is far cheaper to deter a war than to fight one. That’s why a greater commitment to defense is needed on both sides of the Atlantic.

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