Republicans’ support for a continuing resolution—which maintains Biden-era spending levels—in the shutdown fight is the latest evidence that despite bold rhetoric, neither the president nor Congress are serious about reining in spending. Writing in National Review, Yuval Levin comprehensively assesses how little the growth of government spending has been slowed in 2025.
Pentagon and congressional leaders typically treat continuing resolutions as a crisis for the military—severely compromising readiness and investment in the future. However, AEI scholar and retired major general John G. Ferrari highlights an underappreciated upside that the military should embrace: budgetary flexibility.
While Congress negotiates over the shutdown, the president is continuing to wield his unilateral authority over tariffs; he has threatened 100 percent tariffs on pharmaceuticals as he negotiates with the industry. In a new AEI Economic Perspectives report, Alex Brill and coauthors estimate how such tariffs would increase drug prices and insurance premiums while harming US competitiveness.
Amid the broader decline of the humanities in higher education, English departments have faced especially severe declines in enrollment and funding as the discipline has struggled to articulate a coherent identity. On Tuesday, Joshua T. Katz and Christopher J. Scalia hosted three leading scholars for a wide-ranging discussion of what English should be, where it went wrong, and what academics and universities can do to revitalize it.
