AEI's weekly digest of top commentary and scholarship on the issues that matter most
AEI This Week
AEI's weekly digest of top commentary and scholarship on the issues that matter most
STRATEGIC ERRORS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES
Iran Can't Hold the World Hostage
March 21, 2026
As the war in Iran enters its third week, the Islamic Republic has attempted to pressure the US and its allies by closing the Strait of Hormuz and attacking energy production in the region. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Matthew Continetti explains ([link removed] ) why Iran’s actions since the start of the war only strengthen the case for American efforts to collapse the regime.
AP26072814607632 ([link removed] )
In recent years, the Supreme Court has largely abandoned the use of often ambiguous legislative history to interpret statutory language, as justices across the ideological spectrum have embraced Justice Antonin Scalia’s textualist methodology. However, in a new essay for SCOTUSblog, Adam J. White draws attention ([link removed] ) to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s overlooked concurrence in the tariff case to warn that textualism’s opponents may be gaining new steam in a post-Chevron world.
The economic burden of child-rearing is front-loaded, but the most important federal support for families—the child tax credit (CTC)—is distributed in even, annual payments of $2,200 across the first 17 years of a child’s life. As Congress considers a second reconciliation package, AEI welfare expert Matt Weidinger and Katharine B. Stevens propose ([link removed] ) giving parents the option to draw future CTC payments forward to better support child-rearing without increasing federal spending.
How much can promoting economic growth reduce the federal budget deficit? In a research paper in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy and the Economy, R. Glenn Hubbard and coauthors assess ([link removed] ) the potential effects of seven types of pro-growth economic policies on the United States’ fiscal imbalances.
As the capabilities of artificial intelligence expand, the temptation for it to supplant the human element in politics will grow. Philip Wallach considers ([link removed] ) Albania’s recent experiment with an artificial intelligence minister to weigh the broader consequences of this trend.
Contending with American Exceptionalism
America’s history and especially its foreign policy have been shaped by Americans’ sense of their own nation’s exceptional nature and mission. But the global leadership driven by this sense of mission has been increasingly challenged by the transactional foreign policy pursued by the current administration. In her new book Contending with American Exceptionalism, AEI Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Director Kori Schake evaluates ([link removed] ) these trends, drawing from her own experience at the Pentagon and National Security Council, and warns that the United States is at risk of undermining the sources of its own power. America’s political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic exceptionalism has generated positive outcomes for our country and the world, but a foreign policy that repudiates these advantages to pursue pure self-interest or stubborn isolation will create damage that could take decades to repair.
More from AEI
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
The Strategic Rationale for Submarine Rotational Forces–West: Perspectives from the Alliance ([link removed] )
Zack Cooper et al. | University of Western Australia Defence and Security Institute
The Ideological Filter in Gen Z Dating ([link removed] )
Samuel J. Abrams | AEIdeas
Extreme Cold in a Warming World ([link removed] )
Roger Pielke Jr. | The Honest Broker
What Should Be Done About Homework in the Age of AI? ([link removed] )
Naomi Schaefer Riley | Deseret News
Artificial Intelligence's Growth Impact May Hinge on Science ([link removed] )
James Pethokoukis | AEIdeas
PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
International Law and Lawlessness at Home ([link removed] )
John Yoo et al. | 3 Whisky Happy Hour
Mike Rowe ([link removed] )
Ben Sasse et al. | Not Dead Yet
Edmund Burke Was Not a Romantic ([link removed] )
Jonah Goldberg and Yuval Levin | The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg
Discussing Joe Kent and MAGA’s Iran Divide ([link removed] )
Matthew Continetti | WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch
Defining Victory in Iran ([link removed] )
Danielle Pletka and Marc A. Thiessen | What the Hell Is Going On?
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Federal rental housing assistance is badly in need of reform. It is expensive, unfair, and ineffective at promoting upward mobility. HUD’s proposed rule would go a long way toward empowering communities to address the program’s problems.
—Kevin Corinth ([link removed] )
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