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
RESPECTING CENTRAL BANK INDEPENDENCE
Trump Ends His Self-Defeating Attack on the Fed
April 25, 2026
On Friday, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced the end of the widely criticized criminal probe against Jerome Powell. Earlier this week, AEI Economic Policy Studies Director Michael R. Strain had pointed out ([link removed] ) that the president had little chance of getting his Federal Reserve chair nominee, Kevin Warsh, confirmed, or his monetary policy preferences implemented, so long as he persisted in his attack on the central bank’s independence.
AP26113799702145 ([link removed] )
The administration’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request is an important start in comprehensively refreshing America’s conventional and strategic forces after decades of degradation. Writing in National Review, Mackenzie Eaglen explains ([link removed] ) how this proposal addresses five critical shortfalls.
These long-overdue defense investments are sorely needed to confront China’s growing military threat—but they need to be matched to a strategy that also takes China’s economic threat seriously. Derek Scissors highlights ([link removed] ) how President Trump’s China policies have been too soft in sectors including pharmaceuticals and semiconductors.
Last week, Justice Clarence Thomas delivered an extraordinary lecture at the University of Texas at Austin on the importance of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. AEI Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies Director Yuval Levin reflects ([link removed] ) on Justice Thomas’s message that we, and future generations, must sustain and display the courage to live out our founding ethos.
Justice Thomas’s remarks urge us to emulate Abraham Lincoln’s own courage to wage and win a civil war to vindicate the American ideals of equality and liberty. In a new essay for National Affairs, renowned Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo reassesses ([link removed] ) an overlooked contributor to Lincoln’s achievements: his secretary of the treasury, Salmon P. Chase.
The Lithography Loophole: How China Is Printing Its Way to Chip Self-Sufficiency
To bottleneck China’s AI ambitions, since 2022 the US and allies have denied China access to extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, which print circuit patterns onto the silicon wafers that become logic chips—the core ingredient in the computing power undergirding AI development. However, Ryan Fedasiuk and Julia Torres sound the alarm ([link removed] ) in a new AEI report that China is bypassing this bottleneck by repurposing older-generation deep ultraviolet immersion lithography tools to fabricate near-frontier chips. Left unchecked, this could undercut the United States’ near monopoly on cutting-edge computing power necessary to win the AI race. The authors propose countermeasures including tighter export restrictions to maintain America’s strategic advantage and technological leverage in this sector.
More from AEI
RESEARCH AND COMMENTARY
America at 250: Our Lost Opportunity ([link removed] )
Robert Pondiscio | Commentary
Make Economics a College Requirement ([link removed] )
Samuel J. Abrams | The Wall Street Journal
The F-35 Is a Masterpiece Built for the Wrong War ([link removed] )
John G. Ferrari and Dillon Prochnicki | War on the Rocks
The True Shape of the Baby Bust ([link removed] )
Timothy P. Carney | Washington Examiner
The Tariff Argument Fails Again ([link removed] )
Stan Veuger and Simon Johnson | The Dispatch
PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
The Almighty Dollar with Steven B. Kamin and Mark Sobel ([link removed] )
Steven B. Kamin | Global Rewire
Taking Religion Seriously ([link removed] )
Charles Murray | The Hamilton Review
Nicholas Eberstadt ([link removed] )
Ben Sasse et al. | Not Dead Yet
Heather Gerken of the Ford Foundation on Supporting Democracy and the Rule of Law ([link removed] )
Daniel Stid and Heather Gerken | The Art of Association
Birthright, Free Speech, and War ([link removed] )
John Yoo et al. | Law Talk with Epstein, Yoo & Cooke
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
An Inconvenient Truth and its aftermath provided a lesson yet to be fully appreciated: Political exhortation dressed in science will not save the world.
—Roger Pielke Jr. ([link removed] )
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