Writing in the New York Times, Yuval Levin identifies a growing consensus on the dangers that social media use poses to children. Levin proposes a solution to this recognized problem: raising the legal minimum age for internet data collection from 13 to 18 and enforcing it through "effective age verification and meaningful penalties."

Leon Aron honors the efforts and beliefs of Vladimir Kara-Murza, "one of the last nationally recognized opposition leaders to Vladimir Putin," who was arrested in Moscow on April 11. Aron writes that Kara-Murza faces "inevitable conviction" and imprisonment for speaking out against Putin's regime and in support of Russian democracy.

William Haun applauds the Supreme Court's recent track record on religious liberty, which he heralds as a return to "America's long history of religious accommodation, the reality of pluralism and the unique role religion plays in securing self-government." In four cases over this past term, Haun says that the Supreme Court "ended longstanding distortions of [the] First Amendment" that "have stoked the cultural misunderstandings of religious freedom that we see today."  

As poorly as the Federal Reserve has performed over the past year, Paul H. Kupiec warns that things could get even worse if the left succeeds in altering the agency's mandate. Kupiec explains and criticizes proposals from progressives in Congress and the executive branch that would require the Fed to address climate change, allocate bank credit among racial and ethnic lines, and centralize digital currency.

Benjamin Zycher argues that an export ban on US crude oil would, contrary to its proponents' claims, increase prices and harm American consumers. He cites the effects of the previous oil export ban, in place from 1975 to 2015, which he says "had the effect of reducing domestic production of crude oil by shrinking the market for American petroleum."

Reporting on data from AEI's Return to Learn Tracker, Nat Malkus and Alex Audet find that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indoor masking guidance for schools from September 2021 to February 2022 failed to inform sensible masking policies at the school district level. Malkus and Audet write that the CDC's "blanket guidance," which "advised all students and teachers to mask indoors, with no flexibility based on local conditions," led to polarized and misinformed responses across districts.