With the Federal Reserve System likely to post its first annual operating loss since 1915, Paul H. Kupiec and Alex J. Pollock explain why it happened and how it will cost taxpayers for years to come. According to Kupiec and Pollock, the Fed’s quantitative easing investments “created a massive Fed interest rate risk exposure that could generate mind-boggling losses if interest rates rose—as they now have.”

The Department of Labor’s inspector general estimates that $163 billion of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance was lost to fraud and improper payments. Matt Weidinger and former Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) call on congressional oversight committees to find out where it went.

Samuel J. Abrams and Joel Kotkin investigate the emergence of “single woke females” as “one of the most potent voting blocs in American politics” and a core component of the Democrats’ coalition. “Unmarried women without children have been moving toward the Democratic Party for several years,” write Abrams and Kotkin, “but the 2022 midterms may have been their electoral coming-out party.”

Max Eden evaluates how Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has challenged critical race theory (CRT) in schools and its counterpart in higher education: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Eden gives Gov. DeSantis high marks: “By properly synonymizing DEI with CRT, DeSantis has taken an important step that other conservative leaders ought to study and emulate.”

According to Benedic N. Ippolito and Boris Vabson, an increasing rate of Americans with health insurance has meant more cost sharing between insurers and patients—and more of those costs going unpaid. Ippolito and Vabson consider how policymakers can respond to this growing form of medical debt.