Free Republic

WASHINGTON — President Trump lashed out at a leading African-American congressman on Saturday, calling him “a brutal bully” who represents a Baltimore-based district that has become a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.” Mr. Trump’s attack on Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Democrat from Maryland and leading critic of the president, parroted a segment that aired earlier in the morning on “Fox & Friends.” The president suggested that the congressman was a hypocrite for criticizing conditions in migrant detention centers at the southwestern border when his own district is blighted. Mr. Trump...

... Business investment has been cool since last year’s third quarter when the President revved up his trade brawl with China. Executives have reported delaying investment decisions since they don’t know the impact of his multifront trade war on cross-border supply chains. Foreign investment in the U.S. has been declining with capital flows from China falling 87.9% between 2016 and 2018. Trade uncertainty increased last quarter after negotiations with China collapsed in May. Then the President threatened tariffs on Mexico as a cudgel to curb immigration from Central America. Around the same time, the Trump Administration blindsided businesses with a...

President Trump won two victories on his border agenda Friday, with the Supreme Court allowing the use of military funds to expand the barrier on the Mexican border while Guatemala agreed to serve as gatekeeper for asylum seekers trying to get to the U.S. In a 5-4 decision, the justices of the U.S. high court said President Trump can shift about $2.5 billion in military funds to construct an additional 100 miles of wall at the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to seal off the U.S. from illegal immigration. In February, Mr. Trump had declared a national emergency in order...

Tuition freezes are gaining popularity across the country. Earlier this year, university systems in Virginia and Pennsylvania announced that tuition would not rise in the next academic year, saving students and parents millions of dollars. Purdue University started the tuition-freeze trend in 2013. Under the leadership of its president, Mitch Daniels, Purdue instituted a freeze on all tuition and fees at its flagship campus in West Lafayette, Indiana. Tuition has stayed flat ever since—more than half a decade. Since then, enrollment has increased, students have a more affordable education, and Purdue continues to thrive. University administrators, governing boards, and state...

No one would ever nefariously exploit gender non-discrimination laws to prey on little girls, they said. Right-wing fearmongering, they called it. Over the past few decades, the Left has been engaged in the glorification of anyone who departs from the “cis-gendered” status quo, with no regard for antiquated concerns like morality or sexual ethics. By and large, leftists have enjoyed a blank check from the culture to push whatever boundaries they want when it comes to sex and gender. A few years ago, this included a push to allow transgender individuals to use bathrooms and other gendered facilities corresponding with...

The costs of America’s trade disputes with the world continue to mount. Academic studies document clearly, for example, that new U.S. tariffs on washing machines and other products have raised U.S. consumer prices of those goods, thereby cutting into Americans’ real incomes. New government data suggest that another cost is building. Foreign direct investment into America by multinational companies headquartered abroad is falling. In 2015 and 2016, America’s FDI inflows totaled $482 billion and $486 billion, respectively. Soon after taking office in January 2017, President Trump launched several new trade disputes; that year FDI into the U.S. tumbled nearly 40%...

Back in 2010, I wrote a piece for the Martin Center entitled Bad Sociology, Not Law bemoaning the marginalization of common law doctrine in the American law school curriculum. My point then was that, increasingly, law students were just learning about legal doctrine in their classes rather than being called upon to master the prevailing legal doctrine itself in all its complexities. Put differently, law teachers are devoting more classroom time to policy (what should be) and less to the prevailing law’s basic anatomy (what is). At Harvard Law School, for example, Agency, Trusts, Evidence, Business Associations, and Family Law...

... Contrary to the claims in Michelle Alexander’s much-discussed 2010 bestseller The New Jim Crow, drug prohibition is not driving incarceration rates. Yes, about half of federal prisoners are in on drug charges; but federal inmates constitute only 12 percent of all American prisoners—the vast majority are in state facilities. Those incarcerated primarily for drug offenses constitute less than 15 percent of state prisoners. Four times as many state inmates are behind bars for one of five very serious crimes: murder (14.2 percent), rape or sexual assault (12.8 percent), robbery (13.1 percent), aggravated or simple assault (10.5 percent), and burglary...

The Berkeley, California, City Council is getting headlines for its decision last week to ban supposedly gendered language from its city code. “Manhole” and “manpower” are now out in favor of “maintenance hole” and “human effort.” Somewhere George Orwell is crying, but the city’s progressive lords were even more destructive when they also moved to ban natural gas from nearly all new buildings. The ordinance is due for a second reading this week and already has unanimous council support. Beginning Jan. 1, with few exceptions the city will deny developers permission to build a home, town house or small apartment...

Donald Trump rarely admits a mistake, much less an overstatement, so we’ll take the regret he expressed Thursday at the chant of “send her back” during his Wednesday rally as the moral equivalent of an apology. Let’s hope his supporters get the message, and that Mr. Trump stops egging them on. The crowd in North Carolina broke into chants of “send her back” after Mr. Trump lambasted Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar for hating America. Mr. Trump had used the words “go back” in a tweet earlier in the week, and the crowd’s chant shows how easily an ill-thought presidential comment...

City leaders in Portland, Ore., are considering making it illegal for protesters to wear masks in an attempt to address violent clashes between left-wing and right-wing activists, the latest of which occurred a few weeks ago. Police Chief Danielle Outlaw first called for an antimask law after dueling protests on June 29, where a conservative writer said he was assaulted by members of the left-wing group Antifa, who frequently wear masks. Demonstrators from Antifa, short for antifascist, were among those countering a march by the Proud Boys, which calls itself a “Western Chauvinist Group” and is designated as a hate...

Democratic candidates for president, in their impressive expansiveness, are promising free college. Some limit their proposals to community colleges, others to state-run schools, and a few, going for broke, want also to forgive student debt for private-college tuition. Since no realm of American life has undergone greater inflation in recent decades than higher education, this is no piddling promise. The cost to taxpayers could be in the trillions, though the prospect would please a nephew of mine who this autumn is sending a son to Dartmouth at the annual price of $76,000. If government is going to pay for college,...

... Nevertheless, in a time when academic resources are stretched thin and many traditional academic departments are facing retrenchment, it is reasonable to ask whether the continued expansion of [grievance studies] departments is justified. Is there something beyond their inherent academic value that is driving the growth of cultural studies programs at the expense of other departments and, perhaps, the overall health of the university? The answer is yes. It is the contemporary university’s quest for a diverse faculty. Almost all elite universities make it a top priority to increase the number of minorities and women on their faculty. Yale...

Trump outdid himself with anti-“squad” tweets over the weekend suggesting that the four Democratic congresswomen go back where they came from. The tweets were clearly trolling and meant to be sardonic — supposedly they are to go back home, fix their countries, and then return here to tell us how it’s done, with Nancy Pelosi happy to pay the airfare. They are several things to say about this: 1) As always, presidents shouldn’t troll; 2) on a tactical level, it’s incredibly dumb for the president to insert himself into the middle of the Democratic circular firing squad between Nancy Pelosi...

In 1969, Forest Hills was a long way from Christopher Street, and a bizarre incident of vigilante tree chopping showed just how far. Only days before the Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village, a mob of some 20 local men descended on the southern edge of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Using power saws and axes, they leveled a grove of trees that was known as a gay cruising spot. According to a New York Times report at the time, “15 dogwood trees, 11 London planes, a number of wild-cherry trees and other greenery” were felled. The parks department estimated the trees...

We present results from a five-year effort to design promising online and text-message interventions to improve college achievement through several distinct channels. From a sample of nearly 25,000 students across three different campuses, we find some improvement from coaching-based interventions on mental health and study time, but none of the interventions we evaluate significantly influences academic outcomes (even for those students more at risk of dropping out). We interpret the results with our survey data and a model of student effort. Students study about five to eight hours fewer each week than they plan to, though our interventions do not...

In March 2018, the University of Arkansas Board of Trustees adopted new rules that fatally undermine academic freedom. We authored this piece for the Martin Center explaining the damage the amendments would inflict on higher education in the state. Unfortunately, the Board of Trustees ignored our warning, a warning reiterated by numerous other faculty and academic organizations. So earlier this month, three of our colleagues filed a lawsuit that seeks to bar application of the revisions to faculty with tenure or who were on the tenure track at the time the changes were adopted. Should the lawsuit succeed, some of...

Free public school starting at age four, or even three, is growing in many American cities. It’s gaining traction as a way to help young children learn the reading, counting and social skills that prepare them for kindergarten. It also promises to help close academic gaps between rich and poor children. Above all, it may have lasting benefits for attendees, including success in school and better lives as adults. But promises are not guarantees, and universal pre-K works better in some places than in others. Washington, D.C., runs one of the country’s oldest, best-funded, most comprehensive pre-K systems. So what...

President Trump’s relentless public criticism of the man he picked to run the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, isn’t broadly shared by lawmakers who confirmed the central bank leader to his post last year. The Fed chairman heads to Capitol Hill for two days of testimony beginning Wednesday, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have mostly commended the job he is doing. In interviews, they declined to endorse Mr. Trump’s call for the Fed to cut interest rates and said they would oppose efforts by the president to remove Mr. Powell from office. Mr. Trump is angry Mr. Powell...

It was a big day for plans, and Senator Elizabeth Warren rubbed her hands together almost gleefully as she said, “I’ve got a lot of them.” But at the Essence Festival in New Orleans on Saturday, she was not the only one with a plan. Ms. Warren and Senator Kamala Harris of California both used the occasion — the annual culture and music festival sponsored by Essence magazine, which caters to black women — to introduce major new proposals intended to address racial disparities, including in wealth and homeownership. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and former Representative Beto O’Rourke...