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January 28, 2025
A Warning Against Warning Labels on Social Media Platforms
If you can’t constitutionally restrict social media platforms or the speech they convey, force them to transmit some of your own speech they’ll surely dislike. That’s seemingly the strategy of some lawmakers frustrated that the First Amendment’s guarantees of free expression and editorial autonomy have repeatedly stymied their paternalistic efforts to restrict minors’ platform access to lawful, presumptively protected…
January 27, 2025
The Most Major Hurricanes Ever
Last year the world experienced the most major hurricane landfalls since records are available, tying only 2015, with 11 storms. Does last year indicate that we have reached a new climate-fueled normal? Let’s have a look. More than a decade ago, Jessica Weinkle, Ryan Maue, and I published the first long-period global hurricane landfall dataset using a consistent methodology….
January 27, 2025
AI’s Emerging Paradox
While the presidential transition commanded headlines this week, equally significant shifts were occurring in AI technology. Just hours before Donald Trump’s inauguration, DeepSeek released its latest model, achieving a breakthrough in AI reasoning that matches the best models of OpenAI and Anthropic but at a fraction of the cost. DeepSeek, which is backed by a Chinese…
January 27, 2025
The Most Major Hurricanes Ever
Last year the world experienced the most major hurricane landfalls since records are available, tying only 2015, with 11 storms. Does last year indicate that we have reached a new climate-fueled normal? Let’s have a look. More than a decade ago, Jessica Weinkle, Ryan Maue, and I published the first long-period global hurricane landfall dataset using a consistent methodology….
January 24, 2025
Regional Transmission Organizations as Market Platforms II
Whether it’s rising electricity bills, reliability concerns, an impetus for decarbonization, or the related importance of grid modernization, power systems in the U.S. and around the world are struggling with change. In this series on regional transmission organizations (RTOs), I’m digging in to the institutional aspects of these challenges. Last time I started with history….
January 24, 2025
Why Meta’s Change in Fact-Checking Is Good for Democracy
If there was ever any doubt that US politics has conditioned the content carried by social media delivered worldwide, it was erased on January 7 when Meta announced it was scrapping its fact-checking on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in favor of a community notes system similar to that used on the platform X. In a video…
January 24, 2025
Trump’s Big, Bold AI Gamble
What a difference a week makes. As others and I have predicted, newly-inaugurated President Trump rolled back much of his predecessor’s policy approach to artificial intelligence (AI). But few forecasted just how stark the contrast has been. Last week, before the inauguration, I argued that Trump should reverse outgoing President Biden’s ill-considered Executive Order on AI. As…
January 24, 2025
Two Cautions on the Trump Energy/Environment Executive Orders
The Trump “Day One” executive orders on energy and environment policies are worthy of applause because they implement a shift toward market forces in place of central planning as the dominant institution driving resource allocation in the various energy sectors. At the same time, two of the executive orders are problematic: the exit from the Paris climate agreement, and…
January 22, 2025
Liability Elasticity and Other Policy Concerns Underlying Social Media Addiction Lawsuits
Lurking beneath today’s raft of social media addiction lawsuits blaming platforms for harming minors are three broad public policy concerns. These frets could easily affect corporate liability in areas beyond online media. The first concern is the discretion trial court judges possess––in the absence of explicit legislation or a state high court ruling dictating otherwise––when deciding whether…
January 22, 2025
America Can’t Afford to Lose the High-Skilled Talent Race in Today’s Competitive Markets
A recent social media clash that erupted between Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and Trump loyalists over high-skilled immigration reform exposed deep ideological rifts within the Republican coalition. But the importance of the debate over immigration policy and the American education system extends far beyond social media — solving these problems is critical to America’s competitiveness. By combining pragmatic immigration reforms,…