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March 25, 2025
The Press Clause’s Disputed Meaning and Its Implications for Trump-Era Journalism
A burgeoning battle among academics and attorneys involving a centuries-old communications technology––the printing press––could impact journalists’ current claims to constitutional protection against President Trump’s ceaseless attacks on news organizations. Indeed, the dispute might profoundly affect lawsuits such as Associated Press v. Budowich in which a wire service is fighting to restore its press-credentialed access to…
March 25, 2025
The Energy Demands of the Data-Driven Future: Challenges and Solutions
Event Summary On March 25, AEI hosted a conference on the challenges of balancing energy constraints with the rapid growth of AI and data centers. AEI’s L. Lynne Kiesling opened the event and moderated the first panel, which examined the evolving energy demands of AI infrastructure. Brian George (Google), Arne Olson (Energy and Environmental Economics),…
March 25, 2025
The Public Interest as a Political Tool
Donald Trump and Brendan Carr, the president’s choice to chair the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), seem intent on reinvigorating the Commission’s statutory authority to ensure that over-the-over broadcasters serve “the public interest.” That’s especially so when it comes to deploying the FCC’s news distortion rule to potentially punish stations—for example, CBS affiliates that aired 60…
March 21, 2025
Will FCC v. Consumers’ Research Revive the Nondelegation Doctrine?
The idea behind the nondelegation doctrine is sound: Congress should not delegate legislative power to executive branch agencies. But its implementation leaves much to be desired. Nearly every nondelegation case acknowledges there’s a theoretical boundary but then finds that Congress hasn’t crossed it here. Only twice has the Supreme Court found a law violated the…
March 21, 2025
New Poll on Workers’ Attitudes to AI Reinforces Old Divides
Will artificial intelligence help, replace, or kill us? These long-unanswered questions came back into focus earlier this week, as the Pew Research Center published the results of an eye-opening poll that further underscores an unhappy trend: our debate about AI is fundamentally broken. Pew found that more than half of all American workers reported being…
March 20, 2025
Regional Transmission Organizations as Market Platforms V
In this RTO series, I’ve been exploring the decision-making processes and corporate governance structures within Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), highlighting how these institutions perpetuate the control and decision-making power of incumbent investor-owned utilities (IOUs). Today, we’ll delve deeper by examining two critical, complementary insights: first, how monopoly regulation dilutes corporate governance incentives for IOUs, and…
March 20, 2025
Is Single Extreme Event Attribution Even Possible?
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) currently has a study committee on Attribution of Extreme Weather and Climate Events and their Impacts. In this series — Weather Attribution Alchemy — I have previously discussed the committee’s many conflicts of interest. Today I discuss a crucial scientific question at the center of the committee’s work,…
March 20, 2025
DOGE, Open Up the MAX Database!
My most recent post “Haste Controls Waste!” sought to reconcile my misgivings about the speed of current government reforms with decades of staunch and thoroughgoing resistance. Now let’s talk about DOGE-y reforms that could be applied to democratic processes. When Elon Musk spoke about democracy in the Oval Office some weeks ago, many people focused…
March 19, 2025
How much might AI legislation cost in the US?
Policymakers are rushing to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), but the economic impact of these regulations remains largely unexplored. While the European Union and the United Kingdom have produced cost estimates, recent developments in the United States offer important new benchmarks. Recent amendments to the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and regulations implementing President Biden’s Executive Order on AI offer…
March 19, 2025
AI and Jobs: Measuring Impact and Building New Assessment Tools
Event Summary On March 19, AEI’s Brent Orrell and Shane Tews hosted a panel discussion featuring Alex Tamkin, an AI researcher at Anthropic, and Jason Owen-Smith, a sociologist at the University of Michigan, on how AI is shaping the labor market and workforce development policy. The conversation was moderated by Axios reporter Ashley Gold. The…