Matters of Policy & Politics

Robert E. Hall, the Hoover Institution’s Robert and Carole McNeil Senior Fellow (Emeritus) and Stanford professor of economics, has been named a co-recipient of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to understanding macroeconomic stabilization. Hall becomes the sixth Hoover economist in the past half-century to receive the honor, continuing a tradition that began with Milton Friedman.

In a new episod...

A vestige of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”, the federal Medicare healthcare program has expanded in ways its architects perhaps didn’t foresee – a growing constituency (nearly 70 million elderly Americans now rely on Medicare for their healthcare needs, with that number climbing as more Americans reach their golden years) and senior healthcare occupying a growing chunk of the federal budget (Medicar...

A divided America agrees on one thing: most folks don’t want new data centers in their communities. But do data centers live up to their sour reputation as water and electricity gluttons? Or are they, in fact, a 21st Century version of the automobile – an innovation deemed dangerous at first, but eventually a means to community advancement and prosperity? Steven Koonin, the Hoover Institution’s Edward Teller Senio...

Among the latest happenings in the Golden State: choosing California-based “winners” and “losers” in the aftermath of the settlement of the state attorney generals’ antitrust suit blocking the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger (a good day for Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, not one of California AG Rob Bonta’s better moments, and mixed results at best for Hollywood-based entertainment); what an...

The beginning of a new K-12 year across the United States means the continuation of a learning-loss problem that predates COVID’s disruption of America’s educational system, as well as a new concern in more recent times: artificial intelligence interfering with students’ intellectual curiosity and development and teachers’ ability to do their job. Eric Hanushek, the Hoover Institution’s Paul and Jean H...

Twenty-five years ago, the Free World was shocked by an attack on America in which three airliners struck New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon – a fourth plane crashing in rural Pennsylvania presumably on its way to strike the US Capitol. What did we learn from that attack, and is America better prepared to handle terror that can take more sophisticated forms? Philip Zelikow, the Hoover Institution’s Bot...

A recent AI analysis conducted by a team of Hoover fellows finds the US at greater risk of great-power hostilities with China than in recent decades, thus necessitating America to step up its deterrence capabilities. That includes the interaction between the Pentagon and venture capitalists who finance defense-related start-ups and ventures, the topic of a Hoover Institution briefing entitled Mobilize the Modern Defense Industrial ...

The beginning of a new college year across the United States begs the question of the health of liberal education in America – the ongoing concern that tomorrow’s leaders aren’t receiving the intellectual grounding and diversity of thought that reflects a free society and whether campus life embodies the principles of a rights-protecting democracy. In his new book Reclaiming Liberal Education, a complication of a ...

Ordinarily, summertime in Sacramento in an election year coinciding with a governor’s last year in office makes for plenty of intrigue (what bills are forwarded to the governor; how does it affect his legacy)? But in 2026, the leadup to the August 31 deadline for passing legislation seems humdrum. Are a docile legislature and an oftentimes absentee Gavin Newsom (mostly recently stumping in early-primary Michigan) to blame? Me...

Fifty years ago, three young men working out of a modest ranch-style home in Los Altos, California, changed the world by creating Apple Inc. But is Apple’s success (at one point this year, a $5 trillion market cap) a one-off or yet another example of how innovation has flourished in the 250 years of the American republic? Stephen Haber, the Hoover’s Institution’s Park L. Loughlin senior fellow and co-author of an ...

To the notion of a vast and empty outer space, imagine instead the lower orbit of planet Earth cluttered by thousands of aging tracked objects losing their functionality and far too much debris – some of it moving at speeds of kilometers per second, posing a threat to satellites and mankind’s ability to communicate and make scientific, economic and climate forecasts, not to mention great powers’ national security....

In a year full of talk about revolutions past (1776) and present (AI), there’s yet another upheaval to ponder: an emerging “quantum revolution” that will change the boundaries of science and industry as it deeply impacts global commerce and geopolitics -- the US, China, and European nations are all making advancements in the field. Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann and three co-authors discuss their recent Hoover Instit...

California is one of 24 states that allow voters to decide whether initiatives and referenda can become law – i.e., direct democracy. But what does California’s slate of 14 initiatives on the November ballot –  including a “wealth tax” on billionaires, new voter-ID requirements, plus proposed changes to the recall of elected officials – say about the Golden State’s priorities, special ...

As America prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, it’s not so much “taxation without representation” at issue as it is the question of what modern taxation represents – For some, a chance to strike a blow against wealth disparity while pursuing a socialist dream of expansive government. Nowhere is that more evident than in California and a ballot initiative which, if approved by voters in November, would ...

This week’s bombshell news in Sacramento: California Gov. Gavin Newsom announcing that he and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom are under federal investigation reportedly for tax and financial improprieties – Newsom claiming he’s the victim of a political vendetta as a critic of President Trump, but the story also a window into the unseemly practice of “behested payments” that special interests use ...

On the eve of the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, how has the nation’s Declaration of Independence – drafted, debated and signed in a world shaped more by royalty than republicanism – managed to stand the test of time?

They quibbled over the language and the provisions, but in the end America’s Founding Fathers produced a 1,320-word document establishing a newborn republic’s belief...

California’s revised state budget for the new fiscal year beginning in July comes with a plot twist – a deficit that’s no more, courtesy of an unexpected capital-gains tax windfall. But is the same entity that showered Sacramento with billions in tax revenue – California’s vibrant AI sector – also a source of long-term economic and policy concerns (tech-related job losses; competing with farmers ...

America is a land dotted with so-called “company towns” – population centers where a single business or industry dominates not only the local economy, but government and community ethos as well. But what happens when a town and an industry in decline part ways, leaving it to local government and leadership to take up the slack? Hoover fellow Elizabeth Mitchell Edler discusses what transpired in those portions of A...

Before invasions of Ukraine and Crimea and various “resets” of America’s diplomatic approach toward the Kremlin, there was the “Boris and Bill Show” – two chummy and newly-installed presidents meeting multiple times at the tail-end of the 20th Century with the shared goal of bringing Russia into a post-Cold War world order as a peaceful, prosperous (and non-proliferating) society.

Rose Gottemoell...