Articles

DECEMBER 30, 2020, afternoon Most people were packing up their offices. It was nearly New Year’s Eve of an election year at the Health and Human Services (HHS) offices in Washington, DC. Regardless of the skullduggery that goes on there, DC is beautiful around the holidays. Congress is out, so the streets and sideways are … ...

Last Thursday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a historic piece of legislation that makes the legal system much fairer for Tennessee businesses and individuals. The new law flips wrongful judicial deference (also referred to as agency deference, or as Chevron or Auer deference at the federal level) on its head by instructing courts to review &# ...

Wisconsin has become the latest state to end the unconstitutional practice of equity theft. Equity theft is a scheme that allows governments to settle an unpaid tax debt by taking a person’s private property—and all the equity it has accumulated. Governments often sell that property to private investors, who make windfall profits at the own ...

Virginia recently passed a bipartisan law that will give parents the right to choose whether their children wear masks in schools. School mask requirements have been a hotly debated issue across the country since schools reopened after the initial COVID pandemic lockdowns. Whether you are pro-mask, anti-mask, or somewhere in between, we should all ...

Occupational licenses, which impact a wide variety of professions, require workers to obtain state-issued “permission slips” before working in their desired fields. Often, if not always, the state licensing boards with the authority to accept and deny license applications as they please are stacked with individuals representing special ...

The pandemic is subsiding in America. Masks are coming off. People are gathering. There is light at the end of the tunnel. But in a few states, governors are still fighting tooth and nail to keep their emergency powers. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear is suing his own state Legislature after it passed laws that put … ...

As the country continues to re-open after more than a year of living under COVID emergency orders, it may be tempting to ignore further calls to restrict executive overreach. But we must be vigilant in upholding our system of checks and balances before the next national crisis comes our way. Many will chalk up the … ...

Co-authored by Nick Murray from Maine Policy Institute. This month marks the one-year anniversary of when states and the federal government first declared states of emergency over the spread of COVID-19. Much has changed since then in how we understand the virus, as well as the effects of lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, school closures, and “ ...

Although pandemics and crises are common throughout history, the “unprecedented” factor of the past year has been authoritarian restrictions on daily life and gubernatorial abuses of power. Consequently, it’s perplexing that unilateral restrictions on dining, walking outside, school closures, and family gatherings pass as reasonab ...