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Jul 12, 2023 | 
aei.org | Shane Tews |Harrison Durland
The United States is facing a challenge in spectrum management. The country once led the world in digital innovation, but now it is playing catch-up to China. China has been more proactive in allocating mid-band spectrum, which is essential for wireless communication and mobile technology. The US needs to take steps to ensure that it has enough spectrum to meet the needs of both its citizens and businesses.
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Jul 11, 2023 | 
aei.org | Bronwyn Howell |Harrison Durland
While former British politician Joseph Chamberlain lamented that “in politics, there is no use in looking beyond the next fortnight,” modern counterparts Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk must now concur that a day is a long time in the digital marketplace. On July 5, Zuckerberg’s Meta launched its text-sharing platform Threads in direct competition with Musk’s Twitter.
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Jul 7, 2023 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Harrison Durland
On June 30, a six-justice conservative majority of the US Supreme Court concluded in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that the First Amendment’s implicit right not to speak shielded website designer Lorie Smith from being compelled by Colorado’s anti-discrimination public accommodations statute to create same-sex wedding websites.
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Jul 6, 2023 | 
aei.org | Claude Barfield |Harrison Durland
Unlike its major Asian security partners—Australia, Japan, and South Korea—the US has no trade connection to the two major mega-regional Asian trade pacts. In the future, this failure could have important impacts on the ability to obtain key technology, materials, and components, including critical minerals for EV batteries and specialized chemicals for semiconductor production.
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Jul 5, 2023 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Harrison Durland
The US Supreme Court ruled on June 30 in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis that Colorado cannot compel Lorie Smith, in her business capacity as the owner of 303 Creative LLC, to create wedding websites for same-sex couples.
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Jun 30, 2023 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Harrison Durland
When is a statement a true threat of violence unprotected by the First Amendment? Does a speaker’s mental awareness about a statement’s threatening nature make any difference or does it only matter that an objectively reasonable person receiving such a statement would find it threatening? The US Supreme Court resolved those questions on June 27 in Counterman v. Colorado.
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Jun 29, 2023 | 
aei.org | Jim Harper |Harrison Durland
We all experience schadenfreude from time to time. The question is when it’s okay to take pleasure from the misfortunes of others and when it is not. There may be angels who see the pretrial demise of millionaire accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as a loss. I’m not one of them. And when I saw news that JPMorgan Chase is seeking a settlement with Epstein’s victims for $290 million, I casually threw that in the schadenfreude pile.
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Jun 21, 2023 | 
aei.org | Clay Calvert |Harrison Durland
The first post in this series described the Supreme Court’s increasing use of text, history, and tradition when evaluating constitutional questions. It explained that there’s reason to believe this methodology may affect First Amendment speech cases like NetChoice v. Moody, which involves Florida statutes dictating the form and substance of the content large social media platforms can host.
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Jun 20, 2023 | 
aei.org | Jim Harper |Harrison Durland
Since the blog was invented, think-tankers have been pressured to produce what is colloquially known as the “hot take.” In fact, since Twitter, the pressure has been to produce an instant, white-hot take on Twitter, then one that’s cooler but still hot somewhere else. They do the news; we do the commentary, right? I’m not immune to those pressures, and sometimes I have ideas I feel should hit the news cycle. But I’m somewhat resistant to doing the commentary as badly as they do the news.
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Apr 29, 2023 | 
forum.effectivealtruism.org | Ariel Simnegar |Harrison Durland |Vasco Grilo
Disclaimer: this is not a project from Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED). Global warming increases the risk from climate change. This “has the potential to result in—and to some extent is already resulting in—increased natural disasters, increased water and food insecurity, and widespread species extinction and habitat loss”.
