Cato Podcast

Trump's executive order challenges 150 years of birthright citizenship law, hinging on four words in the 14th Amendment. The Cato Institute's Tommy Berry, Dan Greenberg, and David Bier unpack the constitutional stakes and what the justices signaled at oral arguments. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Davies’s new book, The Great Realignment, argues that the key political divide of the past century — markets versus state control — is being displaced by a new aligning issue: nationalism, sovereignty, and collective identity versus cosmopolitanism and globalism. Cato’s Ryan Bourne talks with Davies about why today’s biggest political fights seem less about tax and spending and more about borders, culture, and who governs, how these non-economic conflicts still have deep economic roots, and what this new alignment persisting would mean for libertarians and economic policy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TSA agents are staying home; airport lines are hours long, and Congress still cannot agree on a DHS funding bill. The Cato Institute's Pat Eddington and Chris Edwards say this is a consequence of tying aviation security to the federal budget; a mistake other high-income countries do not make. With high failure rates in covert screening tests and a long trail of civil liberties abuses including secret watchlist criteria and a mass domestic passenger surveillance program, the case for privatizing airport security is stronger than ever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Massachusetts is weighing a ballot initiative that would cap rent increases at the rate of inflation with no vacancy decontrol, one of the most stringent rent control regimes proposed in the country. Cato's Ryan Bourne and Jeff Miron walk through why economists are nearly unanimous in opposing rent control: it shrinks rental supply, degrades housing quality, and tends to benefit longer-term, higher-income tenants rather than the low-income renters it claims to help. As Cambridge's own history shows, the policy doesn't just fail to solve the affordability problem; it actively makes it worse.

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In Newport Beach and along California's state beaches, government-created monopolies have effectively banned independent surf instructors from earning a living, with one instructor fined $40,000 after an undercover sting operation. Stephen Slivinski, Caleb Trotter of Pacific Legal Foundation, and Cato's Tommy Berry explore why First Amendment claims may be the sharpest tool available for fighting back against occupational protectionism. If these cases succeed, the precedent could crack open economic liberty litigation far beyond California's coastline.

We want to hear from you! Please share your thoughts in a 3-minute anonymous survey to help us refine our programming at Cato.org/PodcastSurvey.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.