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Let’s get this out of the way: My new book, The Last American Road Trip, is out today. This newsletter has 51,000 subscribers. Now if all 51,000 of you go out and buy the book, that would be terrific! I would like to stop promoting it and get back to what I love: writing.

You can order The Last American Road Trip at:

Bookshop: The Last American Road Trip a book by Sarah Kendzior - Bookshop.org US
Left Bank Books (signed!): SIGNED Last American Road Trip by Sarah Kendzior | Left Bank Books
Barnes and Noble: The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir by Sarah Kendzior, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble®
Amazon: The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir: Kendzior, Sarah: 9781250879882: Amazon.com: Books

Or get it at your local independent bookseller! Independent booksellers are important bastions of free speech and civic engagement, especially in these times.

The United States needs immigrants. Americans aged 65 or older will nearly double to about 50% of the population from today’s 27% due to declining fertility and rising longevity. The dire warnings we hear about the Social Security and Medicare systems will come true with a vengeance. Immigration, to be sure, is not the only remedy for our demographic problems—we can incentivize child-raising and extend the average working life—but it is an indispensable one. Working-age adult immigrants who pay into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds help keep these systems solvent.

The fall in America’s fertility rate stems from cultural and religious shifts that cannot be undone quickly. In a January 10, 2022 contribution to The American Mind, I reviewed the statistical evidence that the decline in our fertility can be explained by the attenuation of religion in the United States.

By Fernando Monge, Ruth Puttick, and Rainer Kattel

Why do some cities seem to tackle complex challenges more effectively than others? Is Helsinki really able to address housing issues more nimbly than Sydney? If so, why? Or why does Cape Town excel in crisis response but not in addressing persistent problems like informal settlements? Our recently published research suggests that — at least in part — the answer lies not just in the cities themselves but in the broader environment in which they operate.

In his address to Congress this month, President Trump boasted—and justly so—of his administration’s astonishing success in stopping illegal border crossings over just six weeks. “Since taking office, my administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded.” This is no Trumpian bombast: A 94% year-on-year reduction in illegal entries really is an unprecedented accomplishment. It is also a popular one: a majority of Americans approve of controlling the border.

An even larger majority—some 76%—approve of his policy of deporting undocumented aliens who have committed felonies. Even some on the Left like Jon Stewart have been wondering: if ICE knew exactly where to find all those murderers, rapists, drug dealers, and human traffickers, as clearly they did, why then did the Biden Administration never act to deport them? Good question.

And a second cut – from 4.1% to 3.85% – is exactly what the Reserve Bank should have delivered today.

The Treasurer and Prime Minister constantly remind us that the bank is independent of government and politics.

Now, suddenly, the RBA doesn’t want to look political.

“Australian mortgage holders are suffering too much for the bank to tiptoe around the sensitivities of our political leaders,” said Greg Jericho, Chief Economist at The Australia Institute.

“When rates were going up, the bank had no problem slugging borrowers ten times in a row.

“Now that rates are coming down – and the bank board is meeting less often – the RBA is more worried about appearing political than doing the right thing by Australians.

“All the indicators have continued to move in the right direction since the last rate cut. Underlying inflation has now been below 3% for three straight months – so why wait?

“Interest rate cuts never happen as a one-off. The RBA has already indicated that more are coming. So, I repeat, why wait?”

The post Rate hold more political than the cut we should have had  appeared first on The Australia Institute.

Itamar Drechsler, Hyeyoon Jung, Weiyu Peng, Dominik Supera, and Guanyu Zhou

Editor’s note: The second chart in this post has been updated to reflect the revised analysis presented in the research paper—Staff Report No. 1143 (October 16, 2025, 10:00 am).

Previous Australia Institute research showed that 56% of Australia’s gas exports are based on royalty-free gas and Treasury has confirmed that no gas export project has ever paid Petroleum Resource Rent Tax.

Key points:

• Gas export volumes are expected to be maintained at 80 million tonnes per year to 2030.
• This gas is expected to sell for a total of $303 billion.
• 56% of this, or $170 billion is based on royalty-free gas and is unlikely to pay any petroleum tax.

“Big gas is taking the piss,” said Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute.

“Last week we saw Opposition Leader Peter Dutton acknowledge that excessive gas exports are harming Australians.

“Unrestricted gas exports have been a disaster, but even worse is that most of it is given away for free.

“It’s important to understand what these forecasts mean – the Australian Government is planning to give away vast volumes of public gas, for free, out to 2030.

“Not only is this fiscally irresponsible, but this is making climate change worse.

“Fossil fuels need to be phased out and kept in the ground, not given away for free.

“The next parliament has a real opportunity to end the gas industry’s free ride and deliver for the Australian public and the climate.”

Assessing dynamic capabilities in city governments: insights from developing the Public Sector Capabilities Index

By Anna Goulden

This blog shares the latest highlights from our work to develop the Public Sector Capabilities Index. Led by UCL IIPP in partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Public Sector Capabilities Index will be a first-of-its-kind measure of city governments’ capabilities to problem-solve and adapt. We call these dynamic capabilities — in simple terms, the abilities of public sector organisations to transform their activities, processes and resources to address both existing and newly-emerging challenges.

On this episode of After America, Allan Behm joins Dr Emma Shortis to discuss the ongoing fallout from the Signal chat debacle, the dire situation facing Ukraine, and Australia’s failure to adapt to a radically changed world.

This discussion was recorded on Friday 28 March 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Read more from Emma in the latest edition of Australian Foreign Affairs.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Allan Behm, Special Advisor, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Show notes:

‘Here are the attack plans that Trump’s advisers shared on Signal’ by Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris, The Atlantic (March 2025)

The most popular and encouraging part of the upheaval unleashed by the Trump presidency may be the administration’s fierce determination to break the grip that wokeness, the new racialism, and gender ideology have had on all levels of government, as well as on the commanding heights of civil society. As William Voegeli perceptively argues in the latest issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Trump speaks for the 80% of Americans who are appalled by “anti-racism” being turned into a weapon of war by other means; who want free speech to be respected again; who are alarmed by limitless social engineering, the genital mutilation of the young, and literally open borders; who do not want women’s sports to be dominated by biological men; and who deeply resent the constant invective being directed against the noble American project itself.

President Trump has repeatedly spoken of a “common sense revolution,” a “revolution” that puts the lie to the para-Marxist claim, beloved by academics, journalists, and almost all politicians, that the concerns of citizens are almost exclusively “bread-and-butter” ones, and that “culture war” issues are at best a distraction and at worst an exercise in demagoguery, racism, and homophobia.

Can dynamic capabilities in city governments be analysed through AI-augmented Qualitative Evidence Synthesis?

By Kwame Baafi, Rainer Kattel and Ruth Puttick

The Public Sector Capabilities Index establishes how best to assess dynamic capabilities. As the potential grows for artificial intelligence (AI) augmented research, what can the Public Sector Capabilities Index learn to effectively collect and analyse data about city governments around the world?

As chunks of rotting salmon from a massive fish die-off wash up on the shores of Tasmania’s pristine beaches, the Albanese government rammed legislation to shield the salmon industry through Parliament within 48 hours, with the support of the Coalition.

Details of the legislation were made public on Monday. On Tuesday, it was introduced to and passed by the lower house. By Wednesday evening it was law. Forget policy on the run, this was slapdash.

While focus was on the government’s surprise income tax cuts and Peter Dutton’s plans to sack 41,000 public service workers, Australia’s environment laws were gutted with no genuine debate. None of the regular parliamentary scrutiny that accompanies a bill.

No Senate inquiry. No time for public hearings or public input into the legislation. No consultation with scientists, or the local community.

It was pure politics. Both Labor and the Coalition rushed the legislation through with an eye on votes in Bass, Braddon and Lyons.

This article is read by Eunice Wong, a Juilliard-trained actor, featured on Audible's list of Best Women Narrators. Her work is on the annual Best Audiobooks lists of the New York Times, Audible, AudioFile, & Library Journal. www.eunicewong.actor

Text originally published March 11, 2025

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Jeremiah Gridley, leader of the Massachusetts bar when John Adams joined it, said that “a Lawyer ought never to be without a Book of Moral Philosophy on his Table.” In the founding era, moral philosophy was itself part of common law reasoning, as was political philosophy.

This sets the Founders apart not only from the modern academy, with its separate departments for government, philosophy, and law, but even from their British contemporaries of the late 18th century such as the jurist William Blackstone. As James Wilson noted of Blackstone, “He should be read and studied. He deserves to be much admired; but he ought not to be implicitly followed.”

Contra Blackstone, the Founders maintained that if one does not think about common law precedents in particular, and legal reasoning in general, in light of the moral/legal reasoning behind them, one will misread them. The reasoning that justified them was inseparable from the law itself, and informed the scope and limitations of any precedent that followed.

In this election campaign, opposition leader Peter Dutton has set out to defy the weight of his party’s recent history.

Dutton began the year by announcing plans to make the instant asset write-off scheme permanent and to introduce a $20,000 tax deduction for small business meal and entertainment expenses. In his budget reply speech on Thursday night, Dutton promised to temporarily halve the petrol excise, a move which he claimed would save motorists $14 per week.

That’s the extent of the Liberal Party’s tax agenda so far. Shadow ministers have told the media there are no discussions or plans for personal tax relief. When the government unveiled its budget-night proposal to cut the lowest tax rate (from 16 per cent to 14 per cent by mid-2027), Dutton dismissed the measure as a “cruel hoax” and promised to repeal the legislation if elected.

The opposition’s pledge to oppose that measure is truly historic.

Since the Menzies era, there have only been two out of 22 federal elections where the Liberal Party did not offer either personal income tax cuts, family tax relief or company tax cuts.

In elections where the Liberal Party did not make income tax cuts a centrepiece of its policy offering, it still offered proposals such as income tax indexation or half-indexation (particularly under Malcolm Fraser), income tax-splitting (under Andrew Peacock), child tax rebates (under Peacock and John Howard) or changes to the tax-free threshold (particularly under the Howard government) as a form of personal tax relief.

What City Observatory Did This Week

ODOT’s “Strategic Review”: Conflicted consultants whitewashing mis-management. The Oregon Department of Transportation is again trying convince the Legislature and the public that it isn’t incompetent at managing highway construction.  With three major Portland-area highway projects racking up a staggering $4.8 billion in cost overruns in the past five years, the agency has a serious financial and credibility problem.  It has offered up a so-called “strategic review” to try to placate criticism but it shows the agency is more interested in image management than actual project cost control. ODOT commissioned a review that reads more like a public relations exercise than a genuine effort to address systemic problems.

The review, led by consultants with deep financial ties to ODOT, doesn’t even try to meaningfully diagnose or solve the agency’s chronic cost overrun issues. Notably, the panel includes former state DOT directors from states with their own significant infrastructure management challenges, raising questions about the review’s credibility.

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North Carolina May End Parking Mandates—Your City Should Be Next

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Friday 28th March 2025

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Unpacking opposition: the contested landscape of life skills-based education in Pakistan

 — Publication: Advancing Learning and Innovation on Gender Norms (ALIGN) — Wednesday 26th March 2025

Unpacking opposition: the contested landscape of life skills-based education in Pakistan ESubden Wed, 03/26/2025 - 16:41 26 March 2025 Report Komal Qidwai, Fabiha Moin, Rida Rehan Chughtai, Ziana Shakil ALIGN, Aahung View report Pakistan 133, 64, 1474, 1690

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ODOT’s “Strategic Review”: Conflicted consultants whitewashing mis-management

 — Publication: City Observatory — Friday 28th March 2025

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT’) has a big management problem:  huge cost overruns on highway mega-projects.  Just three Portland area highway projects—The Interstate Bridge Replacement, the I-5 Rose Quarter freeway widening and the I-205 Abernethy Bridge have chalked up cost overruns totaling $4.8 billion in just the past five years.

ODOT commissioned a “strategic review” which failed to identify the scale or frequency of these cost overruns as a major problem.

The consultant team ODOT hired to perform the strategic review comes from a firm largely dependent on ODOT for consulting work on these same mega-projects.  The consultants are conflicted because they make more money when ODOT has cost-overruns, and stand to lose business if they’re publicly critical of a big client.

These conflicts are accentuated by the revolving door between top state DOT management positions and highly paid consulting gigs. The strategic review was led by ODOT director Kris Strickler’s former boss—who now works for a firm billing $80 million for its work on the IBR.

An independent study published by the Brookings Institution shows that excessive reliance on consultants is a major contributor to high costs, and Oregon’s costs are double the national average.

Just as in 2016, prior to the last big transportation package, ODOT hired a consultant to whitewash its management credibility to convince the legislature to increase its funding.

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Migrants are not to blame for soaring house prices

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Friday 28th March 2025

It looks like in this election there is going to be a lot of talk about how immigration impacts house prices. This topic can very quickly become charged with emotion, so instead let’s look at the facts.

Despite what you may have been told, over the past 10 years, housing supply has actually grown faster than the population. The number of dwellings has increased by 19%, while the population has grown by just 16%.

If supply were the only reason for the increase in house prices and the decline in affordability over the past decade, you would expect that during this time house prices would have either fallen or at least risen slower than average incomes. However, house prices have increased by 70% – well beyond household incomes. This clearly suggests that population growth is not the major factor driving house prices.

Even more clearly, during the pandemic the government closed the boarders and net overseas migration fell. That meant for one of the very few times, more people left the country than entered it. In the 18 months from March 2020 until September 2021, over 100,000 more people left Australia than entered it. That was the largest fall ever recorded.

If lowering migration made housing more affordable, then you would have expected that during this period, Australians would have experienced a great improvement in housing affordability. Alas, the complete opposite occurred. Instead of becoming more affordable. House prices rose an astonishing 20% in just 18 months.

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Ottawa Rethinks a Costly Development—Your City Can Too

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Thursday 27th March 2025

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Budget reply a step backwards that would make the housing crisis worse

 — Organisation: Everybody's Home — Thursday 27th March 2025

National housing campaign Everybody’s Home said the Coalition’s budget reply fails to fix the housing crisis and instead proposes policies that would make it worse.

Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said: “The Coalition’s budget reply fails to offer solutions that will ease the housing crisis and fails to help everyday people who are struggling with housing stress. 

“The Coalition’s housing plans are a step backwards that would push up the cost of housing. The Opposition has no plan to help the majority of renters and the growing number of people who’re being pushed into homelessness.

“The Coalition’s plan to encourage people to raid their superannuation to buy a home would make the deepening housing crisis even worse. It will drive house prices up, lock more people out of housing, and lower people’s retirement savings. 

“It is unfair to ask the next generation to make sacrifices that their parents never had to think about. We should be bringing the cost of homes down, not pushing up costs and asking people to sacrifice their retirement savings.

“Super for Housing will largely benefit those already on the property ladder, and leave everyone else worse off.”

Ms Azize also said that Australia needs a major boost to social housing.

“Hundreds of thousands of people are in severe rental stress. They need social housing – but the Coalition is proposing to build even less by getting rid of the Housing Australia Future Fund.

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An Interoperability Framework for Payment Systems

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — Thursday 27th March 2025

Jon Durfee, Michael Junho Lee, and Joseph Torregrossa

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Designing the Public Sector Capabilities Index — testing our approach with city governments

 — Organisation: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) — Thursday 27th March 2025

Designing the Public Sector Capabilities Index — testing our approach with city governments

By Bec Chau

What makes a city government adaptable? The answer doesn’t come from theory alone but from the people managing complexity every day. The Public Sector Capabilities Index is taking shape through deep engagement with city governments, ensuring it reflects the challenges, constraints, and opportunities they navigate.

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Federal Policy Broke the Housing Market. It Won’t Fix Things Now.

 — Organisation: Strong Towns — Thursday 27th March 2025

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Peter Dutton confirms excessive gas exports hurt Australia

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Thursday 27th March 2025

Mr Dutton said a Coalition government would force gas exporters to divert uncontracted gas to Australian customers, demonstrating that there is no gas shortage in Australia.

Key points – Australia Institute research has shown:

• Excessive gas exports have caused domestic gas and electricity prices to triple. Limiting exports is the only way to reverse this price increase.
• Gas exporters such as Santos have stated that part of their goal for export gas projects was increasing domestic gas prices.
• This policy would not significantly affect government budgets or the economy because the gas industry pays little tax and employs few people.
• No gas exporter has ever paid petroleum tax, most gas exports are royalty-free and most pay little company tax.

“It is good to see the Opposition identify the key problem in Australian energy policy – excessive gas exports,” said Mark Ogge, Principal Advisor at The Australia Institute.

“A decade ago, Santos told investors that their gas projects were ‘as much about raising the domestic gas price as about gas exports’ and finally some of Australia’s leaders may be ready to push back on gas corporations.

“Gas exports have tripled prices for Australians and the only way to stop that is to restrict exports and to switch Australia’s energy demand to cleaner sources.

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The Most Ingenious City: How State-Sponsored Innovation Powered Venice’s Rise and Transformation

 — Organisation: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) — Thursday 27th March 2025

By Fernando Monge | This blog post was originally published on the Datapolis substack.

I just came back from a short trip to the city of Venice. No matter how many stories one has heard, nor how many pictures one has seen, Venice — and the creativity that sustained this Mediterranean superpower and cultural marvel on top of a million nailed trees in a marshy lagoon — stands as one of history’s most captivating urban success stories.

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A Reckoning for Higher Ed

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Thursday 27th March 2025

A sense of fear is rippling through higher education—the fear that the Trump Administration will hold it accountable for violating federal law. As President Trump withholds millions in grants to Ivy League institutions, The New York Times’s Thomas Edsall innocently asks, “The American university system commands worldwide respect. What would prompt a call for its abolition?”

Like so many institutions, the American university system used to enjoy bipartisan trust and support. It once commanded broad-based respect, a respect that has been in freefall as the Left systematically dropped objective standards of excellence and the canon of Western civilization, replacing them with ever-evolving departments of grievance studies and activism. The majority of Republicans view American universities as a net negative. Independents are trending the same way, with just one-third saying they have “quite a lot” of trust in our universities.

On the basis of once high levels of trust, the universities secured enormous taxpayer benefits not given to any other sector. Now, they are shocked to find themselves in the process of losing their special carve-outs, which make up a substantial portion of their budgets. Losing these perks is a serious threat to their entire business model. In other words, as the kids say, FAFO.

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A Budget that does no harm (sort of)

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Thursday 27th March 2025

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor discuss the Government’s tax cuts, the big missed opportunities in this Budget, and what it’s like inside ‘the lock-up’.

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 27 March 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute and Centre for Future Work // @grogsgamut

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes:

‘Labor’s budget tax cuts make good economic sense – and have backed Dutton and Taylor into a political corner’ by Greg Jericho, Guardian Australia (March 2025)

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Interoperability of Blockchain Systems and the Future of Payments

 — Organisation: Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Publication: Liberty Street Economics — Thursday 27th March 2025

Jon Durfee, Michael Junho Lee, Joseph Torregrossa, and Sarah Yu Wang

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What does evidence mean for the Public Sector Capabilities Index?

 — Organisation: UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) — Thursday 27th March 2025

By Ruth Puttick

The Public Sector Capabilities Index will assess city governments and compare their comparative strengths in adapting to solve problems and take advantage of new opportunities. Data and evidence are central to the entire process of identifying, assessing, and comparing dynamic capabilities. But what does good evidence look like, how can we gather it, and how can we ensure it influences decision making to support city governments to develop and improve their problem-solving abilities?

It is worth stating up front that evidence is not the same as data. Data is essential to our work and will take many forms, such as interview transcripts and budget data. But data is raw and uninterpreted, whereas evidence is data that has been analysed and used to support or refute a hypothesis or claim. Evidence is what we need to understand impacts and outcomes. In other words, how can we convince city governments, finance ministers, and others, to invest in the development of dynamic capabilities and deliver positive change for residents?

For the Public Sector Capabilities Index, we are thinking about evidence in six categories:

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The American Mind Podcast: The Roundtable Episode #260

 — Organisation: The Claremont Institute — Thursday 27th March 2025

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Mixed Signals | The Roundtable Ep. 260

Atlantic reporter Jeff Goldberg was mistakenly added to a national security group chat, leading to a DC media feeding frenzy—is there anything of substance to be gleaned from this goof? Meanwhile, Jay Bhattacharya—an early opponent of the 2020 lockdowns—was confirmed by the Senate to direct the National Institutes of Health, hopefully marking a turn back to sound health policy. This week, the guys talk through messaging and operations security, Biden-era censorship, plummeting egg prices, and more! Plus: a round of reading recommendations.

Recommended articles:

How Covid Remade Our America, Five Years Later

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Endless onslaught: Would Israel’s Mordechai be attacked as ‘antisemitic’ in Australia?

 — Organisation: Free Palestine Melbourne — Thursday 27th March 2025

Haaretz, Israel’s oldest and most widely known newspaper, has just published a long, roughly 8,000 word feature article, about the work of Lee Mordechai, the Associate Professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has compiled on line a massive report entitled “Bearing Witness to the Israel-Gaza War.” The English translation of the […]

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We don’t need no Education

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Thursday 27th March 2025

On this episode of After America, Dr Emma Shortis and Angus Blackman discuss Trump administration group chats, Big Pharma’s big whinge, and the history of conservative efforts to dismantle the federal Education department.

This discussion was recorded on Tuesday 25 March 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Read more from Emma in the latest edition of Australian Foreign Affairs.

Order What’s the Big Idea? 32 Big Ideas for a Better Australia now, via the Australia Institute website.

Host: Emma Shortis, Director, International & Security Affairs, the Australia Institute // @EmmaShortis

Host: Angus Blackman, Producer, the Australia Institute // @AngusRB

Show notes:

‘The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans’ by Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic (March 2025)

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Dutton’s gas plan won’t solve manufactured “shortages” – or bring down prices

 — Organisation: The Australia Institute — Thursday 27th March 2025

Australia has enough gas to supply the domestic market many times over.

But the gas giants are allowed to export 80% of our gas overseas. That creates fake shortages which, in turn, force domestic prices up.

There is no need to approve any new gas projects in Australia.

Australia Institute research proves this would only make things worse. It would lead to more exports. The manufactured shortages would remain and domestic prices would keep rising. The only winner would be the multinational gas companies.

It’s expected Mr Dutton will use tonight’s Budget Reply speech to announce a domestic gas reservation scheme targeting new projects in exchange for faster environmental approvals.

A reservation scheme is a good idea, but it must be for existing gas, not new gas. Exports should be capped.

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