The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is in the news with the release of the Durham report and this week’s testimony in the House about the agency’s politicized leadership. In response to the FBI’s recent failures, many columnists and policymakers have called for either reforms, funding cuts, or agency dismantling.

The FBI has an annual budget of more than $11 billion and a workforce of 37,000 spread across headquarters, 56 field offices, 350 satellite offices, and dozens of foreign offices.

The chart shows that real FBI spending almost doubled from $5.25 billion 2000 to $10.44 billion in 2011 and has since trended slowly upwards reaching $11.4 billion in 2023.

Gonzalez v. Google, a much-watched Supreme Court case about whether Section 230 protects algorithmic curation, ended with a whimper on Thursday. In a three page per curiam opinion, the Court avoided addressing Section 230 at all. Instead, the court decided Gonzalez via Twitter v. Taamneh, a related case about platforms’ underlying liability for hosting terrorist speech under the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).

In a clear, unanimous decision authored by Justice Thomas the court held that Twitter did not “aid and abet” ISIS under the ATA by failing to prevent the terror group from using its platform. Because Gonzalez plaintiffs’ underlying claims were essentially the same as those in Twitter v. Taamneh, it wasn’t necessary for the court to rule on whether Section 230 protected Google from plaintiff’s now-defunct ATA claims. Remanding Gonzalez, the Court writes:

“ … we think it sufficient to acknowledge that much (if not all) of plaintiffs’ complaint seems to fail under either our decision in Twitter or the Ninth Circuit’s unchallenged holdings below. We therefore decline to address the application of §230 to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief.”

Most important is the simple fact that the Court was offered an opportunity to reinterpret or remake Section 230 and declined to act on it. This is, as I explained after oral argument, the best possible outcome. “The best outcome would be for the court to dismiss Gonzalez as improvidently granted and decide the matter in Twitter v. Taamneh, a related case about the scope of the Anti‐​Terrorism Act.” By refraining from ruling on Section 230, the Court avoided even inadvertently muddying the waters of settled lower court precedent.

Instead, the Court signaled that even in the face of intractable partisan disagreement, decisions to impose a duty to remove speech rest with legislatures, not the courts. Indeed, in footnote 14, Thomas writes “Plaintiffs have not presented any case holding such a company liable for merely failing to block such criminals despite knowing that they used the company’s services. Rather, when legislatures have wanted to impose a duty to remove content on these types of entities, they have apparently done so by statute.”

This reasoning cuts against both knowledge standards and exceptions for algorithms. The fact that a platform knew of (and in this case, tried to prevent, albeit imperfectly) an unlawful misuse of its services does not make it more liable for the misuse. And, despite several attempts, Congress has refrained from creating a duty to exclude unlawful content from algorithmic curation tools.

Although Twitter v. Taamneh does not affect platforms general protection from liability for user speech under Section 230, Thomas hits all the right philosophic notes as he applies the common law to the ATA’s aiding and abetting provisions. He draws clear lines between the classic common law standard of aiding and abetting in Halberstam v. Welch, in which a burglar’s live-in partner and accountant was held liable for supporting her partner’s criminal career, and the passive support at issue in Twitter and Gonzalez. Thomas writes, “The fact that these algorithms matched some ISIS content with some users thus does not convert defendants’ passive assistance into active abetting.”



Examining the role of algorithms in Twitter, Thomas correctly presents algorithmic curation as integral to websites ability to host user speech.

“Viewed properly, defendants’ “recommendation” algorithms are merely part of that infrastructure. All the content on their platforms is filtered through these algorithms, which allegedly sort the content by information and inputs provided by users and found in the content itself”

He continues by recognizing that platforms rarely filter content at upload, instead relying on post-hoc moderation. “There is not even reason to think that defendants carefully screened any content before allowing users to upload it onto their platforms”. Crucially, Thomas treats this model as a legitimate way of offering the opportunity to speak to the largest number of people.

“The mere creation of those platforms, however, is not culpable. To be sure, it might be that bad actors like ISIS are able to use platforms like defendants’ for illegal—and sometimes terrible—ends. But the same could be said of cell phones, email, or the internet generally.”

In a world where the basic business models and default openness of major social media platforms has come under attack, this recognition is valuable in any context. Paired with the Court’s decision to pass up an opportunity to reinterpret Section 230, it is a victory for free speech worth celebrating.

“Prior to the pandemic, I had never considered microschooling or delved into out-of-system learning environments,” says Lizette Valles, founder of Compass Educators and Ellemercito Academy in California.

Lizette and her husband Oscar were long-time private school teachers. After COVID-19 regulations closed schools, they founded Compass Educators: A Holistic Tutoring Company to help parents and students deal with distance learning challenges. Their goal was to meet students where they were and equip them to thrive in the new environment. It succeeded so well that some parents asked Lizette to privately homeschool their children.

Creating a microschool was the “natural next step” says Lizette. “We were already custom tailoring instruction for our students and growth was inevitable at that point. Families were seeing that a smaller, student-centered, and family-like environment was absolutely needed and something they wanted for their children.” Ellemercito Academy opened in 2021.

Lizette and Oscar don’t take a conventional approach to education. “We use a proprietary blend of tools and instructional strategies inspired by Erin Gruwell, Charlotte Mason, and Paulo Freire’s problem-posing educational approach coupled with place-based learning and a literature-rich curriculum,” says Lizette. They follow the Los Angeles Unified School District’s curriculum for English, math, science, and history because their parents want that link. But they supplement heavily with novel studies, hands-on projects, and student-driven opportunities. For example, they are working to incorporate Drone Legends in their STEAM curriculum after students requested it.

According to Lizette, “It’s when our students know that they have a voice and are heard, that they begin taking ownership and investing in their own learning. They become co-creators of their educational experience, and that’s an incredibly meaningful and empowering realization for any student. They are given encouragement and guidance to extend their learning through various self-selected activities and discovery.”

Ellemercito follows a very flexible schedule. They meet for full days Mondays through Wednesdays and half days Thursdays and Fridays. But each student’s schedule is personalized, so they may come to Ellemercito some days and learn elsewhere other days. “For instance, one student attends our school for three days and then goes to surf school the remaining days. Another participates in a home dual immersion program learning Spanish and then attends our school. Each family sets their own schedule and amount of homework that best suits their child’s needs,” Lizette says.

“School days” at Ellemercito don’t entail just sitting in the classroom while a teacher lectures. They incorporate a lot of experiential learning, real-world experiences, and time outdoors. They have regular nature days and field trips to get their students out and about. “Our next nature day involves taking our kids to a regional park in an RV, hiking, cooking together, fishing, and cycling for the day,” says Lizette. “There will be time to paint the landscape, learn a new recipe, or simply lie down and listen to the sounds of nature. However our students choose to spend the day will hold meaning, and that is the desired goal—to be saturated in nature. It’s only when kids grow up climbing trees or building sandcastles, that they’ll want to save forests and oceans. In attuning themselves to the natural world, they’ll seek to preserve it for generations to come. Our goal is to reintroduce nature as part of their daily lives. It’s in doing so, that their awareness of its complex beauty and gratitude for it will increase.”

It’s amazing that Lizette and Oscar have adopted such a decentralized, student-focused approach to education since they had a very traditional educational background before COVID-19. “I come from the traditional private school sector, and as a fully credentialed teacher with a Masters in Education, I am unlearning so much of what has been ingrained in me for years,” Lizette explains. “Oftentimes, we stay in the illusionary box because we’ve settled into complacency. We may tell ourselves that the learning environment or school may not be all that we envision for our kids, but it’s ‘good enough.’ We are conditioned into accepting cookie-cutter methodologies that are no longer serving anyone well. Our children deserve more than mediocrity. We were on the precipice of accepting a standardized education with standardized children in a standardized setting that is antiquated. However, if you allow yourself to reimagine education, what would it look and feel like?”

At its current location, Ellemercito’s enrollment cap is probably 10 students to maintain the character of the school. But they are interested in opening other locations if it becomes feasible. Lizette strongly encourages others who are considering creating a new educational option to go for it. “Microschooling offers a different pathway to learning in a fully customizable environment,” she says. “The questions it asks have more to do with what brings your child joy, peace, excitement, and creativity than rigidity, regurgitation, and standardization. This type of schooling is the most natural and freeing option given that it fuses the best practices of public, private, and homeschooling with new research-backed practices that take into consideration the whole child—mind, body, and soul. How would you inspire and be inspired by the next generation of thinkers, creators, and world changers to dream big and take action? We have all been waiting for this! Jump in!”

In an interview for the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), I discuss the theory and practice of rhetoric. Although I am a professor of rhetoric by trade, many consider my participation in the current “culture war” as my primary motivation. This interview shows that my involvement in promoting viewpoint diversity and my embrace of rhetoric is symbiotic in nature.

This 12-minute video can be broken down into five segments.

The Definition of Rhetoric. Rhetoric, according to Aristotle, is “the ability, in any given cast, to discern the available means of persuasion.” This definition implies the need to consider one’s audience and how one’s message aligns with that audience. It also implies the reality of viewpoint diversity, a concept that necessitates rhetorical skill if one wants a viewpoint to succeed in the Marketplace of [Diverse] Ideas.

Harmful DEI Initiatives. The common narratives of contemporary Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives are antithetical to rhetoric because of their relative intolerance of viewpoint diversity and, therefore, rhetoric. A corollary of this intolerance is race essentialism: the idea that members of the same race experience and interpret the world in the same ways. To many proponents of contemporary DEI initiatives, communicating dialect other than the one assigned to your group—e.g., black people not speaking black English—is a form of inauthenticity. In reality, rhetoric is about putting one’s authentic self through a dialectical filter to better convey a message. For those who speak not to inform or persuade, but to center a particular identity, none of this matters; audience consideration is considered a distraction.

Rhetoric and Classical Liberalism. The values of the First Amendment, considered with the concept of the Marketplace of Ideas, suggests that rhetorical skill is ideal in American society. Thus, I believe our education system should emphasize the rhetorical practices best suited for success (life, liberty, happiness) in such a society. I also think dialogue is imperative to a well-functioning civil society, but if words are violence (I commonly refrain in many DEI circles), how can we have authentic conversations? The less likely we are to talk, the more likely we are to fight.

Adaptability. Adaptability—one’s ability to adjust to contexts—can be considered the most valuable skill for rhetoric. The one who cannot adapt rhetorically to a new situation will be less persuasive than one who can. In a diverse society like the United States, adaptability is your best friend. I think the fact that adaptability is a key competency in the theory and practice of emotional intelligence is also important. It enhances one’s social awareness in a way that, ideally, helps expand one’s comfort zone. It teaches that, quite often, our fixed interpretations of events, not the events themselves, cause more problems than we realize.

Francis Bacon. This is not so much about Francis Bacon as it is about his definition of rhetoric. He wrote, “the duty and office of rhetoric is to apply reason to the imagination for the better moving of the will.” This is Bacon’s way of saying that rhetoric is about the control and translation of emotion into language palatable and convincing to a given audience. Bacon insisted that reason “is disturbed” by the emotions. Our emotions should not be suppressed, but they should not be in control, either. Bacon saw emotional self-control as a primary utilization of rhetoric. In a real sense, it is how we initially talk to ourselves before we talk to others. Emotions, couched in the relevant discourse, can sound quite reasonable to a particular audience.

Hopefully, this short video can explain why I think knowledge of rhetorical theory and practice can alleviate the current divisions and polarizations negatively influencing society. Viewpoint diversity is both better understood and better handled when one has a healthy appreciation for, and strong skill in, rhetoric.

I have long been calling for states to make it easier for doctors who are licensed and experienced in other countries to serve patients in this country. States require such doctors to repeat their entire residency training in an accredited residency program in the United States—even if they have been practicing successfully for years in their home countries—and pass the standardized U.S. Medical Licensing Exam. These onerous requirements deprive state residents of competent care from experienced physicians, many of whom are unable to find residency positions or cannot afford to start all over again. Many end up working in other fields.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some states—most notably New Jersey—temporarily relaxed those restrictions to allow foreign doctors to help improve access to needed medical care. In 2020, I moderated an online event discussing how states can and should make it permanently easier for such doctors to care for their residents.

In a Statement for the Record to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship in February 2022, I recommended that state lawmakers reform their laws to make it easier for experienced foreign doctors to care for patients in their states. Many countries offer provisional licenses to foreign doctors and, after a period of supervision, grant them unrestricted licenses to practice medicine.

There is finally some good news on this front. Yesterday, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed HB 1312 into law. This new law grants provisional licenses to international medical graduates who have full licenses in good standing in other countries and pass the same standardized medical exams that U.S. medical graduates must pass. After two years of supervision by a Tennessee-licensed physician, they can receive unrestricted licenses.

Tennessee thus becomes the first state to break down barriers that prevent foreign doctors from helping address the worsening physician shortage in the United States. Yesterday the governor also signed into law a bill allowing medical school graduates who haven’t matched in residency programs to work as assistant physicians.

Tennessee’s latest legislative session took some good steps toward improving access to health care.

I recently testified for the Senate Budget Committee on the topic of taxes, economic growth, and budget deficits.

You can read my full written testimony here, and watch the hearing here. Below is a lightly edited version of the three main points I emphasized in my oral remarks.

First, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was a success. Second, tax cuts did not cause the federal deficit. And third, the topic of this hearing is really about the appropriate size and scope of government—a topic on which reasonable people can disagree. However, if Congress decides that the current trajectory of federal spending does not need to be curtailed, it should be honest with the American people. Big government is expensive, and it will require significantly higher taxes on everyone.

I’ll begin with a bit of history of the 2017 tax cuts. After years of misleading reporting, many Americans still don’t believe that they benefited from a tax cut. This is a shame because the law not only lowered taxes for Americans at every income level, it simplified taxpaying, and supported an economy that was struggling to finish the long climb out of the great recession.

The law cut taxes for more than 80 percent of Americans and cut the tax bill for the lowest-income Americans the most. Despite claims to the contrary, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act made the U.S. tax code more progressive—collecting a larger share of tax revenue from the highest-earning taxpayers.

The law cut tax rates for individuals, doubled the child tax credit, and curtailed special interest itemized deductions so that 30 million more taxpayers now used the simpler and larger standard deduction.

The tax cuts also boosted wages, investment, and economic growth by expanding full expensing for businesses and lowering the corporate tax rate to 21 percent—moving us from one of the highest rates in the developed world to a bit above average. In 2018, investment outpaced CBO projections, new manufacturer orders increased, and small business optimism peaked.

The labor market also improved. Wage growth went from flat or declining, to steadily increasing. At the beginning of 2020, the average production and nonsupervisory worker saw about $1,400 in higher wages. These economic gains were also widely shared. Following the tax cuts, inequality declined as income growth among lower-income and minority households outpaced all others.

Second, the deficit is the result of unsustainable spending growth, not a lack of tax revenue.

Last year, federal revenue was at a two-decade high, and this year’s revenue as a share of the economy will be a full percentage point above the historical average. If the Treasury collected as much revenue as it did when we had a budget surplus in 2000, the current deficit would still be above five percent of GDP.

It’s new spending that drives the deficit. For example, President Biden has added about $5 trillion in unnecessary spending to the national debt. That’s more than three times the 10-year revenue reduction of the 2017 tax cuts.

Deficits are caused by spending more than Congress is willing to raise in taxes.

Which brings me to my final point. Americans benefit from being a relatively low-tax country, compared to many others around the world.

A lower-income taxpayer will pay about $6,000 more in taxes if they move to Europe. A middle-class taxpayer would fork over more than half of his income and pay about $16,000 more in taxes.

President Biden’s pledge to increase government spending without raising taxes on Americans earning less than $400,000 is a mathematical fiction. Every other large modern welfare state funds its programs with high taxes on the poor and middle class. Advocates of more government spending need to be honest with the American people. Big government requires significantly higher taxes on everyone, not just the rich.

Tax increases are also no panacea. Historically, higher taxes prolong and deepen recessions, fuel higher spending, and don’t lower government debt ratios. Keeping government small is the best way to ensure the American people can continue to prosper.

Without addressing spending growth, ever-larger tax increases mean the poor will get poorer, and deficits will get bigger.

Instead, I hope that Congress addresses the drivers of our unsustainable budget, puts constraints on the size and scope of government, and protects Americans from the costs of higher taxes as the 2017 tax cuts begin to expire.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) signed HB 1311 into law on May 17, creating the new health care practitioner category called “graduate physicians.” Tennessee now joins Missouri, Arizona, Arkansas, Utah, Kansas, Louisiana, and Idaho in removing barriers that prevent medical school graduates who have not landed a residency position from providing primary care services to patients and honing their knowledge and experience while licensed primary care physicians supervise them.

With a large, medically underserved rural population, Missouri was the first state to launch a new licensure category in 2017: assistant physician (AP). APs are essentially apprentice physicians, a common way to train physicians before the modern era of residency programs. Under this reform, medical school graduates who cannot land a residency position can still care for patients in primary care clinics while enhancing their knowledge and skills.

As Spencer Pratt and I point out in our recent Cato briefing paper, most states require medical school graduates to complete at least one year of postgraduate residency training before granting them a license to care for patients as non-specialist general practitioners (GPs). Yet the number of medical school graduates exceeds the number of residency positions. According to the American Medical Association, in 2021, roughly seven percent of Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) and roughly ten percent of Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O.) graduates failed to match with a residency program. Many are stuck in limbo. They cannot apply the knowledge and skills acquired with their doctorate degrees to care for patients. They can also not hone and develop those skills in a residency program.

A 2021 survey found that one in three physicians and advanced practice registered nurses intend to reduce work hours, and one in five physicians plan to retire. A recent Association of American Medical Colleges study forecasts a shortage of as many as 48,000 primary care physicians by 2034. Researchers project California, Texas, and Florida to have the worst shortages

Some states enacting legislation like Missouri’s call this new category of physicians “associate physicians.” Others call them “bridge physicians.” Tennessee’s new law labels them “graduate physicians.”

Missouri allows APs to renew their licenses indefinitely annually. Some states cap the number of years that APs may work, after which they can only keep caring for patients if they complete a year or more of residency.

Such caps are a drawback because, as our briefing paper explains, the assistant physician model could create an alternative pathway to obtaining a license to practice as a GP. GPs are still a significant component of the primary care provider workforce in the United States.

Unfortunately, Tennessee’s new law sets the cap at two years, after which graduate physicians can no longer treat patients. Nevertheless, Tennessee lawmakers have taken a step in the right direction toward mitigating the worsening shortage of primary health care clinicians.

I will moderate a Cato online event on this subject on May 22, with a panel consisting of the Missouri physician-legislator who spearheaded the country’s first assistant physician law, a practicing assistant physician in rural Missouri, and a senior research fellow from Heritage Foundation who has studied this reform proposal in depth. You can register for the event here.