2025 Writing Highlights
2025 was a busy year, and there was plenty to write about. I published about 49,000 words in articles and reports this yearβ roughly the equivalent of a 180-page bookβ on topics ranging from taxes to railroads. Here's a few of the highlights, touching on some of the biggest political stories from this year:
Documenting the Damage: 100 Harmful Policies from the First 100 Days of the Second Trump Administration
The United States of America is a different nation than it was 100 days ago.
The first 100 days of Trump 2.0 represent the most aggressive opening to a new presidential administration in nearly a century. In this full-length report, I summarized 100 different areas of harmful policy change that occurred at the start of this year, providing a semi-comprehensive guide to what was changed by the second Trump administration. The conclusion section then analyzes the ways that Trump is both a break from and a continuation of the pre-Trump status quo. This remains a useful guide for understanding Trump's agenda, and serves as a historical record of the damage that was done.
Rule by Contractor
Like Muskβs dream of building self-driving cars, the [government contracting] industry dreams of a self-contracting contractor. Musk himself is test-driving this concept.
Elon Musk spent the early part of this year sabotaging the federal government through his "DOGE" initiative. I argue that this effort was about privatization, not waste or efficiency. By reducing state capacity, Musk created new opportunities for corrupt government contractors like himself to infiltrate the government and expand their own policy-making powers. In reality, government efficiency requires that we hire more public servants and fewer private contractors.
What You Need to Know About the Budget Reconciliation Bill
Every dollar that the government spends represents a choice: should we fund programs that help people meet their basic needs, or should we fund programs that destroy lives and livelihoods?Β Β
The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" passed by Republicans this year is one of the most important laws of this century so far, enacting deep cuts to social spending in order to spend more on the security state and tax cuts for the rich. To help you understand the problems with it, I came together with two colleagues to write an article explaining how this law is a nightmare from three different perspectives: economic justice, global peace, and immigrant rights.
Unpacking the Dangerous Myth of 'Narco-Terrorism'
So long as the government insists upon seeing non-military problems through a military lens, they will never be solved.
The Trump administration's campaign of murder and intimidation in the Caribbean and Pacific has been justified by the threat of "narco-terrorism." Examining the history of this term reveals that it's been a deeply flawed idea every since its origins in the Reagan administration. Rather than explaining the real world dynamics of the drug trade, the "narco-terrorism" myth serves as a simplified justification for military intervention. This myth distracts us from more important parts of the story, including both the importance of addiction treatment and the US government's own history of helping drug traffickers.
