The Trump administration’s desire to dismantle the Education Department has inspired some alarm. Those panicking would do well to remember a key historical fact: One of the leading advocates of creating such a department was the Ku Klux Klan. Congress authorized today’s Education Department in 1979, transferring authority over federal education policy from the 1953…

There’s reason to hope for at least a temporary move toward fiscal sanity in Washington. Ordinarily, a drive for a slimmed-down federal budget would last little longer than a New Year’s dieting resolution. What gives credibility to the current federal weight-loss plans is the commitment of some outsize characters. President Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and…

New York state bluntly informed President-elect Trump’s lawyers this week that it won’t agree to vacate the massive civil fraud judgment against him and his family. Although the state’s intransigence surely disappoints Mr. Trump and his family, it isn’t altogether regrettable. The case can now proceed, which means it will clarify our freedom of speech.…

In Orwell’s 1984, after years of war against Eurasia as Eastasia’s ally, Oceania abruptly switches sides, becoming Eurasia’s ally against Eastasia. Instead of articulating a policy change, the government simply rewrote history to declare that “Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.” The modern Administrative State uses the same Orwellian tactic to rewrite the law.…

Something strange is intercepting our trajectory into space. The obstacle isn’t space debris, old satellites, or meteors. Rather, it’s licensing. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not yet granted a license for the launch of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship, and even the Fish and Wildlife Service is still evaluating whether to permit it. Licensing is thus…

How important is the decision issued in June by the Supreme Court in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and its companion case, Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce? The Claremont Institute’s Theo Wold observes that this victory against the administrative state is merely “incremental.” Although valuable, “it will not remake the administrative state or solve the post-New Deal power imbalance in the federal government.”…