TRENTON — Three bills before the New Jersey Legislature would end the state’s status as one of the least-regulated homeschooling jurisdictions in the country. One would require families to register with their school district each year. One would require them to submit a curriculum aligned with state standards and an annual portfolio evaluated by a third party. One would require...
August 10, 2026
StubHub’s CEO Is Also a Professional Ticket Reseller
StubHub founder and chief executive Eric Baker is a part owner and managing partner of Andro Capital, an investment fund that operates as a professional ticket reseller and has sold tickets on StubHub since 2008, according to the company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The relationship, along with a separate arrangement in which StubHub refers sellers to...
How Much of the U.S. Economy Is Tax-Exempt? Nobody Officially Knows
America’s nonprofit sector is no longer a rounding error in the national economy. Federal data show tax-exempt organizations contributed more than $1.5 trillion to U.S. gross domestic product in 2024 — over 5 percent of the entire economy — while paying little or no federal income tax on most of what they earn. That scale has moved the sector from...
Iowa’s Rising Cancer Rates Collide With a Federal Order Shielding Glyphosate
Iowa now records the second-highest rate of new cancer diagnoses in the United States, trailing only Kentucky, and is one of only a handful of states where the rate is still climbing while the national rate falls. Much of the public debate has centered on the state’s intensive agriculture — and, increasingly, on glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide....
Before Blaming Israel: How the Palestinian Economy Absorbed a Self-Inflicted Blow in the Gulf
It has become a reflex in much commentary on the Palestinian economy to trace its condition to a single source: Israeli occupation, closures, and control over borders, water and movement. Those factors are real, extensively documented, and central to any honest account. But they are not the whole account. Some of the deepest wounds to Palestinian economic life were self-inflicted...
Rap Falls Out of the Billboard Top 40 as the Lakers Project an All-White Starting Five: A Look at the ‘DEI Backlash’ Debate Behind the Headlines
Two unrelated developments in American popular culture converged in the fall of 2025 and, together, revived a long-running argument about race, representation and the fate of diversity initiatives. In late October, Billboard reported that its Hot 100 chart had, for the first time since 1990, no rap songs in its top 40. Months later, the Los Angeles Lakers’ offseason moves...
Inside the Fight Over ActBlue’s Fraud Controls: How the Platform Says It Handles Suspicious Donations — and Why Investigators Say It Fell Short
ActBlue, the online payment processor behind the bulk of small-dollar fundraising for Democratic candidates and progressive causes, is at the center of a widening dispute over how it screens donations for fraud. Congressional investigators, several state attorneys general, and the platform’s own outside lawyers have raised questions about whether ActBlue’s internal controls did enough to keep out illegitimate contributions, including...
As ‘Common Ownership’ Reaches the Courts, Regulators Weigh Whether Antitrust Law Should Rethink What Counts as a Monopoly
A decades-old assumption underlies American antitrust law: that competing companies are run by rivals with opposing interests. A growing body of legal and economic scholarship—and now a federal lawsuit proceeding in Texas—is testing whether that assumption still holds when the same small group of asset managers ranks among the largest shareholders of nearly every major firm in an industry. At...
Socialist Wins Sweep New York Primaries: A Mandate for the Left, or Something Narrower?
Democratic socialists scored a broad set of victories in New York’s June 23, 2026, primary elections, ousting two sitting members of Congress and expanding their bloc in the state legislature. The results have prompted competing explanations among political analysts, who disagree over whether the outcome reflects a genuine embrace of socialist policy, a shift in Democratic foreign-policy attitudes, or a...
Ideology or Industry? Why a Hunger Advocate Wouldn’t Concede That Soda Is Unhealthy
When a witness before Congress declines to affirm something nearly every cardiologist in the country accepts, the moment tends to outlast the hearing. That is what happened June 25, 2026, when Gina Plata-Niño of the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) repeatedly would not give a direct answer on whether sugary soda is healthy or whether taxpayers should fund it...