Charles Lipson

Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus

University of Chicago

Frequent contributor: 
Real Clear Politics
Spectator | World
The Telegraph
Wall Street Journal

PBS and NPR should never have received public funding

The debate about partisan bias at PBS and NPR is important – the bias itself is obvious – but that’s not the most important point. What matters most is that democratic governments have no business funding or controlling news channels directed at their own citizens. Those channels should be privately owned…There is no way a Republican-controlled House and Senate will keep pouring money into networks they believe hate them. They know that hatred is warmly reciprocated.Congress has been mulling the...

Donald Trump calls for a renewal of American patriotism

Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the most powerful, rousing and pointed of any presidential address in decades. “America is back… and we are just getting started,” it began, capturing the theme of the night. The address ended with a peroration that his administration would “take up the righteous cause of American liberty” and “fight, fight, fight for a country our citizens’ believe in and deserve.” Our country’s “Golden Age,” he said, ”has just begun.”Don...

Democrats built America’s over-mighty presidency. Now Trump is bending it to his will

The best way to understand president Trump’s ambitious goals is to understand how they alter the massive changes made to America’s government over the past century – and how they also leave many of those profound changes untouched.Trump’s policy goals are obvious. He campaigned and won on promises to reduce the government’s bloat, cost, and regulatory burdens. He promised to root out fraud and corruption, and he’s doing it with Elon Musk and Doge. His Cabinet Secretaries will implement those pla...

Trump’s presidency is an ink-blot test for America

Americans are being given a national ink-blot test about our politics. Their answers tell us how a divided country sees that landscape and what they think of Pres. Trump’s bold efforts to reshape it. Trump has reshaped his party, and what those Republicans now see is a strong leaders fulfilling his campaign promises. Democrats see a dictator dismantling the administrative state they built and staffed. Those are the ink blots on the walls of our politics today. It’s a Rorschach test, and Americans will take it the next time they go to the polls.

When government officials are threatened, they deserve protection

If public officials (today's or yesterday's) are threatened because of what they did in office, they deserve protection. They may not deserve our gratitude. They may not deserve our thanks and appreciation. That depends on…When US officials and former officials face lethal dangers for the work they did in office, they deserve protection from the country they served. That’s true whether they served the country well or poorly, whether they can pay fo...

Joe Biden’s reputation is already in tatters. History’s judgment will be even harsher

As memories of American presidents fade, only a few salient thoughts linger about each one. Voters are too busy complaining about the next president to remember much more.Richard Nixon is remembered for Watergate, and Gerald Ford for pardoning him. Lyndon Johnson is remembered for the Civil Rights laws of the mid-1960s, the Vietnam War, and the “Great Society” welfare programmes.Jimmy Carter will be remembered, after the encomiums for his recent death fade away, for the gas crisis, Iranian hosta...

What is DoGE’s hardest task?

DOGE’s hardest task is not cutting the excess federal payroll but cutting excess federal regulations. To succeed, DOGE needs to focus on four overriding goals:
(1) Reducing the dead-weight drag of regulations on the economy without removing essential safeguards; (2) Making significant changes, not minor ones; (3) Ensuring those changes have an enduring impact by making them difficult to reverse; and (4) Increasing democratic oversight of future rule-making, a legislative responsibility that Congress has wrongfully (and perhaps unconstitutionally) abdicated.

The winners and losers in the fight to keep the government open

The first two Continuing Resolutions failed because they contained a trainload of pork, a steaming pile of non-essential provisions that rank-and-file Republicans refused to support. They learned about the bill’s hidden provisions thanks to a new media landscape, which featured blogs and podcasts with huge audiences, free speech on “X,” and the use of AI (specifically Elon Musk’s Grok) to undercover what was in the bill. The problems will come in a couple of months when the short-term measure ends.

What’s flying over New Jersey?

The public is frightened, and bland reassurances from Washington aren’t helping. Neither is a wagging finger from the government’s PR flaks, who don’t give citizens any real information but tell them to calm down. When you unpack the obfuscation, White House officials are making two basic points.
1. We don’t know what the objects are or where they came from.
2. Don't worry about it.
The two statements are inconsistent, and the public knows it. They want real answers, not false assurances. The government’s communication problems are compounded by a simple fact: they have lied so often about so much that nobody believes their statements without proof.
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