April 21, 2026

Now, on to the news…

Photo credit: d3sign/Moment via Getty Images

Productivity, which compares the inflation-adjusted value of goods and services produced with the inputs required to produce them, is central to prosperity. It’s excellent news, then, that it’s been surging in several parts of the world. In the third quarter of last year, U.S. labor productivity jumped 4.9 percent, up from 1.9 percent growth the year prior. In the U.K., too, growth stands at 3.4 percent over the last six quarters.

The challenge, Allison Schrager argues, will be sustaining this growth once labor and capital are largely fully deployed. “Over the long run, sustained productivity growth depends on new innovations—and on applying them in ways that reshape the economy,” she writes.

This is where artificial intelligence could be transformative. Read about how the technology could drive productivity growth, and what it may mean for our economic future.

As part of a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Justice Clarence Thomas recently gave a speech at the University of Texas. He spoke about how progressivism has challenged the American Founding, noting that it has “coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration.” Progressivism rejects the premise of the Declaration of Independence, he said, that believes our rights come from God—instead, progressives believe that rights come from government.

Thomas’s assessment is right on target, Ilya Shapiro argues. “A country that forgets the Declaration’s account of man and government will not preserve the Constitution’s structure for long,” he writes.

Read more here.

More than a decade ago, in Sokolow v. PLO, a U.S. federal jury ruled that terror attacks on 36 U.S. citizens abroad in 2002 were funded and orchestrated by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, and awarded the victims some $655 million in damages. Subsequently, however, various courts ruled that U.S. federal courts had no jurisdiction to render judgments against foreign defendants, even when they attacked American citizens.

“That injustice was finally corrected last month,” Tal Fortgang writes, “when the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the full judgment in Sokolow v. PLO.” As Fortgang observes, the court had little choice but to do so, in light of last year’s unanimous Supreme Court ruling in Fuld v. PLO upholding federal jurisdiction in these cases. As Fortgang writes, the resolution of the Sokolow case “vindicates the principle once and for all: our Constitution was never a sanctuary for rogue organizations that deliberately fund the murder of Americans.”

As cities expanded and industrialized in the second half of the nineteenth century, developers produced townhouses in large numbers. But in the early twentieth century, the style began falling out of favor as critics found townhouses to be too generic and even low-quality. “Postwar flight to the suburbs and the resulting urban decay further doomed the single-family townhouse,” Brad Hargreaves explains. “Upper middle-class families that would have happily purchased a townhouse in 1875 wanted nothing to do with city living in 1975.”

Then came the 1990s and early 2000s. Crime rates fell, interest in urban life returned, and townhouses became hot again. “Townhouse neighborhoods in gateway cities like New York and Boston drew demand from global buyers and smashed sale price records,” Hargreaves writes. “Today, it’s not unusual to find townhouses in the West Village or Beacon Hill listing for more than $10 million.”

A handful of developers are trying to capitalize on the interest. Read about some of their projects and why they’re optimistic about the townhome’s enduring charm.

“The hallmark of all progressive policies is that their most passionate supporters are always completely insulated from the inevitable and always obvious consequences of implementing them. It’s only the people they purport to care about that get hurt.”

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Lloyd Braun, commenting on New Mexico’s broken child-welfare agency