June 23, 2026

Photo credit: Spencer Platt / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images

New York State lawmakers recently rejected a bill that would have banned “caste” discrimination. No state has enshrined the Indian system of social hierarchy into law, but activists will keep trying, Lee Jussim, Danit Finkelstein, and Colin Wright argue.

Indeed, they’ve succeeded in Seattle, which has added caste to its anti-discrimination law. Universities, too, have added caste to discrimination policies.

“Activists often kick off moral panics by asserting the existence of a pervasive but difficult-to-measure problem, then demanding a new institutional mechanism to detect and punish it,” Jussim, Finkelstein, and Wright observe. “But just like prior moral panics, there’s little evidence that caste discrimination is widespread—and real evidence that adding it to our laws will make things worse.”

You can read more about their findings here.

Since 2019, states have been authorized to use the Treasury Department’s Do Not Pay tool, which allows agencies to screen data and verify beneficiaries’ information before payments are made. “DNP serves as a first line of defense against fraud and misspending—at no cost to the states,” Dan Lips explains. The Treasury Department estimates the tool helped agencies prevent and recover nearly $12 billion in fraudulent payments last year.

And yet, just 19 states have adopted the tool. Their failure to do so “is likely resulting in substantial waste, fraud, and abuse,” writes Lips.

Read more about Do Not Pay, and the legislation that could help to strengthen the tool.

“Milton Friedman was a fierce advocate of market economies not only because they worked but also because they promoted liberty, which was to him the most important principle of all,” James Piereson writes. Indeed, Friedman cherished his independence, expressed unconventional ideas, and loved to debate. “His ideas about free markets,” Piereson continues, “along with his policy proposals about vouchers, unions, and the welfare state, shocked the sensibilities of liberal adversaries.”

Read more about the legacy of this master economist.

New Orleans’s post-Katrina school reforms transformed one of America’s worst education systems into a national model. After adopting a nearly all-charter, all-choice system, the city saw major gains in test scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment, while eliminating failing schools.

Paul Vallas served as the superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District (RSD) from 2007 to 2011 and oversaw these improvements. “When families can choose, schools must compete,” he said. “Leaders gain the freedom to lead. The system closes what doesn’t work. And student outcomes improve—even in a poor city, even after catastrophe, and even without additional funding.”

Vallas encourages other school districts around the country to emulate the NOLA model with greater “autonomy, choice, accountability.”

Read more here.

“The science of association is the mother science,” Alexis de Tocqueville observed when he toured the United States in 1831. “The progress of all the others depends on the progress of that one.”

Tocqueville found the U.S. to be so exceptional because of citizens’ ability to associate with others and build institutions.

Sadly, we are losing that gift, Luke Burgis writes. Institutions are more fragile, more nihilistic, and organized around zero-sum competition. But, he argues, courage can serve as the remedy. “The healthy institutions our society needs must be built on it: the willingness to take risks, make mistakes, sacrifice, and remain in communion with real people, who cannot be muted or ignored like a group chat,” he writes.