Author: J.D. Tuccille

President Biden may have admitted “the pandemic is over” with regard to COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean we won’t be feeling its sting for a long time to come. Security expert Brian Michael Jenkins argues that “the normality we knew before will not return” as we suffer the lingering effects on policy, erosion of liberty, and breakdowns in social cohesion. Data from elsewhere shows that we’re already living in a world affected by the pandemic and the policies adopted in response to the virus. Pointing to the after-effects of historical epidemics, Jenkins predicts the damage may last for generations. “Physicians…

Several factors contribute to soaring gasoline prices, but the greed of oil barons is an unlikely explanation no matter what President Joe Biden claims. It’s not that energy companies don’t want to make a buck; to the contrary, we count on their self-interest to drive the innovation and competition that puts fuel in our tanks. But it’s not as if they’ve grown greedier in recent months. What has actually changed is that the world has become more chaotic even as overregulation and an ideological crusade against petroleum discourage investment and make it difficult for supply to catch up with demand. In a letter to…

The last couple of years have been a revelation when it comes to public health measures for battling COVID-19 and whatever bugs come next. We’ve seen that masks offer little protection unless they’re the uncomfortable medical variety, states that locked down hardest took nasty economic hits in return for little if any health benefit, and kids isolated by decree from their peers suffer mental health issues. But don’t tell the politicians—they want more! Across the country, government officials seem eager to revive mask mandates and, perhaps, other artifacts of pandemic policy, if only as reminders of the high-tide mark of…

It wasn’t long ago that “normal” schooling meant public school, understood as some variation on the theme of classes punctuated by the sound of a bell, lunch in a cafeteria, and detours to run around with beat-up gym equipment. Catholic kids had similar experiences at parochial schools and some mostly rich kids went to private academies. Anything else was a little weird and required explanation. But, accelerated by pandemic-era stresses, innovations in recent years brought big changes to education. The biggest change of all is probably the growing acceptance won by charters, homeschooling, and a host of flexible approaches to…

My son recently underwent what was once a common rite of passage: his first job. He now balances the demands of schooling with cleaning toilets, stocking shelves, and bagging groceries at a local supermarket. While once a normal experience for teens, compensated employment became rarer in recent years as young, inexperienced workers were rendered uncompetitive by rising minimum wages. The pandemic-era labor shortage made teens employable again. That opportunity may fade when adults return to the workforce and offer experience and maturity in return for artificially hiked pay. “Honestly, without them, we’d have to close our doors,” the owner of…

Politicians have been on a high over the last year-plus, wielding extraordinary power with the approval of voters fearful of viral infection. Democrats, in particular, championed draconian restrictions on life and often won praise for doing so. Going into the election, Terry McAuliffe, Phil Murphy, and other politicians had every reason to expect voters to cheer similar interventions in other areas. But voters, it turns out, are over their pandemic panic and want something closer to a traditionally restrained government minding its manners and paying attention to the public’s concerns. “From Virginia’s Tidewater region to the Philadelphia suburbs to Long…

Occupational licensing has already been called out for hobbling opportunity, impeding mobility, protecting established practitioners from competition, and for raising prices of goods and services. Now there’s a new reason to object to turning working in a chosen field from a right into a privilege: the withholding of licenses as a means to punish those who criticize government officials. Specifically, Maine’s Department of Public Safety is denying a private investigator’s license to Joshua Gray because he publicly condemned a shooting by state troopers. “Gray’s problems with the Department began after he criticized the conduct of Maine police in the fatal…

“Ease up on the executive actions, Joe,” The New York Times urged recently inaugurated President Biden. While supportive of the president’s broadly progressive agenda, the newspaper’s editorial board found his flurry of executive orders and other unilateral actions both troubling and vulnerable to easy reversal by future presidents. “This is no way to make law,” the Times added. Unfortunately, creeping rule-by-decree has become common for presidents, and Biden’s impatience with the normal frustrations of the legislative process builds on the conduct of his predecessors. While partisans tend to pick sides on executive power depending on who holds the White House, the devolution of the presidency…

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, horrified Americans were ready to embrace virtually any proposal that promised to keep them safe. Government officials, for their part, were eager to curry favor with the fearful public and saw an opportunity to promote legislation and policies that had failed to win support in the past. The result was a surge of authoritarianism from which the U.S. has yet to recover. Now—with the public understandably concerned after the January 6 storming of the Capitol—we should brace ourselves for another wave of political responses that would, again, erode our liberty. “We’re going to have to…

Echoing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned city residents this week to prepare for a “full shutdown” as part of ongoing efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19. The two elected officials better not hold their breath waiting for compliance. Evidence from around the country shows that many Americans are thoroughly sick of impoverishing, socially isolating lockdown orders, and are revolting against the often-hypocritical politicians who issue them. “The governor said in a New York Times interview over the weekend that we should prepare for the possibility of a full shutdown. I agree…

Since the beginning of the pandemic, businesses able to shift their employees to remote work have done so with varying degrees of eagerness. Telecommuting became a lifeline for operations that were resistant to work-from-anywhere arrangements in the past but found them to be the only way to continue operating amidst lockdown orders and public fear of infection. But will the changes stick for the long term? Or will workplaces revert to their pre-pandemic forms? It’s looking more and more like there’s no reason for some of us to change out of pajamas; the evidence suggests that remote work has been…

Perhaps the only thing worse than being subjected to seemingly arbitrary and intrusive rules imposed to fight a pandemic is when those same rules fail to accomplish their goals. Instead of effective infectious disease control, you get fatigue with commands issued by officials who seem to have no idea what they’re doing, as we’re seeing during the COVID-19 crisis. Given the resulting pushback against ineffective, nonsensical rules, expect widespread cynicism toward official dictates to linger after the virus is history. Consider New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who, early in the crisis, ordered his state’s nursing homes—over their protests—to…