I’ve been sitting on this post by Matt Yglesias for a while. In the post Matt chides President Trump for not trying to get an immigration bill passed:

American immigration law is complicated, and almost every provision of this vast corpus reflects some political compromise reached long ago, often under different circumstances. I think it’s fair to say that almost none of it is optimal.

Lenin said of the bureaucracy, “better fewer, but better.” When it comes to immigration, I don’t see it that way. We should try to be more selective, but we should also want more immigrants to come to the United States than ever. So while I agree that many of the current visa programs aren’t ideal, unlike Stephen Miller or Elon Musk, I don’t have my hair on fire about it.

What’s crazy, though, is that for how much conservatives rant and rave about immigration, the Trump administration isn’t even seeking legislative changes to American immigration law.

Now I’m going to go into what may seem to be a long diversion but isn’t because I think that Matt has the wrong end of the stick.

I’ve been pretty clear here about what I think that immigration policy should be. In short

• We should accept more genuine asylees than we do. An asylum-seeker is already defined in statute. It isn’t just someone from a poor, violent country or someone who wants a job.
• We should have a temporary workers program. Many of those who come here do so primarily to work. They have only marginal interest in becoming Americans.
• We should have some sort of DACA program to normalize the status of those brought here as children who’ve never lived anywhere else.
• Beyond that the law should be enforced. It should be enforce vigorously but not harshly. Admittedly, that’s a difficult line to tread.

Note that those preferences can only achieved by a) changing the law and b) enforcing the results. The opinion polls from both Gallup and Pew Research suggest that lots of Americans think pretty much the same way that I do. However, there’s certainly a spectrum of opinion.

At the extremes are two caricatures, “cartoon versions” of the parties’ positions. Those cartoon versions are:

• Republicans want no immigration.
• Democrats want open borders.

Neither description accurately characterizes most Republican or Democratic voters but each party’s rhetoric often caters to those extremes. Most people are somewhere between those poles.

The challenge that we’re facing is that both Democrats and Republicans are catering to their most extreme wings—the cartoon versions.

But this is the first point I’m trying to make. A president can move substantially toward a restrictionist immigration policy simply by enforcing existing law more aggressively. Democrats can only achieve the cartoon version of their views by not enforcing the law. Those may seem to be symmetrical strategies but they’re not. Enforcing the law strictly is the president’s job. Not enforcing the law is dereliction of duty.

My second point is this and I think it’s where I deviate most from Matt’s view. The executive branch should first faithfully enforce existing law. Once that’s happening those who want different law bear the burden of persuading Congress to enact it. If President Trump can achieve the cartoon version of policy above just by enforcing existing law, why should he change the law? Changing immigration law is Congress’s responsibility. If Democrats want a more permissive system, they should persuade Congress. If Republicans want a more restrictive system than existing law provides, they should also persuade Congress.

I wanted to commend Tomas Pueyo’s most recent Substack to your attention. In it he documents a distressing claim: the UK, Europe, and Canada are abandoning freedom of speech. His evidence is pretty convincing.

For decades I’ve been pointing out that we in the United States are operating under a delusion if we think that rights that we take very seriously are universal. Those include freedom of speech and of the press.

It is also true that rights considered fundamental in other countries are, shall we say, considered otherwise here. For example, in the UK there is a “right to cross the land” enshrined in Magna Carta. Here we call it “trespassing”.

In yet other countries establishing a church is an article of faith.

The key point is that other countries are different from us. That should be obvious but, apparently, is not.

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today on the recently released Fauci diaries. It is sharply critical of Dr. Fauci, portraying him as vain, politically manipulative, and more concerned with his public image than he has admitted.

I don’t know enough about the diaries to judge whether every criticism in the editorial is fair. What struck me, however, wasn’t anything in the diaries. It was something Dr. Fauci himself admitted years ago.

Early in the pandemic Dr. Fauci advised the public not to wear masks. Later he acknowledged that this advice was, at least in part, intended to conserve the limited supply of masks for healthcare workers. In other words, he deliberately told the public something other than what he believed to be true because he thought doing so would produce a better outcome.

I understand the dilemma. There really was a shortage of masks. Healthcare workers really did need priority. But there is a line that public officials cross at their peril. Their most valuable asset is not authority or expertise. It is credibility.

Once a public official admits that he has deliberately misled the public—even for what he believes is a good reason—every subsequent statement becomes suspect. If he was willing to tell me something he believed to be false yesterday because he thought it would produce a better result, why should I assume he is telling me the whole truth today?

Scientists are wrong all the time. That’s the nature of science. New evidence appears. Hypotheses are revised. Recommendations change. I have no objection to that.

I do object to being managed rather than informed.

In a free society, citizens are entitled to the best judgment of their public officials, not what those officials think citizens ought to hear. The moment experts decide that the public cannot be trusted with the truth, they begin to squander the very trust on which their influence ultimately depends.

That, more than anything I have read in today’s editorial, is why my confidence in Dr. Fauci’s subsequent pronouncements was so seriously diminished.

There is a saying attributed to the ancient Greek poet Archilochus: “The fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In his most recent Wall Street Journal column Walter Russell Mead in analyzing our conflict with Iran writes:

Iran may be a hedgehog, but Donald Trump is a fox, and he’s unlikely to give up until he’s tried every trick in the book.

I confess that I’m baffled by Dr. Mead’s column. Dr. Mead points to President Trump’s willingness to try many different tactics. But Archilochus didn’t say that the fox does many things; he said that the fox knows many things. Those are not the same. A hedgehog may employ a great variety of tactics in pursuit of a single overriding conviction. I agree that the Iranian regime is “a hedgehog”. Their one big thing is that they want the regime to survive.

However, I don’t think he has sufficiently demonstrated that President Trump is a “fox” in Archilochus’s sense. My own view is that President Trump is also a hedgehog. His one big thing is winning. Once viewed through that lens, many actions that otherwise seem disconnected become much easier to understand. Dr. Mead sees Trump’s willingness to employ many different tactics as evidence that he is a fox. I see those tactics as instruments in the service of a single overriding objective.

So, rather than a fox on one side faced by a hedgehog, we have two hedgehogs with diametrically opposed single big things. I don’t see how they can both be right.

The weather in Chicago today was quite nice—sunny, temperature in the 70s, moderate humidity. Much better than it was last week. Last week we had recordbreakingly bad air quality, attributed to smoke from fires in Ontario. President Trump’s response reminded me of Maslow’s Hammer: “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem begins to look like a nail.” My own response would have been different. As my mother taught me, you catch more flies with sugar than with vinegar.

Still, Americans are bearing real costs due to smoke from Canada. When Canada had its own recordbreaking forest fires in Ontario in 2023, emergency rooms had large numbers of people with breathing problems and many people turned to their physicians for help. The editors of the Washington Post chide President Trump:

The United States and Canada share the world’s longest international border: 5,525 miles. While there has always been friction, the relationship is a model for how trade is mutually beneficial.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge, opening next week, is named for a Canadian who spent 25 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings. There is a tunnel between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, that cannot accommodate large trucks, and the privately owned Ambassador Bridge has long been subject to bottlenecks.

The opening of the new bridge to traffic was already delayed a month after Trump objected to the financial terms. Canada footed the full $4.7 billion construction cost and initially planned to share toll revenue with the U.S. after its initial investment was paid back. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney says the two countries will now split the net revenue for the first 15 years after subtracting operating costs.

The Canadian wildfires introduced an unexpected wrinkle. On Sunday, Trump suggested Canada should be forced to “pay us damages” for “poisoning our air” with smoke. Canada is far from a model ally, but Trump’s approach clearly has backfired and boosted anti-American voices north of the border.

Just as the fog from the fires has lifted, so too can this spat. Trump and Carney spoke Tuesday by phone and agreed to intensify negotiations. Both countries will lose this fight if they can’t find a way out, regardless of who started it.

Whatever role climate change plays, it seems equally clear that forest management practices deserve renewed attention. Historically, Canada and the U. S. have cooperated on managing forests. Whatever our disagreements over trade or other issues, smoke recognizes no border. This might be an opportunity for our two nations to redouble our efforts. Rather than complaining about damages, the president could have proposed a joint review of forest management practices, wildfire prevention, and firefighting resources.

Presumably as a step in its Bezos-demanded shift in its editorial policy, the editors of the Washington Post note just how costly “Medicare for All” would be:

Roughly three-quarters of Medicare-for-all supporters believe that it could be paid for entirely by taxing billionaires. They’re wrong.

A recent poll by Echelon Insights found that 74 percent of voters who support the idea championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) and other progressive lawmakers think raising taxes only on billionaires would cover all of Medicare’s costs.

Just 40 percent knew the truth: Medicare-for-all would require raising taxes on most taxpayers, including the middle class.

In making that observation they have inadvertently, to use the late John McLaughlin’s phrase, lurched uncontrollably into the point I made decades ago: at the rate of increase of Medicare costs no plan that did not limit those costs would be affordable.

In a related but not identical point Andy Kessler’s recent Wall Street Journal column offers tentative praise for Atria Health’s business model:

“People have basically become resigned to the fact that healthcare sucks, it’s going to get more expensive, access will get worse.” I’m sitting in the New York City location of Atria Health with founder Alan Tisch. He’s making the case for preventive care.

“All of the incentives in our healthcare system are to treat sick people, and the sicker people are, the more money everyone makes,” he says. “There’s not even a billing code or a system for preventive healthcare. Doctors, scientists and technologists lost control. Healthcare is the only system on earth where both sides of the marketplace are wildly unhappy.”

He expects pressure for change: “People born in the 21st century don’t want to live that way. Consumer mindset and interest is massively shifting towards preventive health, wellness and longevity. They want to know where they stand, they want incredible amounts of data, they want to be proactive, and they want to be technology-enabled.”

Atria Health and Research Institute calls itself “a precision-based approach to preventive medicine and longevity” with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Palm Beach, Fla. Four more are planned in the next two years. Mr. Tisch says members (currently 5,000) pay “$20,000 to $75,000 per year that covers everything that we do within our four walls.” Atria makes $150 million in annual recurring revenue and is profitable from operations, he says.

Maybe it’s just an illusion but it seems that roughly that every generation or so preventative care is proposed as a cost savings measure. That was, for example, part of the Affordable Care Act, cf. Section 4002, establishing the Prevention and Public Health Fund:

The purpose of this Fund is to provide for expanded and sustained national investment in prevention and public health programs to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth in private and public sector health care costs.

Historically, it hasn’t taken long before those in the health care sector recognized that it was considerably easier to bill for services for the sick than to keep people healthy.

So we’re left with a system in which people are billed for something they don’t want (care) as a proxy for something they do want (health) and Congress is unwilling to control the cost increases within the system, cf. “Sustainable Growth Rate”. Every successful single-payer system has depended, in one form or another, on political mechanisms that restrain cost growth. Financing alone has never been sufficient.

The policy discussion of health care reform generally addresses three questions:

1. Who pays? (taxes, insurance premiums, employers, individuals)
2. How healthy are people? (prevention, wellness, longevity)
3. What determines the cost of delivering healthcare? (provider incentives, pricing, utilization, technology, regulation, political willingness to say “no”)

The discussion spends most of its time on (1); reformers focus on (2); neither can succeed without confronting (3).

One argument advanced in support of the Affordable Care Act was that expanding insurance coverage would reduce healthcare costs by reducing uncompensated care and shifting treatment from emergency rooms to less expensive settings. More than a decade later, the uninsured rate is substantially lower, yet healthcare expenditures continue to rise rapidly. Whatever benefits expanded coverage may have produced, it has not resolved the underlying problem of cost growth.

One sentence of James Freeman’s column in the Wall Street Journal took me aback:

As a reminder, Republican voters are the ones who prefer government to be smaller.

Do they? If Republican voters genuinely prefer smaller government, Congressional Republicans have done a poor job of translating that preference into policy. You certainly can’t tell it from Congress’s actions. Just as one indication here’s the track record of the Reagan Administration:

Notice that spending did not go down from year to year once. In fairness during Reagan’s term spending did decline as a percentage of GDP but that’s not the same thing as “smaller government”. Here’s a comparable chart for President Trump’s first term:

Whatever else “smaller government” may mean, it is difficult to describe a government whose spending rises every year as becoming smaller. So, either what Congressional Republicans are doing is different from what Republican voters want, or the statement is just untrue.

Despite their intraparty differences of opinion there is one thing on which Congressional Republicans tend to agree: taxes should be lower. Indeed, that’s a major source of our problems. Republicans want to pay less and Democrats want to spend more.

What I think is absolutely true is that Republicans and Democrats tend to have different spending priorities.

The traffic was bumper to bumper as I drove downtown from my home on the Northwest Side yesterday. Reaching my destination took nearly an hour longer than I had anticipated. I’m not sure what produced the traffic but I can’t help but believe that the heavy haze was a contributing factor.

The haze is being attributed to an unwanted immigrant—smoke from Canadian wildfires. Here’s a map of the wildfires:

These are becoming a recurrent problem.

The wildfires in Canada in 2023 were unprecedented. However, 2025 was the second-highest season on record and 2026 is beginning to look as though it will be yet another major year for forest fires in Ontario.

The media accounts routinely attribute the fires to climate change and it would be excessive to claim that human-produced climate change plays no role in them. They are a complex, multi-factorial problem whose causes include drought, changes in forestry practices, and human action. It is estimated that as much as 90% of forest fires in human-inhabited areas can be attributed to human action. Canada harvests considerably less lumber than it did 20 years ago and denser forests and increased fires go hand-in-hand.

My point in this is that you deal with the problems you encounter rather than the problems that fit the narratives you prefer. Canada may need to revert to the more aggressive forestry practices it employed years ago if the country’s reduction in human-induced emissions are to have meaning.

We’ve rather clearly entered the Dog Days of Summer—the time during which opinion pieces in major media outlets are incredibly uninteresting, as though they’re phoning them in.

Right now there’s very little to react to. I’m aware that many of those writing don’t like Trump. They haven’t liked Trump for at least 10 years now. Do they have anything new to say about it?

I’m aware that we’re at war. Does anybody have any good reporting or analysis of the conflict? Most of the opinion pieces sound either irate, bored, or both.

I’m aware that prices are high. Does anybody have any interesting insights about that? Or just laments that it’s Trump’s fault?

I’m aware that Russia and Ukraine are at war. They’ve been at war for four years now. The Ukrainians are innovating the heck out of things and the Russians are responding to that. Despite the Ukrainians’ intervention the only thing that will grant Ukraine victory is if the pain they’re causing Russia sufficient to make the Russians give up. Napoleon and Hitler both underestimated the amount of pain the Russians would absorb. Are there any new insights?