When Lauren Yacht posted on a Northern Virginia homeschool Facebook group that she was thinking about starting a homeschool program, she didn’t know what to expect. As she prepared to move back to the DC area from Florida, she was shocked that she couldn’t find any hybrid schools. She appreciated the model, where kids learn in person some days and at home other days. While she loved homeschooling her gifted daughter, it could be exhausting. "It was kind of hard and sort of lonely to do it alone," she admits.

Sarah Lavezzo, another homeschool mom who was also moving back to the area, saw the post. She had started a microschool in Colorado that survived the pandemic, and she’d sworn off starting another school. But Lauren’s description matched what Sarah had already built. "For the second time in my life, I reached out to a complete stranger over the internet," Sarah says.

The coincidences don’t stop there. "It was really just kismet," says Lauren. "Both of our daughters were seven. Both of them were gifted, twice-exceptional. And we moved back on the same day, within a couple of miles of each other. And so it was just like meant to be."

The women had a three-hour conversation over Zoom, and a school was born. Afterwards, Sarah went to her husband and said, "I think I’m starting another school."

Scholé Center for Innovative Education started with a pilot year as a homeschool co-op and launched as a hybrid school in 2023. It now serves 37 students from kindergarten through eighth grade, meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Friday field trips. They use a unique approach, marrying classical content with hands-on, self-directed learning techniques.

"We have three classes of mixed ages," Lauren explains. "Students are placed in each class based on what level of challenge or support they need in each subject area." The different levels of a subject all meet at the same time to allow students to move to the level they need. So a child may be in a more advanced class for literature and a less advanced class for science or vice versa.

"We have some students who kind of bounce around between the different levels all day, and then some students who just stay in whatever their grade level is," Lauren adds.

While most subjects are fully covered at Scholé, parents select their own core math and language arts curriculum for home. At school, they focus on literature, reading great books, and doing deep dives into reading comprehension and literary analysis. They also practice math together using things such as logic games and puzzles to work on their analytical skills. "It’s kind of like Socratic discussions, but with math," Sarah says.

In science and social studies, they follow a four-year rotation, similar to many classical programs. They are currently in a physics year, so everyone’s doing physics, even the kindergartners. Sarah teaches middle school science and has been teaching the same students for several years. She’s amazed to see how they’ve grown as scientists and in their understanding of scientific experimentation, including formulating a hypothesis and testing one variable. "There’s this passion there that fuels their content knowledge acquisition," she says. "One of our whole things is experiential learning and how that can fuel actual mastery of the skills and really just passion. Because it doesn’t matter how great somebody teaches something. If the kids don’t have passion and curiosity, it’s kind of like falling on deaf ears."

As with science, they incorporate a hands-on approach for social studies. They use a flipped classroom model, especially for the older kids. The students have reading assignments for home using a set program, and then use class time for Socratic discussions and other engaging activities. For example, when they studied ancient Rome, students built working aqueducts out of play sand and glue. When covering the Civil War, they marched in formation at a local fort, wearing period uniforms. Years later, the students still recall those activities.

The goal isn’t to remember every little detail of history; it’s to give the children an overarching view of the world. "We like to say that in the elementary years, we’re kind of making like an impressionist painting of all of the things there are to know about all of the different domains," Lauren says. "We hope that at the end of their elementary years, they’ll have this idea of ‘This is the world. This is what’s in it. This is the narrative of history. This is what science covers. This is what composers have been around and art movements and things like that.’ And then in the middle school years, we start to turn the focus dial and sort of refine that picture."

The school’s project-based learning goes beyond classroom walls. Last spring, middle school students won first place in the World Affairs Challenge, competing against over 100 international teams. "It’s learning by doing. They do research, they design a project around the UN sustainable development goals, and then they actually have to go out and do the project," Sarah explains. "They may be young people, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have an impact in their community, and their voice matters; their actions matter."

The year before, the students created products to sell at a local farmer’s market to raise money for an orphanage in Guatemala to help children receive life-saving surgeries. "The students ran it, they collected the money, they interfaced with the people. They went up and made announcements on the stage on the microphone," Lauren recalls. "They came away with over 1,000ドル that they had raised for these surgeries. And it funded surgeries for three orphans."

For the weekly Friday field trips, they take full advantage of living in a bustling area. While being near DC gives them access to numerous museums, they also explore the community for unique learning opportunities. They’ve toured water treatment plants for chemistry and are going to iFly for physics. After studying Gothic architecture, they partnered with a local stained-glass maker who taught kids the art and science of their craft and let them create their own project. "It feels like it would be a shame to live so close to touching some of these things and not get a chance to see them," Lauren notes.

Now they face a new question: what happens when their first three students graduate from eighth grade this year? "There really isn’t a lot in this area," Lauren acknowledges. "There’s nowhere for them to go that’s similar to this."

As they consider stepping up to fill that vacuum, they are keeping their own children in mind. "All of this was really born from us wanting something that would work for our own children. And we’ve kept that mentality for our students, too. You know, we wouldn’t want to provide anything that we wouldn’t want for our own kids," says Lauren. So they’re also thinking that way about a potential high school. "If it’s what we’re looking for, we hope that it’s what other families in our area are looking for too."

The US House of Representatives voted to approve the continuing resolution and appropriations bills that the US Senate approved on November 10. In doing so, it reaffirmed the Senate’s recriminalization of hemp-derived cannabinoids such as gummies and drinks and effectively shut down the US hemp industry. This occurred despite the best efforts of Senators Rand Paul (R‐KY) and Jeff Merkley (D‐OR) and Representative James Comer (R‐KY), along with a bipartisan group of 27 representatives, to prevent it in their respective chambers.

Reasonable people might wonder why Congress chose to eliminate the hemp-growing industry that supplies millions of customers with products they enjoy and use for self-medicating for pain, depression, anxiety, and even PTSD.

It’s unlikely that they think THC gummies or drinks are more dangerous than alcohol. Peer-reviewed studies consistently show that alcohol causes much more harm—such as health problems, dependence, and social issues—than cannabis. Two landmark Lancet analyses by Nutt and colleagues, along with later work by Lachenmeier and Rehm, all rank alcohol as the most harmful, with cannabis much lower. However, these studies generally look at cannabis broadly—mainly smoked—and don’t specify whether a 5 mg THC seltzer is safer than a 5 percent beer. They show that, overall, cannabis is less harmful than alcohol; they don’tyet provide specific evidence about today’s THC beverages.

A recent systematic review—the first serious look at cannabis-infused beverages—underscores how little we actually know. Froude et al. (2024) found just 29 relevant studies, most focused on marketing and product composition, with only a handful examining acute effects in humans. Those studies reported some unpleasant reactions in infrequent users and highlighted a persistent problem with inaccurate labeling. But the authors’ central point is the most important: research on cannabis drinks is sparse and inconsistent and offers virtually no insight into long-term risks or how these beverages compare to alcohol.

New cardiovascular research suggests that regular use of THC edibles may impair vascular function to a degree similar to tobacco smokers—hardly a trivial finding, and one that should curb any "edibles are harmless" claims. But the study is cross-sectional and offers no direct comparison to alcohol, so it tells us far less than some advocates or critics might hope.

Policymakers may have valid concerns about children consuming these products, which could poison them. But, like alcohol and tobacco, no reasonable person is suggesting these products should be marketed or accessible to minors. And lawmakers should not restrict adults’ right to buy these products based on concerns about minors using them. Otherwise, they might as well consider reinstating alcohol prohibition or banning any vehicle that isn’t self-driving.

Edible THC products can pose problems. Kids may accidentally get into them, adults sometimes consume more than they intended, and long-term heavy users might face cardiovascular risks. However, no evidence singles out low-dose THC drinks as a unique danger. The necessary studies simply aren’t available yet. Importantly, these are not unusual risks—we see similar patterns with legal products like alcohol, Tylenol, and energy drinks. We manage these risks through education and reasonable safeguards, not by banning products for adults. Low-dose THC beverages should be treated similarly: as an adult-use intoxicant that requires clear labeling and responsible access rules, not prohibition.

Several lawmakers who claim to support federal marijuana decriminalization—or even full legalization—voted this week for a bill that effectively re-criminalizes many hemp-derived cannabinoids. In the Senate, Dick Durbin (D‐IL) and Tammy Duckworth (D‐WI) supported the motion that maintained the hemp ban language. In the House, Republicans Brian Mast (FL-18), Tom McClintock (CA), and Nancy Mace (SC), along with Democrats Jared Golden (ME), Tom Suozzi (NY), and Don Davis (NC), all longtime supporters of cannabis reform, also voted "yes." The result reveals a striking example of cognitive dissonance: Congress wants to step back from policing marijuana while simultaneously extending federal control over non-marijuana products from the same plant.

Maybe it’s because national cannabis trade groups like the US Cannabis Council and the American Trade Association for Cannabis and Hemp, which represent the legal cannabis dispensary industry, have been urging Congress to classify hemp-derived THC products as illegal marijuana—effectively lobbying to close the so-called "hemp loophole." They’re not alone: major alcohol producers, including the Distilled Spirits Council, the Beer Institute, and the Wine Institute, have called on lawmakers to remove intoxicating hemp beverages from the market.

Yet even the alcohol industry isn’t united. A large coalition of beer, wine, and spirits distributors has told Congress not to close the "hemp loophole" at all, arguing instead for a regulatory and tax framework that treats hemp drinks like alcohol. The politics of cannabinoids, it seems, split industries just as much as Congress.

The hemp industry has 365 days to comply with the new prohibition. That gives lawmakers time to reconsider and decide whether they want a drug policy based on evidence and adult autonomy or one driven by protectionism and fear. Congress should use that year to choose the former. A free society doesn’t ban products because it lacks data; it gathers data, tells the truth, and lets responsible adults make their own choices.

Steve Moses has been studying and advocating for better long-term care (LTC) for decades. In the latest Cato Policy Analysis, "Better Long-Term Care for Billions Less," Moses explains how Medicaid dominates the market for LTC services and supports, reduces LTC quality, and subsidizes wealthier individuals at the expense of the poor.

Counterintuitively, Medicaid subsidizes LTC for middle-class and affluent individuals, who do not need government assistance. Middle-class people easily qualify for Medicaid under the basic financial eligibility rules. Some individuals with significant assets artificially impoverish themselves to become eligible for and receive Medicaid LTC subsidies.

Eliminating Medicaid LTC subsidies for individuals who could meet or could have planned to meet their own LTC needs would improve LTC quality and reduce the burdens Medicaid imposes on taxpayers. Middle-class and affluent seniors could draw on their assets and private LTC insurance, saving Medicaid as much as 100ドル billion per year without impairing its ability to serve those who truly need assistance.

The situation is fairly insane.

Why should amassing wealth that will pass to heirs take precedence over funding quality LTC for the living? Why should Medicaid force taxpayers to pay for LTC for those who would get it anyway, where subsidies serve no other purpose than to protect the inheritances of those individuals’ heirs?

Moses offers eight specific reforms that would rededicate Medicaid to its original purpose of providing assistance to those who cannot help themselves. And he doesn’t flinch from the stark reality: "To fix LTC, Medicaid LTC caseloads must decline dramatically."

Number seventeen in our series of occasional roundups on election law and policy:

• The Supreme Court agrees to review a Fifth Circuit panel decision finding that Congress’ naming of a uniform national election day makes it unlawful for states to accept some ballots posted by that date but received later, as roughly 30 states do. [SCOTUSBlog on Watson v. Republican National Committee]
• Trump: Congress may never have passed a bill making documentary proof of US citizenship part of the national mail voter registration form. But I’ve got the people’s mandate, so I’m just going to do it right now by executive order. Federal judge: No, you have no such power. Permanently enjoined. [October 31 ruling by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly (D.D.C.), told you so in March and again in September]
• By a 36–64 margin, voters in Maine clobbered a conservative-backed package of electoral reforms that would have curtailed absentee voting and drop boxes as well as required voters to show identification at the polls. [Maine Public Radio]
• "I would rather just stand on principle and stand on my morals and ethics," said Kansas State Representative Brett Fairchild, a conservative Republican who isn’t going along with his party’s demand for mid-decade redistricting. "That way I can actually look at myself in the mirror and sleep at night. It’s not all just about getting re-elected." [New York Times] Maryland Senate Majority Leader Bill Ferguson (D‐Baltimore) did something principled, and now he must pay the price. [Lauren Egan, The Bulwark; my Substack]
• "Modernizing Voter List Maintenance: An Evidence-Based Framework for Access and Integrity" [Michael Morse, Rachel Orey, and Joann Bautista, Bipartisan Policy Center]
• Claim: Donald Trump’s push to abolish the Senate filibuster is motivated in substantial part by a desire to enact changes in federal election law by simple majority. [Bob Bauer]

The Cato Institute has long excelled at originating and disseminating policy ideas. As libertarians, however, we tend to be uncomfortable with the hard work of advancing those ideas through the levers and gears of the policy world, since that typically entails give-and-take compromises and partial victories at best. As Richard Rorty put it, "In democratic countries you get things done by compromising your principles in order to form alliances with groups about whom you have grave doubts." This is not inherently appealing to anyone and is especially unattractive to many libertarians who tend to place great emphasis on following their principles to their logical conclusions. But if we want to see our ideas implemented, we need to engage not just with policy ideas but with the policy process as well. And that is how I found myself sitting in committee meetings for 72 hours over the past couple of months helping to write federal regulations.

Let’s back up to the beginning. When issuing new regulations, most federal offices and agencies must follow the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). A core component of this is "Notice and Comment," which requires that proposed regulations be published so that the public can suggest changes before the regulations are finalized and implemented. The Department of Education is the main office that is required to use negotiated rulemaking as well as follow the APA. Under negotiated rulemaking, the department selects negotiators from various stakeholder groups, who then work to achieve consensus on proposed regulations. If they reach consensus, the department must propose the agreed-upon regulations, though the department can make changes to the final regulations based on the public’s comments.

As luck would have it, I recently served as one of the negotiators on one of these negotiated rulemaking committees tasked with updating federal regulations for student loans based on the recently passed reconciliation bill. What did I learn from this process?

Negotiated rulemaking can be, but isn’t always gamed.

Since the Department of Education chooses the negotiators for each stakeholder group, it is not uncommon to stack the deck. For example, the Biden administration’s negotiated rulemaking committee for student loan forgiveness didn’t include a single voice opposed to the notion of mass student loan forgiveness. The department can stack the deck not only by choosing negotiators for each group but also by deciding which groups have a seat at the table. Indeed, Cato’s own Neal McCluskey pointed out that that committee didn’t include a taxpayer representative, a scandalous choice given the massive price tag for the various loan forgiveness proposals.

In contrast, the committee I served on did include a taxpayer representative and the department didn’t seem to be stacking the deck. Part of that is likely because the committee’s task was fairly narrow—update existing regulations to account for changes in the reconciliation bill, which involved mostly technical (as opposed to policy) matters.

The negotiated rulemaking step is a bit ridiculous.

If a negotiated rulemaking committee reaches consensus, it does bind the Department of Education to propose that regulatory language. But the department can change the final regulations based on feedback gathered during the public comment period. If no consensus is reached, the department can propose whatever regulations it chooses. Courts will weigh in on the legality of whatever regulations are implemented if there is a lawsuit. This means that negotiated rulemaking doesn’t meaningfully constrain the government. It does, however, take up a lot of time, both for the negotiators and for the government, adding months to the process. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing from a libertarian perspective. But merely adding a few months to the regulatory process isn’t much of a win. And the added time affects both new and undesirable regulations as well as deregulatory efforts.

Compromise means you won’t be completely happy.

Most of the committee’s task entailed straightforward updates to federal regulations on student loans and related matters based on the reconciliation bill that passed a few months ago. In a few areas, however, the committee had some real decisions to make. In particular, the bill set different loan limits for professional students (50,000ドル per year, compared to 20,500ドル for other graduate students), and it defined professional students by pointing to a regulation that provided a vague definition. The committee thus had to sort out what the definition of a professional student is based on the statute, congressional intent, and ambiguous regulatory text. This was the most contentious matter the committee addressed. The committee reached consensus, which means that no one got everything they wanted, but everybody got something and could live with the end result. This is a prime example of how the democratic political process is geared toward providing partial victories.

Government processes are slow and bureaucratic.

Before serving on the committee, I assumed most government decisionmaking was slow, bureaucratic, and slightly maddening for those involved. But then I served on a committee that involved 72 hours of meetings, during which I was not allowed to talk (I served as an alternate negotiator, and only the primary negotiator for each group is allowed to talk.) I also was not allowed to vote on the final regulatory language (only the primary negotiator votes). In other words, it was even slower, more bureaucratic, and more maddening than I thought.

But someone had to do it, and I kept telling myself that libertarians will achieve more of our goals if we have a seat at the table. Whether that was a coping mechanism or the truth remains to be seen.

Many people celebrated President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting "political debanking." Yet, those same people seem to be silent now that the president created new pressures to effectively debank the left.

Ebrima Sanneh, a reporter for American Banker, broke the story as banks began to grapple with two seemingly conflicting executive orders. The first order came on August 7. It leaned heavily into the idea that banks have engaged in "unacceptable practices" by restricting access "on the basis of political or religious beliefs." In doing so, Trump wrote that it is "the policy of the United States" that no one should be debanked for political beliefs.

The second order came on September 22. It was here that Antifa was officially designated as a "domestic terrorist organization." A few days later, the White House then published a memo outlining how the Bank Secrecy Act should be used to "identify and disrupt financial networks that fund" Antifa in order "to ensure such activity is rooted out at the source." By itself, this second order is a compliance nightmare.

People have done objectively bad things under the banner of Antifa. At the same time, however, Antifa appears to be more of an ideology than a formal organization. With that in mind, it is unclear how banks are supposed to avoid Antifa. Should banks blacklist anyone who comes in wearing an Antifa pin? Should they review photos of protests to identify potential Antifa-aligned customers? Should onboarding documents include a questionnaire about a customer’s feelings about fascism?

Making matters worse, the designation resembles something out of the authoritarian’s playbook. Authoritarian governments around the world have labeled their opponents as "terrorists" to cut them off from the financial system. Félix Maradiaga experienced this when he was labeled a terrorist by the Nicaraguan government. His crime? Maradiaga announced that he was running for president against the long-standing incumbent, Daniel Ortega. Banks had no say in whether this designation was accurate. Once Maradiaga was labeled a terrorist, their hands were tied. And that brings us back to the current situation in the United States.

Banks are now caught between the two executive orders. Do they comply with the terrorist designation and shut down the accounts of customers who have associated themselves with Antifa? They could, but that would risk running afoul of the other executive order by debanking a customer for what could be described as political reasons.

Todd Baker, a fellow at Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center, described the situation to American Banker: "The two directives are inherently self-contradictory, and any search for a coherent policy to reconcile the two is impossible."

Impossible to reconcile as it may be, this case is illustrative for two primary reasons.

First, it shows how the focus on political debanking rests on a questionable premise. In addition to the president’s executive order, legislation such as the Fair Access to Banking Act and the Ensuring Fair Access to Banking Act attempts to go after political debanking. Yet, despite these attempts, it’s been exceedingly difficult to identify cases of true political discrimination. Instead, claims of political (and religious) debanking have rested on less-than-straightforward anecdotes.

Second, this case shows how governmental debanking is the more fundamental issue. Clear evidence of political discrimination may be hard to find, but the fact that this new debanking pressure came from the government is clear as day. It shows how the government has the power to decide, at the drop of a hat, who receives access and who doesn’t. The cryptocurrency industry faced similar pressure when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation told banks to stop facilitating cryptocurrency activity. Other industries experienced this pressure from the government under Operation Choke Point.

Make no mistake: Debanking is a problem. A better approach, however, would be to reform the Bank Secrecy Act, prohibit the regulation of reputational risk, and remove the confidentiality that has kept the public in the dark. Doing so would minimize unintended consequences, take well-established abuses off the table, and give the public much-needed transparency.

Apparently, yes:

In California, recent evidence shows that facilities subject to cap-and-trade have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 3–9 percent. Our findings, however, reveal that toxic emissions from facilities subject to cap-and-trade policies were about 26–42 percent higher on average in the five years after the introduction of the program than they would have been otherwise.

Why? Treating toxic waste is a substantial source of greenhouse gas emissions; hence, increasing the cost of greenhouse gas emissions also makes treating toxic waste more expensive. As a result, cap-and-trade has inadvertently prompted firms to strategically cut back on their efforts to treat toxic waste, causing them to release more of it.

These results do not, by themselves, mean the cap-and-trade program was a mistake; that depends on the magnitude of the harms from carbon emissions versus those from toxic waste.

The example nevertheless illustrates that reducing environmental harms can be difficult; reducing one kind can increase another, since most productive activities generate a range of externalities.

Cross-posted from Substack .