Blog
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson By Matthew Fleming | July 25, 2025 “Abundance,” a new book by liberal thought leaders Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, makes the case that a sustainable future doesn’t need to be driven by the politics of scarcity we see dominating America’s urban ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
California’s obsession with density limits housing growth
Morphing from a once-reasonable requirement that building permit applicants report on the “significant environmental impact” of their construction project and how they intend to mitigate that impact, CEQA is now a process-heavy, bureaucratic beast that delays projects for years and costs developers millions. Of all the ways California’s Legislature and ...
Blog
The U.S. Drug System Strikes a Reasonable Balance Between Incentivizing Innovation and Promoting Competition
The government explicitly grants innovators temporary market exclusivity to provide an opportunity for groundbreaking pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of capital associated with developing novel treatments. This was one of the express purposes of past federal reform legislation, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act signed in 1984 and the Biologics ...
Agriculture
MAHA Report: a failure on several levels
When the MAHA report was released, readers quickly noticed what were later referred to as “formatting errors.” Those errors included footnotes and citations that didn’t exist and were apparently the result of “hallucinations” by report writers relying on AI rather than doing the work to understand existing research. What is ...
Blog
Read the latest on the LA ICE riots
ICE in California – Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place
On May 20, 50 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials including all regional field office directors and an assortment of Homeland Security special agents and investigators were summoned to Washington DC by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Miller is the point man for the Trump administration’s plan ...
Blog
Legislative whiffs—and a few wins—on state housing reform
Legislative whiffs—and a few wins—on state housing reform In a recent piece for RealClearInvestigations, urban experts Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox lamented that “housing affordability stands at the lowest level ever recorded, while one in three Americans now spend over 30% of their income on mortgage or rent.” Try telling ...
Blog
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Newsom wisely uses political capital to secure CEQA reform
Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t afraid to step into the political fray when it comes to standing up to President Donald Trump over national issues that impact California. He’s not always wrong when he sues the administration or speaks out against, say, ICE raids in Los Angeles. But most of those high-profile actions ...
Blog
Read part 1 of a 3 part series on drug pricing
Conspiracies Aside, Drug Company Profits Are Average
Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held its first of three listening sessions on the pharmaceutical market. The goal was to discuss reforms that will improve drug affordability by increasing “generic and biosimilar availability” and promoting “competition”. Achieving these goals is essential. The flaw of the first listening session is ...
Blog
Crime in California 2024
Crime in California 2024 by Steve Smith | July 15, 2025 On July 1, as it has for over 50 years, the California Department of Justice released three statistical reports covering crime in general, homicides, and juvenile crime. On the positive side, there are some reductions particularly in violent crime ...
Blog
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students by Lance Izumi | July 14, 2025 A bill plowing through the State Legislature is using fiscal accountability as a fig-leaf issue to hide its real intentions—crippling California’s popular charter-school sector in order to bolster regular public schools that are seeing ...
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
BOOK REVIEW: ‘Abundance’ By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson By Matthew Fleming | July 25, 2025 “Abundance,” a new book by liberal thought leaders Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, makes the case that a sustainable future doesn’t need to be driven by the politics of scarcity we see dominating America’s urban ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
California’s obsession with density limits housing growth
Morphing from a once-reasonable requirement that building permit applicants report on the “significant environmental impact” of their construction project and how they intend to mitigate that impact, CEQA is now a process-heavy, bureaucratic beast that delays projects for years and costs developers millions. Of all the ways California’s Legislature and ...
The U.S. Drug System Strikes a Reasonable Balance Between Incentivizing Innovation and Promoting Competition
The government explicitly grants innovators temporary market exclusivity to provide an opportunity for groundbreaking pharmaceutical companies to recover the costs of capital associated with developing novel treatments. This was one of the express purposes of past federal reform legislation, such as the Hatch-Waxman Act signed in 1984 and the Biologics ...
MAHA Report: a failure on several levels
When the MAHA report was released, readers quickly noticed what were later referred to as “formatting errors.” Those errors included footnotes and citations that didn’t exist and were apparently the result of “hallucinations” by report writers relying on AI rather than doing the work to understand existing research. What is ...
Read the latest on the LA ICE riots
ICE in California – Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place
On May 20, 50 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials including all regional field office directors and an assortment of Homeland Security special agents and investigators were summoned to Washington DC by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Miller is the point man for the Trump administration’s plan ...
Legislative whiffs—and a few wins—on state housing reform
Legislative whiffs—and a few wins—on state housing reform In a recent piece for RealClearInvestigations, urban experts Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox lamented that “housing affordability stands at the lowest level ever recorded, while one in three Americans now spend over 30% of their income on mortgage or rent.” Try telling ...
Read the latest from PRI's Free Cities Center
Newsom wisely uses political capital to secure CEQA reform
Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t afraid to step into the political fray when it comes to standing up to President Donald Trump over national issues that impact California. He’s not always wrong when he sues the administration or speaks out against, say, ICE raids in Los Angeles. But most of those high-profile actions ...
Read part 1 of a 3 part series on drug pricing
Conspiracies Aside, Drug Company Profits Are Average
Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held its first of three listening sessions on the pharmaceutical market. The goal was to discuss reforms that will improve drug affordability by increasing “generic and biosimilar availability” and promoting “competition”. Achieving these goals is essential. The flaw of the first listening session is ...
Crime in California 2024
Crime in California 2024 by Steve Smith | July 15, 2025 On July 1, as it has for over 50 years, the California Department of Justice released three statistical reports covering crime in general, homicides, and juvenile crime. On the positive side, there are some reductions particularly in violent crime ...
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students
Anti-Charter School Bill Would Hurt Most Vulnerable CA Students by Lance Izumi | July 14, 2025 A bill plowing through the State Legislature is using fiscal accountability as a fig-leaf issue to hide its real intentions—crippling California’s popular charter-school sector in order to bolster regular public schools that are seeing ...
