Every dollar spent by a Texas library puts almost $5 back into the economy, study shows by Sarah Asch

 

The Texas Library Association found that library services across the state offer an economic boon to local communities.

If you walk into your local library, you can borrow a book or ask for help with a research question. You can also get help with your resume, access the internet on public computers, borrow a movie, or perhaps participate in some free public programming.

The Texas Library Association commissioned a study this summer to measure the return on investment for public dollars spent on libraries. They found that every dollar spent by local libraries generates almost $5 in statewide economic activity.

Shirley Robinson, the executive director of the Texas Library Association, said they did this by comparing what people get from libraries to what they could pay for on their own.

“Our research firm compared all of those services to comparable resources that one might be able to go and find in the open marketplace if you were needing to pay for those things,” she said. “And so that’s how that dollar figure of $4.74 for every dollar invested towards Texas libraries produces for an individual and community value.”

The study included data from a wide variety of libraries, from small rural systems to big urban ones. It also looked at how libraries impact the economy beyond the direct dollar calculation.

“When you look at things like just the overall support for jobs in the state, for example, we know that approximately 11,200 individuals are employed in our Texas public libraries. That’s absolutely an economic value for the state,” Robinson said. “And then the other significant number in this study was that there’s $3.8 billion in total economic benefit generated from libraries. So when you look at how those services help to support the community, that number becomes really significant.”

Robinson said her favorite library programs are ones designed with seniors in mind.

“Helping them to have access to digital resources that they may not have had the education or even experience within the past couple of decades in their lives,” she said. “We have a couple of programs that specifically train seniors on how to do things like use a mouse on a computer, how to get onto the internet and pay bills.”

These workshops help seniors stay socially engaged and help them participate in the economy, Robinson said.

“There is almost no aspect of our day-to-day lives now that doesn’t involve the internet or using a mobile device,” she said. “And so a lot of these programs in our public libraries are able to either put devices directly into the hands of our seniors or train them on how to use those devices when they are at home to give them greater independence.”

Robinson’s hope is that this data encourages state and local governments to spend more money on libraries, especially those that lost funding and staffing during the COVID-19 pandemic and haven’t recovered.

“I’m thinking right now of a couple of different libraries across the state that have had to cut their staffing by almost half over the last five or six years,” she said. “And that has a huge impact on the services that they’re able to provide, the number of hours that they are able to stay open. We very much would like to see those staffing levels increased and returned to what they were pre-pandemic.”

Robinson would also like to see more investment in library infrastructure.

“Many of these buildings were built in the 60s and 70s,” she said. “We’re really needing to reinvest in those buildings so that they can continue to serve the population that is growing in many parts across the state.”

See less

Rubio refuses to comment on Guilfoyle allegations by MATTHEW LEE

 

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday flatly refused to comment on a new report alleging that U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle engaged in improper and possibly illegal conduct before taking up her post.

Rubio told reporters that he would not discuss the allegations contained in a Wall Street Journal story that said Guilfoyle had asked a donor and supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump to pay a $100,000 credit card bill just before her confirmation hearing, promising him access to administration officials if he did.

He spoke before leaving Greece, where he delivered a speech calling for European countries to return to what he described as their civilizational roots.

Rubio said he was aware of The Wall Street Journal’s report, which was published late Wednesday, but had no idea if it was true and he would not address it.

 

“You guys walk around thinking that because some source told you something and you reported it, it’s the gospel. It’s not the gospel. It’s not the gospel for me. That’s not the way we do things,” he said at the foot of his plane as Guilfoyle, who was there to see him depart Greece, looked on.

At a joint news conference with the Greek foreign minister on Wednesday, Rubio said he would not address the allegations while visiting a foreign country, but added, “Suffice it to say our embassy here is doing a great job. Our ambassador has been a strong ambassador here.”

 

The top two Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees have called for an investigation into Guilfoyle, but Rubio would not say if he was prepared to open one.

Congressional Democrats already were looking into claims reported last month by the Wall Street Journal that Guilfoyle acted improperly while serving as the top U.S. envoy to Greece.

The Journal reported that Guilfoyle told guests at a reception that the U.S. could undermine the Greek government if it chose to, promoted the business interests of one particular Greek construction and energy company, and allowed its lobbyist into private diplomatic meetings.

Guilfoyle, a former Fox News Channel host and California prosecutor who was once engaged to Trump’s son Donald Jr., has denied any wrongdoing and Rubio has defended her before.

U.S.-Russia Talks on Ukraine Now Involve an Oil Deal Tied to Trump Allies by Troianovski, Anton ; Lipton, Eric . New York Times , Late Edition (East Coast); New York

 

The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.

The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Donald Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Kushner or Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government.

The monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

There is no indication that Kushner or Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

Russian President Vladimir Putin brought up the deal when he met with Witkoff and Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.

 The Americans responded that they would work on it, the person said, seeing it as a way to build good will with the Kremlin while also lowering global energy prices. But the deal is also a lucrative one for the buyers: U.S. approval for the sale would release the assets from American sanctions, instantly increasing their value.

In Moscow, the decision on the deal is widely seen as Mr. Putin's to make, even though Lukoil is technically a private company. The upshot is that the giant transaction, involving assets as varied as oil fields in Cameroon, refineries in Europe and gas stations in New Jersey, comes down to Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has been promoting the promise of business deals with Russia since early last year, describing the country as a ''tremendous opportunity.'' The deal again brings Mr. Trump's World Liberty Financial cryptocurrency company -- co-founded by Mr. Witkoff -- into focus. One of the investors in the Lukoil deal is a part owner of World Liberty.

Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, who have traveled repeatedly to Russia for meetings with Mr. Putin, have argued that the potential to rebuild economic ties with the West could convince the Russian president to compromise in Ukraine. The administration has recently signaled it is open to deals with Russia even before the war ends, as a way of showing it is serious about resetting the United States' relationship with Moscow.

The Lukoil sale, people familiar with the matter say, is one of those deals.

In a statement, a senior administration official confirmed that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner played a direct role in helping negotiate the financial terms of the investment by the federal government in the deal to ensure that it included ''a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States.''

A spokeswoman for Mr. Witkoff said that he ''takes no salary and travels the world on his own plane, at his own expense, working on behalf of President Trump to negotiate peace and bring hostages home to their families.'' She added that Mr. Witkoff ''has no conflict of interest and no financial stake in this matter.''

A Stalled Bid, and a New Contender

Numerous potential bidders expressed interest in at least part of Lukoil's international holdings when the assets went on the market last fall, including U.S. energy giants like Chevron.

The Washington private equity firm Carlyle reached a tentative agreement in January to buy a large share of the assets, after making the pitch that bringing Lukoil's international portfolio under U.S. ownership would further the Trump administration's goal of ''energy dominance.''

But in recent months, as U.S. approval for Carlyle's bid stalled, a different group emerged as the leading bidder: one led by Mr. Boehly, a billionaire supporter of Mr. Trump's, alongside well-connected figures in the Middle East and the U.S. government itself. The members of the partnership were reported last week by The Financial Times.

Mr. Boehly is a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and donated $1 million to MAGA Inc., the Trump-aligned political committee, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million through his investment firm, Eldridge Industries, to Mr. Trump's inauguration. 

 

he U.S. government is taking a stake in the deal through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, an agency that invests in and lends to projects overseas. A D.F.C. official said in a statement that the potential Lukoil deal ''would advance the Trump administration's commitment to strengthen U.S. economic security, advance U.S. foreign policy and lower energy prices for everyday Americans.''

But it would not be an all-American purchase.

A major equity holder would be the Qatar-based conglomerate controlled by Moutaz Al-Khayyat and his brother Ramez Al-Khayyat, both of whom attended Mr. Trump's inauguration in 2025 and have since formed a partnership with Mr. Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, one of Mr. Trump's daughters, to help finance a multibillion-dollar luxury hotel resort project in southern Albania.

Another major stakeholder would be an Abu Dhabi-based investment fund controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates' top national security adviser, who controls another fund that purchased a large stake in the Trump family's cryptocurrency company, World Liberty, run in part by Mr. Witkoff's son.

Steve Witkoff was a co-founder of World Liberty, and Mr. Trump's sons are also involved in the company, which generated $799 million for Mr. Trump last year, in part because of an additional cryptocurrency purchase worth $2 billion that Sheikh Tahnoon's affiliate made in 2025. Mr. Witkoff himself has sold off his stake in World Liberty, a person close to him said.

Sheikh Tahnoon also helps oversee an Abu Dhabi investment fund called Lunate, which is among the largest stakeholders in the private equity firm Mr. Kushner set up after he left the White House at the end of Mr. Trump's first term. This means Sheikh Tahnoon is effectively a business partner of Mr. Kushner's as well.

An 'Alarming' Set of Entanglements

Hui Chen, a former Justice Department prosecutor and a white collar crime and ethics adviser who served until the start of Mr. Trump's first term, said the connections between Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner to players in the Lukoil deal illustrated why friends and family members of Mr. Trump's should not be top foreign policy advisers.

''This is an alarming and very concerning set of entanglements,'' said Ms. Chen, who has also worked as a corporate compliance lawyer. ''And it means you have to question how the Trump administration is evaluating the different bidders involved here. Are the personal interests involved going to wrongly influence the outcome?''

Lukoil's international division, which is based in Austria, hired its own Washington-based consultant who is close to Mr. Trump, Bryan Lanza, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump's 2024 election campaign and now works at Mercury Public Affairs. He is no longer working for Lukoil, a person familiar with the matter said.

The deal is not yet final, and would need to be approved by the Treasury Department, which oversees sanctions enforcement.

But in the case of Lukoil, people involved said, the key decisions are being made at the White House. Asked about its approach to the Lukoil decision, a Treasury Department spokeswoman said that the agency's Office of Foreign Assets Control ''implements foreign policy as determined by the White House.''

The Sept. 5 meeting with Mr. Putin was the first time that Lukoil came up in the Russian president's conversations with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, one person familiar with the matter said.

But Kirill Dmitriev, Mr. Putin's economic envoy, has been closely involved, people familiar with the sale process said. He traveled to New York and Washington for meetings last month, and told reporters that ''dialogue'' with the United States was ''continuing across many areas, including energy.''

Lukoil's refineries in the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Romania play an important role. They produce diesel and jet fuel, which have been in short supply since the start of the Iran war, which has driven up prices and given Mr. Trump an incentive to support a deal that could provide more access to energy.

Lukoil valued its international assets at $20 billion earlier this year, but the price and structure of the proposed deal are not clear.

An official with the D.F.C., the U.S. agency investing in the deal, described participation in the purchase as a way to strengthen the energy security of U.S. allies. The official also said the deal would produce significant profits for the American taxpayer and keep strategic infrastructure away from adversaries.

Scramble for Assets

The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Lukoil a year ago, describing the move as new pressure on Mr. Putin to ''stop the killing.'' It also created a lucrative opportunity: Lukoil was forced to sell off its sprawling portfolio of international holdings.

Investors around the world scrambled to bid on the assets, but the U.S. government held veto power because it controlled how to enforce its sanctions. Because of Russia's autocratic system, Mr. Putin was seen as the final decision maker in Moscow.

The bidding frenzy accelerated last November, when the Treasury Department rejected an initial offer by Gunvor, a Swiss-based energy trading company with past ties to Russia, which had moved to buy Lukoil's foreign assets. The Treasury Department said in a statement that ''as long as Putin continues the senseless killings, the Kremlin's puppet, Gunvor, will never get a license to operate and profit.''

Carlyle secured a ''nonexclusive'' agreement in January with Lukoil to sell its international assets. It was up to the Treasury Department to then sign off on the deal. As months passed with no final deal, other bidders intensified their efforts to step in.

Mr. Boehly has little experience in the oil and gas industry. He has made most of his money through investment firms such as Guggenheim Partners and Eldridge Industries, as well as sports team and entertainment industry investments, including Bruce Springsteen's music catalog.

But over the last several years, the billionaire Khayyat brothers, who were born in Syria before moving to Qatar during the Syrian civil war, have begun to amass a collection of oil industry assets and planned projects in Syria, Libya and Iraq.

Even while the Lukoil negotiations were underway, the Khayyats were continuing to work with Mr. Kushner and Ivanka Trump over plans to build the luxury resort in Albania, an effort that included a meeting involving Ramez Al-Khayyat and Ms. Trump earlier this year in Albania, The Times reported.

The decision over Lukoil's fate has taken so long that the Treasury Department has had to repeatedly issue extensions to its sanctions action, so that Lukoil gas stations in the United States and other businesses around the world could continue to engage with other financial partners. The most recent extension lasts until Oct. 29.

Eight Solutions to Protect Voting Rights and Improve Representation by Brennan Center

 

American public institutions urgently need repair and renewal. The 2024 election was the first time since the 1800s that the incumbent party lost the White House for the third time in a row. Public trust in government has plunged to historic lows. Citizens plainly feel left behind, economically unmoored, and dissatisfied with the government that serves them.

Crisis can bring innovation. As Lincoln urged, we must “think anew.” What will matter most is not what we are against but what we are for.

This is the fourth in a series of policy agendas. The Brennan Center began with proposals to combat corruption and reform the Supreme Court and will soon offer solutions focusing on executive power. We will also put forward ideas for constitutional change and more.

Our solutions must match the scale of the challenges. They seek to address the problems of today, not 10 years ago or 1975. The project of reform must engage people from both parties, and no party. The best ideas are neither left nor right: They reflect the urgent desire of the disaffected middle.

Throughout history, reform follows scandal and crisis — often, but not always. If we act, from today’s clashes can come a time of renewal and democratic rebirth.

 

The vote is the heart of democracy and the essence of self-governance. All U.S. citizens have a right to elections that are free, fair, and secure. We need full representation in governance so that public policy addresses the needs of everyone. Elections should be modern and free from foreign interference.

The U.S. election system has long been a beacon to the world. Two and a half centuries ago, the Declaration of Independence affirmed that government is legitimate only when it rests on the “consent of the governed.” At the time, only white men who owned property could vote. Since then, Americans have widened the circle of democracy. At every step, some pushed back. But over time, those fighting to expand and protect the right to vote largely prevailed.

U.S. elections have proved remarkably resilient. In recent years, despite the pandemic, threats of violence, and disinformation, the system held. The past two presidential elections saw record voter turnout: 66 percent in 2020 — the highest since 1908 — and 64 percent in 2024.¹ Americans want to vote.

 

The system, however, has been battered by a political assault designed to restrict the vote and diminish democracy. Voters face attacks they have not seen in half a century — from the Supreme Court, from the president, and from states.

The U.S. Supreme Court has effectively destroyed the Voting Rights Act. Shelby County v. Holder, in 2013, eliminated a key part of the law that helped block discriminatory voting policies and practices, and Brnovich v. DNC, in 2021, made it virtually impossible to challenge those practices. Since then, the difference between white and nonwhite turnout rates has grown rapidly.² Legislatures in more than half the states have passed more than a hundred new laws restricting access to voting and suppressing votes. Louisiana v. Callais, earlier this year, made it practically impossible to enforce the Voting Rights Act’s prohibition on racial discrimination in redistricting. It left the law a dead letter.

At the same time, gerrymandering has worsened. In 2025, President Trump kindled a frenzy of partisan gerrymandering that began in Texas and soon spread across the country. Then Callais and other court rulings licensed racial discrimination and led to the elimination of Black majority districts across the South. Both parties are now locked in a retaliatory spiral aided by the Supreme Court, with redistricting wars likely to continue year in and year out. This new status quo will further limit voters’ influence over policy, crush competition, and worsen polarization in Congress.

Malevolent actors, including foreign governments, meanwhile threaten to compromise elections. Foreign agents actively attempted to influence the past several elections in the United States. In 2016, for example, Russian intelligence agencies hacked into election board infrastructure (though they did not access voting tabulation systems).³ Foreign enemies may try again this year.

And now for the first time, the federal government itself is working to undermine confidence in elections. The Trump administration has attempted to rewrite election rules to burden voters and usurp control of election systems. Baseless fraud claims circulate online, now with the support of the White House. The lies cause Americans to question election integrity and provide cover for cynical politicians who seek to profit from restrictive voting policies. Since 2020, states have passed more than 100 laws that make voting more difficult.⁴

Congress must act. It can respond to the Supreme Court’s misguided legal reasoning. It can forestall gerrymandering nationwide, in “red” and “blue” states alike. It can build a modern, participatory electoral system for a changing, diverse country. Under the Constitution’s Elections Clause, both states and Congress set the rules for elections. States administer them. Presidents have no role in running elections or in writing the rules that govern them. But national legislation has repeatedly proven necessary to ensure that state and local governments (and now the federal government too) do not abuse the rights of their own citizens and to reinforce equal opportunity for political participation across the country.

Repeatedly, Congress has used that constitutionally granted power to pass national laws. The National Voter Registration Act, enacted in 1993, required governments to make voter registration more widely available. The Help America Vote Act (2002) funded new voting technology after the 2000 Florida recount. The Electoral Count Reform Act (2022) clarified and strengthened procedures to certify a presidential victor. And Congress came achingly close to passing two bills that would have prevented many current voting problems. Elements of the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act are incorporated in solutions here. Some policies, too, already work in multiple states. Those successes should be extended nationally.⁵

The solutions below are not intended to be comprehensive. We will continue to push for reforms beyond those listed. But achieving them would make voting fairer and more accessible for U.S. citizens and mitigate damage done by states, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court.

 

Make voting rights fully enforceable.

Citizens truly have a right to vote only if they can vindicate that right in court against attacks to undermine it.⁶ Today, no federal law provides for an explicit, affirmative right to vote. Congress has the power, under the Constitution’s Elections Clause and the 14th Amendment, to pass a law that does just that and then to provide citizens with the legal tools they need to enforce that right.

More on

• Voting Reform

A series of bad decisions by the Supreme Court (and some lower courts) has severely limited voters’ ability to enforce voting rights in court. Those decisions make burdens on voting difficult to successfully challenge. Further, courts, by accepting unsubstantiated allusions to potential fraud, have let states put restrictive voting policies into effect. They also have made it extremely difficult for voters and advocates to prove intentional racial discrimination. In fact, through Callais and other decisions, the Court has effectively held that a state legislature can excuse race discrimination by claiming it is acting in the name of partisanship.⁷

At the same time, and not coincidentally, many states have enacted suppressive voting laws.⁸ And election deniers have attempted to undermine or subvert elections.

Congress should use its legislative authority to enact an explicit right to vote that is backed up with a clear mechanism for voters to challenge any infringement of that right. It should specify that any law or practice that makes voting more difficult will be subject to the strictest level of scrutiny by the courts.⁹

Congress should also provide a clear and more reasonable standard for challenging intentional race discrimination in voting. It must make explicit that states and the federal government cannot dodge lawsuits by claiming immunity, by arguing that their objectives were partisan rather than race-based, or by asking courts to presume good faith.

Any such law should clearly provide that any voter whose rights have been infringed — or groups representing such voters — has standing to sue. Courts should be empowered to change or set aside state rules when necessary to vindicate constitutional rights so that states cannot use stalling or other procedural tricks to stop Americans from voting.

Create baseline standards for voter access.

Despite comparatively high turnout in recent elections nationally, voter participation rates have vast room for improvement. Nearly 90 million voting-age Americans did not cast a ballot in the 2024 election — more than the number of votes received by either major-party presidential candidate — and approximately a quarter of Americans who are eligible aren’t registered to vote at all.¹⁰ And voting rates are much lower for some demographic groups — including young voters and voters of color.

Congress has the power to encourage higher participation in elections. While states are charged with setting the “times, places, and manner” of elections, Congress can make or alter laws to set national standards for voting.¹¹

Congress should create baseline national standards for voting procedures such as early and mail voting. A nationwide set of standards would reduce the administrative and voter confusion caused by states’ wildly varying election practices. More important, it would prevent states from implementing changes that disproportionately burden people of color or those in lower socioeconomic groups.

Congress should also mandate voter-friendly registration procedures. There is precedent for its involvement in this arena: The National Voter Registration Act requires states to give citizens the opportunity to register to vote when they apply for or renew their driver’s license.

Today, more than 20 states have adopted automatic voter registration.¹² It is essentially a more seamless version of that 1993 law: When eligible citizens interact with agencies such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, they automatically are registered to vote or have their existing registration updated, with appropriate strong protections to ensure that only eligible citizens can sign up. It’s a cost-effective reform that cleans up voter rolls and, as Brennan Center research has shown, increases registration rates significantly.¹³ As a backstop, citizens who are not on the rolls should be able to register in person and cast a ballot on the same day, another policy widely in place across states.¹⁴

 

Make voting rights fully enforceable.

Citizens truly have a right to vote only if they can vindicate that right in court against attacks to undermine it.⁶ Today, no federal law provides for an explicit, affirmative right to vote. Congress has the power, under the Constitution’s Elections Clause and the 14th Amendment, to pass a law that does just that and then to provide citizens with the legal tools they need to enforce that right.

More on

• Voting Reform

A series of bad decisions by the Supreme Court (and some lower courts) has severely limited voters’ ability to enforce voting rights in court. Those decisions make burdens on voting difficult to successfully challenge. Further, courts, by accepting unsubstantiated allusions to potential fraud, have let states put restrictive voting policies into effect. They also have made it extremely difficult for voters and advocates to prove intentional racial discrimination. In fact, through Callais and other decisions, the Court has effectively held that a state legislature can excuse race discrimination by claiming it is acting in the name of partisanship.⁷

At the same time, and not coincidentally, many states have enacted suppressive voting laws.⁸ And election deniers have attempted to undermine or subvert elections.

Congress should use its legislative authority to enact an explicit right to vote that is backed up with a clear mechanism for voters to challenge any infringement of that right. It should specify that any law or practice that makes voting more difficult will be subject to the strictest level of scrutiny by the courts.⁹

Congress should also provide a clear and more reasonable standard for challenging intentional race discrimination in voting. It must make explicit that states and the federal government cannot dodge lawsuits by claiming immunity, by arguing that their objectives were partisan rather than race-based, or by asking courts to presume good faith.

Any such law should clearly provide that any voter whose rights have been infringed — or groups representing such voters — has standing to sue. Courts should be empowered to change or set aside state rules when necessary to vindicate constitutional rights so that states cannot use stalling or other procedural tricks to stop Americans from voting.

Create baseline standards for voter access.

Despite comparatively high turnout in recent elections nationally, voter participation rates have vast room for improvement. Nearly 90 million voting-age Americans did not cast a ballot in the 2024 election — more than the number of votes received by either major-party presidential candidate — and approximately a quarter of Americans who are eligible aren’t registered to vote at all.¹⁰ And voting rates are much lower for some demographic groups — including young voters and voters of color.

Congress has the power to encourage higher participation in elections. While states are charged with setting the “times, places, and manner” of elections, Congress can make or alter laws to set national standards for voting.¹¹

Congress should create baseline national standards for voting procedures such as early and mail voting. A nationwide set of standards would reduce the administrative and voter confusion caused by states’ wildly varying election practices. More important, it would prevent states from implementing changes that disproportionately burden people of color or those in lower socioeconomic groups.

Congress should also mandate voter-friendly registration procedures. There is precedent for its involvement in this arena: The National Voter Registration Act requires states to give citizens the opportunity to register to vote when they apply for or renew their driver’s license.

Today, more than 20 states have adopted automatic voter registration.¹² It is essentially a more seamless version of that 1993 law: When eligible citizens interact with agencies such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, they automatically are registered to vote or have their existing registration updated, with appropriate strong protections to ensure that only eligible citizens can sign up. It’s a cost-effective reform that cleans up voter rolls and, as Brennan Center research has shown, increases registration rates significantly.¹³ As a backstop, citizens who are not on the rolls should be able to register in person and cast a ballot on the same day, another policy widely in place across states.¹⁴

 

How Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes by Hill, Kashmir ; Drucker, Jesse ; Tan, Eli ; Isaac, Mike . New York Times

 

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta’s A.I. push is a tremendous success. “Our investments in A.I. are accelerating every major part of our core business,” he has told investors. “Every sign that we’re seeing in our own work and across the industry gives us confidence in this investment.”

But when Meta files its taxes, it tells the Internal Revenue Service a different story. It claims that its A.I. data centers are a giant experiment that could fail, according to four people with knowledge of the company’s operations.

It does this so it can tap into a tax credit intended for research and experimentation. It’s an aggressive interpretation of the tax break, which Meta embraced to claim billions of dollars in tax credits for data center expansion.

Characterizing its A.I. data centers as experimental is “kind of wild and out there,” said Andre Shevchuck, a partner at the advisory firm BPM who specializes in the research and experimentation tax credit.

Indeed, Meta’s own accountants recognize that the strategy is on shaky legal ground. In disclosures buried in securities filings, the tech giant warns that billions in tax savings are vulnerable to being overturned by the I.R.S., in large part because of “uncertainties with our research tax credits.”

Here’s what Meta is doing: For tax purposes, the company classifies its enormous, multibillion-dollar data centers as “pilot models.” Under a tax credit created in the 1980s to spur innovation, companies can get a rebate for supplies, but only if they are being tested in an experimental effort, not standard business operations. Meta is claiming that the costly A.I. computer chips it buys from companies, including Nvidia, are entitled to a taxpayer-provided discount as part of the experiment.

The move caused some unease within Meta’s finance department. The I.R.S. in the past has challenged companies that claimed the credit for basic supplies. While thousands of companies, including other tech giants, get huge benefits from the research tax credit, they do so overwhelmingly for salaries paid to researchers and engineers — the people carrying out innovation.

Meta’s use of the tax break for the data centers has not been previously reported. The New York Times reviewed securities filings and conducted multiple interviews, including with the people familiar with Meta’s operations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss proprietary matters.

The company started claiming the credit for the data centers two years ago. Since then, Meta’s savings from the credit have soared, trimming almost $4 billion off its tax bill last year, filings show. Meta is now the biggest beneficiary of the tax credit among publicly traded companies, a Times review of securities filings found.

Aggressive bets like these often pan out for big companies: Even if the I.R.S. balks, companies can settle disputes and still wind up ahead.

Meta is already in one sizable dispute with the I.R.S. over this tax break, for using it to subsidize its chief executive’s multibillion-dollar pay package. In 2013, Meta claimed that $4.1 billion of stock options exercised by Mr. Zuckerberg counted as a research expense because he helped invent new software, such as Facebook’s News Feed. The I.R.S. is trying to claw back the company’s resulting $355 million in tax savings, court filings show.

The social media company’s stock is soaring, and it is now worth nearly $2 trillion thanks in part to how its A.I. efforts have improved Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook. This month, Meta released Muse, a personal A.I. agent that immediately became the most downloaded app for iPhone and Android users. Meta and other tech giants’ A.I. efforts have also been helped by an accelerated write-off for research and development expenses that stemmed from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in 2025.

“Meta is one of the largest investors in research and development in the United States,” said Andy Stone, a company spokesman. “Over the last five years, Meta invested $200 billion in R&D — $57 billion in the last year alone, advancing frontier research, building new technology and supporting American jobs. Like other companies that invest at this scale, we use the tax incentives Congress established decades ago to encourage this type of domestic investment.”

A Very Favorable Tax Credit

The tax break dates to the first year of the Reagan administration, when Japan was a global leader in technological innovation. Business lobbyists and legislators were worried that America’s fledgling tech sector would fall behind, so Congress created the Research & Experimentation Tax Credit as an incentive to take risks and invest in inventions that might not pan out commercially. A few years after the credit was created, a government report said it had been used to develop, among other things, electronic banking equipment and drugs to treat cancer.

Tax rules already permitted tech companies to write off research expenses from their taxable income. The new credit was even more generous and could be taken on top of the deduction. But it was harder to qualify for. Companies have to meet a complex four-part test to prove they are running an experiment, not just rolling out a new product.

In the summer of 2024, Meta was ramping up its efforts to compete in the Silicon Valley A.I. race, breaking ground on tens of thousands of acres of data centers across the country. This was an expensive endeavor. One of the biggest expenses of any A.I. data center was computer chips, which are made by companies like Nvidia and cost thousands of dollars each. A Meta employee overseeing the build-out had a creative idea to offset the costs: Tap the credit.

The credit is meant to spur innovation by encouraging companies to tackle unsolved problems and technical challenges. While Meta is testing different physical layouts for server racks and looking for the best way to network thousands of chips for A.I. training, the chips themselves are known to work. They have been at the center of A.I.’s progress for the last decade and turned Nvidia into the world’s most valuable company.

Some in Meta’s finance department questioned whether this tactic would pass muster with the I.R.S., according to a person familiar with the matter. The I.R.S. has rejected other companies’ efforts to claim the credit for “proven and commercially available equipment and technology.”

The company sought advice from lawyers at multiple firms, who pointed to a relevant case from 2021, in which a federal judge denied the research tax break to an Indiana shipbuilder for the cost of building new types of vessels. Simply creating a new product wasn’t enough; a company must pinpoint the specific components of a project that were technically uncertain and prove it used scientific experiments to overcome that uncertainty.

One of the lawyers Meta consulted was Jeffrey Moeller at Ivins, Phillips and Barker, people familiar with the conversations said. Mr. Moeller represented the pharmaceutical maker Bayer in a $200 million dispute with the I.R.S. over research tax credits. In an interview, he would not comment specifically on Meta. But he did say the rules could permit claiming the credit on commercially available, proven products — if they were supplies required to resolve the uncertainty of a project.

Another lawyer consulted by Meta, those people said, was Alex Sadler, a former Department of Justice tax lawyer and now a partner at Morgan Lewis, which declined a request to interview him. But when he spoke at a tax conference in Virginia this month, Mr. Sadler said that pilot models were an “area of controversy” and that the I.R.S. “doesn’t like” when companies characterize commercial production as research to claim the credit. The I.R.S. takes issue with the use of the research tax credit for “big things,” he said.

“What if we have a $10 billion data center that does cool stuff that hasn’t really been done?” he said. “Is all the cost a research expenditure?”

After a few months of deliberation, Meta took the plunge. It started labeling chips bound for A.I. data centers differently for tax purposes from those sent to standard data centers, two people with knowledge of the matter said.

 

Risky Business

The strategy has been lucrative. Meta said the research tax credit shaved $2 billion off its taxes in 2024, and then $3.9 billion in 2025.

That is a significant increase from the $700 million the company reported in 2023, the year before it embarked on its data center strategy.

At the very top of the company, Meta executives kept the tax strategy close to the vest, two people with knowledge of the discussions said.

But because the I.R.S. was likely to challenge this new and untested accounting magic, the company had to acknowledge the risk in a securities disclosure called “unrecognized tax benefits.” That is essentially the gap between what Meta paid to the I.R.S. and how much it might owe if tax authorities challenge its maneuvers. It’s a warning to investors that Meta made a bet, and the amount of the gap reflects the odds of losing, as determined by a company’s tax advisers.

Since Meta began its research credit A.I. strategy, the amount set aside to cover those tax bets increased 45 percent — to $18.74 billion today from $12.9 billion two years ago. The contributing factor listed first in its annual financial filing is “uncertainties with our research tax credits.”

Other major tech companies, including Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft, also report research tax credits of more than $1 billion a year. But none of them have flagged the research tax credit as a risk in their financial reports to investors or disclosed whether they have used it for A.I. data centers.

“Meta is claiming billions of dollars in tax benefits that its own accountants are telling investors are at risk of being overturned by the I.R.S.,” said Lisa De Simone, a former tax adviser at EY who teaches accounting at the University of Texas business school.

Mr. Stone, the Meta spokesman, said that “unrecognized tax benefits are simply a mandated accounting measure of uncertainty.” He called them a “snapshot in time reflecting the status of unresolved issues and reflect many different types of uncertainties.”

Another of Meta’s unresolved issues concerns one of the biggest U.S. Tax Court disputes in the country’s history: The I.R.S. is seeking nearly $16 billion in taxes and penalties on profits it says the company shifted to the Cayman Islands from the United States.

Tax credit experts said Meta was again entering choppy waters by taking this huge tax break on data centers. Shawn Marchant, who runs the credit and incentives practice at Tanner and advised on the research incentive for more than a decade at EY, said he would be “skeptical” of claiming it for all the computer chips in all the data centers. Mr. Shevchuck, the tax adviser at BPM, proposed one way it might work: “If you had a data center that you’re building out to cure cancer.”

Meta declined to answer questions about what made its A.I. data centers experimental, and why tens of billions of dollars of chips and computing equipment qualified for the research tax credit.

Meta’s auditor, EY, had to sign off on the plan. The global tax and accounting firm was among the firms that Meta consulted on using the tax credit in the first place. EY has since pitched other companies on using the research credit to buy computer chips for A.I. training.

Innovation or Creative Accounting?

James Shannon, a former U.S. representative from Massachusetts who sponsored the research tax credit in 1981, said it had been intended to support “people power, knowledge, information,” and not “making things.” He was surprised to hear that a technology company would use the credit for supplying A.I. data centers.

“This has gone way, way beyond what anybody could have imagined,” Mr. Shannon said.

Whether the tax break inspires the innovation that he and other lawmakers sought is a matter of debate. Some companies appear to use the credit for spending they would do anyway, according to a study last year by economists at the University of Southern California. If companies “simply reclassify existing spending as R&D,” the researchers wrote, they are getting the tax breaks “without meaningfully financing innovation.”

The credit has become the second-most expensive federal corporate tax break, behind only the reduced rate applied to offshore profits. In its most recent estimate, the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation projected the credit would cost the government $32.1 billion in 2025. Meta alone would be responsible for more than a tenth of that.

Commentary What did the Trump-Xi summit actually accomplish? by Brookings

 From September 23-25, 2026, President Donald J. Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit. Below, Brookings scholars comment on what the visit reveals about the future trajectory of U.S.-China relations.

 

Ryan Hass

America holds a weaker hand after state visit

During the state visit, Trump was simultaneously uninterested in the policy details of the U.S.-China relationship and attentive to the special touches of hospitality he wanted to extend to Xi. Xi, by contrast, appeared bemused and even entertained at times by Trump’s efforts to impress him.

Lost amidst the visit’s pomp, Trump failed to deliver on the business at hand. The White House summit readout offers no details or sense of movement on a principal objective of the visit—removing impediments to the regularized flow of critical minerals that China leveraged since Trump’s announcement of the Liberation Day tariffs.

Meanwhile, according to U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue, Trump has offered to sell weapons to China while consulting with Xi over future arms sales to Taiwan. Such statements are too far from believable for anyone in Beijing to take them seriously. There is a risk the Chinese are concluding that Trump is so unprepared for summits that his statements lack credibility or lasting value.

Additionally, Trump’s performance has laid bare that he is not invested in viewing U.S.-China relations as a security competition. Any talk of the Trump administration playing five-dimensional chess with China through its actions in Greenland, Venezuela, or elsewhere falls apart when Trump is simultaneously offering to sell weapons to China.

Trump’s performance will raise fresh concerns among America’s allies about Washington’s continuing reliability. It also will raise eyebrows in Beijing about the Trump administration’s overall competence. Neither of these outcomes put America on a stronger footing for navigating future challenges with China, whether over security issues, trade imbalances, human rights, or artificial intelligence.

 

Melanie W. Sisson

China benefits from Washington’s lack of strategic vision

Expectations for the Trump-Xi summit were low; nobody was let down. The visit also reinforced the impression that Beijing has a strategy for pursuing its interests, and Washington does not. 

Trump is a man in perpetual pursuit of instant gratification, and the brief extension of the trade truce announced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave Trump enough of it that he could spend his time gleefully showing Xi all his new toys. Xi arrived prepared to indulge Trump’s showboating—and to use it to his advantage: Xi took every opportunity to forward the idea that the United States and China are great power equals; to present a vision of bilateral cooperation that might appeal to a Global South audience; and to further insinuate his preferred language on Taiwan into the bilateral narrative.

The good news is that the visit is another data point suggesting that Xi prefers anemic stability to no stability at all, and therefore he is not inclined to test limits and run risks. The bad news is that in the absence of Washington’s own strategic vision, incremental, short-term dealmaking does more for China’s interests than for America’s. If the two leaders again sideline security concerns—including artificial intelligence—in their scheduled November and December meetings, and their delegates agree in January to yet another trade-truce extension, it will be because China recognizes this imbalance and is quite content with it.

 

Yun Sun

Détente amid political strains

Trump and Xi’s Washington summit reaffirms the positive trajectory the United States and China have been committed to following two prior summits in Busan last year and Beijing last May. The question is how sustainable this trajectory will be and whether it could withstand political changes, including the U.S. midterm elections next month, the 2028 presidential election, and a new administration in 2029. All of them could take U.S. policy toward China in a very different direction. The return of a more establishment-oriented administration could bring back a more competitive outlook and strategies toward China. There is also a rising “restrainer” school that advocates for more accommodation, tolerance, and peaceful coexistence with China.

The Chinese have argued that the new “constructive relationship of strategic stability,” or the détente, is the result of China’s enhanced comprehensive national power, especially its ability to impose “mutually assured disruption” vis-à-vis the United States. A more establishment-oriented U.S. administration could put this concept to a serious test, especially if it seeks to resume the competitive approach toward China through active competition in all domains, enhanced support of Taiwan, and strengthened ties with allies and partners to collectively suppress China’s influence.  After all, other than with rare earths, China’s ability to disrupt the American economy without paying a significant cost itself is extremely limited, if not entirely nonexistent. And even with the Chinese ability to inflict damage, the United States could pursue an entirely different policy course other than the current one. There is still a deep conviction within the national security community that China remains the only great power with the capability and desire to challenge the U.S. supremacy. Future changes in U.S. politics will inevitably bring new uncertainties to the current narrative.  

 

Susan A. Thornton

China and America need to keep talking

Many have called Xi’s recent state visit a summit long on pageantry and short on substance. Trump certainly gave the Chinese leader a lavish welcome, but at the end of the day, this is a meeting between the leaders of the world’s two biggest powers. The pageantry, honestly, was for both of them.

What was the signal in this noise and where are we headed? The visit produced substantive outcomes on much-needed institutionalization of the relationship. The two leaders committed to meeting twice more within the year, once at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in China and once at the G20 in Miami. The trade teams managed to launch the Board of Trade as an ongoing negotiating platform and will presumably continue their discussions with a view to another extension of the trade truce in the next several months. The AI dialogue has also launched and, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, will meet again in November. And the Chinese readout included language about reinstituting military-to-military dialogue channels and work on crisis management mechanisms, which are long overdue. These represent a much-needed start on restoring some regular connectivity between the two sides. As Secretary of State Marco Rubio has indicated on multiple occasions, the United States and China need to be talking to one another; not doing so is irresponsible.

Many differences remain and few issues were resolved, but statecraft is about mature management of problems. This summit moved us a step in that direction and signaled to Americans, Chinese, and the world that their leaders understand the importance of sustained engagement

 

Kari Heerman

Don’t mistake bilateral activity for progress

Xi’s state visit may be both less and more consequential than it looks. The danger for Washington is that the machinery emerging across summits and negotiations creates the appearance of broader progress while leaving largely untouched the problems that prompted it to rethink the relationship. The summits keep Washington and Beijing talking, which may help contain disputes. Meanwhile, the accumulating deals and mechanisms could produce lasting changes in how the economic relationship operates.

In the immediate term, each deliverable will command attention: another extension of the trade truce, details of the new Board of Trade, an AI dialogue. The new trade arrangements do little to address concerns about structural excess capacity. Critical minerals and technology remain largely unsettled. These are not peripheral issues; they are central to the shift in China policy in Washington and other capitals.

Washington and Beijing can bargain bilaterally, but these challenges play out through trade, investment, technology, and supply chains that run through countries and firms around the world. Bilateral bargains therefore cannot by themselves resolve these challenges. If bilateral bargaining is how Washington manages its economic relationship with China, the rest of the world will increasingly be part of the bargain, whether it wants to be or not.

Trump and Xi have committed to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in China in November and the G20 in the United States in December, where the prospect of another bilateral meeting will inevitably command attention. Many of the countries around those tables have a major stake in these issues. If the next U.S.-China bargain again becomes the main event, managing the bilateral relationship may further substitute for addressing issues that cannot be solved bilaterally.

 

Vanda Felbab-Brown

Little focus on fentanyl

A striking feature of the Trump-Xi summit was the lack of focus on fentanyl and other synthetic drugs and precursors originating in China. For weeks, the Trump administration has claimed that its post-October 2025 law enforcement cooperation with China produced great results, attributing declines in fentanyl drug overdoses to it that, in fact, began in May 2023. Since then, tens of thousands of lives in the United States have been saved. That’s a crucial accomplishment, but it did not start or accelerate during the Trump administration.

In fact, after Trump’s fentanyl tariff bluster in January 2025, China learned how to neutralize, outplay, and deflect U.S. pressure by restricting U.S. access to rare earths, boycotting politically sensitive U.S. goods such as soybeans, and occasionally scheduling drug precursors. Many of the precursors, as well as the potent synthetic opioids nitazines, that China scheduled in 2025 were already slated by China to be scheduled during the Biden administration. China simply double-counted its scheduling. After a slow year in 2025, U.S.-China law enforcement cooperation has also returned to where it was in the second half of 2024, to both countries’ satisfaction. To placate Washington, China adds a few new precursors or novel substances, such as orphines, to its scheduled list before Trump-Xi meetings. It did so again in September 2026.

But major issues remain unaddressed—exactly the same ones the Biden administration grappled with. When China schedules precursors or finished drugs, Chinese traders move to nonscheduled ones and knowingly peddle them to drug trafficking organizations with recipes for their conversion into illegal products. New dangerous drugs such as cychlorphine, xylazine, and medetomidine emerge in China and flow to illicit markets. Smuggling untested and counterfeit peptides (GLP-1 drugs) to the United States is a new venture for Chinese trafficking networks. Chinese money laundering services for Mexican cartels and other criminal groups are also burgeoning.

Scheduling is useful, but its effectiveness is limited. What is most needed is for China to develop reliable law enforcement mechanisms to prosecute traders who knowingly sell nonscheduled chemicals to criminal organizations—the equivalent of U.S. material support statutes. Chinese traders must also be obligated to do due diligence on their customers. Intensifying global efforts against Chinese money laundering networks is also imperative.

Hopefully, the suspension of the administration’s histrionic fentanyl rhetoric will provide a productive atmosphere for a serious bilateral effort to tackle these tough law enforcement challenges, rather than lead the Trump administration to simply give up on dealing with them.

 

Jonathan A. Czin

A missed opportunity for America and Europe

Xi’s state visit to Washington marked a momentous missed opportunity for American foreign policy. Instead of feting Xi, Washington policymakers could have been tag-teaming with European allies on the trade issues that animated Trump’s first and second trade wars with China. European leaders are seriously considering moving ahead in October with measures to deal with China Shock 2.0. The current frailties in China’s domestic economy—especially its growing reliance on exports—could afford the United States and its allies an unusual degree of leverage with Beijing, given how dependent China remains on the European and U.S. markets.

Alas, even if European leaders do move forward—still a big “if”—they will be doing so alone, as the Trump administration is already focusing on Trump’s next two meetings with Xi. That’s unfortunate. At best, these encounters are likely to be “meetings about meetings” as the two sides struggle to get the dialogue mechanisms underway that they already agreed to at Trump and Xi’s previous tête-à-tête. At worst, these meetings may be punctuated by a “Big Three” meeting among Trump, Xi, and Russian President Vladimir Putin—a photo op that would evoke the Yalta Summit of World War II. While those encounters are likely to be more stunt than substance, the choreography would underscore that Trump remains more focused on courting than countering these two leaders who are working together to undermine U.S. power.

 

Mireya Solís

Bad news for Japan and Asian allies

By most accounts, the Trump-Xi meeting was heavy on pageantry and light on substance. Coming into the summit, expectations of major results were already low. The United States and China are far apart on the major international conflicts of the day—Ukraine and Iran. They remain at odds over structural economic irritants. And despite pledges of “constructive stability,” tit-for-tat defensive economic measures and Chinese grey zone activities in the First Island Chain are ongoing.

On cue, the meeting’s outcomes were modest: an extension of the Busan compromise (suspending Chinese export controls on rare earths and American tariffs), a forthcoming dialogue on artificial intelligence, and the operationalization of a Board of Trade to lower tariffs on nonsensitive bilateral trade.

Nevertheless, thin fact sheets should not be mistaken for a “nothing-burger” event. This summit spoke volumes, in ways that undercut U.S. partners and allies—for its intangible elements: optics, narratives, and signaling. Beijing is keenly aware of the importance of diplomatic protocol. When Trump chose to give Xi an unprecedented welcome by meeting him at the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews, it became clear that Xi has the upper hand over an American president saddled with low approval ratings and a no-exit Iran conflict. More concerning for Tokyo were Trump’s scripted remarks on the wartime alliance between the United States and China just when Beijing is pressuring Japan on all fronts and trying to discredit its defense buildup as the return of militarism. Trump’s failure to grasp that the United States had allied with a different China and fought a different Japan will only invite more Chinese coercion. Perhaps the bitterest bit to swallow was the revelation by U.S. Ambassador to China David Purdue that Trump asked Xi if he would be interested in buying American weapons. Such a blasé comment telegraphs to foe and friend alike that the president is not taking seriously the growing Chinese squeeze U.S. partners are experiencing in the region.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi pulled out all the stops to meet first with Trump and impress on him the complexities of the China challenge. The vibes at the U.S.-China meeting show she came up short as the United States regaled Xi with summit atmospherics that benefit China with little tangible deliverables in return.

 

Michael E. O'Hanlon

A bargain on Taiwan?

Reportedly, in Washington last week, Xi asked Trump to oppose even the possibility that Taiwan could someday gain its independence. (Right now, U.S. policy does not endorse that outcome, but nor does it exclude the possibility.) Thankfully, Trump appears to have declined; acceding to Xi’s request would have been a unilateral American concession.

But is there a deal to be made that could gain something from Beijing as well? One possibility to consider: Washington would formally and publicly oppose the option of Taiwanese independence in exchange for Beijing promising to never use force against Taiwan. These would both be big changes to existing policy. By this concept, if Beijing ever saw the need to punish or pressure Taiwan (over the independence issue in particular), it would do so using only economic and diplomatic means. The overarching goal would be to prod Beijing and Taipei toward a mutually acceptable form of permanent autonomy for Taiwan within a broader Chinese nation or commonwealth centered on Beijing—though achieving that result might take many years, quite probably beyond Xi’s tenure in office. 

Initial negotiations to pursue these kinds of reciprocal pledges—categorical and permanent U.S. opposition to Taiwan independence, with a Chinese promise never to use force to settle the Taiwan issue—should be highly discreet and noncommittal at first. It would be important that the United States not give China the idea that its interest in protecting Taiwan had weakened. But then again, Washington would be making a very big ask of Beijing with this proposal—a long-shot idea, to be sure—so floating the idea might not be so risky. After all, it would not be tantamount to saying that the United States would no longer protect Taiwan.

Even if agreed to, these reciprocal pledges would only mean so much. They would not produce verifiable changes in military capability and would also be reversible. Still, there could be benefits. Were Beijing sincere, one could expect to see a dramatic reduction in People’s Liberation Army military activity around Taiwan right away. And for its part, China could expect to see at least some reduction in U.S. military planning focused on the Taiwan Strait. In the short term, however, Taiwan itself should continue to maintain, even strengthen, its military defenses with American help, since they have been too weak for too long. 

Nothing in this plan would provide definitive proof that the bargain would endure. Nor would it require complete trust by either side in the other; both would continue military planning and sustain military capabilities for a range of contingencies. 

It is also important to note that nothing about the deal would be permanent if Beijing were to breach its terms. Specifically, were China to attack Taiwan, the United States could reverse its position on opposing Taiwan independence. It could also come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a Chinese attack, either militarily or through economic warfare. American military planning would not have to change so fundamentally as to eliminate any hypothetical capacity to help protect Taiwan. But over time, the goal would be to demilitarize the issue to the point where force would no longer be seen as the way to resolve any Taiwan crisis that might emerge, and competition over Taiwan would no longer be the central organizing concept in the military force planning of China or the United States.

 

Scott Moore

Pageantry over progress

The September 24 state visit underscored that the Trump administration has little apparent desire to reshape the fundamentals of U.S.-China relations. There was no clear progress on the core issues, including the ongoing Iran war and its associated energy crisis, artificial intelligence, trade, or security. The summit was driven by optics rather than outcomes. More telling was the latest Chicago Council polling released the same week. American views of China have warmed from their 2024 low, and support for committing U.S. troops to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion has fallen to 38% from 52% in 2021. The shift is sharpest among younger Americans, especially Generation Z. Some of this moderation likely reflects partisans taking cues from the White House. But if the generational shift is sustained, it will shape the future of U.S.-China relations more than anything staged in Washington this week.

Idaho Law Protects Faith Healers. It Wasn’t Always That Way. by Audrey Dutton

 

In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for “traditional” Idaho values.

But from at least the 1880s through the early 1970s, it was illegal for parents in Idaho to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake, newspaper archives and historical documents show.

“Every parent of any child who willfully omits, without lawful excuse, to furnish necessary food, clothing, shelter, or medical attendance for such child, is guilty of a misdemeanor,” reads the 1887 edition of Idaho territory statutes, published before statehood.

The statutes included no mention of spiritual belief as a “lawful excuse.” Three years later, the state constitution explicitly put limits on Idaho’s freedom of religion. It would not excuse “acts of licentiousness,” polygamy or other practices “inconsistent with morality or the peace or safety of the state.”

It wasn’t long before the law came down on members of the Followers of Christ, a faith-healing sect that arrived in Idaho in 1899 and remains active in the state. From 2015 to 2025, the sect’s congregations in Idaho experienced 15 preventable deaths of children, according to ProPublica’s reporting.

 

Pearl Annis was a 13-year-old girl whose parents had moved from Oklahoma to Idaho’s Magic Valley in the spring of 1915 with at least one other Followers family. The Annises and their 13 children shared “a two-room shack,” a local newspaper reported. An officer and a doctor visited the home after neighbors voiced concern. They found Pearl in bed, fully dressed and on the cusp of death.

Her father, Lurid P. “Lewis” Annis, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of refusing to provide medical attention. Pearl was taken to the hospital, according to the news story, and died there with what today would be described as septic shock from a bowel blockage. The newspaper, which didn’t appear to follow up on Annis’ criminal charge, called the Followers church “a religious cult” and Pearl’s death a consequence of “religious mania.”

News archives and historic records don’t say how many times Idaho acted on similar cases in the decades after.

But one legal battle over lifesaving care drew attention in the 1960s, as sickness made its way through a Followers family in a Boise suburb. The mother died in December 1965. Her 4-year-old daughter died the following June.

Days after the girl’s death, a judge ordered the state to take custody of her 10-year-old brother under Idaho’s child protection law. The boy was admitted to a local hospital with pneumonia, a complication of the measles. He spent days in critical condition but survived. The judge told the father that to regain custody, he would have to be willing to give the boy medical care as the law required.

 

A doctor testified that without the hospitalization, the child “almost certainly would have died,” a newspaper report said.

The father’s lawyer told the judge that his sect was rooted in “faith that God will heal the sick.” The law in the 1960s was clear, though: a parent had a duty to protect their child’s health, no exceptions. The judge told Samuel’s father: “The law governs conduct. Religion governs opinion.”

But the legal landscape was about to shift. It came with little public attention.

During a full-on rewrite of Idaho’s criminal code in 1971, the Legislature added a section that said the state could not bring endangerment charges against someone “who chooses for his child treatment by prayer or spiritual means alone.” Legislative records don’t make clear how the wording originated. The passage of another law one year later, affirming the “spiritual means” language and applying it to other crimes, has been credited to the Christian Science church, another Christian denomination with Idaho members.

(The Christian Science website says the church’s practice of “healing in the way Christ Jesus taught” is not “faith healing” and that members are free to choose any form of healthcare. The church also supported Oregon’s full removal of its faith-healing exemption in 2011.)

Faith-healing exemptions soon became widespread nationally. The trigger was the federal Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, which set out to standardize the nation’s child welfare system by giving states grants to more effectively investigate reports of child abuse.

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare interpreted the law as requiring states to have a faith-healing exemption to qualify for the grants — an interpretation that records from the time don’t explain.

 

Most states went along, and Idaho further broadened its exemption in 1976 to not only keep faith healers from going to jail if their children died, but also to keep their children from being placed in foster care solely for lack of medical care.

At the national level, the mandate lasted less than a decade. The Reagan administration adopted new regulations in 1983 that took a neutral stance on the subject, and several states in subsequent years rolled back their exemptions.

Colorado, for example, reverted to prosecuting faith healers as it would any other parent in 2001 following deaths in the Followers-adjacent sect Church of the First Born, including the death of a 13-year-old girl from untreated diabetes.

But Idaho clung to its special treatment for faith healers.

It has remained that way ever since.