President Biden is pushing through climate regulations at record speed as his administration, activists, and international organizations warn of an impending climate disaster absent drastic policy changes. But as the US pauses exports of liquefied natural gas and attempts to spend over a trillion dollars on climate initiatives, few stop to ask the question, “Is the world really headed towards climate apocalypse?” In short, no. Climate science relies on scenarios, of which there are thousands. However, billionaires, policymakers, and climate forums have ensured that the most extreme, outdated, and implausible scenario is now the global “baseline.” What do climate scientists actually think of RCP 8.5? And how can US policy better reflect the realities of climate change?

Roger Pielke Jr. is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on science and technology policy, the politicization of science, and energy and climate. He is concurrently a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder; a distinguished fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan; a research associate of Risk Frontiers (Sydney, Australia); and an honorary professor of University College London. Dr. Pielke is a regular contributor for and oversees the popular substack The Honest Broker.

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Former president Donald Trump is on trial in New York over hush money payments made before the 2016 election. The only problem? Hush money payments as part of non-disclosure agreements are not illegal. New York state prosecutor Alvin Bragg alleges that by improperly filing the payments in Trump’s business records he was trying to conceal “another crime” – campaign finance law violations. Here’s the problem: Bragg not only lacks authority to prosecute campaign finance violations, but even the Biden administration’s Justice Department did not pursue campaign finance violation charges against Trump. Is Bragg’s case against Trump constitutional? And how will such politically motivated cases eat away at America’s rule of law?

John Yoo is the Emanuel Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University. Yoo was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the general council of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. His most recent book is The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Supreme Court (Regnery, 2023) with Robert Delahunty.

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Self-proclaimed “anti-Israel” and “anti-war” protests have gripped college campuses ever since Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack killed, injured, and took hostage thousands of Israeli civilians on October 7. However, in recent weeks, protesters have begun taking siege to universities across the country, setting up 77 “encampments” on quads, vandalizing property, barricading themselves in buildings, and physically and verbally assaulting Jewish students who dare to pass by them. The response from many college administrators and faculty has been timid, when not directly supportive of protesters that have turned violently antisemitic. Where does this antisemitism come from? And what can we do to stamp out the pervasive Jew-hatred plaguing our universities?

Adam Lehman is the President and CEO of Hillel International, the largest Jewish student organization in the world. Adam started his career at Skadden, Arps, and spent two decades as an executive and entrepreneur, including as a Senior Vice President at AOL. He was a Harry S. Truman Scholar at Dartmouth College and is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

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President Joe Biden is one of the least popular presidents in the history of presidential polling. Former President Donald Trump faces 91 charges across four criminal cases. Despite their woes and the overwhelming desire of the American people to vote “none of the above,” President Biden and former President Trump will still face off for the second time this November. How will these two senior citizens make the sale? What will most likely hurt them on November 4? Does a third-party candidate have a real shot at the presidency?

Amy Walter is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. Amy is also a contributor to the PBS NewsHour, a regular Sunday panelist on NBC’s Meet the Press, and appears frequently on CNN and Fox News. Previously, Amy was the political director of ABC News and an inaugural fellow at the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.

Matthew Continetti is the director of Domestic Policy Studies and the inaugural Patrick and Charlene Neal Chair in American Prosperity at the American Enterprise Institute. His work has a particular focus on the development of the Republican Party in the 20th century. Matt was also the founding editor and the editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon.

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Last weekend, for the first time since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran launched a direct attack on Israel from Iranian territory. In total, some 170 drones, 120 surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, and more than 30 cruise missiles targeted Israel, with most coming from Iran, and some from Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen. In response to what was a well-advertised attack, Israel, the United States, Great Britain, France, and Jordan (among other Arab countries) deployed from land, sea, and air with jets, missile defense, and a guided missile cruiser among a sophisticated array of defensive assets. As a result, a reported seven missiles landed mostly harmlessly in Israel, with injuries restricted to shrapnel injuring a young Bedouin girl. Israeli and American leaders were quick to celebrate Iran’s failed attack and the “restoration of deterrence.” But are the Israelis correct in celebrating Iran’s inability to cause real damage? Or are they ignoring the very real risk that seven Iranian missiles actually hit the State of Israel? What will Iran learn from this exercise? And how did their attack reflect the lessons Russia is learning on Iranian equipment in Ukraine?

Frederick W. Kagan is the director of AEI’s Critical Threats Project and a former professor of military history at the US Military Academy at West Point. He is the author of the 2007 report Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, which is one of the intellectual architects of the successful “surge” strategy in Iraq, and the book Lessons for a Long War (AEI Press, 2010). His Critical Threats Project, alongside the Institute for the Study of War, releases regular updates on Iranian activity in the Middle East, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and transnational terrorism on the African continent.

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Find the Critical Threats Project's Iran Updates here.

Joe Biden and the Democratic Party love labeling Donald Trump and his MAGA followers as the greatest threat to American democracy. So why are Democratic-aligned Super PACs funding self-declared MAGA candidates in GOP primaries? In a recent article for the Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim explains that there are two reasons: The strategy has (so far) helped Democrats win in general elections; more importantly, Democrats long for a time when they were part of the heroic resistance against Trump. But this strategy could backfire: Democratic lawfare against Trump is helping him win over voters who think “the system” is rigged against them. And the moment a Democrat-funded MAGA candidate wins a general election, their warnings about MAGA’s threat to democracy will fall flat on its face.

Barton Swaim joined the Wall Street Journal as an editorial page writer in 2018. He writes a regular column on political books. Before joining the Journal, he was an opinion editor at the Weekly Standard. He is the author of The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics (Simon and Schuster, 2016).

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Read Barton's article Why Democrats Can’t Quit Trump here.

In the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, Joe Biden stood by America’s closest Middle Eastern partner, providing diplomatic cover and military aid. Recently, however, the Biden administration has become increasingly critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli operations in Gaza. In March, Biden refused to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire without conditioning it on the release of Israeli hostages or acknowledging the atrocities of October 7. Why the sudden shift in tone from the Biden administration? Will the growing rift between Biden and Netanyahu affect Israel’s war aims in Gaza? And how will Biden’s failure to stand by Israel affect American partnerships in the region?

Dan Senor is the host of the podcast Call Me Back and co-author of New York Times bestselling books The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation and Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle. He is a former Defense Department official, was a senior advisor to former Speaker Paul Ryan’s campaign for vice president, and was a foreign policy advisor to Senator Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns. Dan was educated at the University of Western Ontario, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Harvard Business School. He is currently a partner at Elliott Investment Management.

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Find Dan Senor's podcast here.

According to President Biden, his stewardship of the economy – which he has dubbed “Bidenomics” – should be praised as the best America has ever seen. Unemployment is down and jobs are up. So why exactly are Americans giving such poor ratings to Bidenomics? Perhaps it’s because Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package unleashed the worst inflation in 40 years. And while inflation may be lower today than it was three years ago, its compounding effects mean that prices are still sky-high. On top of that, Americans recently hit a record high of over a trillion dollars in credit card debt. In short, it doesn’t take a PhD to understand that Americans are hurting.

Gary D. Cohn is the Vice Chairman of IBM and served as chief economic advisor and the 11th Director of the National Economic Council to President Donald Trump. Before serving in the White House, Mr. Cohn was President and Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs, a member of the firm’s Board of Directors, and Chairman of the Firmwide Client and Business Standards Committee. Mr. Cohn began his career at U.S. Steel before moving to New York to trade on the New York Commodities Exchange.

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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, students, parents, and teachers were told they have to stay home from school in order to stop the spread of disease. Anyone who questioned that advice was labeled a conspiracy theorist who does not "trust the science." Now, the public is waking up to the real effects of “long COVID” -- the longer students stayed away from school, the more they are choosing to stay home today, with all the learning and social loss that implies. Who suffers the most? Minorities and the poor. Who cares? Not the teachers' unions or the government that caused this disaster.

Nat Malkus is a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he specializes in empirical research on K–12 schooling. He is a national expert on a range of educational issues that affect students across the country—including Career and Technical Education, school choice, Advanced Placement, standardized testing, and how the nation’s schools responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Read the WTH substack here.

Following the terrorist attacks of October 7th, Harvard University was among several elite bastions of higher education to show its true colors – moral relativism, raw antisemitism on campus, and poor leadership. Harvard, like other elite institutions, has and will continue to suffer reputational damage for its response. And indeed, the rot of higher ed is deep. It is not that a liberal bias has metastasized into illiberalism, but rather that illiberalism has been layered on top of a creeping and extreme form of leftism. What is going on in our country’s top universities? Who is to blame? How do we solve it?

Lawrence H. Summers was Chief Economist of the World Bank (1991-93), US Secretary of the Treasury (1999-2001), Director of the US National Economic Council (2009-10), and President of Harvard University (2001-06).

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Read the WTH Substack here.

Super Tuesday wrapped up as predicted, with Trump sweeping the GOP win and Haley dropping out. Barring a meteorite, this means we are locked into a Trump-Biden rematch. But the newest Harvard-Harris CAPS poll reveals an America that is not as certain as primary voting behavior suggests – overwhelmingly, they profess a desire for a non-Biden non-Trump choice at the polls. For voters, immigration has become a national priority, even in states (Alaska) that are nowhere close to the southern border. Meanwhile, inflation, which affects everyone, has moved farther down in voters’ anxieties. And then there’s the large majority of voters who are comfortable marking on a poll that they believe Trump is a felon or that Biden is incompetent, but then vote for them anyway. This week, we try to get some clarity about these puzzling contradictions.

Mark Penn is the chairman of the Harris Poll, as well as leading research companies including the National Research Group, Harris Insights & Analytics and HarrisX. He is the co-founder of the Harvard-Harris Poll, a monthly poll on key public opinion topics crucial to Americans like taxes and healthcare. He's also the president and managing partner of the Stagwell Group, a private equity fund. He previously held senior executive roles with Microsoft, WPP, and senior strategic roles on electoral campaigns for President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Download the transcript here.

Read the WTH substack here.

Check out Mark Penn's poll here.