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Reason
Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward ([email protected]), Publisher Mike Alissi ([email protected]), Editors at Large Nick Gillespie ([email protected]), Matt Welch ([email protected]), Managing Editor Jason Russell ([email protected]), A
Reason3 min readAmerican Government
Is Chaos the Natural State of Congress?
WHAT IF THE federal government was reduced to its essential functions? What if thousands of federal workers were sent home without pay? What if citizens were forced to examine the real role that the federal government plays in their lives and Congres
Reason1 min readIntelligence (AI) & Semantics
Ready for RoboCop?
THE KNIGHTSCOPE K5 Autonomous Security Robot is getting a two-month pilot program in New York City’s Times Square subway station. The K5 is a far cry from the eponymous cyborg in the 1987 film RoboCop. Instead, it’s a 5-foot-2-inch 420-pound rolling
Reason4 min read
Essentials for Van Life
FOR TWO YEARS, we lived in a 72-squarefoot tiny house we built inside a van. Our van gave us the freedom to live rent-free across North America, making our home in picturesque high deserts, isolated mountaintops, secluded beaches, wineries, and even
Reason2 min readCrime & Violence
Jailed for Criticizing Police
IN JULY 2017, Louisiana woman Nanette Krentel was shot in the head and left in a burning house. More than two years passed before anyone was arrested. That person, however, wasn’t alleged to be the murderer. Rather, the sole arrest related to Krentel
Reason2 min read
Commandeered Hotels For The Homeless
TO SOLVE ITS worst-in-the-nation homelessness problem, Los Angeles is considering the novel and legally suspect approach of commandeering empty hotel rooms as shelter housing. Come March, city voters will decide on a ballot initiative backed by the h
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
Q&A Meaghan Ybos
When Meaghan Ybos was raped in 2003, it was the sort of assault you see more often in cinematic crime fiction than in reality. A stranger, wearing a ski mask, broke into her home, held a knife to her throat, and forced himself on her. Twenty years la
Reason2 min read
New Mosquitos Can Help Beat Malaria
FOR THE FIRST time in 20 years, nine cases of locally acquired malaria have occurred this summer in the United States: seven in Florida, one in Texas, and one in Maryland. The feverish illness is caused by infection through the bites of mosquitoes ca
Reason2 min readCrime & Violence
Goodbye to Detroit’s Asset Forfeiture Racket
A FEDERAL APPEALS court has dealt a welcome victory to vehicle owners and a scathing rebuke to Detroit’s asset forfeiture racket. A panel of judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit unanimously ruled in late August that Detroit’s prac
Reason3 min read
Prepare Your Kids for a Successful Launch
PART OF RAISING children is knowing when to step back. That comes at different times depending on kids’ choices. For us, the transition was marked by our son’s arrival at the University of Arizona as a freshman. Anthony would have new responsibilitie
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
An Administrative Court Scandal at the SEC
JUST WEEKS AFTER the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door to more extensive judicial oversight of executive branch agencies’ internal courts, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) dropped dozens of those cases—including one that prompted the Cou
Reason2 min readAmerican Government
GOP Candidates Compete To Restrict Immigration
IMMIGRATION AND BORDER policy proposals that were once largely limited to the Republican Party’s fringe are now entering the GOP mainstream, as evidenced by the hard-line positions of leading 2024 Republican presidential primary candidates. GOP hopef
Reason13 min read
The Endangered Species Act at 50
“I’M ALL FOR conservation,” Frank Ribelin, a landowner outside Austin, Texas, told U.S. News & World Report two decades after passage of the Endangered Species Act, “but I’d like to club the little bastards.” He meant the golden-cheeked warbler, a sp
Reason5 min read
When Ideas Had Consequences
RICHARD M. WEAVER’S Ideas Have Consequences, published 75 years ago, is not really a book about how ideas have consequences. It’s a book about what one idea, propounded by the medieval friar William of Occam—“the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which
Reason15 min readAmerican Government
The Abundance Agenda Promises Everything to Everyone All at Once
IN SUMMER 2023, American progressivism was spending big and riding high. Despite razor-thin majorities in Congress, Democrats had spent the last two years enacting hundreds of billions of dollars in new subsidies—for green energy, public transportati
Reason17 min readSocial History
After Dobbs
WHEN THE SUPREME Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, everyone knew the fallout—for women, for doctors, for U.S. politics—would be profound. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly pro
Reason12 min readInternational Relations
Will Russia Ever Be Free?
EAGER THOUGH WE all are to learn how the Ukraine war ends for Ukraine, there is another great unanswered question about the invasion: How will the war end for Russia? Will it revert to a quasi-Soviet totalitarian past, this time with a simulacrum of
Reason11 min readCrime & Violence
How To Yell ‘Fire’ In A Crowded Theater
AT A JULY hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Republican members focused on social media companies’ moderation of largely conservative viewpoints and accused the Biden administration of working han
Reason8 min read
Against Psychedelic Hipsters
“I NEVER PICTURED a world where marijuana would be anywhere close to legal, and it’s mind-blowing to me that mushrooms are being decriminalized everywhere,” says Shane Mauss, a comedian who tours the country discussing his psychedelic experiences. Fo
Reason13 min read
Frozen Pizza Is the Best Pizza
DEBATES ABOUT PIZZA are a lot like debates about religion, or politics, or monetary policy: There are a lot of strongly held beliefs, but very little is ever truly resolved. Yet if one were to make a list of candidates for the best pizza in New York
Reason6 min read
The Price of Friedman
AS JENNIFER BURNS writes in her excellent new biography of the libertarian economist Milton Friedman, “Many aspects of our contemporary world that today seem commonplace have their origins in one of Friedman’s seemingly crazy ideas. If you’ve had tax
Reason5 min read
The Good Samaritans Who Saved Syrian Refugees
THERE IS A story about crisis relief that a lot of people believe instinctively, one that’s built into our institutions: Governments and major international organizations, armed with resources and authority, are best equipped to quickly help people h
Reason6 min read
Reviews
EMMA CAMP The Retrievals, a podcast from The New York Times, examines how one rogue nurse at Yale Fertility Center systematically stole fentanyl intended for patients, leading as many as 200 women to experience excruciating pain during procedures. Wo
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
Archives
“That the public case against Backpage bears so little resemblance to the actual charges against it is partly a result of a mass panic over the confluence of sex and technology. That cultural near-hysteria has been stoked by a strange-bedfellows coal
Reason3 min readCrime & Violence
Brickbats
After the city of Atlanta demolished Everett Tripodis’ house without properly informing him, city officials sued him to recoup the $68,000 they claim to have spent tearing it down. The city wants to force the sale of the lot to pay for the demolition

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