Today, Eugene Volokh explores the reach of the Federal Communications Commission in the wake of Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary removal from his show by ABC. Michael McFaul argues Russia is an unreliable ally and offers his view on how best to end the invasion of Ukraine. And Michael D. Bordo explores the fiscal policies that contributed to sky-high inflation in Britain in 1975.
Revitalizing American Institutions
On the latest episode of Free Speech Unmuted, Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh joins cohost Jane Bambauer and special guest Ashutosh Bhagwat of the UC Davis School of Law to explore the events of the past week, when ABC abruptly took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air after backlash about his comments on the political climate around Charlie Kirk’s murder—under the influence of the Federal Communications Commission, its chair Brendan Carr, and two owners of affiliate ABC stations . Carr publicly stated prior to Kimmel’s temporary removal that he wanted ABC’s affiliates to preempt Kimmel’s show, and Bhagwat says such a suggestion is legal. But in the future, he said, the FCC could wield significant power over broadcasters by either delaying their license renewal or slowing review of a pending merger. Watch or listen to the episode here.
Determining America’s Role in the World
Appearing with Max Bergmann and Dr. Maria Snegovaya on the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Russian Roulette podcast, Senior Fellow Michael McFaul argues that Russia’s remaining allies should not count on the Kremlin’s help should they get into trouble. He cites the experience of the Assad regime in Syria as it started to buckle in response to the northern rebel offensive that eventually toppled it. He also brings up Iran’s poor performance in its short war with Israel, where Russian-made air defenses struggled to shoot anything down and Russia made no resupply available. The group moves on to discuss what the Trump administration’s next steps regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should be, and whether selling US weapons to Europe so they can be forwarded on to Ukraine is enough of a role for America to play. Watch their discussion here.
US Defense
Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group contributor Ralph Peters writes of the terrible consequences of Stalin’s purges of officers from the Red Army between 1936 and 1938. Nearly 80% of the Russian officer corps was shot or imprisoned during this time, leaving the Red Army incapable of stopping a German invasion in 1941. In the first two months of that invasion, Peters writes, incompetent leadership cost Russia two million casualties and soldiers captured. Looking to today, Peters says the US must avoid such a purge at all costs. “Firing and hiring senior officers based on their imagined politics or because they provided uncongenial professional advice is a formula for disaster,” he writes. Read more here.
The Economy
In a new column for the Center for Economic Policy Research, Distinguished Visiting Fellow Michael D. Bordo argues that the terrible inflation Britain experienced in 1975 was a result of a near-complete abandonment of fiscal discipline by the government at that time. Citing a variety of macroeconomic factors as well as a content analysis of UK finance ministers’ speeches from that time period. Bordo argues that fiscal discipline went out the window, which contributed to the inflation spike. Mentions of the word “debt” in those speeches fell to almost zero in the period between 1960 and 1979, a time when Parliament passed measures to subsidize food, rents, mortgages, and special benefits for unionized labor. Inflation only started to come down in the early 1980s, when the government began to get its spending in order. Read more here.
Reforming K–12 Education
On the latest episode of The Education Exchange, Senior Fellow Paul E. Peterson interviews Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. They discuss how the district has worked to turn around underperforming schools. Carvalho says the district drafted only four goals coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic: a standard in numeracy, a higher graduation rate, a better reading standard and a social-emotional growth goal. “We are not chasing 1,000 dreams; we are deliberately strategically pursuing four very specific goals.” These goals are supported by a commitment to follow only the latest and best-supported theories of education, Carvalho says. Listen to their conversation here.
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