Today, Jennifer Burns considers the costs of an American shift away from multilateral global engagement; Andrew Hall launches his new Substack with a post on governance challenges in prediction markets; and David L. Leal argues it’s too soon to tell how Latino Americans will vote in 2026.
Freedom Frequency
Research Fellow Jennifer Burns argues at Freedom Frequency that the postwar United States exercised its power in a paradox: even as America dominated the world and its systems, it found itself at the center of an interdependent web of trade, defense, and institutions. Today, the historian says, the Trump administration is impatient with multilateralism even as a multipolar world system is starting to emerge. The question is: will the United States be able to exercise its power and influence in a world where the center—of power, trade, and culture—no longer holds? Read more here.
Politics, Institutions, and Public Opinion
In the inaugural post to his new Substack Free Systems, Senior Fellow Andrew B. Hall reflects on his recent participation in a real-time experiment looking at prediction markets, held on election night in New York City. That night, Hall says, “markets rapidly distilled data and social media hot takes into cold, hard prices that moved rapidly in response to both the latest official information and the latest ‘vibes.’” Hall then explains three core governance challenges for prediction markets: manipulation, discovery, and resolution—each of which he plans to write on more in the future. “Real-time prices from political prediction markets can cut through noise, quantify uncertainty, and help us see the world more clearly, if they are designed with care,” Hall concludes. Read more here.
Writing for Defining Ideas, Hoover Senior Fellow and legal scholar David L. Leal says claims that Latinos are rejecting President Trump or the Republican Party are premature and based on equivocal evidence. Instead, he writes, the party split among Hispanics is mostly stable and reflects these voters’ movement into the American political mainstream—in particular, toward a sharp focus this year on the economy. Leal argues that individual identity, rather than group identity, is beginning to express itself politically among Latino voters, as it has for other ethnic immigrant groups in US history. “To believe that the 2025 election returns are indicative of the Latino vote in 2026 and 2028 is to rely on crystal balls as much as social science,” says Leal. Read more here.
Revitalizing History
On the latest episode of Uncommon Knowledge, Distinguished Policy Fellow Peter M. Robinson sits down at Yale University with the “dean of Cold War historians,” John Lewis Gaddis—Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer of Long Telegram author George F. Kennan and one of America’s most influential thinkers on grand strategy. Gaddis explains why the atomic bomb reshaped global politics, how George Kennan predicted the Soviet collapse decades before it happened, and why détente faltered in the 1970s. Gaddis also shares his views on the future of American grand strategy, the challenges posed by China and Russia today, the tension between promoting democracy and maintaining global stability, and why understanding the past is essential for navigating the 21st century. Along the way, the distinguished scholar explains why he remains optimistic about the humanities—and about America. Watch or listen here.
Hoover Institution News
Hoover Institution Science and Senior Fellow Drew Endy traveled to Washington, DC, this month to brief policymakers on Biosecurity Really, a new report from the Bio-Strategies and Leadership (BSL) program. Biosecurity Really provides a frank assessment of rising biosecurity risks and a holistic strategy for making biosecurity real going forward. Over two days of engagement, Endy and members of the BSL team met with members of Congress, congressional staff, and senior administration officials across government for wide-ranging discussions of biotechnology and biosecurity issues. Conversations focused on the report’s findings and its nine planks of policy recommendations. Across a dozen meetings, Endy also shared research on opportunities to strengthen America’s leadership in biology and biotechnology, including through expanded investment in foundational research. Read more here.
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