Friday, November 21, 2025

This Friday, Nader Nadery recalls an episode when his work for justice in Afghanistan came at a terrible price; Dan Berkenstock outlines the challenges America will face as it pursues economic opportunities on the moon; and Lee Ohanian and Bill Whalen discuss legal challenges to California’s recently passed Proposition 50, as well as unsettling questions surrounding wildfire recovery in Southern California.

Freedom Frequency

A Guest of the Taliban

At Freedom Frequency, visiting fellow Nader Nadery, a former student activist in Afghanistan who risked death to oppose authoritarianism, offers an excerpt from his forthcoming book in which he narrates a harrowing memory of torture and endurance. A survivor of the Taliban’s cruelty and oppression, he vows to make sure his country survives too. Nadery served as an official in multiple roles in Afghanistan and continues to write about politics, human rights, women’s rights, and democracy. Read more here.

Technology Policy Accelerator

Shooting for the Moon

Speaking with Policy Fellow Martin Giles for an interview at Defining Ideas, space expert Dan Berkenstock, distinguished research fellow, points to a lunar convergence: The moon has taken on new significance for the United States because of Chinese competition, great leaps in technology, and soaring demand for energy and computing. As China’s ambitions give America its first significant national motivation to explore space in a half century, vast potential benefits of lunar exploration beckon. Yet issues of property rights, sovereignty, cooperation, and potential military clashes are far from solved.  Read more here.

California Policy & Politics

California Update: Prop 50 Legalities, LA Fire Confusion . . . and Bad News for Billionaires?

After a lopsided victory earlier this month, can California’s Proposition 50, on redistricting, survive a legal challenge? And why do last January’s devastating fires in Los Angeles continue to raise unsettling questions? For Matters of Policy & Politics, Hoover Senior Fellow Lee Ohanian and Distinguished Policy Fellow Bill Whalen join Hoover’s Jonathan Movroydis to discuss the latest in the Golden State, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pending retirement, what the indictment of a former Newsom chief of staff says about Sacramento’s political culture, and a tech-rich Northern California county’s search for more tax revenue. Additionally, on the subject of wealth, the panelists consider the politics and sensibility of a 5% wealth tax on California billionaires, possibly headed for next year’s ballot. Watch or listen here.

Confronting and Competing with China

Book Talk on The Arsenal of Democracy

Yesterday, the Hoover History Lab and its Applied History Working Group, in close partnership with the Global Policy and Strategy Initiative, held a book talk on The Arsenal of Democracy Technology, Industry, and Deterrence in an Age of Hard Choices. The event featured the authors Eyck Freymann, Hoover Fellow, and Harry Halem, Senior Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, in conversation with Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin. Freymann and Halem discussed their approach to selecting evidence and crafting their argument, as well as what makes this book a distinctive contribution to military and US-China relations scholarship. Watch or listen here.

Health Care Policy

Reforms the GOP Should Consider as Congress Negotiates Health Insurance Subsidies

“The guiding principle behind conservative healthcare reforms should be to make health care into a functioning market,” argue Policy Fellows Daniel Heil and Tom Church in a new post at Church’s Substack. They explain how “the GOP may need to make a deal with Senate Democrats regarding the temporary COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies that expire at the end of the year.” Heil and Church then lay out three questions Congress should be asking as they consider various health policy proposals, beginning with “How much do they want to borrow?” The post then dives into more details on the health insurance subsidies set to expire at the end of 2025. Read more here.