Today, Victor Davis Hanson reviews the strategic blunders that now leave Iran’s fragmented regime on the geopolitical ropes; Andrew Hall explores why prediction markets are becoming a key tool in American political analysis; and Hoover announces the 2026 cohort of entrepreneurs using market mechanisms to enhance conservation efforts and environmental quality.
War with Iran
“Iran’s half-century-long deadly terrorist reputation peaked with the October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel that it helped fund and coordinate,” argues Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson in a new post at his Blade of Perseus site. Now, “Iran has no government,” and “apparatchiks from the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the government, and the theocracy . . . fear a popular uprising and an overdue noose strung over the collective neck of the regime.” Hanson’s essay traces the strategic decline of Iran’s power, focusing on the abandonment of the theocratic regime by erstwhile patrons in Beijing and Moscow. Rather than implode after October 7, Israel went on the offensive and dismantled Iran’s regional proxies. The Gulf States and Europe, Hanson says, have little interest in continued appeasement of the regime in exchange for peace and oil. Taken together, these shifts mean “Iran can no longer credibly bluff, threaten, or delay,” and the ruling regime “is in ruins.” Trace the miscalculations leading to the self-destruction of Iran’s regime.
Prediction Markets
In a post at the Free Systems Substack, Senior Fellow Andrew B. Hall and coauthor Pairie Koh explain why prediction markets are eclipsing opinion polls as go-to measures of the future course of politics and world events. “For decades, the polling number was the default quantitative input into political conversation—the main way to use data to ‘monitor the situation’ with elections,” Koh and Hall write. Their research has found that “prediction markets were once a small fraction of the relevant creator content, but the 2024 election was a sea change.” Today “prediction markets are . . . the dominant data source for creators making videos about politics who need to draw on probabilistic information.” Unpacking the drivers of this shift in the “information layer,” Hall and Koh note that, unlike polls, prediction markets update in real time and “carry financial skin in the game that partially disciplines them against wishful thinking.” But these new markets also have unique downsides as signals “about political reality,” which the authors will continue to research. How prediction markets are changing the political conversation.
Markets vs. Mandates
The Hoover Institution is proud to announce the 2026 cohort of eight professionals named to its highly selective Enviropreneur Fellowship Program. This fellowship, falling within Hoover’s Markets vs. Mandates Research Program, invites conservation professionals and innovators in environmental technologies to apply market solutions to pressing environmental issues, combining intellectual rigor and entrepreneurial spirit to foster meaningful change. "Successful enviropreneurs convert economic prosperity into environmental health and vice versa. This program aims to amplify their success by increasing their visibility and helping them see hidden opportunities and barriers,” said Senior Fellow Dominic Parker, who directs Markets vs. Mandates alongside Senior Fellow Terry L. Anderson. The Hoover Enviropreneur Fellowship integrates entrepreneurial insight and academic expertise to develop profitable businesses that enhance environmental quality and conservation. Unpack how markets and entrepreneurship can improve environmental quality.
State Tax Policy
The gap between high-tax states and low-tax states suggests we’re a country divided on tax policy, Research Fellow David R. Henderson writes at Defining Ideas. The effects of this divide? Taxpayers are migrating to those states that hold the line on income taxes, to the financial benefit of those governments, Henderson says. In those jurisdictions, a percentage cut in the tax rate will cause revenue to go down less than that percentage, thanks to the power of incentives broadening the tax base. Henderson reminds readers that the Laffer curve, made famous during the Reagan presidency, explains the process at work: Raising tax rates leads to less of the activity being taxed—potentially yielding less money for the government. This mechanism should give states a clear incentive, Henderson concludes, to keep taxes low or eliminate them, or risk continued population and revenue drain. How differences in state tax policy show the power of economic incentives.
Health Care Policy
More than 1.2 million Americans live in nursing homes, and that number is rising. Institutional Special Needs Plans (I-SNPs) are Medicare Advantage plans designed for long-term-care residents that reduce hospitalizations through on-site clinical teams and aligned financial incentives. Yet few eligible beneficiaries are enrolled. This new Hoover Institution Press essay by Visiting Fellow Brian J. Miller and coauthors John Connolly and Anthony DiGiorgio reviews the evidence on I-SNPs and recommends regulatory reforms to make I-SNPs more successful and accessible. The paper notes that the prevalence of Medicare beneficiaries requiring long-term institutionalized care is rising, which makes improving insurance design for these beneficiaries a national imperative. How regulatory reforms could achieve better outcomes for patients in long-term care.
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