A Viable Third Party?

The United States has been a two-party nation for most of its history. So it’s not surprising that Elon Musk’s suggestion that he might create a new party was met with so much skepticism.

But Musk’s idea for a third party speaks to the dissatisfaction both Republican and Democratic voters have felt for their own parties for years now. In fact, third-party success is more plausible today than in the past, Michael Kaufman argues. “Democrats are riven by socialist, anti-Semitic partisans—still a minority, but representing the party’s younger, more energetic wing,” he writes. “Republicans have drifted from their free-market, small-government roots, alienating many traditional conservatives.”

Read more about how a well-conceived third party could attract these disaffected voters and improve the nation’s political future.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing has seen better days.

In 2022 and 2023, American investors, on net, pulled more than $40 billion out of ESG funds; in 2024, they removed another $19.6 billion; and through May of this year, they had withdrawn an additional $6.6 billion.

“That’s a promising start,” James Copland writes, “but we need to stay vigilant—ESG activism reduces economic growth, shrinks our tax base, and weakens our national security.”

Indeed, as Copland points out, ESG funds often strong-arm corporations into pursuing vague concepts like sustainability and diversity over shareholder value.

Read more about the history of ESG investing and why its collapse is long overdue.

About ten years ago, The New Yorker jumped on the DEI bandwagon. The magazine declared itself an “antiracist” institution, set racial quotas in hiring, and promised to “talk about racism” at every opportunity.

The most recent example of this “antiracism” at work is an essay about Sydney Sweeney by writer Doreen St. Felix. “Sweeney, St. Felix mused, represents a fantasy ‘Aryan princess’ to some of her fans,” Christopher F. Rufo writes.

Rufo looked at St. Felix’s X account and found what he calls “a cesspool of bigotry”—language like “I hate white men”; “Whiteness fills me with a lot of hate”; “Whiteness must be abolished”; “We lived in perfect harmony w/ the earth pre whiteness.”

“The ‘racial reckoning’ that produced writers such as St. Felix was not about helping minorities,” Rufo writes. “It was about punishing the majority.”

Known as a supposedly harmless psychoactive herb that can relieve pain, kratom has become popular in many states. But the herb is associated with health risks and withdrawal symptoms, signaling the need for greater regulation, Ethan Gilden writes. New York is considering legislation that would restrict the sale of it.

Read Gilden’s summary of what additional steps New York and other states can take to address the safety risks.

“At some point the plates stop spinning. The question becomes what generation is going to have to clean up the inevitable mess.”

Photo credit: The Washington Post / Contributor / The Washington Post via Getty Images