On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump ordered his departments “to deliver emergency price relief,” including action to “lower the cost of housing and expand housing supply.” That sounds simple enough. But following through will require a skillful political balancing act.

Housing costs put Trump and his congressional allies in a tough spot. Housing is too expensive because its development is overregulated. Yet the regulations that drive up housing costs—arcane local zoning and building codes—are not the kinds that congressional Republicans are best positioned to fight. Moreover, many of the local codes protect suburban single-family-home neighborhoods, a residential ideal that Trump has pointedly defended. 

In a new paper, we suggest one way out of this dilemma: target big, expensive cities for housing growth, while letting states decide for themselves what to do about the suburbs. Specifically, we propose to reallocate federal affordable-housing tax credits—a roughly $15 billion subsidy—away from the nation’s biggest, most expensive cities unless they adopt a basic set of pro-housing reforms.

Specifically, to retain their eligibility for the federal affordable-housing subsidy, these cities would have to allow development of apartment and condo buildings along major corridors and in commercial areas; cap development fees at $10,000 per new unit (roughly the national average); provide waivers from price controls that render a project infeasible; and approve projects that conform to applicable standards “ministerially”—that is, without discretionary reviews and associated conditions of approval that may change a project’s design or increase its cost. Congress should also task a federal agency with developing criteria for measuring cities’ housing performance, such as housing-stock growth relative to potential growth, given prices and parcel characteristics. Persistently poor performers should lose their eligibility for federal subsidies regardless of whether they have opted into the federal pro-housing reforms. 

Our proposal is budget-neutral and state-neutral: if a city like New York chooses not to relax its regulations, the tax credits it forgoes would flow to affordable-housing projects elsewhere in the state. The new policy would put significant pressure on big-city governments to adopt pro-housing reforms, since progressive city councilmembers won’t want to be seen forfeiting affordable-housing funds. The suburbs would be unaffected, however, as the new policy would apply only to big, expensive cities.

It makes economic sense for Congress to target major cities for housing growth. When workers and firms cluster together, they become more productive. One study estimates that land-use deregulation in America’s seven most expensive cities would grow the U.S. economy by 7 percentage points. Moreover, because housing markets are all connected, building more housing in large cities would reduce housing costs for suburban voters, too.

The political logic to targeting big cities is equally clear: the voters living in them want more housing development, whereas suburban residents generally dislike density. Big blue cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco stymie development not because their voters detest new buildings but because local progressive interest groups block projects unless they get their pound of flesh. Labor unions demand that developers hire high-cost workers. “Equity” groups insist that new units be set aside as low-income housing. Tenant unions fight any project that might temporarily displace a renter or demolish a rent-controlled housing unit. All these forces raise building costs, resulting in a high-price, low-growth status quo that persists despite broadly pro-housing electorates.

Why don’t developers just say “No” to the groups’ demands? Because in many blue states, complex procedural rules, coupled with discretionary standards for approval, give opponents the ability to stall projects by filing appeals and suing. Such delays reduce a project’s rate of return, so developers must pay off anyone who credibly threatens legal action. Investors, in turn, demand a higher rate of return to compensate for the extra risk, raising developers’ capital costs.

The good news is that Congress would not be acting alone. In recent years, red, blue, and purple states have all taken bipartisan steps to curtail excessive local restrictions on housing development. Florida’s Live Local Act is one example. It requires cities to permit apartment and condo buildings in commercial districts and cuts taxes on these structures, while buffering single-family-home neighborhoods.

Nor does Congress have to go as far as Florida by preempting local restrictions on housing development. It can give cities a choice: either opt into a pro-housing regime like Florida’s or forgo federal support for something else they value, such as tax credits for affordable housing.

More than a generation ago, noted deregulator Jack Kemp convened a blue-ribbon commission on local barriers to housing development. The commission targeted the suburbs, only to see its recommendations ignored. The lesson for today’s congressional Republicans is to focus instead on misgoverned big cities. Federal incentives won’t move political mountains in places where voters firmly oppose regulatory changes—but they just might break the interest-group logjam in places where voters already want more housing.

Photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images

Greenpeace backed radical protesters who tried to block a North Dakota pipeline. Now the pipeline company has won huge damages in a lawsuit against the iconic NGO. Other nonprofits should take notice.

On Wednesday, a jury in Mandan, North Dakota returned a stunning verdict against Greenpeace for its role in the violent protests and misleading PR campaign that disrupted construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. The jury hearing the civil lawsuit found Greenpeace USA and two other Greenpeace entities liable for civil conspiracy, defamation, trespass, and other misdeeds. If the verdict stands, the storied environmental nonprofit will have to pay $667 million in damages to plaintiff Energy Transfer, the pipeline company that built and owns the DAPL.

The decision wasn’t entirely unexpected. In fact, Greenpeace had tried (and failed) to get the trial location changed, asserting that a jury in that oil-producing region would be biased in favor of the plaintiff. Nonetheless, the sheer size of the damages awarded will send shock waves through the loose networks of nonprofit groups that support disruptive protests around the nation.

In a City Journal article about the case, I noted similarities between the anti-pipeline protests near North Dakota’s Standing Rock Indian Reservation and other mass actions, including Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and the anti-Israel demonstrations that erupted around the United States after the October 7 attacks. Making an analogy to hybrid warfare, I described these as “hybrid protests,” in which masses of peaceful demonstrators are joined by smaller groups of trained agitators who tip the events toward violence. As Park MacDougald has reported, these loose networks of troublemakers are often financially supported “by a vast web of progressive nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, and dark-money groups.”

Energy Transfer’s suit against Greenpeace represents the first major success in exposing and penalizing the putatively legitimate nonprofits that funnel money and material support to the lawbreakers embedding themselves in these hybrid protests. If the enormous verdict survives the inevitable appeals, it will be a major shot across the bows of progressive organizations that quietly foment political mayhem while maintaining plausible deniability.

Many hybrid protests begin spontaneously as local people gather to demonstrate against a perceived injustice. But soon, outside activists—including trained Antifa-style agitators—begin flooding in. When police made arrests at various pro-Hamas campus uprisings, for example, they found that roughly half the arrestees had no connection to the schools they were occupying. These activists have the funds to travel long distances for extended periods and often arrive with specialized equipment for blocking roads, occupying structures, or fighting police. Some, like the lifelong activist Lisa Fithian, whom the New York Times observed leading the takeover of Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall, describe themselves as “trainers” teaching supposedly nonviolent tactics to neophyte protesters.

Energy Transfer’s civil lawsuit alleged that something similar took place at Standing Rock. Greenpeace maintains that the protest was led by local Native American activists and that the environmental group merely offered incidental support. The group is correct that the conflict began when the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe began protesting the pipeline being built close to its reservation. But, as a firsthand report in Outside detailed, before long outsiders—most of them white—began dominating the gathering. While local Sioux leaders struggled to keep the protests peaceful, many of the newcomers began blockading roads, torching heavy equipment, and battling with police.

During the trial, Energy Transfer’s lawyers presented evidence that Greenpeace played a significant role in supporting the activists pushing for “direct action” against the pipeline. Greenpeace USA paid roughly $20,000 to send protest trainers—including a Greenpeace employee—to Standing Rock, court documents showed, while the group’s executive director personally raised another $90,000 for the effort. One internal Greenpeace email estimated the funding “has the potential to provide skills training to 3,000 activists.” Another Greenpeace employee bragged in an email about doing “some awesome spy shit” while scouting for potential blockade locations near the construction site.

Greenpeace also supplied power tools, propane, tents, cold-weather gear, and a van equipped with solar panels. Energy Transfer’s lawyers particularly focused on the 20 to 30 “lockboxes” Greenpeace delivered to the Standing Rock occupation. A lockbox—sometimes known as a “sleeping dragon”—is a sophisticated device that allows activists to chain themselves to heavy equipment or to each other while forming human blockades. They consist of heavy PVC or concrete tubes into which activists can lock their arms, making it impossible for police to separate or move them without special equipment. The lockboxes proved a major headache for law enforcement officers trying to remove protesters from highways and construction sites. One photo displayed at the trial showed a Greenpeace-paid trainer using a lockbox. When then-Greenpeace executive director Annie Leonard received a text showing another demonstrator employing the device, she responded approvingly that the action “ups the ante.” Asked to explain that phrase in court, Leonard compared the protester with anti-segregation activist Rosa Parks.

The North Dakota jury also supported Energy Transfer’s claims that Greenpeace defamed the company in its public statements about the project and illegally interfered with the company’s relationship with financial institutions. Greenpeace maintains that its actions supporting protesters and its claims regarding Energy Transfer all fall under the First Amendment. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment, and lawsuits like this aimed at destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech,” Deepa Padmanabha, senior legal counsel for Greenpeace USA, told the Washington Post. The jury concluded, however, that trespassing and vandalism don’t constitute peaceful protest, and defamation is not free speech.

Asked for comment on the verdict, a spokesperson sent me this statement from Greenpeace USA executive director Sushma Raman: “This is the end of a chapter, but not the end of our fight. Energy Transfer knows we don’t have $660 million. They want our silence, not our money.”

Energy Transfer no doubt faces a long road before it can collect any money from Greenpeace. The NGO has already announced that it will appeal the verdict, and one of the group’s international affiliates has filed suit against the pipeline company in the Netherlands under an EU free-speech law. But Energy Transfer’s stunning court victory will have an impact that far outweighs any financial gains.

Over the decades, progressive NGOs have grown increasingly bold about funding radical organizations that support violent actions. Many of these seemingly mainstream groups rely on liberal donors who are unaware of just where their money is going. They rely on a veneer of respectability—and opaque funding channels—to shield them from lawsuits or prosecution. But for nonprofits that conduct or fund genuinely illegal behavior, the era of the untouchable NGO may be coming to an end.

Top Photo by Stephen Yang/Getty Images

The Trump administration is making an example of Columbia University. Widely regarded as the American campus most prone to violent and disruptive anti-Israel activism, the school has seen $400 million in federal grants revoked, and a noncitizen graduate now faces deportation for “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Columbia’s response to these actions, in turn, is setting a precedent—offering a glimpse into how elite institutions may navigate unprecedented government pressure to comply with federal law.

Rather than addressing the rampant discrimination against Jews on its campus, Columbia is mounting a campaign to turn public opinion against the administration. The university appears to be engaging in “malicious compliance,” responding to government demands in a way designed to make those demands seem unreasonable. The Trump administration should refuse to take the bait and instead make clear that its priorities are unobjectionable: curbing law-breaking and vicious anti-Semitism at the school.

First, Columbia’s response to the federal funding cuts closely resembles the “Washington Monument” strategy. When faced with budget reductions, government agencies often move to slash the most visible and popular services—like access to the Washington Monument—to provoke public outcry. Likewise, Columbia staff have taken to social media to highlight the cuts’ impact, particularly the potential loss of scientific research, in an effort to rally public sympathy.

Columbia could easily offset these cuts by tapping into its $15 billion endowment, a third of which is said to be unrestricted. Better yet, it could reallocate resources from departments—like Middle Eastern studies and gender studies—that have been taken over by the very radicals who contributed to this predicament. While shifting funds might not be easy, if these research areas are as vital as Columbia claims, then it’s ultimately a matter of priorities.

Second, Columbia is reportedly harassing students who have written anti-Israel op-eds in school newspapers. According to some reports, Columbia’s Office of Institutional Equity—a name that suggests something less than good-faith compliance—has begun investigating students for expressing views that “may have subjected other students to ‘unwelcome conduct’” based on national origin.

Nowhere does President Trump’s executive order on combating anti-Semitism require this response. In fact, the order explicitly states that Title VI enforcement “shall not diminish or infringe upon any right protected . . . under the First Amendment.”

At best, Columbia’s approach seems to be a clumsy extension of the same speech-policing policies universities have used in recent years to regulate discussions on race and gender. At worst, it is textbook malicious compliance: the government demanded action against anti-Semitism, so the university is making martyrs out of those exercising their right to free expression.

What makes this response particularly egregious is that a straightforward alternative is readily available. Columbia could address its discrimination problem by identifying and expelling the students who have illegally occupied campus buildings, defaced property, and even assaulted security officers. This approach requires no speech policing and would instead hold accountable those directly responsible for harassing and intimidating Jewish and Israeli students.

Unfortunately, Columbia has been slow to expel students who violated school rules and committed minor crimes in their anti-Israel activism, even as it has eagerly investigated op-ed writers—a glaring double standard.

Finally, leaders at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism reportedly warned noncitizen students to “avoid publishing work on Gaza, Ukraine and protests related to their former classmate’s arrest.” This falsely equates writing about a controversial topic with engaging in lawless acts to advance the interests of terrorist groups, as detained Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil allegedly did.

The goal is clearly to make the Trump administration look like it is targeting speech, not unlawful and disorderly actions. But the message to students should be far simpler: don’t openly espouse terrorism. That’s wise counsel for citizens and noncitizens alike.

The Trump administration has rightly responded to Columbia’s malicious compliance with clear guidance. It should continue demonstrating that its focus is not on punishing scientists, op-ed writers, or journalism students, but on getting the university to address its discrimination problem at the root, as it explained in a letter sent on Thursday. That means expelling students who took part in illegal encampments, occupations, and vandalism; terminating faculty who participated; rolling back programs that have fostered anti-Semitism; and reviewing admissions practices to understand how Columbia became a hub for bigotry, lawlessness, and terrorist sympathies.

Rather than swiftly addressing civil rights violations, Columbia has chosen to throw a tantrum. Its reaction only confirms that the university deserves every consequence coming its way.

Photo by Islam Dogru/Anadolu via Getty Images

On June 5, 2024, astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore donned bulky blue spacesuits and clambered aboard Boeing’s Starliner space vehicle. Later that morning, the spacecraft launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral to begin its long-delayed first crewed mission to the International Space Station. Anyone who follows space news knows what happened next: Starliner suffered a series of malfunctions and was eventually declared unsafe to carry the two test-pilot astronauts back to Earth. Williams’s and Wilmore’s planned eight-day visit to the station turned into nine months. Finally, on Monday, March 17, the two astronauts climbed into sleek, white spacesuits designed by SpaceX and strapped themselves into seats in a SpaceX Dragon capsule attached to one of the station’s docking ports.

Now Williams and Wilmore are home. But the saga of their long ISS sojourn, including the debacle of Boeing’s effort to build a commercial space vehicle, will remain an enduring part of space lore. The episode marks a major setback to NASA’s long-term goal of helping private companies, including Boeing, develop and fly their own space vehicles. That program, known as Commercial Crew, allows NASA to avoid the expense of building and launching its own spacecraft and instead to fly its astronauts aboard privately owned rockets and crew vehicles. When that program launched 15 years ago, NASA leaders expected Boeing to be its lead vendor in commercial space operations. Instead, Elon Musk’s SpaceX—then considered a rookie startup in the space business—quickly became the agency’s indispensable partner in delivering crews and cargo to the space station. 

The Starliner mission was intended to prove that the Boeing vehicle was ready for routine crewed spaceflights. That would give NASA a choice of vendors when planning missions and give SpaceX its first commercial competition in the human spaceflight business. But after Starliner’s glitchy performance, that goal appears dubious. Indeed, industry insiders question whether Boeing—America’s most storied aerospace manufacturer—will continue to play a major role in the country’s space efforts. (Boeing did not respond to a request for comment.) Starliner eventually flew home, without its crew, landing safely in New Mexico. But that uneventful flight did little to quell doubts about the spacecraft’s (or Boeing’s) future. 

The spacesuits Williams and Wilmore wore on their outbound and return flights tell part of the story. Despite being a newcomer to human spaceflight, SpaceX was able to develop its form-fitting white pressure suits relatively rapidly. Both NASA and private SpaceX astronauts have been wearing them during missions aboard the company’s Dragon capsule since 2020. (If the suits look like something out of a sci-fi movie, that is no accident; the company consulted with Hollywood costume designer Jose Fernandez, who created suits for the silver-screen versions of characters like Wonder Woman and Wolverine.) The ability to design, test, and deploy new technologies quickly is a key factor setting SpaceX apart from legacy aerospace companies.

The suits Boeing designed for Starliner missions took much longer to develop. NASA tested them in an earthbound crew module in 2022, but they weren’t worn in flight until Williams’s and Wilmore’s bumpy Starliner test flight last year. While technologically sophisticated, the suits recall the bulky look of the “pumpkin” pressure suits worn by space shuttle astronauts. (The Boeing suits are not compatible with the Dragon capsule. That meant Williams and Wilmore would have to wait for properly fitted SpaceX suits to be delivered before they could even consider a return on the SpaceX ship.) Boeing’s halting pace designing its spacesuit was more than matched by the company’s tortured progress building the Starliner vehicle itself.

Boeing and SpaceX both started developing their respective crew vehicles around the same time. In 2014, both companies received NASA grants—$2.6 billion for SpaceX; $4.2 billion for Boeing—to complete their spacecraft. But while SpaceX raced ahead, Boeing struggled. Starliner’s first uncrewed test flight suffered disastrous software problems, and its second revealed worrisome hardware glitches. The company has announced $1.6 billion in losses on its Starliner program. That’s a particularly bitter pill given that the troubled spacecraft might never fly again, meaning Boeing would also miss out on expected future revenues. Meanwhile, SpaceX has launched a total of 14 crewed missions to the space station.

Williams and Wilmore are coming back to Earth in a very different political environment than the one they left when they launched last year. In its first two months in office, the Trump administration has brought sweeping changes to the U.S. government. Many space watchers expect NASA to undergo a major transformation, especially given Elon Musk’s deep involvement in setting the White House agenda. Many potential NASA reforms are long overdue, as I outlined in a City Journal article last month.

One key question is how NASA can move forward with its cost-saving commercial programs given the Starliner setback. Boeing has already said it won’t participate in future projects that employ the strict fixed-price budgeting rules NASA requires for commercial vendors. Fortunately, NASA’s public-private partnership with SpaceX has been a stunning success, and other vendors, including Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are making progress. A bigger issue is what to do with NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS). That bloated, Apollo-style rocket was built the old-fashioned way, with lavish, open-ended contracts, and is owned and flown by NASA itself. It is currently scheduled to carry U.S. astronauts to the Moon in 2027. But the project’s delays and cost-overruns are legendary, and many space experts advise simply killing the program. That move would be another blow to Boeing, which is one of the lead contractors on the project.

For the moment, spaceflight advocates—not to mention NASA insiders—are on tenterhooks waiting to learn which programs the White House will target. For example, the Mars Society, an outside space advocacy group, recently expressed outrage over reported plans to enact a 50 percent cut in NASA’s budget for unmanned science missions, including the Hubble Space Telescope and Mars Curiosity Rover. The group described the potential cuts as a “brutal attempt to wreck American space science.”

During Williams and Wilmore’s long stay at the ISS, space watchers got a taste of the politically charged way President Trump and his advisor Musk approach space issues. “The @POTUS has asked @SpaceX to bring home the 2 astronauts stranded at the @Space_Station as soon as possible,” Musk tweeted on his X platform in late January. “We will do so. Terrible that the Biden administration left them there so long.” President Trump later confirmed on his own social media platform that he had asked Musk “to ‘go get’ the 2 brave astronauts who have been virtually abandoned in space by the Biden Administration . . . . Elon will soon be on his way. Hopefully, all will be safe. Good luck Elon!!!” 

The exchange suggested that SpaceX was about to launch a daring emergency mission to rescue Williams and Wilmore from their sad abandonment in space. In fact, NASA’s plan for bringing the astronauts home had been in place for months. Why did the return take so long? The ISS always has at least one SpaceX Dragon capsule attached to serve as a lifeboat in case of an emergency. NASA could have opted to use that capsule to bring back the astronauts, but first it would need to launch another Dragon to take over that lifeboat function. So, instead of adding an expensive, additional launch to its schedule, NASA decided to integrate Williams and Wilmore into the regular ISS crew and then fly them home as part of a scheduled crew rotation. That required altering the station’s crew rotation plan a bit: a new four-member team—Crew-9—was slated to arrive at the ISS in September; NASA bumped two astronauts from that team in order to allow Williams and Wilmore to fill those positions and take those two seats on the return flight. That meant that the two Starliner astronauts would stay aboard the ISS for the full six-month duration of the Crew-9 mission and then fly home with their new teammates.

It all sounds complicated, but making Williams and Wilmore part of the ISS crew was the simplest, least expensive solution. As highly experienced astronauts, they were able to make real contributions to the ISS mission, including taking part in a spacewalk. The unexpected failure of Starliner kept the two astronauts living aboard the station much longer than expected, but they weren’t “abandoned” and didn’t require a rescue mission. On Facebook, NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg noted that “the decision to bring them home on a SpaceX vehicle was made LAST SUMMER. And nothing has changed since.” The president might not know this, but Musk certainly should.

To outsiders, the idea of spending nine months in space sounds like a terrible hardship. That’s not how astronauts see it. Astronauts spend their entire careers training—and hoping—for an opportunity to fly. Many never get the chance. Others are lucky to get to space once or twice. So, while the extended absence from their families was likely bittersweet, Williams and Wilmore seem to have embraced their ISS experience. (Williams now has the distinction of having spent more hours conducting spacewalks than any other female astronaut in history.) As Nyberg explained, “As a former astronaut, the only astronauts I feel bad for are the two who had to be removed from Crew-9 to accommodate Butch and Suni’s return and now have to wait for their chance to live and work on the ISS!”

Williams and Wilmore are now back with their families. But, with major decisions about the future of NASA looming, the political drama surrounding the American space program is likely just beginning.

Top Photo: NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams (Photo by MIGUEL J. RODRIGUEZ CARRILLO/AFP via Getty Images)