In Defense of the Tourist Trap: Why Following the Crowd Might Be the Smartest Way To Travel
Tourist traps aren't failures of imagination—they’re optimized cultural hubs built for your enjoyment.
Features
Cincinnati's Beer-Loving Germans Endured Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Alcohol Resistance
The city's German immigrant experience suggests that immediate assimilation isn't necessary to eventual assimilation.
Trad Wives and Tallow Fries: How the Wellness Wars Flipped Health and Food Politics Upside Down
Does RFK Jr.'s MAHA movement want to loosen the government's grasp on food and medicine—or use government power to impose blueberries on everyone else?
How Tariffs Are Breaking the Manufacturing Industries Trump Says He Wants To Protect
Most imports to the U.S. are raw materials, intermediate parts, or equipment—the stuff that manufacturing firms need to make things.
What Ronald Reagan's Fusionist Politics Teach Us About Liberty, Virtue, and Their Limits
Fusionism holds that virtue and liberty are mutually reinforcing, and that neither is possible in any lasting or meaningful way without the other.
Cocaine Hippos, Monkey Copyrights, and a Horse Named Justice: The Debate Over Animal Personhood
Are human courts the best venue to protect wild animals?
Are the News Media in Their Onion Era?
The lessons "America's Finest News Source" could offer the rest of the press.
What if the President Tries to Annex Greenland and Canada?
Trump's new imperialism makes neither economic nor geopolitical sense.
Can the President Refuse To Spend Money Authorized by Congress?
Impoundment, line-item vetoes, and the tricky problem of cutting spending through the executive branch
Not Guilty but Punished Anyway
Sentencing defendants based on acquitted conduct violates basic notions of justice.
The Anarchist and the Republican
How John McClaughry and Karl Hess fought to decentralize power—one from inside the system, one ever further from it
Your Tribalism Is Dumb
We don't just crave being on a team; we also crave a rival. We want to be in a club, and we want a nemesis to motivate us.
The New Prohibitionists Are Hijacking Federal Dietary Guidelines
The campaign to make America dry is as dubious as the campaign for the food pyramid.
Comic: The Bottom-Up POV of Jane Jacobs
Challenging the common knowledge of urban planning
Their Kids Said They Were Trans. Then CPS Came Knocking.
Across the country, parents of gender-dysphoric kids are confronting state intrusion.
When the Government Puts Wolves in Your Backyard
Endangered red wolves became a symbol of federal overreach—and a target for local ire—in eastern North Carolina.
The American Right Is Abandoning Mises
The Austrian economist's principled thought once served as a check on the intellectual right.
How To Get Rid of a Tenured Professor
"Officially, it was a voluntary departure. But I sure felt like I'd been pushed out."
Trump's Dramatic Crossroads Between Protectionism and Dynamism
The GOP faces a choice about how to move forward.
Google Is Big. Does That Make It a Monopoly?
To understand the federal government's case against Google Search, you need to understand the different visions over monopoly and government power.
Surrogacy Is the New Battleground in Reproductive Freedom
Critics on both the left and the right decry surrogacy as exploitative, especially when carriers are compensated.
The Strange Case of The Immortality Key
Many people depicted in a supposedly "groundbreaking" book on psychedelics and religion are now speaking out against it.
The Most Controversial Paper in the History of Psychedelic Research May Never See the Light of Day
Researchers gave psilocybin to two dozen religious clergy. Was it guided by science, religion, or some awkward combination?
Javier Milei Ended Rent Control. Now the Argentine Real Estate Market Is Coming Back to Life.
"The effects were immediately seen by everyone and they were all beneficial," says the former vice president of Argentina's central bank.
How the Fair Housing Act Gave Us Emotional Support Parrots
The right to a reasonable accommodation has produced some absurd results.
Finding Trillions in Federal Cuts Is Easy. But Will Trump and Musk Follow Through?
DOGE won't necessarily have to kill any of Republicans’ sacred cows—but they will have to be put on a diet.
Comic: It's America's Founding Grandfather, John Locke
Decades after his death, the English philosopher's ideas helped shape the American republic.
Cutting Off Trade Will Make the U.S. Poorer and China More Totalitarian
Politicians in both major parties see the People's Republic as an economic and military threat. But the real threat is an isolated China.
The Pentagon Keeps Losing Equipment and Buying Stuff It Doesn't Need
How the U.S. military busts its budget on wasteful, careless, and unnecessary 'self-licking ice cream cones.'
'The Constitution Is Not a Suicide Pact'
How a 1949 Supreme Court dissent gave birth to a meme that subverts free speech and civil liberties
The Improbable Rise of MAGA-Musk
Is Elon Musk a reactionary with a defective bullshit meter or the best part of the second Trump administration?
Everybody Hates Prices
How much should a Wendy's Baconator cost? Elizabeth Warren thinks the government should help decide.
An El Paso Christian Charity Is Caught Up in Texas' Border Fight Against the Feds
Annunciation House feeds, shelters, and clothes immigrants. State officials say it's "systemic criminal conduct."
Joe Biden Once Understood Why Tariffs Are Bad. Then He Got Trade Policy Amnesia.
Despite campaigning against Donald Trump's tariff hikes, Biden left many of them in place.
Joe Biden Tried To Use the Regulatory State To Micromanage Everything
The Biden administration's war on "junk fees" is emblematic of its nanny state instincts.
Joe Biden Flip-Flopped on Immigration and Embraced Trump's Tactics
The Biden administration continued many of the same immigration enforcement measures he lambasted Trump for using.
Biden's Transformation From a Dove to a Hawk
From Afghanistan to Ukraine to Israel, Biden's was a presidency defined by contradictions on peace and interventionism.
Biden's Attempts To Forgive Student Debt Were a Disaster
While the administration was fighting for debt forgiveness in court, it was also rolling out a broken FAFSA application form.
Bidenomics Goes Out With a Whimper
There's a good reason Biden eventually stopped saying Bidenomics. Americans didn't like the results of his economic policies.
Biden's COVID-19 Response Eroded Civil Liberties
Mandates, school closures, and overreach defined an administration that doubled down on failed policies.
Biden Failed To Deescalate the Drug War
Though he commuted some drug offenders' sentences, Biden never delivered on the rest of his drug reform promises.
What Happened to Biden's Ambitious Criminal Justice Reform Plans?
Joe Biden ran on some good ideas to reform policing and incarceration, which he mostly failed to deliver.
Bye, Joe: Evaluating the Biden Presidency
From the war in Afghanistan to the war on drugs, Reason writers offer performance reviews of Joe Biden's single term as president.
The Great American City Upon a Hill Is Always Under Construction
American history is often a story of people leaving to try to build their voluntary utopias.
Abolish the FDA
Many seriously ill people die waiting for the FDA to approve drugs that regulators in other advanced countries have already approved.
Abolish the TSA
The agency has not made air travel safer but it has made it costlier and more time-consuming to fly.
Abolish the NSA and CIA
Ending these unaccountable agencies would safeguard civil liberties and improve intelligence gathering.
