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Hoover Daily Report | April 14, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

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  Welcome to "the Hoover Daily Report". Ideas Advancing
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  Freedom. It's Tuesday, April 14th, twenty twenty six.
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  Today, Darrell Duffie asks if it is time to draw down the Fed’s
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  multitrillion-dollar balance sheet. Michael McFaul writes about the new dawn
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  in Hungary and what it means for global antidemocratic forces. And Eugene Volokh
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  dives into a Florida judge’s decision to dismiss President Trump’s $10 billion
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  defamation suit against The Wall Street Journal.
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  Is the Fed Bigger Than It Needs To Be?
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  The 2008 Global Financial Crisis set off enormous growth in the Federal Reserve’s
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  balance sheet—and COVID measures and quantitative easing kept adding to the
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  increase. Today, reserve balances are 300 times bigger than they were in 2007,
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  writes Senior Fellow Darrell Duffie, who asks: Does the Fed really need them to be
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  so high? Large caches of reserves are a direct response to the needs of the
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  biggest and most complex banks to show self-sufficient sources of liquidity, he
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  writes, and the banks are leery of appearing to fall short on this metric.
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  Still, there are strategies the Fed could promote that would bring down that need
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  for $3 trillion in reserve balances, he writes—if these changes are carried out
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  mindfully.
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  Viktor Orbán’s Loss Matters Far Beyond Hungary.
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  For MS Now, Senior Fellow Michael McFaul writes of the impact of Hungarian
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  strongman Viktor Orbán’s election loss on Sunday. After 16 years in power, during
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  which Orbán worked to gerrymander, court-pack, and influence-peddle his way
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  to permanent control, the opposition Tisza party now has a supermajority in
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  the House of National Assembly. McFaul writes that new Hungarian leader Péter
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  Magyar will stop blocking EU assistance for Ukraine, slowly cut Hungarian imports
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  of Russian oil and gas, and begin to repair democratic institutions in his
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  country. “In the 21st-century struggle between autocrats and democrats, these
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  election results in Hungary rank among the most significant outcomes in the past
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  20 years,” he writes.
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  Hoover Institution Gathering Explores Campus Culture, Bias, and Declining Trust
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  in Higher Education.
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  A cross-disciplinary group of scholars from Hoover and around the country
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  gathered at the Hoover Institution on March 6 to discuss the culture on
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  university campuses in the United States, particularly with respect to how this
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  culture shapes open inquiry, the welcoming of students from different
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  backgrounds and viewpoints, and public trust in higher education. “Our
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  universities continue to be critical national assets for research and
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  scientific innovation, for developing a well-informed citizenry, for leveling the
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  playing field for success, for social mobility,” Brandice Canes-Wrone, director
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  of the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions, told attendees. “And yet at
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  the same time, we’re at a time of historically lower public trust. And as
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  we'll talk about more today, a lot of that lower trust relates to cultural
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  critiques.” The gathering was organized by Canes-Wrone and Senior Fellow Eugene
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  Volokh as a collaboration between RAI’s initiative on higher education and the
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  Hoover Institution Program on Free Expression, which Volokh leads.
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  President Trump's Libel Lawsuit over Wall Street Journal Article on Epstein's
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  Birthday Letters Dismissed.
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  On his blog, Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh breaks down why a judge in the Southern
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  District of Florida dismissed President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against The Wall
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  Street Journal over its reporting on Trump’s alleged contribution to a book
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  compiled to celebrate the 50th birthday of the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
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  Trump’s complaint hinged in part on the claim that Wall Street Journal reporters’
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  continued investigation into the veracity of the entry in the birthday book, after
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  Trump told them it was “totally fake” constituted actual malice. “To establish
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  actual malice, "a plaintiff must show the defendant deliberately avoided
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  investigating the veracity of the statement in order to evade learning the
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  truth,” Judge Darrin Gayles wrote. “The Complaint comes nowhere close to this
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  standard. Quite the opposite.”.
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  How the Strait of Hormuz Saves the World’s Poor from Starvation.
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  In The New York Post, Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg points out that natural
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  gas–produced artificial fertilizers are crucial to global food production, and
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  about 25 percent of all artificial fertilizer produced each year has to pass
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  through the Strait of Hormuz. “The UN estimates that the [current US-Iran]
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  conflict could drive fertilizer prices up by 15% to 20% and push at least another
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  45 million people into acute hunger,” Lomborg writes. The ingenuity of methods
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  such as using natural gas to produce fertilizer are the main reason only a
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  small fraction of the world’s population experiences chronic hunger today.
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  Featured Hoover Podcast.
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  EconTalk.
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  EconTalk is an award-winning weekly podcast hosted by Russ Roberts, featuring
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  wide-ranging and in-depth conversations with an eclectic roster of guests,
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  including authors, doctors, philosophers, psychologists, economists, and more,
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  exploring the ordinary and extraordinary people, events, and innovations shaping
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  today’s world.
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  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Tuesday, April 14th, twenty twenty six.
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  Each weekday, we bring you research, analysis, and commentary focused on
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  public policy, national security, and the ideas shaping American society and
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  government.
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  The Hoover Institution at Stanford University is grounded in constitutional
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  principles with a commitment to sustaining the safeguards of the American
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  way of life.
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  Thank you for listening.
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  For links to all the articles and interviews mentioned today, visit
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  hoover.org slash, HDR.