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Hoover Daily Report | March 20, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

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  Welcome to "the Hoover Daily Report". Ideas Advancing
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  Freedom. It's Friday, March 20th, 2026.
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  This Friday, Tom Church and Daniel Heil analyze the relative scale of federal
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  spending on entitlement programs versus other federal budget items;
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  David Fedor
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  speaks with Bill Whalen about American energy strategy amid global market
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  volatility; and Jonathan Roll argues that it’s not too late for the US and Israel
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  to benefit from clarifying the objectives of their joint war against Iran’s
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  revolutionary regime.
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  Counting the Days.
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  One way to make sense of the huge numbers in the federal budget is to measure them
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  against “Social Security and Medicare days”—that is, how many days of spending
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  by these two huge programs would it take to cover any other program? In a new Plot
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  Points analysis at Freedom Frequency, Policy Fellows Tom Church and Daniel Heil
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  run these numbers. Defense outlays, for instance, would take 126 days of Social
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  Security; Medicare spending would take just over four months. The proposed $200
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  billion Iran war supplement would add 27 more. At the other end of the scale,
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  keeping Amtrak running would take a mere eight hours. In between are myriad
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  government programs, some of which are mistakenly believed to be big drags on
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  the budget. Foreign aid offers one example. Church and Heil argue that
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  getting an accurate sense of the relative scale of different items in the nation’s
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  budget is crucial if policymakers are to find ways to avoid insolvencies, higher
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  taxes, or severe benefits cuts in years ahead.
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  Oil Shocks, Energy Strategies, and George Shultz’s Wisdom.
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  A worldwide oil shock triggered by hostilities in the Middle East raises
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  questions about the viability of America’s energy strategy and the ability
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  of the United States and other developed nations to ride out the current storm. On
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  a new episode of Matters of Policy & Politics, Policy Fellow David Fedor, a
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  member of Hoover’s George P. Shultz Energy Policy Working Group, puts 2026’s
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  oil drama in historical context and explains why Californians pay more at the
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  pump than most Americans. Fedor also touches on a few other policy items that
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  have Hoover’s attention: the state of US-India energy relations; a nuclear
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  reactor approved for Wyoming; Indo-Pacific nations hamstrung by limited
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  supplies of LNG; and Taiwan’s energy security. Fedor, who worked alongside the
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  late Secretary Shultz for nearly a decade and a half, also touches on his mentor’s
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  intellectual curiosity and how Shultz might parse these troubled times.
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  How To Credibly Define Victory in the Middle East War.
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  “Defining war objectives is not only the conceptual bedrock of effective war
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  planning and execution,” Research Fellow Jonathan Roll writes at RealClear
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  Defense. “It is also part of the strategic equation itself.” Yet Roll
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  notes that one of the challenges for US and Israeli leadership during the current
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  war with Iran has been inconsistent messaging about the campaign’s ultimate
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  objectives. Roll, acknowledging possible downsides of clarifying the war’s
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  objectives, nevertheless maintains that providing such clarity could yield
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  “potentially substantial” benefits. “Even though the definition of war objectives
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  now would be seen as belated,” Roll says, “the advantages of such an approach …
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  largely outweigh the costs.” Roll concludes that “defining a clearly
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  attainable endgame” remains “an essential part of achieving victory.”.
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  Strategic Costs of US Global Success.
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  Viewed across five decades, the structure of global power has changed less than
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  commonly assumed, Senior Fellow Stephen Kotkin argues in this lecture from
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  Hoover’s 2025 Summer Policy Boot Camp. Kotkin explains how maritime democracies
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  continue to confront large, land-based authoritarian powers, while the United
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  States retains a dominant share of global wealth, military capacity, innovation,
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  and cultural influence. What has changed, Kotkin says, is scale: Global
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  interconnection, dual-use technology, and the diffusion of economic success have
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  made power harder to control and easier to exploit. The result is not decline,
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  but a world destabilized by the unintended consequences of victory.
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  Judicial Importance, Independence, and Legitimacy in Polarized Times.
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  On March 4, the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions held a
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  webinar—co-sponsored by the Stanford Constitutional Law Center—about the role
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  of the judiciary today. Senior Fellows Michael McConnell, Eugene Volokh, and Tom
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  Clark were joined by University of Chicago Law School professor Genevieve
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  Lakier. Panelists covered how the federal courts are functioning—and perceived—amid
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  today’s polarized political landscape. The conversation also explored questions
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  such as: What is the judiciary’s role in safeguarding democracy? How can courts
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  maintain legitimacy in a divided society? And how should we interpret recent
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  high-profile court rulings in the broader context of American constitutionalism?
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  Featured Research Initiative: Technology Policy Accelerator.
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  The Hoover Institution Technology Policy Accelerator seeks to understand the
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  drivers and dynamics of technological innovation in the 21st century, assess
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  the opportunities and risks that breakthrough technologies are creating,
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  and develop governance approaches that maximize the benefits and mitigate the
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  risks for the nation and the world.
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  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Friday, March 20th, 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.