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Hoover Daily Report | May 19, 2026 · Hoover Daily Report

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  Welcome to "the Hoover Daily Report". Ideas Advancing
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  Freedom. It's Tuesday, May 19th, twenty twenty six .
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  Today, Elizabeth Economy writes of China’s reluctance to fill in any gaps
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  created by foreign policy shifts under way in Washington during the second Trump
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  administration. John Cochrane recaps a new Hoover book drawn from work discussed
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  at the annual monetary policy conference. And Orin Kerr explores a new ruling on
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  the admissibility of evidence at Luigi Mangione’s state murder trial, that
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  conflicts with a ruling made at his federal trial.
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  The US and China Crave Hegemony Without Responsibility.
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  In the Financial Times, Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy writes about her main
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  takeaway from the Trump-Xi Summit: the Chinese Communist Party doesn’t actually
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  want to fill any of the perceived gaps generated by President Trump’s withdrawal
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  from multilateralism and America’s tussles with many of its traditional
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  allies. The hawkish view of policy regarding China continues to have
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  bipartisan support in Washington, yet China isn’t moving to increase its
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  foreign aid budget or assume any costs of global leadership after Washington cut
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  aid and backed away from global responsibilities. “The world is
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  confronted now with two superpowers that want the rights of global leadership
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  without any of the responsibilities,” Economy writes. “Faced with this choice,
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  the response of most other countries appears to be ‘none of the above.’ ”.
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  Finishing the Inflation Job.
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  In this special Grumpy Economist Weekly Rant, Senior Fellow John Cochrane
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  highlights Finishing the Inflation Job and New Challenges for Monetary Policy, a
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  new Hoover Institution Press volume drawn from Hoover’s annual monetary policy
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  conference. The volume brings together leading voices from central banking,
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  financial regulation, and economic policy, including Kevin Warsh, Chris
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  Waller, Loretta Mester, Charles Plosser, Augustine Carstens, Isabel Schnabel, and
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  others. Cochrane previews the volume’s major themes, the unfinished fight
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  against inflation, digital assets, private credit, international risks,
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  fiscal pressures, and the increasingly difficult relationship between monetary
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  policy and fiscal policy in a government facing rising debt burdens. With
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  inflation still elevated and new risks emerging across the financial system, the
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  central message is clear: finishing the inflation job will require confronting
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  the next generation of monetary policy challenges.
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  France’s Original Culture War: The Dreyfus Affair.
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  Catherine Ostler joins Distinguished Visiting Fellow Andrew Roberts to discuss
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  her new book The Renoir Girls, which unravels the extraordinary true story
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  behind Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s famous portraits of the Khan Dawnver sisters—a
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  tale that stretches from the glittering salons of Belle Époque Paris and the fury
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  of the Dreyfus Affair to Nazi-occupied France and to Auschwitz. Blending art,
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  aristocracy, scandal, betrayal, and survival, Ostler reveals how one wealthy
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  Jewish family became caught in the violent currents of French anti-Semitism,
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  while the paintings themselves survived war, looting, and exile to become silent
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  witnesses to one of Europe’s darkest centuries.
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  The Missing Part of the State Court Mangione Suppression Ruling?
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  At the Volokh Conspiracy, Senior Fellow Orin Kerr writes about a New York state
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  trial court’s decision to suppress some of the contents of a backpack seized from
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  Luigi Mangione, who stands accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian
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  Thompson, in contrast with a federal judge who ruled all contents of the bag
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  are admissible. Kerr, who admits he found the new opinion “a little odd,” writes
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  that the court based its decision on New York state constitutional law, even
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  though police seized the bag in Pennsylvania. “The heightened
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  restrictions of New York law apply to the Pennsylvania officers, even though they
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  presumably didn't know (and maybe couldn't know) they would be governed by
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  New York state search and seizure law,” Kerr writes of the ruling.
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  How Much Longer Will the 1 Percent Save California’s Budget?
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  The proposed California state budget stands on the shoulders of a very small
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  number of giants: the high earners with taxable incomes tied to equities. Not
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  only are income tax windfalls from this source a gamble, writes Senior Fellow Lee
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  E. Ohanian, but those taxpayers are the ones most equipped to abandon California
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  for states that don’t treat them as cash cows. Stock-market gains predicted in
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  Governor Newsom’s budget are far from a sure thing, he notes: revenue swings in
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  recent years have veered from a 55 percent increase (2021) to a nearly 35
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  percent drop (2023). And now, proposals for wealth taxes to fund bloated state
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  projects are posing a threat to California’s business creation and
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  productivity. “As a Californian,” Ohanian asks, “can you feel any benefits of a
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  state budget that has increased about 40 percent (after adjusting for inflation)
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  over the past eight years?”.
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  Featured Hoover Podcast.
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  Matters of Policy & Politics.
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  Matters of Policy & Politics, a podcast from the Hoover Institution, will examine
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  the direction of federal, state, and local leadership and elections, with an
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  occasional examination of national security and geopolitical concerns, all
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  featuring insightful analysis provided by Hoover Institution scholars and guests.
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  That’s your Hoover Daily Report for Tuesday, May 19th, 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.