The Investigative Journal’s weekly survey of policy research from across the ideological spectrum. Each entry identifies the publishing institution’s orientation and principal sources of funding, links to the original document, and summarizes the findings in the authors’ own terms. Publication dates are noted throughout: this week’s fresh releases lead, followed by recent reports that continue to shape the debate.
Two threads ran through think tank output heading into the July 4 weekend. The first is the mounting pressure artificial intelligence is placing on both the physical power grid and the federal balance sheet. The second is the perennial contest over how governments tax property, finance local services, and account for the true cost of what they spend. Below are eight reports from nonpartisan, libertarian, center-right, and progressive institutions, grouped by theme.
RAND: AI’s power appetite meets a fragile supply chain
The week’s most consequential release came from the RAND Corporation, the nonprofit research organization that has historically drawn the bulk of its revenue from U.S. government contracts, especially with the Department of Defense and other federal agencies. RAND discloses that this particular study was “independently initiated” and financed through philanthropic gifts and grants to its Center on AI, Security, and Technology rather than by a government client. Published June 25, Supply Chain, Energy, and AI Nexus: Evaluating AI Energy Supply Chain Vulnerabilities runs 121 pages and maps the physical equipment behind the AI build-out.
The report finds that more than half of North America faces a substantial risk of energy shortfalls within the next five to ten years, driven by data center demand, electrification, and industrial growth. Using a composite vulnerability score, the authors identify steam turbines, geothermal production wells, conductors and wires, and battery technologies as the most supply-chain-vulnerable equipment for front-of-the-meter installations in 2025. Crucially, they conclude that data centers cannot escape these constraints by going off-grid, because off-grid “bridge power” projects rely on many of the same natural gas turbines as grid-connected sites.
Quantifying the stakes, RAND estimates that supply-chain threats to front-of-the-meter components could reduce available net power capacity by roughly 7 to 31 percent by 2030 relative to a no-delay baseline, with battery bottlenecks behind the meter shaving off another 8 percent. The authors recommend that the Department of Energy adopt a formal decision framework for responding to shortages, that the International Trade Commission and Customs and Border Protection sharpen tariff-code granularity to track vulnerable components, and that DOE and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission coordinate with utilities and large data-center customers to maintain reserves of the most critical grid hardware.
Brookings: the political geography of AI exposure
The Brookings Institution — a century-old Washington institution generally regarded as centrist to center-left, which states that it is “supported by a diverse array of funders” including foundations, corporations, and governments, and that each publication reflects its authors’ views alone — examined where AI-exposed workers live and how they vote. In The political geography of AI exposure (June 3), Mark Muro, Todd Jones, and Shriya Methkupally weight occupational exposure estimates — drawn from Anthropic’s data on Claude usage, with automation counted twice as heavily as augmentation — by local employment.
The analysis reports that 62 of the 100 most AI-exposed U.S. counties voted Democratic in the 2024 presidential election, and that those counties hold about 75 percent of the population of the top-100 group. Highly exposed, Democratic-leaning jurisdictions include New York County, San Francisco, Boulder and Broomfield in Colorado, Santa Clara, Hennepin in Minnesota, and King County in Washington. Lower-exposure states that voted Republican — Nevada, Mississippi, Wyoming, and North Dakota — register exposure levels of 10 to 11 percent.
The authors are careful to flag that the pattern reflects occupational sorting rather than ideology, and that the correlation carries no causal claim; they even cite research suggesting AI adoption can generate jobs and benefit Democratic-leaning areas. Still, they argue that white-collar, AI-exposed “blue” counties could become flashpoints for economic anxiety heading into the November midterms. It is a data point worth pairing with the RAND findings above: the same technology straining the grid is reshaping the electorate.
Center for American Progress: don’t bank on AI to fix the debt
The Center for American Progress, a progressive institution founded in 2003 by John Podesta and financed by foundations, corporations, labor organizations, and individual donors, turned to the fiscal outlook. In a June report, Why the National Debt Matters More Than It Used To and Why We Should Not Count on AI To Fix the Problem, economist Bobby Kogan argues that federal debt is now larger and more expensive than in previous generations.
The report contends that debt began outgrowing the economy this century, a trajectory it traces to tax cuts — beginning with the 2001 measures — that it says disproportionately benefited the highest earners, and that the “fiscal gap” has widened over the past decade. On the question animating much of Washington, the analysis concludes that betting on an AI-driven productivity surge to close that gap is not warranted on present evidence, and that the responsible course is to “hope for the best and plan for the worst.” That framing — emphasizing revenue and tax policy as the debt’s primary driver — is contested by the free-market institutions covered below, which locate the problem on the spending side of the ledger.
Cato Institute: federal spending as a “leaky bucket”
The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank co-founded in 1977 with early backing from industrialist Charles Koch, says it accepts no government funding and relies on individual donors, foundations, and corporate contributions. In Federal Government Spending Is a Leaky Bucket (June 23), Chris Edwards and Ryan Bourne argue that every dollar routed through Washington loses value at multiple stages.
The paper describes “leaks” that begin with the deadweight losses of taxation and continue through central-planning failures, congressional misallocation, and bureaucratic waste. It cites an estimate that federal tax compliance costs reached roughly $546 billion in 2024 — more than 10 percent of the revenue collected — and points to the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program, projected to cost about $100 billion, as a case study: the authors note the ships doubled in cost, struggled with their intended mine-hunting and anti-submarine missions, and are expected to last roughly 10 years rather than the planned 25.
Edwards and Bourne’s central methodological complaint is that the Congressional Budget Office and most federal agencies omit deadweight and compliance costs when evaluating programs, which they say biases analysis toward approving initiatives that are net losers for the economy. Read alongside the CAP report, the two papers frame the ideological core of the deficit debate: whether the remedy lies chiefly in raising revenue or in curbing and reforming outlays.
Tax Foundation: Florida’s property-tax gamble
The Tax Foundation, founded in 1937 and nonpartisan with a pro-growth, free-market orientation, is funded by individuals, foundations, and businesses. In The Real November Ballot Question: What Price Are Floridians Willing to Pay to “Save Their Homes?” (June 3), Nicole Fox and Katherine Loughead examine HJR 1, a constitutional amendment the Florida Legislature passed on June 2 and sent to the November 2026 ballot.
The measure would raise the homestead exemption on most non-school levies to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028, indexed thereafter, while requiring newcomers to wait five years for the full benefit and capping annual assessment growth on non-homestead property at 5 percent. Citing legislative fiscal analysis, the authors report the amendment could cut local government revenue by $4.6 billion in its first year and $8.4 billion in its second, with no accompanying plan to replace the money. They note that property taxes supplied 74 percent of Florida local tax collections in fiscal 2023, and that homestead property accounts for 46.6 percent of the state’s just (market) value.
The Tax Foundation’s assessment is skeptical: it argues the change would shift burdens in distortionary ways — onto commercial property, second homes, and new residents — and push localities toward higher sales taxes. The analysts point to earlier Foundation research finding that full property-tax elimination would require an average combined state-and-local sales tax rate of about 15.34 percent. Their preferred alternative is a well-structured levy limit that caps the growth of collections over time rather than carving out the base.
AEI: a “year of starter homes” amid cooling prices
The American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank funded by foundations, corporations, and individual donors, published its monthly AEI Housing Market Indicators on July 1. Compiled by Edward Pinto and Tobias Peter of the AEI Housing Center, the update shows home-price appreciation continuing to cool: preliminary year-over-year appreciation for May 2026 was 1.4 percent — the second-lowest reading in the series — up slightly from 1.2 percent in April but down from 2.4 percent a year earlier, with the median purchase mortgage rate holding at 6.375 percent.
The Housing Center frames 2026 as “the year of starter homes.” It counts 188 housing bills introduced across state legislatures this session, 26 of them in 15 states aligning at least partly with the Center’s supply-oriented “Strong Foundations” playbook, and projects that the aligned measures could add some 281,000 homes per year if enacted as designed. Five states — Idaho, Washington, Kansas, Virginia, and Maine — have already enacted seven qualifying bills.
The report also makes an affordability argument that cuts against common assumptions: single-family rentals, it finds, supply 59 percent of the nation’s rental bedrooms and 82 percent of bedrooms in the lowest-rent decile, functioning as what the authors call an “invisible safety net” of naturally occurring affordable housing. An accompanying AEI survey reports broad public support for supply reforms, particularly when framed around helping first-time buyers.
Urban Institute: defending homeownership gains for underserved buyers
For a complementary view from the center-left, the Urban Institute — established in 1968, generally oriented toward the center-left, and supported by government agencies, foundations, and individual donors — released Advancing and Defending Homeownership Gains on June 9. The evaluation was funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation, which underwrites the Wealth Opportunities Realized Through Homeownership (WORTH) Initiative it assesses.
The report tracks local collaboratives working to expand homeownership in high-barrier communities and communities of color. It finds that, despite the same elevated rates and prices documented in AEI’s indicators, these collaboratives continued to help households buy and keep homes over the past year, increasingly leaning on technology and shared experimentation to sustain their impact. Where AEI emphasizes loosening supply constraints, Urban emphasizes targeted assistance to buyers who face the steepest barriers — two orientations converging on the same affordability crunch from opposite ends.
Carnegie: NATO’s mood shifts before the Ankara summit
Finally, on foreign policy, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — endowed in 1910 by Andrew Carnegie, describing itself as nonpartisan, funded by foundations, governments, and individuals, and stating that it “does not take institutional positions on public policy issues” — published a July 1 roundtable, Ahead of the Ankara Summit, NATO’s Mood Has Changed. The views belong to scholars Sophia Besch, Alper Coşkun, Nate Reynolds, and Stephen Wertheim rather than to Carnegie itself.
The analysts assess that European allies have shifted from trying to appease the U.S. administration toward managing an orderly transition to a more Europe-led alliance, with what they describe as “burden-shifting” supplanting “burden-sharing.” They note the Pentagon has announced a roughly six-month review of U.S. force posture in Europe, and that European capitals are seeking predictability above all so they can plan around future American capabilities. On the conflicts shadowing the summit, the scholars observe that Ukraine will press for air-defense interceptors while Russia seeks to widen transatlantic divisions, and that host nation Turkey aims to leverage the moment to cement its role as a pivotal security actor.
Presented as a range of expert judgments rather than a forecast, the piece is a useful map of the questions the Ankara meeting will test — and a reminder that alliance management is now a live variable in U.S. strategic planning.
Why it matters for TIJ readers
Several of these reports land squarely on The Investigative Journal’s core beats. RAND’s supply-chain findings sit at the intersection of national security, critical infrastructure, and procurement oversight — and its recommendations would hand new monitoring roles to federal agencies whose execution will be worth watching. The Cato, Tax Foundation, and CAP papers, read together, define the fiscal-accountability debate from three vantage points, disagreeing less about the numbers than about whether taxing or spending is the lever that matters. And the AEI–Urban pairing shows how analysts across the spectrum are converging on housing affordability while prescribing very different medicine.
As always, orientation and funding are disclosed here not to discount any institution’s work but to let readers weigh it with full context. The original documents are linked above; readers are encouraged to consult them directly.
This roundup summarizes publicly available research; all figures are attributed to the cited reports and their authors. The Investigative Journal presents findings from across the political spectrum and does not endorse the conclusions of any individual institution.