Week in Review: Who Watches the Watchdogs? A Week of Fiscal Alarms and an Audit of the Auditors
GAO says U.S. debt now rivals the economy — and an audit found the watchdog over inspectors general missing nearly every legal deadline this week.
Think Tank Roundup: Week of June 15, 2026 — Brookings Sounds the Alarm on Social Security
Brookings on Social Security, Cato on Trump Accounts, Tax Foundation on tariffs and Heritage on the FY2027 defense budget—this week in policy research.
Think Tank Roundup: Week of June 4, 2026 — Brookings Says Debt Path Worse Than CBO Reports
Brookings argues the federal debt trajectory is worse than CBO's baseline projection. Plus: Niskanen on the D.C. National Guard deployment, AEI on $30 billion in ed tech, CFR's 2026 conflict…
Week in Review: The Accountability Harvest — Record Recoveries Meet Shrinking Inputs
Inspectors general booked a record $65.6 billion in FY 2025. GAO mapped $100 billion in duplication. DOJ posted record False Claims Act recoveries. Across the same week, Pentagon civilian rolls…
Think Tank Roundup: Week of June 3 — Heritage Indicts Higher Ed, Brookings Pegs ICE Job Losses at 668,000
Heritage's higher-education collection, a Brookings estimate of 668,000 jobs lost to ICE enforcement, AEI on the $30 billion ed-tech market, and more — surveyed across the spectrum.
Think Tank Roundup: Week of May 11, 2026 — RAND Maps the U.S.-China Military Gap
This week's policy research from RAND, Brookings, the Tax Foundation, AEI, the Center for American Progress, and the Cato Institute — on the U.S.-China military balance, open-weight AI, balanced budgets,…
Week in Review: The Accountability Capacity Gap
Five federal documents this week describe a single problem: a record-level enforcement output drawn from a shrinking oversight workforce. An Investigative Journal analysis of patterns across this week's TIJ coverage.
Think Tank Roundup: Week of May 11, 2026 — Brookings Releases First Comprehensive Assessment of One Big Beautiful Bill
Our weekly survey of new research from policy institutes across the ideological spectrum, with attention to who funds the work, what the methodology shows, and how findings intersect with TIJ…
Week in Review: The Disclosure Frontier — Federal Money Is Outrunning the Records Meant to Track It
TIJ's weekend analysis: a single week of public-record disclosures shows an American disclosure architecture splitting in two — even as federal enforcement surges in visible cases.
Think Tank Roundup: Week of April 30 — Carnegie Endowment Iran Analysis Leads the Field
The week ending April 30, 2026 produced an unusually heavy slate of think tank output across the political spectrum, with the ongoing Iran war driving much of the foreign-policy commentary…