Eight policy papers released across the political spectrum this week sketch the contours of a debate that will shape the 2026 legislative calendar: how to redesign farm subsidies, contain agricultural and higher-education spending, accelerate housing supply, blunt artificial-intelligence risks, and rewire America’s posture toward Eastern Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Below is The Investigative Journal’s weekly roundup of notable think-tank publications, with each report’s political orientation and major funders disclosed for transparency.
1. Brookings: A 12-step blueprint for “a safer world”
Senior Fellow Michael E. O’Hanlon’s new vision and policy agenda from the Brookings Institution argues that the United States should pursue what he describes as a layered, twelve-point program to lower the risk of great-power war. The agenda includes designing a new security architecture for Eastern Europe that does not depend on NATO expansion, exploring a commonwealth-style political arrangement between Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China, expanding strategic nuclear arms control to incorporate Beijing, and developing international monitoring tools for advanced AI and synthetic biology.
O’Hanlon, a longtime defense analyst, frames the proposal as a way for Washington to reduce escalation risk without retreating from alliance commitments. The Brookings Institution is broadly center-left in its policy outlook, with major funders including the Gates Foundation, the Hutchins family, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and a mix of corporate and foreign-government supporters disclosed in its annual reports. Records suggest the paper is intended to influence the 2026 National Defense Strategy review now underway.
2. AEI: $55 billion in farm subsidies, with $23 billion in “ad hoc” payments
The American Enterprise Institute’s “Ad Hockery: Supplemental Subsidy Payments for Agriculture” finds that of roughly $55 billion in projected federal farm-sector subsidy payments in 2026, an estimated $23 billion will be distributed through ad hoc supplemental programs rather than the permanent Farm Bill framework. AEI’s researchers note that approximately 150,000 of the largest farming operations are positioned to receive the lion’s share of the disbursements, citing publicly available USDA program data.
The report, authored by AEI’s agriculture policy team, argues that low commodity prices and high input costs have triggered repeated congressional supplemental appropriations that lack the means-testing and program structure of permanent law. AEI is a center-right policy institute funded by the Bradley Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, and a roster of corporate donors that includes financial-services and energy firms. The findings are likely to fuel oversight scrutiny ahead of the next Farm Bill reauthorization, a long-running TIJ accountability beat.
3. Cato Institute: Higher-education budget reform options
The Cato Institute’s new policy analysis, “Federal Budget Reform Opportunities in Higher Education,” published this week, identifies federal student-aid programs, research subsidies and institutional grants that the libertarian think tank argues can be cut, terminated, transferred to states or privatized as part of a broader fiscal correction. Cato analysts contend that decades of federal subsidy expansion have correlated with rising tuition rather than improved access.
The paper builds on Cato’s long-running “Downsizing the Federal Government” project. Cato is funded by the Charles Koch Foundation and a network of libertarian donors, and discloses no government grants. The analysis arrives as the House Budget Committee weighs reconciliation instructions affecting Title IV and the Department of Education’s discretionary accounts — a process records suggest could move this summer.
4. RAND: AI may be eroding collective human agency — and there is a point of no return
RAND researchers released a formal model on April 20 examining how reliance on artificial-intelligence systems can erode what they term “collective human agency” over decisions about technology, governance and economic life. Drawing on social-choice theory, the paper identifies a tipping point past which the erosion may become irreversible, and recommends measurable interventions in procurement, education and AI governance.
RAND is a federally funded research and development center with a nonpartisan mandate; it receives the bulk of its budget from U.S. government contracts, supplemented by foundation grants and university partnerships. The findings are likely to feed directly into ongoing congressional debates about AI procurement standards and the implementation of the 2025 federal AI risk-management framework.
5. Urban Institute: “Big upzonings” in New York and Philadelphia did add housing
An April 15 report from the Urban Institute, authored by Yipeng Su, Will Curran-Groome and Yonah Freemark, examined fifteen years of housing investment data following major zoning reforms in two cities. The researchers report that seven neighborhood-scale upzonings in New York City together produced more than 4,000 additional housing units within four years compared with similar parcels that were not upzoned, and that Philadelphia’s reforms drove a meaningful increase in citywide permitting between 2019 and 2021.
The Urban Institute is a center-left research organization funded by federal agencies, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and others. The report is methodologically careful: it isolates the effect of zoning changes by controlling for neighborhood trends and parcel characteristics, and notes that effects vary by lot size, density bonuses, and parking requirements. Records suggest the findings will inform supply-side reform debates in state legislatures from Texas to California.
6. Tax Foundation: Refunds up 11.1 percent under new tax law
The Tax Foundation’s “Three IRS Datapoints to Watch” tracks how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is reshaping the 2026 filing season. As of April 3, 2026, the average refund stood at $3,462, up 11.1 percent from $3,116 a year earlier, according to IRS Filing Season Statistics summarized by the foundation. The analysis argues that permanent reductions in marginal rates will boost work incentives and produce long-run economic growth.
The Tax Foundation is a right-leaning fiscal research organization funded primarily by individual donors and conservative foundations, including the Searle Freedom Trust and Donors Trust. Filings indicate the group does not accept federal funding. The report’s headline number diverges meaningfully from contemporaneous Center for American Progress modeling, which finds refunds rose by only $346 versus the prior year — well short of the $1,000 figure administration officials had cited. The two analyses use different baselines, illustrating why side-by-side reading of partisan tax-policy work is essential.
7. Carnegie Endowment: Climate-health policy lessons for vulnerable populations
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace launched “Advancing Climate Health for Vulnerable Groups in the U.S.: Looking Back and Looking Ahead” on April 23. The report from Carnegie’s Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program reviews early-2020s federal climate-health policy and offers recommendations for state and federal policymakers, with attention to heat exposure, air quality, and disaster recovery.
Carnegie is a nonpartisan research institution with a foreign-policy emphasis; major funders include Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Hewlett Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and a range of philanthropic and government grants disclosed in its annual reports. The paper is positioned as a U.S. case study with cross-border policy lessons, in keeping with the program’s comparative remit.
8. Economic Policy Institute: Community-benefits agreements for Southern manufacturing
An April 7 EPI report argues that the wave of federally subsidized manufacturing investment flowing into Southern states under the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act will deliver lasting wage gains only if paired with enforceable community-benefits agreements. EPI’s recommendations include local-hire mandates, project labor agreements, and public reporting on environmental and workforce metrics.
The Economic Policy Institute is a left-leaning research organization with substantial labor-union funding, including support from the AFL-CIO and several international unions. Its analysis is likely to inform Democratic governors’ strategies for negotiating with subsidy recipients in Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas. The report should be read alongside contrary work from the Tax Foundation and Manhattan Institute, which have warned that overlapping mandates can deter capital deployment.
What this week tells the TIJ accountability beat
Three throughlines stand out for our reporting priorities. First, fiscal accountability: AEI’s farm-subsidy data and Cato’s higher-education menu both target federal spending streams that have grown through accretion rather than considered design, and both will sharpen oversight hearings on how taxpayer dollars are awarded. Second, supply-side economic policy: the Urban Institute’s upzoning evidence and EPI’s community-benefits framework offer competing but partly compatible answers to how to expand housing and good-paying jobs without expanding deficits. Third, governance of emerging risk: RAND’s AI-agency model and Brookings’s arms-control proposals both ask how Washington can institutionalize checks before crisis — the kind of structural question this newsroom will continue to track.
As always, TIJ presents these findings as the authors describe them. Readers should consult the linked source documents directly and weigh each institution’s funding profile when evaluating conclusions. We will note major errata, right-of-reply requests, or substantive responses from any of the organizations cited as they arrive.