The week’s notable policy research, surveyed across the ideological spectrum — from Heritage’s higher-education indictment to a Brookings labor-market estimate that landed in the middle of an immigration enforcement debate.
Two findings dominated the think-tank traffic this week. The Heritage Foundation published a four-part collection arguing that American higher education is structurally captured and economically dysfunctional. And a Brookings Institution working paper estimated that the federal immigration enforcement surge of the past year was associated with roughly 668,000 fewer jobs in U.S. cities — a figure that drew immediate, contested coverage. Around those two reports, scholars at the American Enterprise Institute, the Tax Foundation, RAND, Urban Institute, the Cato Institute, the Center for American Progress, and Carnegie produced research relevant to readers tracking education, fiscal policy, healthcare, housing, and the contours of the international order. Below is a tour of the week’s notable releases, with each think tank’s orientation and primary funders identified.
1. Heritage Foundation — “Higher Education in America: It’s Worse Than You Think” (2026)
Orientation: Conservative. Major funders historically include the Mercer family, the Bradley Foundation, the DeVos family, and the Sarah Scaife Foundation; the institution discloses corporate donors only at its discretion.
Heritage released a book-length collection of 19 essays organized into four sections — “The Economic Model,” “The Bureaucracy,” “The Leftist Dominance,” and “Where Do We Go From Here?” — that frames U.S. colleges and universities as captured institutions ripe for federal and state reform. According to a review by David Randall of the National Association of Scholars at Minding the Campus, the volume is explicitly aimed at policymakers, staffers, donors, and “interested citizens unfamiliar enough with higher education that this report on our colleges and universities will indeed reveal that it is worse than they think.”
The economic section emphasizes the role of the accreditation cartel and federal student-aid programs in inflating costs and shielding institutions from accountability. The bureaucracy section examines administrative bloat and faculty governance. The cultural section, which the reviewer singles out as the strongest, includes Inez Feltscher Stepman’s essay on how colleges affect men and the American family, Jay P. Greene’s “The Donor Problem: Your Help Is Hurting,” and Patrick J. Deneen’s “Faith and the University.” The closing section credits the first year of the Trump administration with creating “an excellent foundation for future education reform” and lays out a strategic agenda.
The volume is available through commercial distribution and from heritage.org. The collection does not emphasize the parallel project of building new institutions to replace existing ones — work associated with Hillsdale College, the University of Austin, and the network of autonomous civics schools at public universities — and the reviewer suggests Heritage commission a follow-up volume on that theme.
2. Brookings Institution — “Shock, Awe, and Economic Fallout: ICE Enforcement and Employment Effects in U.S. Cities” (May 29, 2026)
Orientation: Center-left. Funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the David Rubenstein family, the Hutchins family, the Hewlett Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and corporate donors disclosed in annual reports.
A Brookings analysis released on May 29 estimated that the intensified Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations of the past year were associated with the loss of roughly 668,000 jobs across U.S. metropolitan labor markets, with spillovers affecting American-born workers and businesses that depend on immigrant labor or customer bases. Bloomberg and Fortune reported the figure within hours of publication. The Brookings authors describe the enforcement campaign as a “shock and awe” intervention — broader and more publicly visible than prior surges, including those initiated under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations — and document a “chilling effect” on local economic activity that extended well beyond the population directly targeted.
The paper draws on county-level employment data and synthetic-control methods to compare cities with heavier enforcement footprints to comparable cities with lighter enforcement. Findings indicate that the employment effects were concentrated in construction, hospitality, agriculture-adjacent services, and food processing, but also showed measurable declines in retail and small-business openings in heavily affected zip codes. The authors note that earlier enforcement waves produced more localized effects; the current campaign’s visibility appears to have changed worker and consumer behavior at a scale prior episodes did not generate.
Records indicate the paper is a working analysis rather than a final peer-reviewed publication, and the authors note significant uncertainty bands around the headline figure. The Trump administration has disputed the framing and pointed to gains in wages for the workers who remain in affected sectors. The Brookings report is available at brookings.edu.
3. American Enterprise Institute — “The $30 Billion Question: Why Doesn’t the Education Market Reward What Works?” (June 1, 2026)
Orientation: Center-right. Funders include the Bradley Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Walton Family Foundation, the Donors Capital Fund, and individual donors disclosed only in aggregate.
Mark Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at AEI and former director of the Institute of Education Sciences, co-authored a report with Auditi Chakravarty, CEO of the Advanced Education Research & Development Fund, examining why the $30 billion U.S. K–12 education-technology market continues to grow without measurable improvement in student outcomes. The authors argue that “American education lacks a reliable bridge between research and scale — one that moves proven tools to millions of students and keeps unproven ones out of schools.”
The report walks through three case studies — Magpie Literacy, CueThink, and A2i — to illustrate how research-backed tools occasionally make it to classrooms when philanthropic, federal, and commercial capital align. It argues that the federal R&D infrastructure, including the What Works Clearinghouse and the National Assessment of Educational Progress contracting process, rewards methodological compliance and incumbent contractors over usable findings. The authors compare the current state of federal education R&D unfavorably to the National Science Foundation’s Accelerating Research Translation program and recommend funding the “messy middle” between proof-of-concept and broad adoption, recalibrating intellectual property arrangements, and demanding that peer-review panels reflect broader practitioner and industry expertise.
The full report is available at aei.org. The piece is notable for being a center-right critique of federal education spending that nonetheless argues for more, not less, targeted public investment — provided incentives change.
4. Tax Foundation — Walczak on the White House CEA State Income Tax Replacement Estimate
Orientation: Center-right, pro-growth tax policy. Funders include the Searle Freedom Trust, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Stiles-Nicholson Foundation, and corporate donors in financial services and energy.
Tax Foundation senior fellow Jared Walczak published a detailed analysis of a White House Council of Economic Advisers report estimating that states could replace existing individual income, corporate income, and general sales taxes with a broad-based sales tax at an average rate of 6.23 percent. Walczak’s analysis, available at taxfoundation.org, concludes that the CEA’s directional case for shifting from income to consumption taxation is sound but that its revenue-replacement rate is dramatically understated.
Walczak’s recalculation produces an average replacement rate of 17.51 percent — nearly three times the CEA’s figure. The discrepancy, he argues, stems from the CEA’s inclusion in the assumed sales-tax base of categories that are either legally untaxable (Medicare and Medicaid spending, US Postal Service purchases, internet access), nontransactional (imputed banking services, nonprofit-provided services, religious-institution operating expenses), or available only at full compliance levels that no real-world tax system achieves. The analysis is technical and useful reading for state legislators in Florida, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and other states considering income-tax repeal.
The piece reflects the Tax Foundation’s broader posture: enthusiastic support for the policy direction of moving away from income taxation while insisting that the revenue arithmetic be honest. The analysis treats the Trump administration’s CEA work as a serious policy document worthy of detailed engagement rather than dismissal.
5. RAND Corporation — Minnesota Tiered Cost-Sharing Synthesis (May 4, 2026)
Orientation: Nonpartisan, federally contracted research. Funders include the U.S. Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, and a range of philanthropic and state-government clients.
A RAND research brief published May 4 synthesized four studies of Minnesota’s tiered cost-sharing approach to state employee health coverage. Since 2002, Minnesota has used a tiered design that places provider networks in cost categories, with employees paying lower out-of-pocket amounts when they choose lower-cost providers. The brief, authored by Tim McDonald, Christopher M. Whaley, Rachel O. Reid, and colleagues, synthesizes evidence on the design’s effects on premium growth, provider behavior, and patient access.
Findings indicate that the tiered model has been associated with slower premium growth than comparable peer-state employee plans and with measurable shifts in patient utilization toward lower-tier providers, without strong evidence of compromised quality. The synthesis is timely for state policymakers and self-insured employers reviewing benefit design, and it lands in a year when the federal Treasury and HHS are reviewing transparency rules for hospital pricing.
The brief is part of RAND’s broader health-policy portfolio and is available through rand.org. RAND’s federally contracted status gives it a distinctive role: its work tends to inform procurement and regulatory decisions rather than advocacy campaigns.
6. Urban Institute — “How Upzoning Affects Housing Supply” (June 1, 2026)
Orientation: Center-left, technocratic. Funders include the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and federal agencies that contract for research.
The Urban Institute’s Housing Matters initiative published an evidence review on June 1 examining how upzoning — reforms that allow more housing units per parcel — affects local housing supply. The review, available at housingmatters.urban.org, draws on a 2025 study of New York City neighborhood rezonings that found a roughly 4 percent increase in residential units on upzoned parcels within seven years, alongside complementary research from Auckland, Minneapolis, and Houston.
The Urban analysis notes that upzoning’s effects are most pronounced where it is paired with reductions in other regulatory barriers — parking minimums, design review timelines, and impact fees. Where upzoning is enacted without those companion reforms, the supply response is muted. The review also addresses the gentrification debate: data shows displacement effects are smaller than critics anticipate and often outweighed by the long-run affordability benefits of greater supply.
This is policy-relevant reading as states including Montana, Florida, and Washington advance preemption legislation that overrides local zoning, and as conservative governors in Texas and Tennessee consider similar moves on supply-side housing reform.
7. Cato Institute — “Federal Budget Reform Opportunities in Higher Education for 2026”
Orientation: Libertarian. Funders historically include the Charles Koch Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, and individual donors disclosed at the institution’s discretion.
Cato Policy Analysis No. 1016, published in April and remaining a reference point in this week’s higher-education debate, examines federal budget reform opportunities in higher education for the 2026 fiscal year. The paper, available at cato.org, argues that the federal government’s student loan portfolio represents a structural fiscal liability that has grown without proportionate accountability for institutional outcomes.
The analysis recommends reforms including caps on Parent PLUS and Graduate PLUS borrowing, institutional risk-sharing arrangements that make colleges liable for a share of loan defaults among their graduates, and transparency requirements that link institutional eligibility for federal aid to median post-completion earnings by program. Cato’s framing reflects its libertarian institutional posture: the goal is not to expand or contract federal involvement but to align incentives so that institutions bear consequences for the outcomes their students experience.
The paper is notable for finding common ground with the Heritage Foundation’s higher-education volume on structural diagnoses while diverging on policy remedies. Where Heritage emphasizes cultural and governance reform, Cato emphasizes fiscal and contractual reform.
8. Center for American Progress — “State Climate Action in 2026”
Orientation: Progressive. Funders include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and corporate donors disclosed in annual reports.
The Center for American Progress released a report this spring on state-level climate and clean-energy policy implementation in 2026, available at americanprogress.org. The report catalogs state actions to maintain clean-energy investment in the wake of federal policy shifts under the Trump administration, including state tax credits, procurement standards, and grid-modernization mandates.
CAP’s analysis emphasizes states such as Michigan, New Mexico, and Maryland that have advanced policies tied to manufacturing investment, job creation, and consumer energy-bill reductions. The report frames state climate action as both an environmental and economic-development strategy, arguing that the manufacturing investments triggered by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act have created durable political constituencies in states that have since moved to protect them.
The report is best read as a counterpoint to AEI’s energy work and to Heritage’s broader regulatory-reform agenda. It is also a useful primer for state-level reporters tracking how blue and purple states are responding to federal regulatory rollbacks.
9. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace — “The Opportunities of Change in World Order” Conference (June 1–2, 2026)
Orientation: Nonpartisan, internationalist. Funders include the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, foreign-government grants (including from the United Arab Emirates and Norway disclosed in past reports), and major individual donors.
Carnegie hosted a two-day conference on June 1–2 as part of its multiyear “Global (Dis)Order” initiative, run jointly with the British Academy. The conference brought together scholars, current and former diplomats, and policymakers to address whether the current period of international upheaval offers opportunities to reconstitute global institutions or whether it instead signals their decline. Programming covered AI’s effects on global security, the future of multilateral economic institutions, and the regional implications of U.S.–China competition.
The event is more notable for the questions it surfaced than for any single research output. Several panels examined how China’s relationship with the BRICS expansion is reshaping development finance, how Gulf sovereign-wealth funds are deploying capital in ways that affect U.S. industrial policy, and how the post-1945 institutional architecture is faring under stress from multiple directions. Carnegie’s framing is more measured than the catastrophist analyses common in some foreign-policy publications, and its participants reflected a wide range of views.
Conference materials and forthcoming working papers will be available at carnegieendowment.org. For TIJ readers tracking the foreign-policy beat, the event is a useful marker of how mainstream internationalist institutions are framing the current moment.
Cross-Cutting Observations
Three patterns are worth noting from this week’s output. First, higher education is the policy battleground that unites the right and libertarian wings of the think-tank world. Heritage, AEI, and Cato all published or sustained higher-education work this week, with different diagnoses but overlapping recommendations on accountability and federal-aid reform. The progressive infrastructure has yet to publish a comparable volume in response.
Second, the Brookings ICE enforcement paper illustrates how academic working papers are now functioning as live political artifacts. The 668,000-jobs estimate appeared in mainstream business coverage within hours; the political response followed almost as fast. This compresses the distance between scholarly publication and policy debate and raises the stakes for methodological transparency.
Third, the Tax Foundation’s engagement with the White House CEA report is a model of what serious policy debate looks like in the current administration: a center-right institution treating an administration document as worth detailed quantitative engagement rather than partisan dismissal. Walczak’s recalculation strengthens the policy case for income-tax reform precisely by being honest about the revenue arithmetic.
For TIJ readers tracking accountability journalism, the week’s most consequential research is the Brookings labor-market analysis and the AEI education-R&D report. Both raise hard questions about the gap between what public institutions spend and what they deliver — questions that hold regardless of one’s priors about immigration or education technology.
This roundup will return next Thursday. Tips on think-tank publications worth tracking are welcome.