President Trump’s bold agenda to rebalance global trade through tariffs and slash government spending demands swift action to offset short-term economic disruptions.

The president secured trillions in promised investment. But when will those projects ever break ground? Federal permitting, a bureaucratic morass, delays critical infrastructure and energy projects, stifling growth.

The unseen costs of these delays — lost jobs, forgone wages and idle capital that could otherwise fuel innovation and upward mobility — are the tangible consequences. What is not built today diminishes prosperity tomorrow.

President Trump’s recent executive orders on deregulation and investment acceleration prioritize growth, yet permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act remains a bottleneck. A 2020 Council on Environmental Quality study found that reviews under the law average 4.5 years, costing billions in lost opportunities.

To get President Trump’s projects started sooner, he should consider utilizing streamlined regulatory tools to reform permitting through voluntary pilot programs using regulatory technology (RegTech) and a permit-by-rule structure backed by surety bonds. These tools would allow the government to frontload the analysis, correct compliance errors much more quickly, and protect the taxpayer with private insurance — and best of all, it simplifies the permitting process and reduces years of government bureaucracy.

This return to common law principles, where the government focuses on enforcing clear standards rather than granting individual permissions, breathes life into property rights, empowering citizens to act freely within defined limits. That’s the decentralized common law governance that historically unleashed American economic dynamism. It would make America’s economy great again, indeed.

However, changing regulations takes time. Notice and comment rulemaking is a quagmire that allows loud factions to defer electoral reality. But there is a lawful way around this delay.

The Administrative Procedure Act allows agencies to forgo notice and comment for policy statements or procedural rules for “good cause,” providing legal flexibility for pilot programs. Based on this, a 1993 DC Circuit case ruled that voluntary pilots do not require notice and comment because they do not impose new obligations on everyone — yet they will ultimately improve the process for everyone (which eventually requires notice and comment or congressional action).

This precedent has stood for over 30 years. The EPA’s Project XL, launched in 1995, proves the legality and efficacy of voluntary pilot programs without notice and comment. Project XL tested innovative permitting approaches, such as streamlined environmental approvals, under Administrative Procedure Act exemptions for policy statements. Fifty pilots were implemented at EPA, and 20 percent of them eventually led to permanent regulatory changes through notice and comment, demonstrating that temporary, voluntary experiments can lawfully test reforms while paving the way for broader adoption.

This precedent also supports using pilot programs to test a permit-by-rule system, where permits are automatically granted unless denied based on transparent standards, a model already sometimes used by the EPA and at least 38 states. For instance, Texas’s permit-by-rule system takes most of the time out of permitting, allowing projects to get started creating jobs and securing supply chains — the kind of decentralized efficiency that built America’s economic preeminence.

A permit-by-rule system, tested through voluntary pilots, also aligns with President Trump’s deregulatory vision. Participants have the option of voluntarily opting in, testing streamlined processes without imposing new legal obligations on other participants, qualifying as Administrative Procedure Act-exempt policy statements or interpretive rules. RegTech — using sensors, blockchains and AI — enhances this approach.

A “courthouse in the cloud” can verify compliance in real time, cutting review times from years to milliseconds. And blockchain-based records can ensure environmental standards are being met, making permitting faster and more transparent and enforcement much swifter. This digital extension of property rights administration combines American economic tradition with cutting edge technology.

Surety bonds complete the framework. By requiring applicants to post bonds guaranteeing compliance, the government shifts from gatekeeping to enforcement. If standards are violated, bonds cover remediation, protecting the public without delaying approvals. Project XL provides lawful precedent for this kind of process improvement, with pilots refining systems before broader rulemaking applies the best ones across the board.

There are some that argue this accelerated process comes at the expense of environmental standards. In fact, the opposite is true. This gambit would better protect the environment and the taxpayer by creating a faster, more cost-effective way to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act’s environmental analysis process requirements. By launching voluntary pilots now, President Trump can deliver economic wins before the midterms, showing voters that deregulation drives jobs and infrastructure renewal.

Project XL’s legacy proves that voluntary pilots are a lawful, effective way to test permitting reforms. By combining RegTech, permit-by-rule and surety bonds, we can unlock those trillions in promised investment. Get ready for the ribbon cuttings.

Stephen Hollingshead is a former regulator under former President George W. Bush, CEO of the regulatory technology startup ChangeInEx, and a senior fellow at America First Policy Institute, where he writes on regulatory reform and expeditionary economics.

Last month, the Trump administration and Nvidia worked out what some have called an unusual and surprising deal for the latter to export its defeatured AI chips. 

That is, President Trump reversed a decision made by his own administration to decategorize Nvidia’s H20 and AMD’s chips as a national security risk in a deal that includes a 15 percent levy to the U.S. government on sales of those chips. 

Trump then followed up with a number of executive orders and an AI Action Plan. In general, U.S. and foreign AI companies, so long as they are not ideologically biased against his administration, will more or less be given a green light to build major AI infrastructure projects. 

Furthermore, AI products manufactured in the U.S. could be exported to non-allied countries, including China, albeit with export controls through U.S. Department of Commerce.

Around the same time, Trump reached a deal with Intel for an unprecedented 10 percent government stake in the company.

For the general public to understand the above calibration of market-orientation and “America First” priorities, the pillars of national security marketism must be explained.

Here, economic security is the same as national security, in which both U.S. and foreign companies are not only reigned in, but are expected to align their operations to constitute the current administration’s objectives, both in political and economic terms. 

This is called corporate statism, a distinct outcome from China’s state capitalism whereby corporate groups form the basis of society and the state.

In recent decades, China’s one-party system has effectively utilized its state capitalism to constitute itself as a superpower and remake the world into a bipolar power system. 

Yet, on the other side of the power system, the Trump administration appears to be aiming to, at least initially, claim exclusive and singular power of the presidency to usher a variation of state capitalism in the United States.

In the administration’s eyes, doing so could decouple the U.S. from China, upend the bipolar power system and lessen the economic and military rise of China.

It’s likely Trump’s national security marketism will entail a “rent system” for both U.S. and foreign companies, requiring them to pay forward when innovating and making profits. 

Trump has also threatened tariffs on American brands in order for U.S. products to be more broadly consumed at home and abroad. 

Additionally, in ushering in his version of state capitalism, his technocrat bureaucracy is devaluing previous American pillars of diversity and inclusion. In their place will be the idiom that personal, domestic and economic security are national security.

It’s no secret that in recent decades a growing segment of the American public has been discontent with the status quo. And, thus, an openness to a different political wind that could promulgate a reshaping of the American way of life.

What has not been fully understood, though, is the emergence and variation of state capitalism in the U.S.

While the term state capitalism generally connotes negative externalities and single-party systems like in China, state capitalism has been studied through the lens of variations and varieties. 

Variations of state capitalism can be observed in all nation-states, as each country’s government, based on their culture and history, designs their unique political and economic aspirations and goals.

In the field of varieties of state capitalism, a number focus on and have been predicting the downfall of existing capitalist societies, such as in China, whereas others focus on the continual forms of state capitalist countries. 

The above is to say that there is another way to understand and assess the Trump administration and its venture into state capitalism. 

Rather than predicting when the state intervention of the Trump administration and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party will fail, it could be more politically and economically astute to realize and accept that the U.S. has likely crossed the Rubicon of returning to its status quo.

In so many words, perhaps the story now is how will the Trump administration execute its state capitalism: vertically or horizontally.

Overall, the Trump administration has been accelerating the vertical aspect of the aforementioned rent system, technocrat bureaucracy and threats to tariff American brands that could significantly rock the U.S.’s healthy consumer economy and normalize today’s volatile stock market. 

However, if the Trump administration pivots to a more horizontal state capitalism, in which key stakeholders and their interests are accounted for, Trump’s state capitalism might have some real legs.

While Trump’s state capitalism is still unfolding and subject to legal and political challenges, it is fueled by a deep-rooted shift in public sentiment and domestic politics that see America losing its way and has created the ideal conditions for Trump to take a playbook straight from China. 

It is indeed uncharted territory where the status quo is being reshaped before our eyes.

Long Le is an associate teaching professor at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.

Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) said Sunday that he believed that the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk “can be an occasion for soul searching as a country.”

“I think we all recognize that political divisions have been deepening in this country, that political violence is on the rise and with so much anger right now and fear this cycle could well escalate, but I don’t think it has to be that way,” Kiley said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I think this can be an occasion for soul searching as a country, where we ask ourselves, ‘How can we pursue a different vision of politics? How can we all play a part in forming a better American community?’” he added.

Kirk was talking at an Utah Valley University event Wednesday when he was shot and killed. Following a manhunt featuring local, state and federal law enforcement, officials identified the alleged suspect as Tyler Robinson, 22, of Utah.

“At this moment, the nation is still in shock over the barbaric murder of a man beloved by millions. The depth of this tragedy is hard to process: a life cut short at age 31, a wife left without a husband, two young children without a father,” Kiley said in a post on the social platform X Thursday.

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) also said Sunday that “just believing differently than some other American is not illegal.”

“I’m a conservative Republican. I have Democratic friends that think very differently, vote very differently, but they’re still my friend on it. So, just having that ideology, just believing differently than some other American is not illegal, that’s America,” Lankford told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

“We don’t all agree as next door neighbors on different things, but it is very different to try to plan, strategize, to be able to carry out an act of violence on it,” he added.

Recently, yet another Apollo astronaut, Jim Lovell, passed on. Lovell’s fame was as defined by his role as a pop culture icon as it was by his astronaut heroics.

Everybody who came of age during the Apollo race to the moon knows the name of Captain Jim Lovell. He flew on the missions of Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13.

Apollo 8 was the first crewed orbit of the moon, which featured the famous Christmas Eve 1968 reading from the book of Genesis as the Earth rose over the surface of the moon. The mission, the first beyond low Earth orbit, provided a beautiful cap to what was otherwise a horrible year.

But Lovell is most famous for being the commander of Apollo 13, the 1970 mission meant to land on the moon, but which instead became a harrowing drama, thanks to an explosion in the Apollo spacecraft service module, in which the crew may not have made it back alive. 

That they did was a great credit to Lovell, the other two crewmen of Apollo 13, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, and the people in Mission Control in Houston.

Twenty-five years later, it was only natural that Ron Howard chose the Apollo 13 mission as a subject to put to film about space exploration. 

The movie starred Tom Hanks as Lovell and featured Lovell himself in a cameo appearance as a Navy admiral. The mission had all the drama that a movie could wish for.

Apollo 13 the movie is one of the best space films of all time. It had danger, high adventure and problem solving under pressure. 

The film provided a look into an era when space adventures were a boon to human civilization, though, as historian Roger Launius has noted, they did not poll well. The movie depicts public disinterest in trips to the moon, until the Apollo 13 accident proved that they could be dramatic indeed.  

The movie ends with Tom Hanks as Lovell safe on the deck of the recovery carrier, musing about his experience and the immediate aftermath, and with a wistful question. 

“I sometimes look up at the moon and wonder when we will be going back and who will that be?”

The question which the screenwriters put into the mind of Lovell was an interesting one. Just two years before the movie premiered, President Bill Clinton effectively canceled the Space Exploration Initiative via budget cuts.  

The initiative had been proposed by his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush and would have taken Americans back to the moon and on to Mars.

Less than nine years later, President George W. Bush, in the wake of the space shuttle Columbia disaster, proposed his own Vision for Space Exploration program, dubbed Constellation. That program was also canceled in 2010 by the president who followed the younger Bush, Barack Obama.

President Obama’s decision caused Lovell, along with the first man to walk on the moon, Neil Armstrong, and the last man to walk on the moon, Gene Cernan, to come out in opposition. They also criticized the plan to commercialize crewed space travel that was also proposed by Obama.

“The availability of a commercial transport to orbit as envisioned by the president’s proposal cannot be predicted with any certainty, but is likely to take substantially longer and be more expensive than we would hope,” they said in a joint statement.

While the commercial crew program is now wildly successful, thanks to the SpaceX Crew Dragon, it did take another 10 years to become operational, partly thanks to political and funding issues, proving the criticism to be correct in the short term but wrong in the long run.

Lovell did live to see President Trump propose the third attempt to send Americans back to the moon and on to Mars. He also lived to see Project Artemis, as it was called, gain widespread political and public acceptance. 

A recent CBS News poll not only showed increased appreciation of the Apollo program since the 1960s but also indicated 3 to 1 public support for Artemis, across all age groups.

Sadly, Lovell will not live to see Artemis II, which will replicate his Apollo 13 flight around the moon, hopefully without the drama and danger the earlier mission experienced. He will not live to see Americans return to the lunar surface on Artemis III.

Only five Apollo astronauts are still living. Will any of them be left alive to see people walk on the moon again?

God speed, Jim Lovell. May his memory be a blessing and an inspiration.

Mark R. Whittington, who writes frequently about space policy, has published a political study of space exploration entitled “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond” and, most recently, “is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.

(NEXSTAR) — In a year full of store closures, you may be shocked to hear of a retailer other than Spirit Halloween opening new locations. One off-price retailer is preparing to open dozens of locations over the next two months. 

Burlington already has more than 1,100 stores in the U.S., covering nearly every state. The discount retailer announced plans in 2020 to open 2,000 stores long-term. Since then, the company has opened several smaller format stores, mimicking moves by other retailers. 

Through October, Burlington says it is opening 60 new stores across 26 states and three in Puerto Rico.

Three opened on Friday: on St. Georges Avenue in Woodbridge, New Jersey; on Sunrise Highway in Massapequa, New York; and on Pecan Park Boulevard in Cedar Park, Texas.

With a few exceptions, the remaining stores will open in October. Below is a list of stores Burlington expects to open in the coming weeks, as well as their scheduled grand opening dates.

Arizona

• Phoenix, 7333 W Thomas Road, Oct. 10
• Phoenix, 4255 W Thunderbird Road, Oct. 17

California

• North Highlands, 3615 Elkhorn Boulevard, Sept. 19
• City of Industry, 21640 Valley Boulevard, Oct. 3
• Fresno, 4895 E Cesar Chavez Boulevard, Oct. 10
• Merced, 3138 R Street, Oct. 10
• Visalia, 720 W. Riggin Avenue, Oct. 10
• Colton, 1080 S. Mount Vernon Avenue, Oct. 24
• Montclair, 5200 Moreno Street, Oct. 24
• Lancaster, 1070 W Avenue K, Oct. 31

Connecticut

• East Haven, 78 Frontage Road, Oct. 17
• North Haven, 380 Universal Drive N, Oct. 24

Florida

• Tampa, 13123 N Dale Mabry Highway, Sept. 19
• Orlando, 7873 S Orange Blossom Trail, Oct. 17
• Coconut Creek, 4847 Coconut Creek Parkway, Oct. 31

Georgia

• Fort Oglethorpe, 2625 Battlefield Parkway, Oct. 10
• Atlanta, 3303 Buford Highway NE, Oct. 17
• Lawrenceville, 860 Duluth Highway, Suite 110, Oct. 17
• Dalton, 1335 W Walnut Avenue, Oct. 24

Idaho

• Idaho Falls, 3011 S 25th Street East, Oct. 24

Illinois

• Algonquin, 175 Randall Road, Oct. 3
• Chicago, 7507 N Clark Street, Oct. 24
• Chicago, 2554 N Narragansett Avenue, Oct. 31

Kentucky

• Louisville, 6801 Dixie Highway, Oct. 3

Louisiana

• Baton Rouge, 10505 S Mall Drive, Oct. 24
• New Orleans, 500 Port of New Orleans Place Suite 128 and 124, Oct. 24

Maine

• Bangor, 6 Bangor Mall Boulevard, Sept. 26

Maryland

• Parkville, 1959 E Joppa Road, Oct. 31

Massachusetts

• Revere, 151 VFW Parkway Suite 50, Oct. 31

Michigan

• Grandville, 4655 Canal Avenue SW, Oct. 3
• Ypsilanti, 3150 Carpenter Road, Oct. 10
• Livonia, 13477 Middlebelt, Oct. 24

Minnesota

• St. Paul, 2089 Old Hudson Road, Oct. 31

Missouri

• Wentzville, 1927 Wentzville Parkway, Oct. 17

Nevada

• Las Vegas, 5055 W Sahara Avenue, Oct. 17
• Reno, 1901 Silverada Boulevard, Oct. 31

New Jersey

• North Bergen, 3129 John F. Kennedy Boulevard Space, Oct. 10

New Mexico

• Albuquerque, 9500 Montgomery Boulevard NE, Suite A, Oct. 31

New York

• Irondequoit, 2255 East Ridge Road, Oct. 3
• Rego Park, 61-35 Junction Boulevard Suite A302, Oct. 3
• Bay Shore, 1851 Sunrise Highway, Oct. 10

North Carolina

• Arden, 11 McKenna Road, Oct. 31

Ohio

• Warrensville Heights, 4063 Richmond Road, Oct. 3

Pennsylvania

• Warrington, 1015 N Main Street Space 1015, Sept. 19
• Glenolden, 20 N MacDade Boulevard, Oct. 24
• Allentown, 3300 Lehigh Street, Oct. 31

Puerto Rico

• Los Colobos II Carretera 3 KM 14.1, Carolina, Oct. 31
• Juncos, 1 State Road 31, Oct. 31
• Mayaguez, 975 Eugenio María de Hostos Avenue Suite 114, Oct. 31

South Carolina

• Columbia, 6880 Garners Ferry Road, Oct. 31

Tennessee

• Kingsport, 2626 East Stone Drive Unit 170, Oct. 10
• Antioch, 5305 Hickory Hollow Parkway, Oct. 17

Texas

• Laredo, 2420 Bob Bullock Loop, Sept. 26
• Houston, 4743 Highway 6 N, Oct. 3
• Houston, 8210 Kirby Drive, Oct. 24
• McAllen, 3300 W Expressway 83 Unit 200, Oct. 24
• Arlington, 5781 SW Green Oaks Boulevard, Oct. 31
• Brownsville, 1601 E Price Road, Oct. 31
• Lake Jackson, 125 Highway 332 W, Oct. 31

Washington

• Puyallup, 120 31st Avenue SE, Sept. 19

Burlington lists job openings for these stores online.

At least 11 of the new Burlington stores — North Highlands, Fresno, North Haven, Dalton, Revere, Las Vegas, North Bergen, Arden, Columbia, a Houston store, Arlington — appear to be a former home to Big Lots, which shuttered all of its stores after filing for bankruptcy last year (some have since reopened under new ownership). 

Five others — City of Industry, Tampa, Idaho Falls, Baton Rouge, Warrington — previously had Bed Bath & Beyond locations. The retailer filed for bankruptcy in 2023 and closed all of its stores, though it did recently reopen a brick-and-mortar store. 

Two additional Burlington stores — a Chicago location and Livonia — are opening in buildings that used to be Party City stores. The party goods retailer announced late last year that it was going out of business. Numerous companies were quick to snap up its abandoned storefronts.