If you’re a parent, you know that social media can cause problems for your children. What you may not know is just how serious the problem is.  Social media apps aren’t innocent places for kids to share funny cat videos with their friends. They’re sophisticated data-collecting and marketing platforms that use personalized algorithms to addict users — including your children.   Using your children’s personal data, these apps have the ability... Read More

Tom Cotton, a Republican, represents Arkansas in the U.S. Senate; Brian Schatz, a Democrat, represents Hawaii; Chris Murphy, a Democrat, represents Connecticut; Katie Boyd Britt, a Republican, represents Alabama. Do you know which social media apps your children are on? Do you understand how those apps might harm them? Few parents, no matter how diligent or tech savvy, can confidently answer “yes” to those questions. This should concern everyone. Kids on social media are vulnerable... Read More

Many of America’s most powerful companies have combined to pursue a dangerous political agenda masquerading as altruism. This agenda, known as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing, hurts shareholders, undermines workers, and sabotages American energy independence. It’s also illegal.Since the passage of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act, any “contract,” “combination,” or “conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce” has been illegal. Yet, ESG proponents have openly conspired and... Read More

For too long Washington has ignored an evil that threatens every American community. This evil is not sown in secluded soil, it emanates across all 2,000 miles of our southern border from a sprawling network of cartelized criminal organizations that have industrialized misery, monetized terror, and revived slavery in the hemisphere. The Mexican drug cartels pose a dire threat to our nation’s health, safety, and security.It’s past time that we wage war against the cartels. Not a Washington “war”... Read More

America does have a student loan problem. But it’s not the problem Joe Biden wants you to believe it is. The real issue with student debt today is that the cost of college tuition has skyrocketed, yet the value of a college diploma has plummeted. What’s worse is the federal government created this problem by writing blank checks to colleges, with little effort to control the cost or quality of higher education. My Student Loan Reform Act of 2022 would end this academic Gilded Age, reduce the... Read More

Last week, President Biden told congressional Democrats that he plans to absolve millions of student-loan borrowers of their debts. Biden and the Democrats have labeled this debt plan “cancellation” or “forgiveness,” but this is nonsense. This illegal and unwise plan would “cancel” nothing. It would only transfer debt from borrowers to taxpayers and redistribute wealth from the responsible to the privileged.As a candidate, Biden wildly pledged to cancel $10,000 in student debt per borrower, a... Read More

Today, we commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of Ulysses S. Grant’s birthday. Born to humble beginnings, this great defender of America won our bloodiest war, trampled the dark forces of disunion, and bandaged our deepest national wounds. Yet progressive historians, a partisan press, and political enemies tarnished his record from the beginning. They maligned him as a drunk and a butcher, and a bumbling Western rube who was ill-suited to politics and probably corrupt. This sloppy and... Read More

Starting this week, China’s genocidal prison state will host the 2022 Winter Olympics. But it didn’t have to be this way – the Games could easily have been delayed or moved.Instead, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Biden administration, and hypocritical executives gave the Chinese Communists what they wanted: the honor of hosting the games and the chance to spread their propaganda across billions of television screens.The world’s greatest athletes will now parade through a stadium... Read More

Within days of taking office, President Joe Biden’s campaign-trail veneer of tough-talking Russia hawk melted away to reveal a weak-kneed appeaser unwilling to constrain the Russian bear. Today, Russia may be on the brink of invading Ukraine because President Biden’s weakness has emboldened Vladimir Putin.In his first week in office, Biden agreed to extend the one-sided New START nuclear-arms treaty. He ignored nearly two thousand Russian tactical nuclear weapons outside the scope of the treaty... Read More

In 2020, our nation’s state and federal prison populations plummeted 15% to the lowest levels since 1992 – at the same time, murders skyrocketed nearly 30% to the highest level since 1998. By the middle of last year, local jail populations similarly shrank by an astonishing 25%.In raw numbers, state and federal authorities reduced their prison populations by 214,000 in 2020 and local authorities reduced their jail populations by 185,000 compared to 2019. This is the worst jailbreak in American... Read More

Last year, our nation experienced the largest increase in murder in American history and the largest number of drug overdose deaths ever recorded. This carnage continues today and is not distributed equally. Instead, it is concentrated in cities and localities where radical, left-wing, George Soros progressives have captured state and district attorney offices. These legal arsonists condemn our rule of law as “systemically racist” and have not simply abused prosecutorial discretion, they have... Read More

Twenty years ago today, China joined the World Trade Organization with the promise of greater peace and prosperity for all mankind. As he championed this historic mistake, then–president Bill Clinton patronizingly said, “It is ironic, I think, that so many Americans are concerned about the impact on the world of a strong China in the 21st century.” We are now witnessing how right those Americans were.Over the past two decades, the government of China has weaponized its nearly $17 trillion... Read More

While Jerome Powell was a better choice than Lael Brainard for Federal Reserve chairman, that alone isn’t a good reason to confirm Mr. Powell for a second term. The Senate should not support his reappointment.The Fed’s core mission is to ensure stable prices and a sound currency. No one can seriously argue that it accomplished this mission under Mr. Powell’s leadership. After years of reckless policy, inflation now exceeds 6%—the highest rate in 30 years.Mr. Powell has insisted for months that... Read More

Editor’s note: This is the last in a series that Senator Cotton has written for National Review on the problem of crime in modern American life, and what to do about it. You can find previous entries here, here, here, here, here, and here.Over the past two years, violent crime and drug overdoses have claimed over 200,000 American lives. This dark reality must not become the new normal. We must instead face this crisis head on and reinvest in the three... Read More

Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are monopolistic technology corporations that dominate a greater market share in their fields than any similar firms in American history.While size alone isn’t a problem, these firms have used their extraordinary wealth and power to buy up rivals, stifle competition and muzzle speech that they oppose. This harms Americans, and that’s why I have joined with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., to introduce the Competition and Opportunity Act, which would stop the... Read More

While President Biden has been distracted by a climate-change conference and sagging approval at home, President Vladimir Putin is building up Russian forces along the Ukrainian border. The Biden administration must respond to this provocation and do what President Obama didn’t—deter Russian aggression against its Western neighbor—before it’s too late.Russia’s war against Ukraine started in 2014, when Russian forces invaded, seized the Crimean Peninsula, and occupied the eastern regions of... Read More

Only 42% of Americans approve of Joe Biden’s presidency and as few as 15% approve of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi’s Congress. The reason for this abysmal approval rating is simple; Democrats in Washington do not represent the interests of the American people. Instead, they appear hellbent on bankrupting our government, derailing our economy, and dissolving our border. Their multitrillion-dollar spending bill would do all three.No provision is more pernicious than the immigration proposal... Read More

Qualified immunity is essential to effective and diligent policing. It shields good police officers from bankruptcy while still subjecting individual bad actors to personal financial repercussions. Any effort to abolish or significantly curtail this indispensable protection is a veiled attempt to defund, defame, and disarm the police in the midst of the worst violent-crime wave in a generation. Qualified immunity safeguards police officers from personal lawsuits, unless they... Read More

Joe Biden has created the worst border crisis in American history. In the midst of a once-in-a-century pandemic, soaring inflation, and skyrocketing street crime, the border isn’t just open, it’s the most open it has ever been.  It is time for President Biden to face the reality of what he has created: a national emergency. The Border Patrol has encountered an all-time record of more than 1.7 million illegal aliens this year. That’s more than triple the number from last year and... Read More

The promise of American higher education has always been that it equips young people with the skills and the knowledge to be wise, productive members of society.Today, going to college is less promising and more perilous for the thousands of young people who head to campus and immediately encounter angry activists and administrators intent on stifling the speech of anyone who dares to question liberal orthodoxy.Consider a recent story from Yale Law School, where out-of-control administrators... Read More