Nonrival

June 04, 2026

Human experts + AI summaries - on public policy, economics, and technology.

Right-Wing Populist Parties Have Surged Across Europe in the Decade Since Brexit

pew

• Right-wing populist parties have gained significant ground across Europe since 2016, with France's National Rally growing from 2 to 123 parliamentary seats and Germany's AfD becoming the second-largest party in the Bundestag.
• This rise is driven by widespread distrust of political elites, economic pessimism (70% of Europeans think children will be worse off than their parents), and cultural backlash against rapid social change on issues like immigration and LGBTQ+ rights.
• While these parties haven't won majorities, they've become a permanent fixture in European politics, attracting disproportionate support from less-educated voters and those who prefer traditional values over social change.

Index Funds Are Accidentally Rigging Corporate Elections When They Try to Stay Neutral

harvard_corpgov

• Index funds like BlackRock and Vanguard use "mirror voting" to match how active investors vote, aiming to stay neutral in corporate elections, but this approach actually distorts outcomes by ignoring corporate voting mechanics.
• Current mirror voting helps low-turnout proposals pass by artificially creating quorums and lowering voting thresholds below what corporate law intends, essentially converting investor apathy into support.
• The authors propose "context-dependent mirroring" that accounts for different voting standards and sometimes requires index funds not to vote at all to achieve true neutrality.

U.S. Job Growth Masks Sharp Regional Divide as More States Lose Jobs Than Gain Them

stl_fed

• U.S. employment grew 0.2% in early 2026, but 28 states lost jobs while only 21 gained them, revealing stark regional inequality
• Nevada led with 2.1% job growth while Washington D.C. shed 5.2% of its jobs, highlighting the widening gap between winning and losing regions
• Metro areas show even more extreme variation, from 3.3% growth in California's Merced area to 4.6% job losses in Arizona's Sierra Vista-Douglas region

In the News

How Economic Power Is Becoming the New Battleground for Global Influence

hoover

• Traditional diplomacy and military power are giving way to 'geoeconomics' — the use of trade, sanctions, investment, and financial tools to achieve geopolitical goals.
• Major powers like the US and China are increasingly weaponizing economic relationships, from semiconductor export controls to Belt and Road infrastructure investments.
• This shift creates new vulnerabilities for smaller nations and businesses caught between competing economic blocs, while making global supply chains a matter of national security.

Analysis

The Trump Administration Erased the Public Record of U.S. Global Health Achievements

think_global_health

• When USAID was dismantled in 2025, the public archive documenting decades of U.S. global health program results was taken down, erasing data on everything from bed net distribution to maternal health services
• Former USAID officials have created a tool to recover some lost data from internet archives, showing that in 2023 alone, U.S. programs reached millions with life-saving interventions
• Without this historical baseline data, it's impossible to verify whether the State Department's new bilateral health agreements are actually improving outcomes or to hold the government accountable for results

Also Worth a Look

• Why Today's Oil Price Spike Won't Replay the Economic Disasters of the 1970s (hoover)
• The space innovation boom actually started in the 1990s, not with SpaceX (voxeu)
• How Scientists Plan to Deflect Asteroids Before They Can Destroy Life on Earth (mit_press_reader)
• How the U.S. Fell Behind in Adopting the Electric Car (econofact)
• Supreme Court Weighs Cases on Immigration Detention, Jury Size, and Prosecutorial Misconduct (scotusblog)
• How 19th-Century Cities Grew a Thousandfold While Making People Richer (works_in_progress)
• Trump's Summer Trade Agenda Will Reshape NAFTA and Impose Sweeping New Tariffs (csis)