January could bring a major shift in who controls education money. A new federal credit will reimburse qualifying donations to scholarship organizations, up to $1,700 per individual. Scholarships can cover private tuition, tutoring and other K–12 expenses. Thirty states have opted in; 19 of the 20 holdouts have Democratic governors. The dispute reaches beyond private schools because public-school students can also benefit. Governors who refuse participation will keep their own families from receiving scholarships while residents can still claim credits for donations benefiting participating states.

America’s birthrate crisis has a housing problem. A new working-paper model estimates that rising housing costs explain 51 percent of the decline in U.S. fertility between the 2000s and 2010s. Small apartments help young adults move out, but larger homes do more to make children possible. When three bedrooms become unaffordable, couples face pressure to have fewer children or none at all. These are model estimates, not settled measurements, but the policy challenge is concrete: a country that wants more families needs housing those families can afford.

A house can rise in price without making its owner proportionately richer. Yet the tax code can treat inflation-driven appreciation as a taxable gain. The home-sale exclusions—$250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for married couples—have remained fixed since 1997. The argument is that aging homeowners face a growing penalty for downsizing, keeping family-sized properties off the market while younger buyers compete for scarce listings. Updating the exclusions could ease that pressure; the broader case here calls for abolishing the tax entirely.

Germany’s voters are breaking with the immigration consensus, and the establishment is struggling to respond. The AfD’s state-election gains deepen the challenge to parties that long dominated German politics. The argument is that dismissing voters’ concerns while defending mass migration has helped turn dissatisfaction into a political revolt. That leaves the governing parties facing a harder question: how long can they resist changing course while the electorate keeps moving away from them?