Oil is flowing out of the Middle East again, but the threat of another war escalation is keeping relief at the pump out of reach. Brent crude topped $105 Thursday as reports said Washington was weighing new strikes against Iran ahead of the midterms. Trump said he did not really want a peace deal. With shipping through the Strait of Hormuz still carrying a risk premium, recovering exports alone may not bring prices down.

Moving goods between American ports comes with a government-imposed catch: the ships must be American-built, owned, registered and crewed. The Jones Act protects a narrow maritime market while its critics argue that higher freight costs spread through the rest of the economy. Its defenders invoke jobs and national security. The case for repeal asks whether protecting an expensive, restricted fleet has actually strengthened American shipping—or simply made Americans pay more.

California wants a 5 percent levy on billionaires to help fund healthcare. The catch is that its biggest taxpayers can leave, taking future income-tax payments and investment with them. A Hoover Institution analysis projects that those lasting losses could outweigh the money raised and leave the state $24.7 billion worse off over time. That is a forecast, not a settled outcome, but it challenges the promise that taxing a handful of fortunes comes without a cost to everyone else.

Colleges hand out high academic grades while earning miserable marks for free speech. FIRE’s latest rankings give failing grades to 121 of 261 institutions and put the average at D-minus. The problem extends beyond written policies to whether students can challenge fashionable views without intimidation. But improvement is possible: Harvard has climbed from the bottom, and Dartmouth offers an example of leadership defending open debate. Administrators can change a campus’s culture when they choose to.