This week, while more drama unfolded about tariffs, the cost of a First-Class stamp increased from 73 to 78 cents. This latest price hike comes as David Steiner takes office as the USPS’ 76th Postmaster General (PMG). America’s mail carrier has raised stamp prices six times over the past three years, and this latest increase gives little hope to reform advocates calling for a different approach from the new PMG. Despite repeated price hikes, the USPS has lost more than $100 billion over the past fifteen years. Postal leadership wrongly thinks it can price-hike its way out of a financial disaster of its own making. The truth is that the USPS only succeeds in driving customers away with each new price increase. Incoming PMG Steiner has his work cut out for him. The USPS lost $9.5 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2024 and more than $3 billion so far in FY 2025. PMG Steiner can start turning things around by reversing course on electric truck orders. The agency is paying nearly $80,000 per new
electric truck and will spend an astounding $10 billion on fleet procurement over the next few years. Switching to a conventional fleet could save taxpayers more than $3 billion total. PMG Steiner should also focus on cutting labor costs, which make up 80 percent of annual agency expenses. Moving away from costly career hires can help bring the agency back into the black. The USPS’ new leader must act fast to reverse his agency’s surging debt and unacceptable performance. Taxpayers and consumers deserve an agency that will deliver for the American people.


In Support of the AI Moratorium

A proposed federal moratorium on state artificial intelligence (AI) laws was a surprising and significant sticking point in discussions of the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The moratorium was ultimately left out of the final bill, but it raised a pivotal question of who should be regulating AI. It is a policy imperative to prevent state officials from enacting a patchwork of reckless rules that place America at a competitive disadvantage. Defenders of the moratorium had correctly identified this as falling within the legal umbrella of interstate commerce, enabling Congress to create a federal framework. Congress preempting state AI regulations is far more than a narrow constitutional question. It is a policy imperative to prevent state officials from enacting a patchwork of reckless rules that place America at a competitive disadvantage. With BBB in the rearview mirror, Congress can and must pass the regulatory moratorium into law.

As experienced in the privacy and telecommunications policy processes, negotiations in Congress have largely been sabotaged by the passage of state-level statutes. These bills typically grant one side excessive leverage by establishing a “regulatory floor” through passing a law in a friendly jurisdiction that grants them most of their demands. At that point, getting a compromise solution that incorporates the other side’s demands becomes practically impossible. Comprehensive nationwide regulatory frameworks take time to craft and refine. Policymakers need to account for the multiple uses a technology could have and all the potential tradeoffs, especially with emerging technologies like AI. As these negotiations take place and policymakers search for the correct balance of regulation, backers of state-level rules usually claim that Congress is taking “too long” and push for a patchwork approach. This status quo creates a perverse incentive for Congress: either rush to pass any sort of
federal framework and risk it being a massive blunder, or forfeit any realistic expectation of passing a national law.

A multi-year pause would give Congress a window to appropriately address necessary nuances and let AI technology mature. The AI hype cycle has led to significant overestimation of both benefits and risks, which do not always materialize. Any serious attempt at a national AI framework needs time to develop, and a moratorium needs to account for that reality. If the blank canvas that makes these negotiations possible is gone after a year or two, then the pause will either have little to no practical effect or will force Congress to pass a rushed and potentially industry-crushing law. Supporters of a federal AI moratorium have already ably articulated the economic, legal, and practical benefits of the proposal. But most importantly, passing a moratorium would be a strategic win for Congress. Allowing states to take the lead in regulating tech products and accepting harmful regulatory spill-over effects is granting any individual state the power to set a de facto national standard that will
render any federal negotiation virtually impossible. That approach has been lamented by both sides of the aisle, as it fails to give consumers and companies clarity over their rights and responsibilities. If Congress wants to pass any sort of comprehensive AI law, it unequivocally needs to pass a state-level moratorium first.

Ordinarily, states play a key role in implementing policies, and it’s generally important for the federal government to enable experimentation with different approaches. However, for truly borderless technologies such as the internet and AI, restrictive regulations in one state stifle — not enable — rival approaches in other jurisdictions. This limiting factor of federalism makes a national approach important in the digital domain. To ensure America’s global competitiveness, lawmakers must pave the way for a national light-touch regulatory framework for AI.


Sports Betting Alarmism and Misinformation

Political commentator and podcaster Saagar Enjeti has been on a crusade against legalized sports betting. In a series of discussions on his YouTube show Breaking Points (and during a recent interview with Tucker Carlson), he railed against the industry, warning of mass addiction, financial ruin, and cultural decay. In his most recent rant he qualified by saying, “I don’t even oppose the ability to gamble,” but sadly followed that with an argument that would make the most ardent prohibitionists proud. Sports betting is not a free-for-all in the United States by any stretch of the imagination. It is regulated—and rightly so. The idea that gambling lingo just burst on the scene in 2018 is patently false. “Seven years ago this was not a thing,” Enjeti claims. However, anyone who has ever listened to Bill Simmons, watched the World Series of Poker Main Event (where some of the largest payouts took place well before 2018), or heard Kenny Rogers sing “The Gambler” knows this is nonsense. Sports
betting has long been a part of American culture—legal or not. The 2018 Supreme Court decision in Murphy v. NCAA simply allowed states to decide how to regulate it. What changed was not the existence of betting. Rather, it was the transition from unregulated bookies and offshore websites to transparent, state-regulated platforms with consumer protections. That’s a step forward—not a descent into moral decay.

States impose their own strict rules on marketing. If anything, sports betting advertising is more tightly regulated than many other legal industries—certainly more than lotteries or alcohol. Claims that legalized sports betting leads to “mass bankruptcy” and “intimate partner violence” are irresponsible at best. These assertions are pulled from a grab bag of unpublished, non-peer-reviewed sources that don’t hold up to scrutiny. No credible studies have found statistically significant increases in domestic violence or bankruptcy attributable to sports betting legalization. As the old adage goes, “Anecdote is not the singular form of data.” Enjeti’s argument boils down to a personal discomfort (that is likely quite well-meaning) with how others spend their free time. He admits he has no issue with gambling per se—just with the fact that it’s now easier and more popular. That may well be a legitimate argument. However, that’s not a compelling reason to curtail the freedoms of millions o
f Americans who engage responsibly. The way to go about curtailing behavior seen as decadent is in community engagement and accountability, not government fiat.

This vision would have government micromanaging how Americans entertain themselves. The real threat isn’t that sports fans are placing $5 bets on parlays—it’s the idea that anyone’s moral discomfort (whether justified or not) should dictate what everyone else should have the ability to do with their own time and money.

BLOGS:

Monday: No, Saagar—Sports Betting Isn’t the Next Opioid Epidemic ([link removed])

Tuesday: Why Arbitrary Merger Enforcement Must End ([link removed])

Wednesday: House Financial Services Committee Holds Hearing After 15 Years of the Dodd-Frank Act ([link removed])

Thursday: Trump’s Troublesome Trade Woes ([link removed])

Friday: Taxing Bias: ALEC’s AI Equity Framework ([link removed])

MEDIA:

July 10, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their news segment on the Baltimore Inspector General.
July 11, 2025: Townhall ran TPA’s op-ed “WHO’s Sin Tax Scheme Is a War on the Working Class."
July 11, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Republicans voice frustration with Gov. Moore's buyout program.”
July 11, 2025: Consumer Affairs mentioned TPA in their story, “Consumer group opposes heavier trucks on federal highways"
July 11, 2025: News Channel 8 WJLA (Washington, D.C.) quoted TPA for their news segment on Governor Moore’s buyout program to reduce the state government workforce in an effort to close the $120 million budget gap.
July 11, 2025: DC Journal (Washington, D.C.) ran TPA’s op-ed “Taxpayers Deserve More Than OBBBA’s Medicaid Cuts – DC Journal."
July 13, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their news segment on the Baltimore County Inspector General.
July 14, 2025: WJLA (Washington, D.C.) mentioned TPA in their news segment on Governor Moore’s buyout program to close the $120M gap in Maryland’s budget.
July 14, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Taxpayer advocate calls Gov. Moore's buyout plan 'smart government.'”
July 15, 2025: Antigo Daily Journal (Burlington, Wisc.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “Taxpayers deserve more than OBBBA’s Medicaid cuts.”
July 15, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Baltimore youth fund decries 'incessant media reporting' about its use of taxpayer dollars.”
July 15, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their news segment on the Baltimore youth fund’s use of taxpayer dollars.
July 15, 2025: American Spectator ran TPA’s op-ed, “Don’t Let California Write America’s AI Laws”
July 15, 2025: The Capital Gazette mentioned TPA in their story, “Baltimore youth fund disputes media coverage of taxpayer spending.”
July 15, 2025: The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their story, “Baltimore youth fund disputes media coverage of taxpayer spending.”
July 17, 2025: The Sunday Gazette-Mail (Charleston, Wv.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “Taxpayers deserve more than OBBBA’s Medicaid cuts”
July 17, 2025: I appeared on WBOB-AM (Jacksonville, Fl.) to talk about tariffs and government spending.
July 17, 2025: The Washington Examiner ran TPA’s op-ed “Postal Service needs reform, not another rate hike."
July 17, 2025: The Charleston Gazette (Charleston, Wv.) ran TPA’s op-ed, “Taxpayers deserve more than OBBBA’s Medicaid cuts.”
July 17, 2025: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their news segment on AI regulation.
July 17, 2025: Juan Londoño appeared on NewsTalk STL's Mike Ferguson in the Morning (St. Louis, Mo.) for their news segment on AI regulation and the AI moratorium.
July 17, 2025: The Baltimore Sun ran TPA's op-ed, "Congress must deliver real Medicaid reform."

Have a great weekend!

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1101 14^th Street, NW
Suite 500
Washington, D.C.
Office: (202) 930-1716
Mobile: (202) 258-6527
www.protectingtaxpayers.org

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