1/2 @JordanMcGillis is a fellow at @InnovateEconomy, the former economics editor at @CityJournal, and a @FreeConTalk signatory. Reporting the findings of a new @EchelonInsights survey conducted for EIG, McGillis wrote that “American workers across partisan divides think the president’s economic agenda has failed them — and on the single issue they care about most, the cost of living, workers say the president’s policies have made their problems worse.” Workers place high prices, housing affordability and taxes at the top of their priority list, explained McGillis and coauthor John Lettieri. “And it’s on this paramount cost-of-living issue that workers disapprove of the president’s performance the most. Only 22% of workers grade President Trump’s performance on inflation and the cost of living as good or excellent, compared to 62% who say it’s been poor. Even among those who voted for Trump in 2024, only 46% give him positive marks.” “American workers are dissatisfied with the direction of the economy and dissatisfied with economic policies that fail to deliver higher wages and greater purchasing power. The lesson of recent elections is that these sentiments spell bad news for the incumbent party — even when other economic indicators, such as job growth and the stock market, are robustly positive.” #FreeCon

1/2 @ISMurray is vice president for strategy and senior fellow at @CEIdotorg. He is also one of the founders of the @FreeConTalk project. In a recent article for The Daily Economy, Murray wrote that America won’t outcompete China by restricting imports on robots. “It will win by becoming the best place in the world to build and deploy them.” “It is a major part of the administration’s policy to ‘reshore’ American manufacturing to bring back jobs,” he explained, “and a tenet of the National Conservatism movement that America needs blue-collar jobs that pay a good wage. Yet both of these propositions rest on the idea that manufacturing needs to be labor-intensive.” What neither officials in Washington nor NatCon influencers seem to understand is that the best chance for reshoring manufacturing capacity is to seek more automation of industrial processes, not less. “That means more robots, but the administration has recently moved to restrict the import of robots, specifically humanoid robots from China,” Murray wrote. “The more hostile the administration is to automation, the more it will drive manufacturing back offshore.” “Restricting access to robot hardware cannot be the answer. The sensible response is to make America the best place to invent, improve, and deploy robots in new and remarkable ways.” #FreeCon

1/2 @NR_Institute, @MyCommonwealth, and other partners will host #FreeCon Philadelphia on Tuesday, November 17 from 3pm to 7pm. Former U.S. Senator @SenToomey and Pennsylvania Attorney General @DaveSunday_ will deliver remarks at the @FreeConTalk event, which will be held at at the Union League in Philadelphia. Other speakers on the future of American conservatism include @RichLowry, @JohnPuri2026, and @AStuttaford from @NRO as well as Andrew Lewis from the Commonwealth Foundation, @EmilyBrey from @AFPPennsylvania, and @CalebSFuller from Pennsylvania’s Grove City College. Will drop a link in the comments for more info and registration.

1/2 @JohnLockeNC, @CarolinaJournal, @CEIdotorg, and other partners will host #FreeCon Raleigh on Wednesday, November 18 from 4pm to 8pm at the Renaissance Raleigh North Hills Hotel. Delivering the keynote address will be @sladesr, senior editor at @reason and author of the new book “Fusionism: Liberty, Virtue, and the Future of the American Right.” Other speakers at the event include @donaldbryson (John Locke Foundation), @DonnaKingCJ (John Locke Foundation), @KentatCEI (Competitive Enterprise Institute), @scottlincicome (@Cato), and @jarobinson1 (@AcademicRenewal). During an initial panel, Carolina Journal editor @DavidLarson83, Locke political analyst @mitchkokai, and Harper Polling’s @brockmccleary will present the results of a post-election Carolina Journal Poll. Will drop an RSVP link in the next post. #FreeCon #ncpol

1/2 The @GoldwaterInst, the @1912Institute, and other partners will host #FreeCon Phoenix on Monday, November 16 from 8am to 5pm at the Westin Phoenix Downtown. Clint Bolick, justice on the Arizona Supreme Court and co-founder of the Institute for Justice, will deliver the keynote address. Other speakers include Victor Riches, @CMSandefur, Timothy Sandefur, @MBeienburg, Jon Riches, and Jenna Bentley from the Goldwater Institute as well as Rebecca Painter (The Policy Circle), Joe Pitts (1912 Institute), Danny Seiden (Arizona Chamber of Commerce & Industry), Jason Huang (Abundance Law Society at Arizona State), Jackson Moll (Home Builders Association of Central Arizona), Tessa Dysart (University of Arizona), Jenny Clark (Love Your School), Jason Bedrick (Heritage Foundation), and Betsy Sanz (Institute for Justice). Will drop an RSVP link in the thread.

1/4 With Election Day still weeks away, we cannot say for sure what American voters will do in the 2026 midterms. Dozens of key federal, state, and local races remain too close to call. Still, Democrats appear likely to take the U.S. House as well as several state governorships and legislative chambers. Republican control of the U.S. Senate is also endangered. Among the hundreds of signatories to the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles are campaign professionals, political activists, and former elected officials — including mayors, school-board members, state and federal lawmakers, governors, and even a former vice president. Most have a rooting interest in partisan politics. Some remain personally involved in campaigns. But the @FreeConTalk project itself is nonpartisan. Our goals extend far beyond one election cycle or the fate of any particular candidate. We believe that unless there is a healthy, vibrant American Right committed to individual liberty, federalism, free enterprise, free speech, free trade, civic virtue, equal opportunity, and the rule of law, any hard-won electoral victories will prove fleeting. And if our movement tolerates cranks, bigots, and other reactionaries, fewer such victories will occur in the first place. Unless conservatives offer real solutions to the problems voters care about most — such as affordability, fiscal responsibility, family formation, and broad access to the American Dream — voters will seek them elsewhere. That voters are destined to be disappointed by populists, progressives, and socialists is true but beside the point. You can’t beat something with nothing. And American greatness is impossible without American freedom. That will be one of the themes explored at three post-election events in battleground states: FreeCon Phoenix on November 16, FreeCon Philadelphia on November 17, and FreeCon Raleigh on November 18. At each summit, #FreeCon signatories and allies will discuss the lessons of the midterms, the challenges and opportunities we will face in 2027 and beyond, and how a rejuvenated American Right can meet those challenges and seize those opportunities. Please join us! RSVP links to follow in the thread.

1/2 After 20 years of public service in the legislative and executive branches, Brent Orrell joined @aei as a senior fellow to work on job training, workforce development, and criminal justice reform. He is also a @FreeConTalk. In a recent article for @NationalAffairs, Orrell applied the lessons of economic history to current debates about artificial intelligence and the future of the American worker. After the invention of the coal-fired steam engine in the early 1700s, waves of innovation dramatically increased its efficiency. While many observers expected the result to be declining demand for coal, its production actually exploded. The increasing productivity of the engines led both to more-efficient mining of coal and the application of steam to more and more industries. “Today, code has reached its coal moment,” he wrote. “Thanks to artificial intelligence, code production is picking up speed, adding vast new supplies of a basic input in the same way technological change and demand interacted to increase coal supplies.” How will these developments affect the labor market? No one knows for sure, Orrell concluded, but policymakers can still take prudent action to adjust to potential economic and political disruptions. “If technological change continues at its current pace, training workers with specific technical skills and capacities — which are, by definition, more exposed to AI-driven automation — will produce diminishing returns. We should instead be cultivating the skills that give workers the capacity to learn new ones. These include reasoning skills, communication skills, collaboration skills, and the sort of judgment and prudence that enables a worker to decide what a problem requires before deciding which tool to apply.” #FreeCon

1/2 Mitch Pearlstein is founder emeritus of the Center of the American Experiment (@MNThinkTank), a Minnesota-based think tank, and a former education official in the Reagan and Bush administrations. He is also a @FreeConTalk signatory. Pearlstein previously served as an editorial writer and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, policy aide to a former Minnesota governor, and a research fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota. In a recent essay, he reflected on the phrase “only in America” and how the rich history of our country should engender gratitude among Americans today. Other countries, such as our neighboring Canada, have many wonderful attributes, Pearlstein argued. Still, America has welcomed strivers and refugees from around the world whose personal experience demonstrated the power of our country’s founding principles and institutions. “I’m fully aware that the United States isn’t sui generis in all things good and wonderful,” he wrote, but “an American, I’ve been luckier than 99% of humans ever to walk the planet. And that won’t be changing.” #FreeCon