Alex Nowrasteh is Senior Vice President for Policy at the Cato Institute and one of the most cited and combative voices in the U.S. immigration debate. A self-described 'radical' for open borders, he turns the standard fears about immigration - crime, terrorism, welfare, wages, culture - into testable claims and then publishes the numbers. He co-wrote the prize-winning 'Wretched Refuse?' and the rebuttal handbook 'The Most Common Arguments Against Immigration and Why They're Wrong,' and he is a regular on Capitol Hill, on cable news, and across the op-ed pages.
Arnold Kling is an American economist, author, and blogger who turned a career spanning the Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, and a sold-at-the-peak internet startup into one of the most charitable, contrarian voices in online economics. He writes the popular Substack 'In My Tribe,' is best known for 'The Three Languages of Politics,' and built a following by taking the most charitable view of those who disagree with him.
Brink Lindsey is a writer and policy thinker who spent decades inside Washington's free-market establishment - vice president for research at the Cato Institute, a leading free-trade voice - before publicly reinventing himself as a 'recovering libertarian.' Now senior vice president at the Niskanen Center, he argues that capable government and robust social insurance are not enemies of markets but their necessary complement. His writing, including The Captured Economy (with Steven Teles) and The Permanent Problem, wrestles with a single paradox: rich countries have never had more material plenty, and people have never felt less satisfied. He explores it weekly from a base in northeastern Thailand on his Substack, The Permanent Problem.
David J. Bier is the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, where he holds the Selz Foundation Chair in Immigration Policy. A relentless data-driven analyst of legal immigration, border security, and interior enforcement, he is best known for showing that fewer than 1 percent of people who want to move to the United States can legally do so, and for the Powerball analogy that reframed the legal-immigration debate. His research has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal appeals courts, and he testifies regularly before House and Senate committees.
Will Wilkinson is a political analyst, essayist, and policy intellectual who spent two decades navigating the intellectual terrain between libertarianism and liberalism before landing somewhere more interesting than either. A former research fellow at the Cato Institute and vice president at the Niskanen Center, he has written for The New York Times, The Economist, The Atlantic, and dozens of other outlets. Currently working in government affairs at Persona, a digital identity company, he continues to publish the 'Model Citizen' newsletter on Substack, where his blend of philosophy, political science, and sharp commentary finds its most faithful audience.