Welcome to the roundup of notable coverage and announcements from the Niskanen Center for the week of Friday, August 7.

Niskanen Center president, Jerry Taylor, was featured in an op-ed by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In his column, Friedman argues for the GOP to return to center-right policies on immigration, infrastructure, and climate. He cites the Niskanen Center’s climate policy work, specifically Mr. Taylor’s recent paper in which he argues that Republicans should embrace a carbon tax as a means to address climate change and as replacement for burdensome EPA regulations.

CLIMATE

David Bookbinder was cited in the National Journal, discussing President Obama’s new Environmental Protection Agency Clean Power Plan, and the viability of state carbon taxes as a market-based compliance option.

In an article for ClimateWire recapping the first Republican presidential candidate debate, Evan Lehmann quotes Sarah Hunt:

Hours before the debate, some conservative advocates had sober expectations about the way the candidates might handle questions about climate change.

Zesty attacks against the Clean Power Plan would be welcome but denying the facts of warming by saying “I’m not a scientist” is a step backward, said Sarah Hunt, an energy policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank that supports taxing carbon dioxide.

“It’s a dodge, and something a serious candidate should not do at the expense of intelligent debate on an important issue of public policy,” she said. “Conversely, I’ll be ecstatic if one of the candidates decides to go beyond the usual rhetoric by acknowledging man-made climate change and the power of the free market as a solution.”

David Bookbinder was featured in an article on Investors.com discussing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan and the difficulties ahead with state compliance. The article discusses the immediate challenges that were raised after the announcement of the plan. In the article, Mr. Bookbinder argues that states like Kentucky, which is one of the most vocal in its opposition, might not have that many options to challenge the plan because the EPA has a model to fit any state that does not comply.

IMMIGRATION

For the Foundation for Economic Education, David Bier wrote about the enormous difficulty people have immigrating to the United States. With the exception of families or refugees, Mr. Bier argues that it is virtually impossible to immigrate to the U.S. Mr. Bier also argues that this level of difficulty only serves to harm the interests of the United States.

In another article for the Foundation for Economic Education, Niskanen Center’s Matthew La Corte writes about the need to overhaul and to simplify the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program in the United States. The SIV is designed to help interpreters in Iraq and Afghanistan come to the United States for protection. Currently, the system is fraught with bureaucracy and makes it all too difficult for people who worked with the United States during times of war to get the protection they deserve.