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Release: Gary Rosen, veteran editor, joins AEI as a senior fellow, and Luke Strange heads AEI media relations. Latest work. For Immediate Release: Washington, DC (July 1, 2026) - American Enterprise Institute (AEI) President Robert Doar and Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies Yuval Levin announced today that Gary Rosen has joined AEI as a senior fellow. His work will focus on American politics and civil society, political philosophy, constitutionalism, higher education, and media. Doar also announced that AEI Vice President of Government Relations Luke Strange will take on a new role overseeing media relations as vice president of government relations and public affairs. "All of us at AEI are delighted to welcome Gary Rosen to our community of scholars. His distinguished career as a leading public intellectual on the right and high-quality work as founding editor of The Wall Street Journal Weekend Review make him an extraordinary addition to our institution. I am also pleased that Luke will be taking on leadership of AEI's media relations team. His many years of experience representing AEI before policymakers on Capitol Hill and in the executive branch equip him well for this new role leading AEI's public affairs," said President Doar. Dr. Levin added, "Gary brings a depth of experience and expertise that will make him an enormous asset to AEI's work on the health and integrity of core American institutions." Before joining AEI, Dr. Rosen launched The Wall Street Journal's Weekend Review, which he edited for over 15 years. He previously served as chief external affairs officer of the John Templeton Foundation, managing editor of Commentary, and senior editor of City Journal. Dr. Rosen remarked, "I've worked with so many outstanding AEI scholars over the course of my career. It's a real honor to be joining their ranks." Mr. Strange said, "I am grateful to Robert for the opportunity to continue serving this outstanding American institution and its scholars." Mr. Strange has been AEI's head of government relations since 2020 and, in that role, oversees AEI's engagement with members of Congress, their staffs, executive branch policymakers, and outside policy organizations and coalitions. For questions, interviews, or other media inquiries, please email [email protected] or call 202.862.5829. The American Enterprise Institute is a public policy think tank dedicated to defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world. The work of our scholars and staff advances ideas rooted in our belief in democracy, free enterprise, American strength and global leadership, solidarity with those at the periphery of our society, and a pluralistic, entrepreneurial culture.

New 'SOURCE' tracks private money to higher ed. A conservative think tank is making it easier to find information about how private money flows to colleges and universities. On Wednesday, the American Enterprise Institute launched SOURCE (Searchable Open University Records of Charitable Expenditures), an interactive tool that gives users access to a dataset of more than one million grants valued at $90 billion plus, which some 57,000 U.S. private foundations have given to nearly 5,300 higher education institutions since 2008. The database was built by extracting information from 15 years' worth of publicly available 990-PF forms, the annual return that private foundations file with the Internal Revenue Service. Researchers can search by institution, country, funding organization and grant tag - such as athletic, general or research. "This information is often difficult to navigate, difficult to read and to the best of my knowledge no one has put together something systematic like this specifically focused on higher education," Tao Tan, affiliate scholar at AEI's Center for the Future of the American University, said at a webinar debuting the portal he developed. "What led to [the creation of SOURCE] was three questions: Where is the money coming from and why? What is it funding? And what patterns can we find?" One of the trends Tan has identified is that both the top funders and the top grantees account for half the awards; the top 165 funders give out 50 percent of the total grants, while 54 of the grantees received 50 percent of the grant dollars. Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Stanford Universities are the top three recipients.

Pentagon seeks help from Ford and GM. By Farah Stockman, Neal E. Boudette and John Ismay / New York Times April 17, 2026 - Last updated 1:41 p.m. KENNY HOLSTON/THE NEW YORK TIMES An aerial view of the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., in October 2025. The Pentagon has met with senior executives of Ford Motor and General Motors to gauge whether the auto industry could help the military acquire vehicles, munitions or other hardware more quickly and at lower costs, according to three people familiar with the talks. The Pentagon has met with senior executives of Ford Motor and General Motors to gauge whether the auto industry could help the military acquire vehicles, munitions or other hardware more quickly and at lower costs, according to three people familiar with the talks. The conversations are in the very early stages and relate to the possible production of components by the companies, not entire weapons systems. No specific projects are currently being negotiated, the people said. The discussions with automakers underscore Trump administration efforts to revamp military procurement as the war in Iran and U.S. support for Ukraine in its war with Russia deplete supplies. The idea is reminiscent of World War II, when GM, Ford and other automakers supplied the military. "The Department of War is committed to rapidly expanding the defense industrial base by leveraging all available commercial solutions and technologies to ensure our war fighters maintain a decisive advantage," a Pentagon official said in a statement in response to questions about the meetings with automakers. "The department is aggressively pursuing and integrating the best of American innovation, wherever it resides, to deliver production at scale and drive resiliency across supply chains." The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on the talks between the Pentagon and the automakers. The Trump administration has complained for months that traditional defense contractors take too long to manufacture weapons systems and charge too much for them. In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that aimed to punish defense contractors that failed to expand their manufacturing capacity. And in November, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth rolled out a strategy for military procurement that included buying more widely available off-the-shelf components to avoid the high costs and delays associated with the specialized systems that the military typically uses. Don't miss out on what's happening! The defense industrial base "is stagnant, building the world's best and most exquisite weapon systems at low volume while relying on obsolescent parts, outdated manufacturing processes and stale innovation," the strategy read. "In contrast, the commercial industry outpaces the D.I.B. in advancing cutting-edge technology." The issue has become more urgent because the war in Iran has depleted U.S. stockpiles of commonly used munitions, such as Patriot missile interceptors. By some estimates, it could take five years or more to replenish the munitions that have been used in the last 40 days. "We are on borrowed time," said John Ferrari, a retired Army major general who is now a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a research group in Washington. "The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, everybody knows that we don't have enough munitions." The Pentagon has turned to auto suppliers because U.S. officials remember how Ford and GM revamped production lines during the COVID-19 pandemic to make personal protective equipment and ventilators. During World War II, the U.S. government asked car companies based in and around Detroit to produce weapons, an industrial mobilization that became famous for building what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the "arsenal of democracy." The Willow Run factory that Ford built near Ypsilanti, Michigan, churned out thousands of planes, producing about one B-24 Liberator bomber an hour at its peak. But that was possible only because military officials designed the planes to be built using machinery Ford already owned, Ferrari said. A big question today is whether the Pentagon will be able to adjust its specifications and requirements to fit the machinery that carmakers use. "Otherwise, it is not going to work," Ferrari said. "The commercial factories are not going to go out and buy new machines, and if they did, that would take years." While they gave up making bombers long ago, some automakers continue to work with the military. GM, for example, has a defense unit that makes vehicles for the Army. Foster Ferguson, vice president of industrial business at Stratasys, a company that manufactures 3D printers used by Ford, said machines that mass-produce parts for the auto industry could make components for military systems. The U.S. military has been exploring the use of 3D printers to make replacement parts for older systems, he said, but the devices could also be used to mass-produce other components. Last month, Stratasys was selected to participate in a military pilot program to accelerate the qualification and deployment of 3D-printed parts. "The Pentagon is bringing a sense of urgency to the modernization and scaling of defense manufacturing," said Ferguson, who served as an officer in the Marine Corps specializing in supply chain and maintenance operations. "The automotive industry can make a significant contribution due to their expertise in economies of scale, cost-down engineering and experience in consistently producing high-volume, quality parts that meet strict production requirements." But many weapon systems require components that cannot be 3D-printed or need rare-earth metals mined or processed in China. (C) 2026 The New York Times Company 13 Comments