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Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary: Russia's Drone Surge Depends on Chinese Supplies
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor:
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Russia's Drone Surge Depends on Chinese Supplies
Simone Chiusa
Executive summary
* The People's Republic of China (PRC) has become Russia's main foreign supplier of drones, providing engines, navigation components, and technical support, and a Chinese state-owned company now also ships the precursor used to make the drones' carbon fiber.
* Russia's state corporation, Rosatom, opened a plant in 2021 to end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors. ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Russia's Drone Surge Depends on Chinese Supplies Simone Chiusa Executive summary * The People's Republic of China (PRC) has become Russia's main foreign supplier of drones, providing engines, navigation components, and technical support, and a Chinese state-owned company now also ships the precursor used to make the drones' carbon fiber. * Russia's state corporation, Rosatom, opened a plant in 2021 to end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors.Imports kept surging, however, and a new line approved in 2026 again pursues import substitution.
* Russia pays the PRC a rising premium for goods it cannot produce at scale. At the same time, Ukraine's expanding long-range strikes threaten critical industrial sites, whose loss would deepen Russia's dependence on Chinese components.
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Documents obtained by Ukraine's Security and Cooperation Center (USCC) and shared with Politico in September revealed that Jilin Chemical Fiber Group, a Chinese state-owned company, had shipped 46 metric tons of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor to Alabuga-Volokno, a subsidiary of Russia's state corporation Rosatom (Politico, September 4). PAN precursor is the acrylic fiber used to make carbon fiber, and Alabuga-Volokno operates in Tatarstan's Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which also hosts Russia's largest factory for Geran drones. The cargo was declared as civilian textile, and the documents point to at least eight similar tenders since 2022.
The shipment is the latest evidence that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has become the main foreign supplier of Russia's drone warfare, and that its assistance now reaches the basic materials from which the drones are built. It also exposes the failure of a pledge that Rosatom made in 2021, when it opened a plant meant to free Russia from Chinese precursors (Rosatom, November 22, 2021). This dynamic reveals both the limits of Russia's drive for self-sufficiency under sanctions and how the PRC sustains the Russian drone industry.
Long-range attack drones have become Russia's main instrument for striking Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. According to Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), the Russian state order for Shahed-type drones grew from about 12,000 units in 2024 to more than 100,000 in 2026, and output of the newer jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 has reached about 3,000 units a month (Ukrinform, June 1). The Russian government has framed the growth of its drone industry as a matter of technological independence, aiming to raise the industry's self-sufficiency from 37.8 percent in 2024 to 81.1 percent by 2030 (TASS, January 9, 2025). In practice, however, the expansion has relied on Chinese suppliers at almost every stage, ranging from single components to complete engines and technical support.
Russian Gerans use Chinese copies of the German engine from the original Iranian design, along with Chinese navigation modules and modems (Kyiv Post, December 10, 2023; The Insider, March 24). A second Russian attack drone, the Garpiya, uses engines from Xiamen Limbach, a Chinese firm the United States sanctioned in October 2024 as part of its first designation of Chinese companies for jointly developing a complete weapons system with Russia (U.S. Treasury Department, October 17, 2024). Nevertheless, the engines kept arriving afterward, declared as industrial refrigeration units, and Chinese specialists visited Kupol repeatedly to test drones and train staff (Reuters, July 23, 2025; RBC-Ukraine, September 25, 2025).
Across the wider range of battlefield goods that Western governments have placed under export controls, the PRC accounts for about 75 percent of Russia's imports (Kyiv School of Economics, July 3). The precursor trade extends this pattern to the material from which the drones themselves are built. Carbon fiber keeps Russia's drones light enough to carry fuel and explosives over more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) and increases stealthiness. The Geran-2 fuselage and wings are built on a carbon fiber structural frame, and the newer jet-powered Geran-5 has a carbon fiber skin, wings, and tail mounted on the internal airframe (Ukrainska Pravda, November 25, 2023; New Voice of Ukraine, January 19). Without this material, drones would be heavier, sacrificing either range or payload.
Carbon fiber is only as good as its precursor. Research on carbon fiber production shows that the fiber's mechanical properties depend heavily on precursor quality (Progress in Materials Science, 2020). The precursor accounts for about half the cost of standard carbon fiber and more than three-quarters of the cost of fine grades used in aerospace (Heliyon, October 2019). Producing it requires specialized expertise in polymer chemistry and fiber spinning, which Russia has long lacked. Until 2021, the PRC supplied about 80 percent of Russia's precursor supply (Economic Security Council of Ukraine, 2025).
The war has further narrowed Russia's options. Sanctions and export controls imposed since 2022 have cut Russia off from Western and Japanese high-grade fiber producers. In the first nine months of 2024, Chinese companies supplied 72 percent of Russia's carbon fiber imports by weight (Economic Security Council of Ukraine, 2025). The PRC has since become the world's leading producer, holding more than half of global carbon fiber capacity in 2025, with Jilin Chemical Fiber as the world's largest producer (ATA Carbon Fiber Technology, 2025).
Rosatom's precursor plant was meant to end this dependence. Opened at Alabuga in November 2021, it was designed to produce 5,000 tons of precursor a year and to replace the material previously imported from the PRC (Rosatom, November 22, 2021). Trade data, however, show that Chinese precursors continued to arrive after the plant opened. Between March 2022 and January 2025, Alabuga-Volokno imported about 3,000 tons of Chinese synthetic yarn worth $21.4 million from two companies of the Jilin group (Frontelligence Insight, August 21, 2025). Because each ton of carbon fiber requires 2 to 2.5 tons of precursor, these imports, at roughly 1,000 tons a year, would have produced about 400-500 tons of fiber, close to the 407 tons Alabuga-Volokno produced in 2022 (Economic Security Council of Ukraine, 2025). Chinese precursors alone could have supplied almost the entire output of Rosatom's fiber line, suggesting the domestic plant has not replaced Chinese supply.
Since 2022, demand has risen sharply. By early 2024, Umatex, the Rosatom division that owns Alabuga-Volokno, reported that its carbon fiber plant was fully loaded and that customers were waiting in line for its output, a change it attributed to the growth of Russia's civilian composites market (Atomvestnik, April 1, 2024). The timing coincides with the expansion of drone production at Alabuga, however, where the plant has become an important source of carbon fiber for Shahed-type drones.
In May, Russian officials approved a new Alabuga-Volokno line with its own precursor unit, due in 2027, and justified it as import substitution (Politico, September 20; Ukrainska Pravda, September 21). Five years after the first plant opened, Rosatom is building a second to solve the same problem, implicitly admitting the 2021 plant did not end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors.
Chinese assistance comes at a growing price for Russia. Moscow paid roughly 300 percent more for Chinese battlefield goods in 2025 than Beijing's other customers did, and this premium has risen in step with Russia's reliance on Chinese supply (Kyiv School of Economics, July 3). The relationship is asymmetric. Russia depends on the PRC for materials it cannot produce at the required scale, while the PRC can set the price and terms.
The optical fiber case shows what this dependence looks like when domestic production disappears altogether. Russia's only optical fiber plant, located in Saransk, stopped working after Ukrainian drone strikes in the spring of 2025, which left Moscow completely dependent on Chinese optical fiber (Militarnyi, February 26).
For Ukraine, the case points to targets that are harder for Russia to replace than other defense-industrial infrastructures. A carbon fiber plant takes years to build and relies on highly specialized equipment; losing it would affect every drone that depends on its output, inflicting significant damage on the entire industry. It would raise the cost of war for Russia, as it would be forced to deepen its dependence on Chinese components to keep delivering drones to the frontline. Russia treats Alabuga-Volokno as a site worth protecting, as satellite imagery shows lattice towers built around the plant to carry nets against Kyiv's long-range drones (Institute for Science and International Security, August 27; New Voice of Ukraine, August 29).
For Russia, the drone program is absorbing capacity once meant for civilian industry. Carbon fiber from the Alabuga plant was intended for civilian aviation and Rosatom's nuclear fuel centrifuges, yet by 2030 up to 89 percent of the plant's output is expected to go to defense enterprises (Militarnyi, September 7).
For Europe, sanctioning the Chinese side of this chain could be politically coherent and costly at the same time. When the European Union listed Chinese entities in its sanctions package in July, Beijing responded the following day by placing 14 European companies and institutions under its own export controls (European Commission, July 22; South China Morning Post, July 24). Consequently, sanctioning Chinese suppliers such as Jilin would come at a cost, including for European defense companies that depend on Chinese components.
The Jilin shipment is small in isolation. It confirms, however, that the PRC's assistance to Russia's drone industry now extends from engines and electronics to the materials used to build the drones. Rosatom promised in 2021 to end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors, and five years later it is building a second plant to reach the same goal, most plausibly because the first cannot produce the fine grades required by the drone program at scale. The rapid scaling of Ukraine's long-range drone attacks poses a new threat to Russia's carbon fiber supply chain, since plants such as Alabuga-Volokno now lie within reach of Ukrainian strikes.
* * *
Simone Chiusa is a geopolitical analyst and writer whose research focuses on drone warfare and military adaptation, as well as European defense, including defense-industrial developments and procurement. He is pursuing a Master's degree in National Security Studies at King's College London and holds a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and Global Affairs from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, where he graduated with honors.
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/russias-drone-surge-depends-on-chinese-supplies/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Russia's Drone Surge Depends on Chinese Supplies
Simone Chiusa
Executive summary
* The People's Republic of China (PRC) has become Russia's main foreign supplier of drones, providing engines, navigation components, and technical support, and a Chinese state-owned company now also ships the precursor used to make the drones' carbon fiber.
* Russia's state corporation, Rosatom, opened a plant in 2021 to end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors. ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Russia's Drone Surge Depends on Chinese Supplies Simone Chiusa Executive summary * The People's Republic of China (PRC) has become Russia's main foreign supplier of drones, providing engines, navigation components, and technical support, and a Chinese state-owned company now also ships the precursor used to make the drones' carbon fiber. * Russia's state corporation, Rosatom, opened a plant in 2021 to end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors.Imports kept surging, however, and a new line approved in 2026 again pursues import substitution.
* Russia pays the PRC a rising premium for goods it cannot produce at scale. At the same time, Ukraine's expanding long-range strikes threaten critical industrial sites, whose loss would deepen Russia's dependence on Chinese components.
-
Documents obtained by Ukraine's Security and Cooperation Center (USCC) and shared with Politico in September revealed that Jilin Chemical Fiber Group, a Chinese state-owned company, had shipped 46 metric tons of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor to Alabuga-Volokno, a subsidiary of Russia's state corporation Rosatom (Politico, September 4). PAN precursor is the acrylic fiber used to make carbon fiber, and Alabuga-Volokno operates in Tatarstan's Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which also hosts Russia's largest factory for Geran drones. The cargo was declared as civilian textile, and the documents point to at least eight similar tenders since 2022.
The shipment is the latest evidence that the People's Republic of China (PRC) has become the main foreign supplier of Russia's drone warfare, and that its assistance now reaches the basic materials from which the drones are built. It also exposes the failure of a pledge that Rosatom made in 2021, when it opened a plant meant to free Russia from Chinese precursors (Rosatom, November 22, 2021). This dynamic reveals both the limits of Russia's drive for self-sufficiency under sanctions and how the PRC sustains the Russian drone industry.
Long-range attack drones have become Russia's main instrument for striking Ukrainian cities and infrastructure. According to Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), the Russian state order for Shahed-type drones grew from about 12,000 units in 2024 to more than 100,000 in 2026, and output of the newer jet-powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 has reached about 3,000 units a month (Ukrinform, June 1). The Russian government has framed the growth of its drone industry as a matter of technological independence, aiming to raise the industry's self-sufficiency from 37.8 percent in 2024 to 81.1 percent by 2030 (TASS, January 9, 2025). In practice, however, the expansion has relied on Chinese suppliers at almost every stage, ranging from single components to complete engines and technical support.
Russian Gerans use Chinese copies of the German engine from the original Iranian design, along with Chinese navigation modules and modems (Kyiv Post, December 10, 2023; The Insider, March 24). A second Russian attack drone, the Garpiya, uses engines from Xiamen Limbach, a Chinese firm the United States sanctioned in October 2024 as part of its first designation of Chinese companies for jointly developing a complete weapons system with Russia (U.S. Treasury Department, October 17, 2024). Nevertheless, the engines kept arriving afterward, declared as industrial refrigeration units, and Chinese specialists visited Kupol repeatedly to test drones and train staff (Reuters, July 23, 2025; RBC-Ukraine, September 25, 2025).
Across the wider range of battlefield goods that Western governments have placed under export controls, the PRC accounts for about 75 percent of Russia's imports (Kyiv School of Economics, July 3). The precursor trade extends this pattern to the material from which the drones themselves are built. Carbon fiber keeps Russia's drones light enough to carry fuel and explosives over more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) and increases stealthiness. The Geran-2 fuselage and wings are built on a carbon fiber structural frame, and the newer jet-powered Geran-5 has a carbon fiber skin, wings, and tail mounted on the internal airframe (Ukrainska Pravda, November 25, 2023; New Voice of Ukraine, January 19). Without this material, drones would be heavier, sacrificing either range or payload.
Carbon fiber is only as good as its precursor. Research on carbon fiber production shows that the fiber's mechanical properties depend heavily on precursor quality (Progress in Materials Science, 2020). The precursor accounts for about half the cost of standard carbon fiber and more than three-quarters of the cost of fine grades used in aerospace (Heliyon, October 2019). Producing it requires specialized expertise in polymer chemistry and fiber spinning, which Russia has long lacked. Until 2021, the PRC supplied about 80 percent of Russia's precursor supply (Economic Security Council of Ukraine, 2025).
The war has further narrowed Russia's options. Sanctions and export controls imposed since 2022 have cut Russia off from Western and Japanese high-grade fiber producers. In the first nine months of 2024, Chinese companies supplied 72 percent of Russia's carbon fiber imports by weight (Economic Security Council of Ukraine, 2025). The PRC has since become the world's leading producer, holding more than half of global carbon fiber capacity in 2025, with Jilin Chemical Fiber as the world's largest producer (ATA Carbon Fiber Technology, 2025).
Rosatom's precursor plant was meant to end this dependence. Opened at Alabuga in November 2021, it was designed to produce 5,000 tons of precursor a year and to replace the material previously imported from the PRC (Rosatom, November 22, 2021). Trade data, however, show that Chinese precursors continued to arrive after the plant opened. Between March 2022 and January 2025, Alabuga-Volokno imported about 3,000 tons of Chinese synthetic yarn worth $21.4 million from two companies of the Jilin group (Frontelligence Insight, August 21, 2025). Because each ton of carbon fiber requires 2 to 2.5 tons of precursor, these imports, at roughly 1,000 tons a year, would have produced about 400-500 tons of fiber, close to the 407 tons Alabuga-Volokno produced in 2022 (Economic Security Council of Ukraine, 2025). Chinese precursors alone could have supplied almost the entire output of Rosatom's fiber line, suggesting the domestic plant has not replaced Chinese supply.
Since 2022, demand has risen sharply. By early 2024, Umatex, the Rosatom division that owns Alabuga-Volokno, reported that its carbon fiber plant was fully loaded and that customers were waiting in line for its output, a change it attributed to the growth of Russia's civilian composites market (Atomvestnik, April 1, 2024). The timing coincides with the expansion of drone production at Alabuga, however, where the plant has become an important source of carbon fiber for Shahed-type drones.
In May, Russian officials approved a new Alabuga-Volokno line with its own precursor unit, due in 2027, and justified it as import substitution (Politico, September 20; Ukrainska Pravda, September 21). Five years after the first plant opened, Rosatom is building a second to solve the same problem, implicitly admitting the 2021 plant did not end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors.
Chinese assistance comes at a growing price for Russia. Moscow paid roughly 300 percent more for Chinese battlefield goods in 2025 than Beijing's other customers did, and this premium has risen in step with Russia's reliance on Chinese supply (Kyiv School of Economics, July 3). The relationship is asymmetric. Russia depends on the PRC for materials it cannot produce at the required scale, while the PRC can set the price and terms.
The optical fiber case shows what this dependence looks like when domestic production disappears altogether. Russia's only optical fiber plant, located in Saransk, stopped working after Ukrainian drone strikes in the spring of 2025, which left Moscow completely dependent on Chinese optical fiber (Militarnyi, February 26).
For Ukraine, the case points to targets that are harder for Russia to replace than other defense-industrial infrastructures. A carbon fiber plant takes years to build and relies on highly specialized equipment; losing it would affect every drone that depends on its output, inflicting significant damage on the entire industry. It would raise the cost of war for Russia, as it would be forced to deepen its dependence on Chinese components to keep delivering drones to the frontline. Russia treats Alabuga-Volokno as a site worth protecting, as satellite imagery shows lattice towers built around the plant to carry nets against Kyiv's long-range drones (Institute for Science and International Security, August 27; New Voice of Ukraine, August 29).
For Russia, the drone program is absorbing capacity once meant for civilian industry. Carbon fiber from the Alabuga plant was intended for civilian aviation and Rosatom's nuclear fuel centrifuges, yet by 2030 up to 89 percent of the plant's output is expected to go to defense enterprises (Militarnyi, September 7).
For Europe, sanctioning the Chinese side of this chain could be politically coherent and costly at the same time. When the European Union listed Chinese entities in its sanctions package in July, Beijing responded the following day by placing 14 European companies and institutions under its own export controls (European Commission, July 22; South China Morning Post, July 24). Consequently, sanctioning Chinese suppliers such as Jilin would come at a cost, including for European defense companies that depend on Chinese components.
The Jilin shipment is small in isolation. It confirms, however, that the PRC's assistance to Russia's drone industry now extends from engines and electronics to the materials used to build the drones. Rosatom promised in 2021 to end Russia's reliance on Chinese precursors, and five years later it is building a second plant to reach the same goal, most plausibly because the first cannot produce the fine grades required by the drone program at scale. The rapid scaling of Ukraine's long-range drone attacks poses a new threat to Russia's carbon fiber supply chain, since plants such as Alabuga-Volokno now lie within reach of Ukrainian strikes.
* * *
Simone Chiusa is a geopolitical analyst and writer whose research focuses on drone warfare and military adaptation, as well as European defense, including defense-industrial developments and procurement. He is pursuing a Master's degree in National Security Studies at King's College London and holds a Bachelor's degree in International Relations and Global Affairs from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, where he graduated with honors.
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/russias-drone-surge-depends-on-chinese-supplies/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Jamestown Foundation Issues Commentary Entitled 'Iran Increases Pressure on Georgia'
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor:
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Iran Increases Pressure on Georgia
Beka Chedia
Executive Summary:
* Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on October 16. Kobakhidze described a friendly talk about tourism, but Tehran's account said they discussed joint initiatives and U.S. sanctions against Iran.
* Iranian Ambassador to Georgia Seyed Ali Moujani has repeatedly challenged Georgia's diplomatic positions, provoking public backlash through ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Iran Increases Pressure on Georgia Beka Chedia Executive Summary: * Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on October 16. Kobakhidze described a friendly talk about tourism, but Tehran's account said they discussed joint initiatives and U.S. sanctions against Iran. * Iranian Ambassador to Georgia Seyed Ali Moujani has repeatedly challenged Georgia's diplomatic positions, provoking public backlash throughcontroversial statements about Georgian history, territorial claims, and Tbilisi's cooperation with Washington.
* Georgia's compliance with U.S. sanctions on Iranian airlines highlights the limits of its rapprochement with Tehran, despite Georgian Dream distancing itself from the West and refusing to join renewed EU sanctions against Iran.
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On October 16, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Yerevan on the sidelines of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. According to Kobakhidze, they discussed bilateral relations and positive cooperation in tourism (Facebook/IrakliKobakhidze, October 16). Kobakhidze publicized the meeting on social media under the label "Paid Advertising" amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington, seemingly signaling Tbilisi's willingness to maintain open cooperation with Iran despite the potential costs to relations with the United States. The Iranian presidential administration's press release offered a different account of the meeting, saying the two leaders discussed "practical cooperation," "the implementation of joint initiatives," and "U.S. sanctions against Iran." The statement also quoted Kobakhidze as saying that "Georgia maintained clear positions toward neighboring countries and opposed any foreign intervention in their domestic affairs" (President of Iran, October 16).
The meeting came amid mounting Iranian pressure on Georgia. On September 30, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Iranian Ambassador to Georgia Seyed Ali Moujani and asked him to respect diplomatic norms and refrain from interpreting Georgian history (Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 30). The diplomatic protest was prompted by a statement Moujani published on his Facebook page on September 25, in which he effectively offended the national and religious sentiments of Georgians by declaring that he was speaking not as a diplomat but as a historian and intended to present his own interpretation of historical events related to Georgian-Iranian relations, particularly the fate of Queen Ketevan (Facebook/AliMoujani, September 25). To signal its intentions, the Iranian Embassy in Tbilisi projected an image of Saint Ketevan the Martyr onto the building's facade. Moujani presented this gesture as a "symbol of historical memory, around which many different historical interpretations exist." Ketevan, a 17th-century queen of the Georgian kingdom of Kakheti, is revered in Georgia as Saint Ketevan the Martyr. In 1624, after refusing the Iranian Shah Abbas I's demand that she renounce Christianity and convert to Islam, she was brutally tortured and executed. Moujani's attempt to revisit the history of Saint Ketevan's torture sparked outrage within Georgian society and among representatives of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Georgian Orthodox Church Protopresbyter Giorgi Zviadadze stated, "Queen Ketevan is a luminary of the Georgian Church, a great martyr. Naturally, the Church has an unequivocal position on this matter: she was tortured. Any attempt to rewrite history and find a different pretext or justification for what happened is absolutely unacceptable" (Netgazeti, September 29).
For the first time, public pressure compelled representatives of Georgian Dream, which has recently moved closer to Iran and demonstrated loyalty to the current regime, to respond relatively firmly to Moujani's provocations. Georgian Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee Chair Nikoloz Samkharadze urged Moujani to respect diplomatic protocol and avoid historical references, emphasizing that such remarks were outside his remit. Samkharadze reminded Moujani that relations between Georgia and Persia had not always been amicable and that their shared history included difficult, painful chapters (1tv, September 29).
Ketevan was not the first historical controversy Moujani had stirred. On September 12, he posted a political map on social media that omitted Eastern Georgia, hinting that the region had historically been subject to Persian territorial claims (Facebook/AliMoujani, September 12).
Moujani's growing proximity to Georgia's political corridors of power stands in stark contrast to his predecessors, who generally kept their distance from the country's political elite and maintained a low public profile. Moujani, by contrast, has become a prominent and controversial figure in Georgia's political landscape, and his statements and conduct have raised growing public concern.
His interventions have also extended to Georgia's compliance with U.S. sanctions. On September 8, the United States imposed sanctions on companies supporting Iran's aviation sector, including those operating flights to Georgia. Two days later, the Georgian Civil Aviation Agency announced on September 10 that Georgia would fully comply with the U.S. sanctions on Iranian airlines (Facebook/GeorgianCivilAviationAgency, September 10). Referring to the agency's decision, Moujani claimed that Tbilisi had made the move "for the greatness of America" and added another veiled threat, stating, "Iranians will travel, see, and learn ... and perhaps, through this new choice, new friendships will also emerge" (Facebook/AliMoujani, September 12). He implied that sanctions against Iranian airlines could deter Iranian tourists from visiting Georgia and instead redirect them to Russian-occupied Abkhazia. On September 14, he issued a new threat, stating that sanctions could push ethnic Georgians in Iran away from their homeland and jeopardize their language and national identity. He also warned that Georgia could suffer economic losses from joining Western sanctions (Facebook/EmbassyofIraninTbilisi,Georgia, September 14). Despite these threats, Iranian airlines operated their last flights to Georgia on September 20, and their operations were restricted from September 21 (Formula News, September 21).
According to the National Bank of Georgia, Iran accounts for just 2.6 percent of Georgia's international tourism revenue. Amid the war and escalating tensions in the Middle East, however, the number of visitors from Iran had already dropped by 65 percent before air travel restrictions were introduced. The decline in Iranian tourist arrivals has also affected other countries across the region (Business Media Georgia, September 10).
Georgia did not join the renewed EU sanctions against Iran adopted on July 24 (Formula News, August 17). Its refusal indicates that solidarity with the European Union is not an absolute foreign policy priority for Georgian Dream. At the same time, Georgian officials are not yet prepared to ignore Washington's interests to the same extent, as shown by their decision to join U.S. sanctions on Iran's aviation sector. This inconsistency may irritate Tehran, which sees that, despite Georgian Dream's rapprochement with Iran and its distancing from the West, Tbilisi does not intend to abandon cooperation with the United States completely.
The March 30 telephone conversation between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kobakhidze also produced a reaction from Moujani (JAM-news, March 30). The following day, Moujani published a warning on Facebook that implicitly encouraged Tbilisi to maintain its political distance from Washington. "No one should forget one fact about [U.S. President] Donald Trump and American policy: when certain countries, whether deliberately or hastily, provide their territory and airspace to outside adventurers, sooner or later they have to pay the price for it within their own borders." He also warned, "No country is immune to the consequences of regional crises. The crisis is much closer than it may seem at first glance" (Facebook/AliMoujani, March 31).
Tehran may fear that if the Trump administration turns its attention to Tbilisi and adopts a more accommodating stance toward Georgian Dream, Georgia could prioritize its ties with Washington over Tehran's interests. Iran may also be concerned that Tbilisi would be unlikely to reject a U.S. request to restrict the activities of Iranian companies operating in Georgia that are suspected of helping circumvent Western sanctions. According to the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC), a Tbilisi-based think tank, the number of Iranian companies in Georgia has increased by approximately 510 percent since 2012, exceeding 12,800 by 2025-2026 (EPRC, August 9).
A comparable rise in economic activity has not accompanied this sharp increase in the number of Iranian companies. No significant increase in employment, business turnover, or officially registered investment volume has been observed (EPRC, August 9). This discrepancy between company registration dynamics and key economic indicators raises questions about the nature of some of these companies' activities. In this context, on August 8, the United States sanctioned Shelbit, a Georgia-registered cryptocurrency company founded by an Iranian citizen. Washington accused the company and its founder of facilitating financial transactions linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and supporting networks used to evade sanctions (Radio Tavisufleba, August 9).
On October 26, Moujani proposed using Iran's transit infrastructure to help Georgian companies export to Afghanistan. In a social media post, he stated that he had already discussed the initiative with representatives of Afghan trade networks and that a special report had been prepared to help Georgian businesses identify potential partners in the Afghan market (Facebook/AliMoujani, October 26). The proposal adds an economic dimension to Moujani's active engagement with Georgia. The initiative also raises questions about the potential implications of routing Georgian exports through Iran, particularly amid U.S. sanctions on Iran and concerns about the activities of Iranian-linked businesses in Georgia. Moujani's previous diplomatic service in Afghanistan, where he was declared persona non grata and expelled, further heightens sensitivity around the proposal. Any expansion of trade links involving Afghanistan would require careful consideration of the risks associated with sanctions compliance, the transparency of commercial transactions, and Afghanistan's long-standing problems with illicit opiate production and trafficking.
Since Georgia regained independence in 1991, Iran has played a limited role in shaping Tbilisi's foreign policy and remained a relatively marginal geopolitical actor, partly because it shares no land border. This is gradually changing under the Georgian Dream government, whose distancing from the West and deepening ties with Tehran have created opportunities for Iran to expand its presence and influence in Georgia. Moujani's assertive conduct, including interventions in historically and politically sensitive debates, reflects this shift. Alongside Russia, Iran is emerging as another external actor whose growing influence could undermine Georgia's international standing and further erode the trust of its Western partners.
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Dr. Beka Chedia is a political scientist from Tbilisi, Georgia. He is currently a professor of political science and a Tbilisi-based Country Expert (Georgia) for the independent research institute Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) at the Department of Political Science of the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. Previously, he had been a visiting scholar at several higher educational institutions and think tanks in Western and Eastern Europe, and he is a former journalist.
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/iran-increases-pressure-on-georgia/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Iran Increases Pressure on Georgia
Beka Chedia
Executive Summary:
* Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on October 16. Kobakhidze described a friendly talk about tourism, but Tehran's account said they discussed joint initiatives and U.S. sanctions against Iran.
* Iranian Ambassador to Georgia Seyed Ali Moujani has repeatedly challenged Georgia's diplomatic positions, provoking public backlash through ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Jamestown Foundation issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, in the foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor: * * * Iran Increases Pressure on Georgia Beka Chedia Executive Summary: * Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on October 16. Kobakhidze described a friendly talk about tourism, but Tehran's account said they discussed joint initiatives and U.S. sanctions against Iran. * Iranian Ambassador to Georgia Seyed Ali Moujani has repeatedly challenged Georgia's diplomatic positions, provoking public backlash throughcontroversial statements about Georgian history, territorial claims, and Tbilisi's cooperation with Washington.
* Georgia's compliance with U.S. sanctions on Iranian airlines highlights the limits of its rapprochement with Tehran, despite Georgian Dream distancing itself from the West and refusing to join renewed EU sanctions against Iran.
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On October 16, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze met Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in Yerevan on the sidelines of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. According to Kobakhidze, they discussed bilateral relations and positive cooperation in tourism (Facebook/IrakliKobakhidze, October 16). Kobakhidze publicized the meeting on social media under the label "Paid Advertising" amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington, seemingly signaling Tbilisi's willingness to maintain open cooperation with Iran despite the potential costs to relations with the United States. The Iranian presidential administration's press release offered a different account of the meeting, saying the two leaders discussed "practical cooperation," "the implementation of joint initiatives," and "U.S. sanctions against Iran." The statement also quoted Kobakhidze as saying that "Georgia maintained clear positions toward neighboring countries and opposed any foreign intervention in their domestic affairs" (President of Iran, October 16).
The meeting came amid mounting Iranian pressure on Georgia. On September 30, the Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Iranian Ambassador to Georgia Seyed Ali Moujani and asked him to respect diplomatic norms and refrain from interpreting Georgian history (Georgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, September 30). The diplomatic protest was prompted by a statement Moujani published on his Facebook page on September 25, in which he effectively offended the national and religious sentiments of Georgians by declaring that he was speaking not as a diplomat but as a historian and intended to present his own interpretation of historical events related to Georgian-Iranian relations, particularly the fate of Queen Ketevan (Facebook/AliMoujani, September 25). To signal its intentions, the Iranian Embassy in Tbilisi projected an image of Saint Ketevan the Martyr onto the building's facade. Moujani presented this gesture as a "symbol of historical memory, around which many different historical interpretations exist." Ketevan, a 17th-century queen of the Georgian kingdom of Kakheti, is revered in Georgia as Saint Ketevan the Martyr. In 1624, after refusing the Iranian Shah Abbas I's demand that she renounce Christianity and convert to Islam, she was brutally tortured and executed. Moujani's attempt to revisit the history of Saint Ketevan's torture sparked outrage within Georgian society and among representatives of the Georgian Orthodox Church. Georgian Orthodox Church Protopresbyter Giorgi Zviadadze stated, "Queen Ketevan is a luminary of the Georgian Church, a great martyr. Naturally, the Church has an unequivocal position on this matter: she was tortured. Any attempt to rewrite history and find a different pretext or justification for what happened is absolutely unacceptable" (Netgazeti, September 29).
For the first time, public pressure compelled representatives of Georgian Dream, which has recently moved closer to Iran and demonstrated loyalty to the current regime, to respond relatively firmly to Moujani's provocations. Georgian Parliamentary Foreign Relations Committee Chair Nikoloz Samkharadze urged Moujani to respect diplomatic protocol and avoid historical references, emphasizing that such remarks were outside his remit. Samkharadze reminded Moujani that relations between Georgia and Persia had not always been amicable and that their shared history included difficult, painful chapters (1tv, September 29).
Ketevan was not the first historical controversy Moujani had stirred. On September 12, he posted a political map on social media that omitted Eastern Georgia, hinting that the region had historically been subject to Persian territorial claims (Facebook/AliMoujani, September 12).
Moujani's growing proximity to Georgia's political corridors of power stands in stark contrast to his predecessors, who generally kept their distance from the country's political elite and maintained a low public profile. Moujani, by contrast, has become a prominent and controversial figure in Georgia's political landscape, and his statements and conduct have raised growing public concern.
His interventions have also extended to Georgia's compliance with U.S. sanctions. On September 8, the United States imposed sanctions on companies supporting Iran's aviation sector, including those operating flights to Georgia. Two days later, the Georgian Civil Aviation Agency announced on September 10 that Georgia would fully comply with the U.S. sanctions on Iranian airlines (Facebook/GeorgianCivilAviationAgency, September 10). Referring to the agency's decision, Moujani claimed that Tbilisi had made the move "for the greatness of America" and added another veiled threat, stating, "Iranians will travel, see, and learn ... and perhaps, through this new choice, new friendships will also emerge" (Facebook/AliMoujani, September 12). He implied that sanctions against Iranian airlines could deter Iranian tourists from visiting Georgia and instead redirect them to Russian-occupied Abkhazia. On September 14, he issued a new threat, stating that sanctions could push ethnic Georgians in Iran away from their homeland and jeopardize their language and national identity. He also warned that Georgia could suffer economic losses from joining Western sanctions (Facebook/EmbassyofIraninTbilisi,Georgia, September 14). Despite these threats, Iranian airlines operated their last flights to Georgia on September 20, and their operations were restricted from September 21 (Formula News, September 21).
According to the National Bank of Georgia, Iran accounts for just 2.6 percent of Georgia's international tourism revenue. Amid the war and escalating tensions in the Middle East, however, the number of visitors from Iran had already dropped by 65 percent before air travel restrictions were introduced. The decline in Iranian tourist arrivals has also affected other countries across the region (Business Media Georgia, September 10).
Georgia did not join the renewed EU sanctions against Iran adopted on July 24 (Formula News, August 17). Its refusal indicates that solidarity with the European Union is not an absolute foreign policy priority for Georgian Dream. At the same time, Georgian officials are not yet prepared to ignore Washington's interests to the same extent, as shown by their decision to join U.S. sanctions on Iran's aviation sector. This inconsistency may irritate Tehran, which sees that, despite Georgian Dream's rapprochement with Iran and its distancing from the West, Tbilisi does not intend to abandon cooperation with the United States completely.
The March 30 telephone conversation between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kobakhidze also produced a reaction from Moujani (JAM-news, March 30). The following day, Moujani published a warning on Facebook that implicitly encouraged Tbilisi to maintain its political distance from Washington. "No one should forget one fact about [U.S. President] Donald Trump and American policy: when certain countries, whether deliberately or hastily, provide their territory and airspace to outside adventurers, sooner or later they have to pay the price for it within their own borders." He also warned, "No country is immune to the consequences of regional crises. The crisis is much closer than it may seem at first glance" (Facebook/AliMoujani, March 31).
Tehran may fear that if the Trump administration turns its attention to Tbilisi and adopts a more accommodating stance toward Georgian Dream, Georgia could prioritize its ties with Washington over Tehran's interests. Iran may also be concerned that Tbilisi would be unlikely to reject a U.S. request to restrict the activities of Iranian companies operating in Georgia that are suspected of helping circumvent Western sanctions. According to the Economic Policy Research Center (EPRC), a Tbilisi-based think tank, the number of Iranian companies in Georgia has increased by approximately 510 percent since 2012, exceeding 12,800 by 2025-2026 (EPRC, August 9).
A comparable rise in economic activity has not accompanied this sharp increase in the number of Iranian companies. No significant increase in employment, business turnover, or officially registered investment volume has been observed (EPRC, August 9). This discrepancy between company registration dynamics and key economic indicators raises questions about the nature of some of these companies' activities. In this context, on August 8, the United States sanctioned Shelbit, a Georgia-registered cryptocurrency company founded by an Iranian citizen. Washington accused the company and its founder of facilitating financial transactions linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and supporting networks used to evade sanctions (Radio Tavisufleba, August 9).
On October 26, Moujani proposed using Iran's transit infrastructure to help Georgian companies export to Afghanistan. In a social media post, he stated that he had already discussed the initiative with representatives of Afghan trade networks and that a special report had been prepared to help Georgian businesses identify potential partners in the Afghan market (Facebook/AliMoujani, October 26). The proposal adds an economic dimension to Moujani's active engagement with Georgia. The initiative also raises questions about the potential implications of routing Georgian exports through Iran, particularly amid U.S. sanctions on Iran and concerns about the activities of Iranian-linked businesses in Georgia. Moujani's previous diplomatic service in Afghanistan, where he was declared persona non grata and expelled, further heightens sensitivity around the proposal. Any expansion of trade links involving Afghanistan would require careful consideration of the risks associated with sanctions compliance, the transparency of commercial transactions, and Afghanistan's long-standing problems with illicit opiate production and trafficking.
Since Georgia regained independence in 1991, Iran has played a limited role in shaping Tbilisi's foreign policy and remained a relatively marginal geopolitical actor, partly because it shares no land border. This is gradually changing under the Georgian Dream government, whose distancing from the West and deepening ties with Tehran have created opportunities for Iran to expand its presence and influence in Georgia. Moujani's assertive conduct, including interventions in historically and politically sensitive debates, reflects this shift. Alongside Russia, Iran is emerging as another external actor whose growing influence could undermine Georgia's international standing and further erode the trust of its Western partners.
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Dr. Beka Chedia is a political scientist from Tbilisi, Georgia. He is currently a professor of political science and a Tbilisi-based Country Expert (Georgia) for the independent research institute Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) at the Department of Political Science of the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. Previously, he had been a visiting scholar at several higher educational institutions and think tanks in Western and Eastern Europe, and he is a former journalist.
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Original text here: https://jamestown.org/iran-increases-pressure-on-georgia/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: Health Coverage Consumers Should Be Wary of Subpar Products
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, by Vice President for Health Policy Sarah Lueck and former staffer Nicole Rapfogel:
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Health Coverage Consumers Should Be Wary of Subpar Products
Open enrollment for marketplace plans for 2027 health coverage is approaching -- beginning November 1 in most states -- and millions of people will be looking for health coverage. Facing significant affordability changes and, in many cases, paying more for less generous coverage, some may turn to subpar health products offered outside ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, by Vice President for Health Policy Sarah Lueck and former staffer Nicole Rapfogel: * * * Health Coverage Consumers Should Be Wary of Subpar Products Open enrollment for marketplace plans for 2027 health coverage is approaching -- beginning November 1 in most states -- and millions of people will be looking for health coverage. Facing significant affordability changes and, in many cases, paying more for less generous coverage, some may turn to subpar health products offered outsidethe marketplace, or companies may target them with aggressive marketing for such products. But these subpar products lack benefits and consumer protections that are standard in Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans.
The expiration of premium tax credit enhancements at the end of 2025, Trump Administration policies that limit eligibility and enrollment, and rising premiums have left millions of people struggling to afford comprehensive coverage. Nearly 3 million fewer people were enrolled in marketplace health insurance in February 2026, compared to the previous year, a 13 percent decrease. And 17 percent of those who remained enrolled said they were not confident they'd be able to afford their premiums all year.
Some people may seek out subpar health coverage products when looking for lower-premium coverage for 2027. Also, research suggests that some agents and brokers steer healthier consumers into non-ACA compliant plans and products in misleading ways. Unlike qualified health plans offered on the ACA marketplaces, subpar products do not have to meet ACA standards to provide comprehensive coverage to all people, including those with pre-existing conditions.
Some of these options, like short-term, limited-duration insurance, provide only minimal coverage, often leaving out maternity and mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, and prescription drugs and charging higher premiums to people with health conditions.
Other options may appear to be equivalent to insurance but are not; they fall outside the purview of insurance regulators who are tasked with protecting consumers. Examples include health plans that Farm Bureaus offer to their members and health care sharing ministries, where members pay monthly fees to cover other members' health expenses.
Some states have helped create markets for subpar products through legislation. Many states have defined Farm Bureau plans as not insurance to exempt them from state insurance oversight and protections. Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Montana allow contributions to health care sharing ministries, which have no obligations to pay members' medical costs, to be deductible from state income taxes.
Some subpar health plans differ from ACA marketplace plans in important ways. This table shows how four such products that people looking for individual coverage might confront bypass consumer protections and regulations.
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Table 1: Comparison of Subpar Health Plans and Products
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Authors
Nicole Rapfogel, former staff
Sarah Lueck is the Vice President for Health Policy. She leads the Center's work on Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and other health care issues, with a focus on advancing policies that make health coverage more accessible and affordable for low-income people and reduce racial and ethnic health disparities.
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Original text here: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/health-coverage-consumers-should-be-wary-of-subpar-products
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Health Coverage Consumers Should Be Wary of Subpar Products
Open enrollment for marketplace plans for 2027 health coverage is approaching -- beginning November 1 in most states -- and millions of people will be looking for health coverage. Facing significant affordability changes and, in many cases, paying more for less generous coverage, some may turn to subpar health products offered outside ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, by Vice President for Health Policy Sarah Lueck and former staffer Nicole Rapfogel: * * * Health Coverage Consumers Should Be Wary of Subpar Products Open enrollment for marketplace plans for 2027 health coverage is approaching -- beginning November 1 in most states -- and millions of people will be looking for health coverage. Facing significant affordability changes and, in many cases, paying more for less generous coverage, some may turn to subpar health products offered outsidethe marketplace, or companies may target them with aggressive marketing for such products. But these subpar products lack benefits and consumer protections that are standard in Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans.
The expiration of premium tax credit enhancements at the end of 2025, Trump Administration policies that limit eligibility and enrollment, and rising premiums have left millions of people struggling to afford comprehensive coverage. Nearly 3 million fewer people were enrolled in marketplace health insurance in February 2026, compared to the previous year, a 13 percent decrease. And 17 percent of those who remained enrolled said they were not confident they'd be able to afford their premiums all year.
Some people may seek out subpar health coverage products when looking for lower-premium coverage for 2027. Also, research suggests that some agents and brokers steer healthier consumers into non-ACA compliant plans and products in misleading ways. Unlike qualified health plans offered on the ACA marketplaces, subpar products do not have to meet ACA standards to provide comprehensive coverage to all people, including those with pre-existing conditions.
Some of these options, like short-term, limited-duration insurance, provide only minimal coverage, often leaving out maternity and mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, and prescription drugs and charging higher premiums to people with health conditions.
Other options may appear to be equivalent to insurance but are not; they fall outside the purview of insurance regulators who are tasked with protecting consumers. Examples include health plans that Farm Bureaus offer to their members and health care sharing ministries, where members pay monthly fees to cover other members' health expenses.
Some states have helped create markets for subpar products through legislation. Many states have defined Farm Bureau plans as not insurance to exempt them from state insurance oversight and protections. Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, and Montana allow contributions to health care sharing ministries, which have no obligations to pay members' medical costs, to be deductible from state income taxes.
Some subpar health plans differ from ACA marketplace plans in important ways. This table shows how four such products that people looking for individual coverage might confront bypass consumer protections and regulations.
* * *
Table 1: Comparison of Subpar Health Plans and Products
* * *
Authors
Nicole Rapfogel, former staff
Sarah Lueck is the Vice President for Health Policy. She leads the Center's work on Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and other health care issues, with a focus on advancing policies that make health coverage more accessible and affordable for low-income people and reduce racial and ethnic health disparities.
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Original text here: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/health-coverage-consumers-should-be-wary-of-subpar-products
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center on Budget & Policy Priorities: Accessing SNAP Data Can Reduce Coverage Losses and Administrative Burdens From Medicaid Work Requirement
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, by Maani Stewart, senior policy analyst on the Health Policy Team:
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Accessing SNAP Data Can Reduce Coverage Losses and Administrative Burdens From Medicaid Work Requirement
While the Medicaid work requirement in the 2025 reconciliation law is going to take away and block eligible people from health coverage, states are required by federal law and regulations to adopt a critical strategy for reducing coverage losses: establishing cross-program data-sharing to help determine ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, by Maani Stewart, senior policy analyst on the Health Policy Team: * * * Accessing SNAP Data Can Reduce Coverage Losses and Administrative Burdens From Medicaid Work Requirement While the Medicaid work requirement in the 2025 reconciliation law is going to take away and block eligible people from health coverage, states are required by federal law and regulations to adopt a critical strategy for reducing coverage losses: establishing cross-program data-sharing to help determinewhether individuals must comply with the work requirement or are exempt. Data-sharing between Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can be especially effective.
The federal rule detailing how states should implement the work requirement directs them to access data from other programs, including SNAP, when determining compliance and exemptions. Federal Medicaid law requires data sharing, and the rule explicitly requires state agencies to coordinate with each other to ensure eligibility systems can share data, which is essential for reducing administrative burden.
Using data to verify eligibility improves accuracy, reduces the need for clients to compile and submit paper documentation, and lessens the paperwork states must process. Effective data sharing between programs will help streamline verification processes and ensure that eligible people can keep their health coverage without interruption.
Individuals are excluded from meeting the Medicaid work requirement if they're a member of a household that receives SNAP and aren't exempt from the SNAP work requirement. (They're also excluded if they satisfy the work requirement in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF.) To make this determination, the rule requires states to maximize reliance on electronic data sources before requesting information from an individual, including using information from their SNAP agency.
States that have already integrated their SNAP and Medicaid programs into the same eligibility and enrollment systems are well positioned to share these data between programs. But the rule's requirement means states that have not integrated these programs must establish connections to SNAP systems or implement manual procedures that allow them to use the information from those systems to determine if people comply with the Medicaid work requirement. Ideally, Medicaid agencies in those states will share relevant information back to SNAP and other programs to streamline eligibility determinations for those programs as well.
As states work to share data between programs, they should:
1. Identify linkage points. State agencies should identify areas of overlap between SNAP and Medicaid involving work requirement compliance and exemptions. For example, a pregnant adult who reports their pregnancy to SNAP and thus is exempt from the SNAP work requirement should also be exempted from the Medicaid work requirement, since the two programs' pregnancy exemption criteria are the same.
2. Leverage SNAP Employment & Training (E&T) programs. Forty percent of Medicaid-covered adults also receive SNAP benefits. State SNAP agencies have SNAP E&T programs, for which the state receives a 50 percent federal funding match. These activities help individuals meet the SNAP work requirement, and those who meet the SNAP work requirement are automatically excluded from the Medicaid work requirement. Although federal Medicaid dollars can't be spent on activities that help individuals meet the Medicaid work requirement, identifying opportunities to leverage federal SNAP funds to connect individuals enrolled in both programs with SNAP E&T activities can help people meet the work requirements and retain access to benefits in both programs.
3. Comprehensive staff training across programs. In many states, eligibility workers determine households' eligibility for multiple programs. In these cases, it's essential that caseworkers be trained to determine accurately when the compliance activities or exemption for a member of a household that receives multiple benefits meets the requirements of each program, and coordinate across the programs.
Designing Medicaid systems capable of sharing and receiving data for determinations may require states to upgrade their eligibility and enrollment systems. But states can claim federal funding that will cover 90 percent of design, development, and implementation costs and 75 percent of the costs for ongoing maintenance and operations.
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Authors
Maani Stewart is a Senior Policy Analyst on the Health Policy team. His work focuses on promoting federal and state policies that help to effectively deliver Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC benefits to those eligible for the programs.
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Original text here: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/accessing-snap-data-can-reduce-coverage-losses-and-administrative-burdens-from-medicaid-work
[Category: ThinkTank]
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Accessing SNAP Data Can Reduce Coverage Losses and Administrative Burdens From Medicaid Work Requirement
While the Medicaid work requirement in the 2025 reconciliation law is going to take away and block eligible people from health coverage, states are required by federal law and regulations to adopt a critical strategy for reducing coverage losses: establishing cross-program data-sharing to help determine ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities issued the following commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, by Maani Stewart, senior policy analyst on the Health Policy Team: * * * Accessing SNAP Data Can Reduce Coverage Losses and Administrative Burdens From Medicaid Work Requirement While the Medicaid work requirement in the 2025 reconciliation law is going to take away and block eligible people from health coverage, states are required by federal law and regulations to adopt a critical strategy for reducing coverage losses: establishing cross-program data-sharing to help determinewhether individuals must comply with the work requirement or are exempt. Data-sharing between Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can be especially effective.
The federal rule detailing how states should implement the work requirement directs them to access data from other programs, including SNAP, when determining compliance and exemptions. Federal Medicaid law requires data sharing, and the rule explicitly requires state agencies to coordinate with each other to ensure eligibility systems can share data, which is essential for reducing administrative burden.
Using data to verify eligibility improves accuracy, reduces the need for clients to compile and submit paper documentation, and lessens the paperwork states must process. Effective data sharing between programs will help streamline verification processes and ensure that eligible people can keep their health coverage without interruption.
Individuals are excluded from meeting the Medicaid work requirement if they're a member of a household that receives SNAP and aren't exempt from the SNAP work requirement. (They're also excluded if they satisfy the work requirement in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF.) To make this determination, the rule requires states to maximize reliance on electronic data sources before requesting information from an individual, including using information from their SNAP agency.
States that have already integrated their SNAP and Medicaid programs into the same eligibility and enrollment systems are well positioned to share these data between programs. But the rule's requirement means states that have not integrated these programs must establish connections to SNAP systems or implement manual procedures that allow them to use the information from those systems to determine if people comply with the Medicaid work requirement. Ideally, Medicaid agencies in those states will share relevant information back to SNAP and other programs to streamline eligibility determinations for those programs as well.
As states work to share data between programs, they should:
1. Identify linkage points. State agencies should identify areas of overlap between SNAP and Medicaid involving work requirement compliance and exemptions. For example, a pregnant adult who reports their pregnancy to SNAP and thus is exempt from the SNAP work requirement should also be exempted from the Medicaid work requirement, since the two programs' pregnancy exemption criteria are the same.
2. Leverage SNAP Employment & Training (E&T) programs. Forty percent of Medicaid-covered adults also receive SNAP benefits. State SNAP agencies have SNAP E&T programs, for which the state receives a 50 percent federal funding match. These activities help individuals meet the SNAP work requirement, and those who meet the SNAP work requirement are automatically excluded from the Medicaid work requirement. Although federal Medicaid dollars can't be spent on activities that help individuals meet the Medicaid work requirement, identifying opportunities to leverage federal SNAP funds to connect individuals enrolled in both programs with SNAP E&T activities can help people meet the work requirements and retain access to benefits in both programs.
3. Comprehensive staff training across programs. In many states, eligibility workers determine households' eligibility for multiple programs. In these cases, it's essential that caseworkers be trained to determine accurately when the compliance activities or exemption for a member of a household that receives multiple benefits meets the requirements of each program, and coordinate across the programs.
Designing Medicaid systems capable of sharing and receiving data for determinations may require states to upgrade their eligibility and enrollment systems. But states can claim federal funding that will cover 90 percent of design, development, and implementation costs and 75 percent of the costs for ongoing maintenance and operations.
* * *
Authors
Maani Stewart is a Senior Policy Analyst on the Health Policy team. His work focuses on promoting federal and state policies that help to effectively deliver Medicaid, SNAP, and WIC benefits to those eligible for the programs.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.cbpp.org/blog/accessing-snap-data-can-reduce-coverage-losses-and-administrative-burdens-from-medicaid-work
[Category: ThinkTank]
Center for American Progress: Brazil, Serbia Elections Show Voters Rejecting Right-Wing Corruption
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center for American Progress issued the following news release:
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Oct 26, 2026
Brazil, Serbia Elections Show Voters Rejecting Right-Wing Corruption
Washington, D.C. -- On Sunday, voters in Brazil and Serbia rejected authoritarian candidates. In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won reelection, defeating right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, an ally of President Donald Trump. In Serbia, nationalist strongman Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat in a general election that pitted his right-wing party against a student-led opposition movement. In response, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center for American Progress issued the following news release: * * * Oct 26, 2026 Brazil, Serbia Elections Show Voters Rejecting Right-Wing Corruption Washington, D.C. -- On Sunday, voters in Brazil and Serbia rejected authoritarian candidates. In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won reelection, defeating right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, an ally of President Donald Trump. In Serbia, nationalist strongman Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat in a general election that pitted his right-wing party against a student-led opposition movement. In response,Damian Murphy, senior vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:
These election results show the power of voters to combat corruption and autocracy. In Brazil, Lula's victory was a clear choice by voters for an agenda responsive to working people's needs on affordability, cost of living, and democracy. In Serbia, a student-led coalition led a successful effort to end years of corruption and closing space for civil society under Vucic. The historic turnout was also a firm reminder of the strength of the ballot box as a force for change.
These results are another example of the limits of Donald Trump's ability to push far-right ideology around the world. Additionally, these results signal the strength of democratic movements and actors working to push back against corruption and elevating the candidates and parties focused on the grim economic reality affecting families across the globe.
For more information, or to speak with an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at shananel@americanprogress.org.
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Original text here: https://www.americanprogress.org/press/statement-brazil-serbia-elections-show-voters-rejecting-right-wing-corruption/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Oct 26, 2026
Brazil, Serbia Elections Show Voters Rejecting Right-Wing Corruption
Washington, D.C. -- On Sunday, voters in Brazil and Serbia rejected authoritarian candidates. In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won reelection, defeating right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, an ally of President Donald Trump. In Serbia, nationalist strongman Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat in a general election that pitted his right-wing party against a student-led opposition movement. In response, ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Center for American Progress issued the following news release: * * * Oct 26, 2026 Brazil, Serbia Elections Show Voters Rejecting Right-Wing Corruption Washington, D.C. -- On Sunday, voters in Brazil and Serbia rejected authoritarian candidates. In Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva won reelection, defeating right-wing candidate Flavio Bolsonaro, an ally of President Donald Trump. In Serbia, nationalist strongman Aleksandar Vucic conceded defeat in a general election that pitted his right-wing party against a student-led opposition movement. In response,Damian Murphy, senior vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:
These election results show the power of voters to combat corruption and autocracy. In Brazil, Lula's victory was a clear choice by voters for an agenda responsive to working people's needs on affordability, cost of living, and democracy. In Serbia, a student-led coalition led a successful effort to end years of corruption and closing space for civil society under Vucic. The historic turnout was also a firm reminder of the strength of the ballot box as a force for change.
These results are another example of the limits of Donald Trump's ability to push far-right ideology around the world. Additionally, these results signal the strength of democratic movements and actors working to push back against corruption and elevating the candidates and parties focused on the grim economic reality affecting families across the globe.
For more information, or to speak with an expert, please contact Sam Hananel at shananel@americanprogress.org.
* * *
Original text here: https://www.americanprogress.org/press/statement-brazil-serbia-elections-show-voters-rejecting-right-wing-corruption/
[Category: ThinkTank]
Capital Research Center Issues Commentary: Two Liberal Economists Accidentally Celebrate America's Entrepreneurs
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary:
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Two liberal economists accidentally celebrate America's entrepreneurs
Left-of-center economists have a math problem: confiscating the wealth of the truly rich cannot remotely fund the government we have, let alone the one they want. So, in a new book two liberal economists seek out more "rich" targets to tax. They find the American Dream instead.
by Michael Watson
October 26, 2026
The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There
Authors: Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick
Henry ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary: * * * Two liberal economists accidentally celebrate America's entrepreneurs Left-of-center economists have a math problem: confiscating the wealth of the truly rich cannot remotely fund the government we have, let alone the one they want. So, in a new book two liberal economists seek out more "rich" targets to tax. They find the American Dream instead. by Michael Watson October 26, 2026 The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There Authors: Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick HenryHolt and Co. (2026). $32.99 (hardcover) $16.99 (eBook)
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Mainstream left-of-center economics (not to be confused with the Democratic Socialists of America vision on the further-left wing of the progressive movement) has a problem, a problem of math. There are too many high-income Democratic voters, many of whom live in high-cost-of-living cities and states like California, New York, and greater Washington, D.C. These voters, like voters everywhere, tend to resist having their own taxes raised to pay for all the wonderful things the DSA types promise.
But what if there were taxes liberals could raise without hitting the nonprofit executives, union officers, senior government bureaucrats, and Brooklyn-based arts magazine editors who make up an influential share of the liberal-progressive political coalition?
Enter liberal economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick. The pair previously consulted for the Obama administration's Internal Revenue Service to figure out how much money the IRS could, should the political winds favor, additionally harvest from so-called "pass-through" businesses. Their recent book, The Everywhere Millionaire, shows three million of these pass-through business owners hold at least $5 million in net worth each, and an average net worth of $25 million.
Zidar and Zwick refer to them as America's "main street millionaires."
The left's WEIRD elite money problem
Those who vote for tax-and-spend liberals have more money than those who do not. Exit polls showed that Democrat Kamala Harris won voters making more than $100,000 annually in 2024, a first for a losing Democratic candidate. (Hillary Clinton split that group evenly in 2016 as well.) But these wealthy left-leaning voters don't feel rich enough to be taxed to pay for the sunlit uplands their politicians keep promising every group Big Philanthropy funds into existence.
As I observed in my 2024 series on America's "WEIRD Elite" (where "WEIRD" is an acronym for "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic"), this is why in his 2020 campaign President Joe Biden targeted his tax hikes on those making more than $400,000 annually. This is, conveniently, a threshold above the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates for the 90th-percentile salary for journalists ($144,140), college professors ($203,580) or lawyers ($351,600). These professions are often held by very liberal postgraduates who follow the more-status-than-income condition associated with left-wing politics in the early 21st century.
And for all the talk about taxing billionaires, there simply aren't enough of them to pay for current spending, let alone the laundry list of new government programs social democrats (that's a fancy European word for "socialists") want.
Dave Burge, the internet personality known as Iowahawk, wrote a thought experiment on how little of the U.S. government you could fund by expropriating everything from billionaires, plus confiscating the annual salaries of all entertainers and athletes, then seizing 100 percent of all corporate profits, and much else. This "steal everything" plot would obviously work only one time; Burge conceded the billionaires might not surrender their fortunes without 500 timely "accidents" happening to every soul on the Forbes 400 list, plus 100 additional "almost-billionaires."
Even then, way back in 2011, this gruesome but hypothetical Bolshevik budget could only fund the federal leviathan for one year. Burge's math on this has probably not changed for the better since then.
There's lots of money in pass-through businesses
But pass-through businesses provide many more targets to take from.
To a tax accountant, a pass-through entity is defined by exclusion as a for-profit enterprise that is not a C corporation (C-corp).
Among other advantages, filing as a C-corp allows a firm to list on public stock exchanges, issue a theoretically limitless number of ownership shares, and sell those shares to foreign owners. Going public as a C-corp permits access to other people's money, and with it the potential to expand rapidly. But this advantage comes with trade-offs, and one is that C-corp income is doubly taxed as corporate income and as dividends to shareholders.
Avoiding this double taxation is the public-spirited justification for having pass-through status in the tax code. Unlike publicly traded firms on Wall Street, an entrepreneurial family that owns and personally manages a dozen privately held car dealerships or fast food franchises is not seeking access to all the world's capital markets. That is why these enterprises have not been hit with the same tax burden as Amazon.
While the Tax Foundation is careful to note that "The taxation of business income in the US is anything but straightforward," it identifies pass-through businesses as "including partnerships, S corporations, and sole proprietorships" that "pass through income [as profits] to owners' individual tax returns, where it is subject to ordinary individual income tax."
These businesses and their owners live all over the country (the "everywhere" in the title of the Zidar and Zwick book) and operate in all sorts of economic sectors. Zidar and Zwick speak of pass-through businesses that made "main street millionaires" in gutter manufacturing, legal services, ski wear manufacturing, human resources contracting, pizza joints, frozen appetizers manufacturing, and private practice physicians. Some of the businesses are quite large and quite lucrative: Bass Pro Shops and its billionaire owner Johnny Morris is singled out, with the outdoor-life retailer's profits having propelled Morris to a net worth exceeding $8 billion as of year-end 2025.
Meet the kulaks
These businesses and their owners are all over the place (and therefore available for tax harvesting by all states and localities), reasonably numerous (but not so numerous that they can effectively oppose a motivated class war), and not universally small (because "small business" is still a strong political brand).
Even better for the social-democratic left, this big pot of everywhere money is disproportionately in the hands of conservative Republicans, unlike the pot of money that is held by the generally liberal Democratic professional-managerial class. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a prominent trade association for smaller businesses largely organized as pass-throughs, contributes to the GOP nearly exclusively and is best known for leading the unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge to Obamacare. Zidar and Zwick report a 2024 survey that found that small business owners were 9 percentage points more Republican than Democratic (against a general population that was three percentage points more Democratic than Republican), with politically independent businesspeople further leaning Republican by 10 points when pressed.
Institutional liberals have another reason to target pass-through businesses specifically. Pass-throughs are effectively never publicly traded, meaning that activists cannot use ESG investing tactics to jawbone them into adopting progressive corporate policies. Planned Parenthood won't be able to bring a shareholder resolution targeting Hobby Lobby's contraception policy, the Human Rights Campaign won't be able to use ESG strategies to pressure Chick-fil-A about its leadership's giving, and the Center for Biological Diversity won't be able to file resolutions to all but close down Continental Resources, because those companies are privately held.
But Zidar and Zwick went to talk to some of the "main street millionaires," and a funny thing happened on the way to easy, coalition-friendly expropriation. The authors found that many of these people are profoundly inspirational figures who rose from very little through guts, grit, and a whole lot of hard work.
They feature, among others, Dick Portillo, who grew up in Chicago's infamous (and now demolished) Cabrini-Green housing project; but then with $1,100 and a trailer in a parking lot Portillo started the business that became an eponymous chain of Chicago-area hot dog restaurants. Karen Bentlage turned a sales job into first a tanning bed empire and then a regional chain of hair removal salons. And after developing a new car bumper, Shahid Khan went from an auto parts engineer to the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team.
Sure, some of the "main street millionaires" are heirs or business school types who bought a retiring founder's project. But, while not always representative of the pass-through breed, figures such as Portillo, Bentlage and Khan are backed up in the data as certainly illustrative of the sort of people who become entrepreneurs. These inspiring figures are analogous to the kulaks, peasant farmers whose small plots of land and assets were stolen during Joseph Stalin's first five-year plan for the Soviet Union.
It's still America
The second half of The Everywhere Millionaire proposes hitting the American kulaks with tax hikes, union-side labor mandates and minimum-wage hikes. Zidar and Zwick could have limited their book to this conventional call for abusing entrepreneurs in the name of capital-P Progressive "progress."
But that's not all the book is about.
They could have written a WEIRD-elite managerial-progressive's manifesto against the forces of the bourgeoisie, marking the "main street millionaires" out for the Saul Alinsky "pick a target, freeze it, polarize it" treatment. Indeed, the policy-dominant second half of the narrative reserves special opprobrium for Cindy McCain and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). McCain, the late Republican politician John McCain's widow, hails from a family that owns a large Budweiser distributorship. Johnson is a manufacturing businessman backed by another manufacturing businessman, Dick Uihlein, who supports tax cuts for manufacturing businessmen.
But that isn't all the book is about either.
It would have been much easier for the economists to serve up nameless kulaks and then propose those entrepreneurs be punished with bog-standard tax-spend-and-regulate liberalism. That book certainly would have been more popular among the DSA sans-culottes who now dominate the Democratic Party. That book (ironically) might have been more profitable for Zidar and Zwick. But instead, either by accident or design (or both), the two liberal economists also wrote a stirring defense of American entrepreneurship and the American Dream at a time it seems like nobody else on either side of the political aisle wants to do it.
* * *
Michael Watson
Michael is Research Director for Capital Research Center and serves as the managing editor for InfluenceWatch.
* * *
Original text here: https://capitalresearch.org/article/two-liberal-economists-accidentally-celebrate-americas-entrepreneurs/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Two liberal economists accidentally celebrate America's entrepreneurs
Left-of-center economists have a math problem: confiscating the wealth of the truly rich cannot remotely fund the government we have, let alone the one they want. So, in a new book two liberal economists seek out more "rich" targets to tax. They find the American Dream instead.
by Michael Watson
October 26, 2026
The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There
Authors: Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick
Henry ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The Capital Research Center issued the following commentary: * * * Two liberal economists accidentally celebrate America's entrepreneurs Left-of-center economists have a math problem: confiscating the wealth of the truly rich cannot remotely fund the government we have, let alone the one they want. So, in a new book two liberal economists seek out more "rich" targets to tax. They find the American Dream instead. by Michael Watson October 26, 2026 The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There Authors: Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick HenryHolt and Co. (2026). $32.99 (hardcover) $16.99 (eBook)
-
Mainstream left-of-center economics (not to be confused with the Democratic Socialists of America vision on the further-left wing of the progressive movement) has a problem, a problem of math. There are too many high-income Democratic voters, many of whom live in high-cost-of-living cities and states like California, New York, and greater Washington, D.C. These voters, like voters everywhere, tend to resist having their own taxes raised to pay for all the wonderful things the DSA types promise.
But what if there were taxes liberals could raise without hitting the nonprofit executives, union officers, senior government bureaucrats, and Brooklyn-based arts magazine editors who make up an influential share of the liberal-progressive political coalition?
Enter liberal economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick. The pair previously consulted for the Obama administration's Internal Revenue Service to figure out how much money the IRS could, should the political winds favor, additionally harvest from so-called "pass-through" businesses. Their recent book, The Everywhere Millionaire, shows three million of these pass-through business owners hold at least $5 million in net worth each, and an average net worth of $25 million.
Zidar and Zwick refer to them as America's "main street millionaires."
The left's WEIRD elite money problem
Those who vote for tax-and-spend liberals have more money than those who do not. Exit polls showed that Democrat Kamala Harris won voters making more than $100,000 annually in 2024, a first for a losing Democratic candidate. (Hillary Clinton split that group evenly in 2016 as well.) But these wealthy left-leaning voters don't feel rich enough to be taxed to pay for the sunlit uplands their politicians keep promising every group Big Philanthropy funds into existence.
As I observed in my 2024 series on America's "WEIRD Elite" (where "WEIRD" is an acronym for "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic"), this is why in his 2020 campaign President Joe Biden targeted his tax hikes on those making more than $400,000 annually. This is, conveniently, a threshold above the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates for the 90th-percentile salary for journalists ($144,140), college professors ($203,580) or lawyers ($351,600). These professions are often held by very liberal postgraduates who follow the more-status-than-income condition associated with left-wing politics in the early 21st century.
And for all the talk about taxing billionaires, there simply aren't enough of them to pay for current spending, let alone the laundry list of new government programs social democrats (that's a fancy European word for "socialists") want.
Dave Burge, the internet personality known as Iowahawk, wrote a thought experiment on how little of the U.S. government you could fund by expropriating everything from billionaires, plus confiscating the annual salaries of all entertainers and athletes, then seizing 100 percent of all corporate profits, and much else. This "steal everything" plot would obviously work only one time; Burge conceded the billionaires might not surrender their fortunes without 500 timely "accidents" happening to every soul on the Forbes 400 list, plus 100 additional "almost-billionaires."
Even then, way back in 2011, this gruesome but hypothetical Bolshevik budget could only fund the federal leviathan for one year. Burge's math on this has probably not changed for the better since then.
There's lots of money in pass-through businesses
But pass-through businesses provide many more targets to take from.
To a tax accountant, a pass-through entity is defined by exclusion as a for-profit enterprise that is not a C corporation (C-corp).
Among other advantages, filing as a C-corp allows a firm to list on public stock exchanges, issue a theoretically limitless number of ownership shares, and sell those shares to foreign owners. Going public as a C-corp permits access to other people's money, and with it the potential to expand rapidly. But this advantage comes with trade-offs, and one is that C-corp income is doubly taxed as corporate income and as dividends to shareholders.
Avoiding this double taxation is the public-spirited justification for having pass-through status in the tax code. Unlike publicly traded firms on Wall Street, an entrepreneurial family that owns and personally manages a dozen privately held car dealerships or fast food franchises is not seeking access to all the world's capital markets. That is why these enterprises have not been hit with the same tax burden as Amazon.
While the Tax Foundation is careful to note that "The taxation of business income in the US is anything but straightforward," it identifies pass-through businesses as "including partnerships, S corporations, and sole proprietorships" that "pass through income [as profits] to owners' individual tax returns, where it is subject to ordinary individual income tax."
These businesses and their owners live all over the country (the "everywhere" in the title of the Zidar and Zwick book) and operate in all sorts of economic sectors. Zidar and Zwick speak of pass-through businesses that made "main street millionaires" in gutter manufacturing, legal services, ski wear manufacturing, human resources contracting, pizza joints, frozen appetizers manufacturing, and private practice physicians. Some of the businesses are quite large and quite lucrative: Bass Pro Shops and its billionaire owner Johnny Morris is singled out, with the outdoor-life retailer's profits having propelled Morris to a net worth exceeding $8 billion as of year-end 2025.
Meet the kulaks
These businesses and their owners are all over the place (and therefore available for tax harvesting by all states and localities), reasonably numerous (but not so numerous that they can effectively oppose a motivated class war), and not universally small (because "small business" is still a strong political brand).
Even better for the social-democratic left, this big pot of everywhere money is disproportionately in the hands of conservative Republicans, unlike the pot of money that is held by the generally liberal Democratic professional-managerial class. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a prominent trade association for smaller businesses largely organized as pass-throughs, contributes to the GOP nearly exclusively and is best known for leading the unsuccessful Supreme Court challenge to Obamacare. Zidar and Zwick report a 2024 survey that found that small business owners were 9 percentage points more Republican than Democratic (against a general population that was three percentage points more Democratic than Republican), with politically independent businesspeople further leaning Republican by 10 points when pressed.
Institutional liberals have another reason to target pass-through businesses specifically. Pass-throughs are effectively never publicly traded, meaning that activists cannot use ESG investing tactics to jawbone them into adopting progressive corporate policies. Planned Parenthood won't be able to bring a shareholder resolution targeting Hobby Lobby's contraception policy, the Human Rights Campaign won't be able to use ESG strategies to pressure Chick-fil-A about its leadership's giving, and the Center for Biological Diversity won't be able to file resolutions to all but close down Continental Resources, because those companies are privately held.
But Zidar and Zwick went to talk to some of the "main street millionaires," and a funny thing happened on the way to easy, coalition-friendly expropriation. The authors found that many of these people are profoundly inspirational figures who rose from very little through guts, grit, and a whole lot of hard work.
They feature, among others, Dick Portillo, who grew up in Chicago's infamous (and now demolished) Cabrini-Green housing project; but then with $1,100 and a trailer in a parking lot Portillo started the business that became an eponymous chain of Chicago-area hot dog restaurants. Karen Bentlage turned a sales job into first a tanning bed empire and then a regional chain of hair removal salons. And after developing a new car bumper, Shahid Khan went from an auto parts engineer to the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team.
Sure, some of the "main street millionaires" are heirs or business school types who bought a retiring founder's project. But, while not always representative of the pass-through breed, figures such as Portillo, Bentlage and Khan are backed up in the data as certainly illustrative of the sort of people who become entrepreneurs. These inspiring figures are analogous to the kulaks, peasant farmers whose small plots of land and assets were stolen during Joseph Stalin's first five-year plan for the Soviet Union.
It's still America
The second half of The Everywhere Millionaire proposes hitting the American kulaks with tax hikes, union-side labor mandates and minimum-wage hikes. Zidar and Zwick could have limited their book to this conventional call for abusing entrepreneurs in the name of capital-P Progressive "progress."
But that's not all the book is about.
They could have written a WEIRD-elite managerial-progressive's manifesto against the forces of the bourgeoisie, marking the "main street millionaires" out for the Saul Alinsky "pick a target, freeze it, polarize it" treatment. Indeed, the policy-dominant second half of the narrative reserves special opprobrium for Cindy McCain and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI). McCain, the late Republican politician John McCain's widow, hails from a family that owns a large Budweiser distributorship. Johnson is a manufacturing businessman backed by another manufacturing businessman, Dick Uihlein, who supports tax cuts for manufacturing businessmen.
But that isn't all the book is about either.
It would have been much easier for the economists to serve up nameless kulaks and then propose those entrepreneurs be punished with bog-standard tax-spend-and-regulate liberalism. That book certainly would have been more popular among the DSA sans-culottes who now dominate the Democratic Party. That book (ironically) might have been more profitable for Zidar and Zwick. But instead, either by accident or design (or both), the two liberal economists also wrote a stirring defense of American entrepreneurship and the American Dream at a time it seems like nobody else on either side of the political aisle wants to do it.
* * *
Michael Watson
Michael is Research Director for Capital Research Center and serves as the managing editor for InfluenceWatch.
* * *
Original text here: https://capitalresearch.org/article/two-liberal-economists-accidentally-celebrate-americas-entrepreneurs/
[Category: ThinkTank]
America First Policy Institute Issues Commentary to Daily Inter Lake: Montana's Land Stewards are Back in the Driver's Seat
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, to the Daily Inter Lake:
* * *
Montana's land stewards are back in the driver's seat
Montana's public lands have long been worked and hunted by generations of Montanans. For the families who depend on them, access to public lands, healthy forests, and a strong timber industry are not abstract policy debates.
They are essential to local economies, livelihoods and a way of life worth preserving.
The current administration recognizes that thriving rural communities depend ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, to the Daily Inter Lake: * * * Montana's land stewards are back in the driver's seat Montana's public lands have long been worked and hunted by generations of Montanans. For the families who depend on them, access to public lands, healthy forests, and a strong timber industry are not abstract policy debates. They are essential to local economies, livelihoods and a way of life worth preserving. The current administration recognizes that thriving rural communities dependon rewarding hard work, protecting access to natural resources, and allowing families to benefit from their efforts.
Its recent federal lands grazing directive reflects an approach that prioritizes ranchers and local land stewards over unnecessary federal bureaucracy.
To read the full article, click here (https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2026/oct/25/guest-opinion-montanas-land-stewards-are-back-in-the-drivers-seat/).
Originally published by The Daily Inter Lake (https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2026/oct/25/guest-opinion-montanas-land-stewards-are-back-in-the-drivers-seat/).
* * *
Christie Mullin
Chair, Rural Policy
* * *
Original text here: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/montanas-land-stewards-are-back-in-the-drivers-seat/
[Category: ThinkTank]
* * *
Montana's land stewards are back in the driver's seat
Montana's public lands have long been worked and hunted by generations of Montanans. For the families who depend on them, access to public lands, healthy forests, and a strong timber industry are not abstract policy debates.
They are essential to local economies, livelihoods and a way of life worth preserving.
The current administration recognizes that thriving rural communities depend ... Show Full Article WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 -- The America First Policy Institute issued the following excerpts of a commentary on Oct. 26, 2026, to the Daily Inter Lake: * * * Montana's land stewards are back in the driver's seat Montana's public lands have long been worked and hunted by generations of Montanans. For the families who depend on them, access to public lands, healthy forests, and a strong timber industry are not abstract policy debates. They are essential to local economies, livelihoods and a way of life worth preserving. The current administration recognizes that thriving rural communities dependon rewarding hard work, protecting access to natural resources, and allowing families to benefit from their efforts.
Its recent federal lands grazing directive reflects an approach that prioritizes ranchers and local land stewards over unnecessary federal bureaucracy.
To read the full article, click here (https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2026/oct/25/guest-opinion-montanas-land-stewards-are-back-in-the-drivers-seat/).
Originally published by The Daily Inter Lake (https://dailyinterlake.com/news/2026/oct/25/guest-opinion-montanas-land-stewards-are-back-in-the-drivers-seat/).
* * *
Christie Mullin
Chair, Rural Policy
* * *
Original text here: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/montanas-land-stewards-are-back-in-the-drivers-seat/
[Category: ThinkTank]