Last week, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released its annual update on how the outdoor recreation sector contributes to state and national economies. We’re approaching 10 years since Congress unanimously passed the REC Act and directed BEA to produce this data. By now, for the industry, it’s like waiting for a report card. And in 2024, the sector showed resilience (data for 2025 will be out in the fall). On an inflation-adjusted basis, the sector’s contribution to...

Just yesterday, new regulatory obligations came down on “social media platforms” that operate in Australia. Prompted by concern that young users – kids under 16 – are especially exposed to harm on those platforms -- and unpersuaded that platform operators were doing enough to protect them -- last year, the Australian Parliament amended its Online Safety Act to essentially ban creating underage accounts. The new rules took effect on 10 December, Australian time. As an island nation with...

As the politics of the last decade have grown dicier, those of us trying to advance any policy agenda have had to speed up and prolong our sprints back and forth across the aisle. So, the Thanksgiving break is truly a rare chance to take a breath. It’s also a chance to get outside and deliberately think about the common ground we have. There’s no getting around how tension-filled life has become in the policy mosh pit. At the same time that the political environment has become so...