Biden Admin’s Woke, Wasteful Infrastructure Add-Ons Inflate Costs

• This holiday season, millions of American families are still struggling to make ends meet due to the ravages of inflation.
• The cost of basics, such as food and family homes, have spiked since January 2021, meaning that real wages have dropped by thousands of dollars per year.
• The Biden administration is going out of its way to make government projects and programs as inefficient as possible by tacking on a laundry list of woke mandates.
• In theory, these rules are supposed to be based on what Congress passed into law. However, the Biden administration has repeatedly inserted its own highly ideological objectives into these notices, bypassing Congress and steering policy far to the left. Incredibly, the policy area most affected by the White House’s dictates isn’t social programs, but infrastructure.
• The bottom line: All of this inflates the costs for goods and services purchased by the federal government while the nation is rapidly going broke.
• Congress should act quickly to undo as many of the Biden administration’s costly and divisive add-ons as possible. Even Democrats ought to have an interest in maintaining the balance of power and not excessively running up the national debt.

Schedule an Interview: David Ditch

Protecting Kids Online: Requiring Age Verification Through App Stores

• The harms social media poses to children are well documented and, at this point, indisputable—even by the companies themselves.
• A bipartisan group of senators is about to take Big Tech CEOs to task on Jan. 31, 2024, by having them publicly address their failures to protect kids online.
• Age restrictions on a deliberately addictive product that targets children should be a no-brainer. Various levels of government impose age restrictions on these types of offerings all the time. For example, kids can’t get tattoos or piercings without parental consent. Or attend movies that are rated R or PG-13. Or purchase video games rated “M.” But somehow, social media services are distinct, even though they trigger a similar addictive response as nictotine withdrawal and gambling.
• State legislatures are making unforced errors by not considering the full internet stack—e.g., the operating system, the app store, or the app—when imposing such measures.
• Social media apps rely on users to self-certify their age when they create an account, but they can’t fully confirm that the user is being truthful—whereas Apple and Google know the precise age of the owner of the device. All the law would have to require is for Apple and Google to give the app a thumbs up or thumbs down when a social media app asks to verify the device is owned by an adult or a child.
• Going through the app stores makes parental consent more doable, because parents have more control over the device than the apps themselves and the app stores are already required to obtain express parental consent for in-app purchases to comply with consent decrees from the Federal Trade Commission.

Schedule an Interview: Kara Frederick and Jake Denton

Biden Wants Open Borders All the Way South to Guatemala

• The Biden administration has worked assiduously for nearly three years to ensure America’s borders remain open. We now know it wants our Latin American neighbors’ borders open as well.
• Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei told us that earlier this year in an interview that he asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for help closing Guatemala’s border with El Salvador and Honduras to help shut off illegal migration north.
• Mayorkas and Blinken turned down Giammattei’s offer, Guatemalan officials told us, on the grounds that DHS lacked the resources necessary to assist Guatemala in this effort.
• President Joe Biden instead embraced leftist president-elect Bernardo Arevalo, who is scheduled to take power in January. There is no indication Arevalo plans to pursue Giammattei’s border security proposal.
• Congress should reject all funding for the administration’s open-border operations, including the Safe Mobility Offices and services south of our border. 
• Instead, funds should be channeled to ICE law enforcement agents to locate and detain the national security threats inside the U.S. to prevent potential terror attacks. Congress should also review the Giammattei plan and explore similar initiatives with interested partners in Latin America.

Schedule an Interview: Lora Ries