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Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today. Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
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- New York City lost almost half a million people between July 2020 and July 2022. Yet the Big Apple seems intent on driving away more residents as well as tourists with its new “congestion charge,” or tax, just approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
- Starting in June, unless legal challenges prevail, drivers will pay $15 per day to enter Manhattan’s Central Business District below 60th Street between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. on weekends.
- The object of the tax is not to improve the NYC road system, which would qualify it as a user fee, but to shift drivers away from their cars to public transit and bail out subways and buses.
- This is an attempt to paper over the fundamental problem with public transit after the pandemic — fewer people are riding it, so transit systems nationwide are losing billions of dollars.
- The congestion charge is a cruel policy for older and handicapped people who live in Manhattan below 60th Street, who find it difficult to take public transit and can’t afford taxis.
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- Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—a law guaranteeing equality between the sexes in education—has been on the chopping block from Day One of the Biden administration.
- But after a lengthy delay, the federal Department of Education has formally announced it will punt on the announcement of its new Title IX sports rule, one that would permit biological males who identify as females to participate in women’s scholastic sports in accordance with their gender identity.
- The seismic changes included in the rule will affect any educational program that is funded directly or indirectly by the federal Department of Education—whether public school, private school, higher education institution, recreation center, charter school, or the like.
- There are 25 states with women’s sports laws on the books. Some states, including Nebraska, still have time to act before the close of their legislative sessions.
- Nebraska’s “Sports and Spaces” Act, LB 575, would restrict access to school bathrooms and locker rooms based on biological sex and would add similar restrictions to most school sports teams.
- Nebraska’s legislative session ends on April 18. But all pending legislation must be debated on the floor before the end of this week to advance. The time for legislative action is now.
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- After the Supreme Court struck down a federal student loan forgiveness program designed to erase the debts of more than 40 million borrowers, the Biden administration is one step away from finalizing a rule to replace it.
- U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona says the rule is going through the negotiated rule-making process slowly but expects it to progress this year.
- The proposal is under review at the Office of Management and Budget, which is the final step before it can be released for comment.
- Adam Kissel with the conservative Heritage Foundation doubts the new plan will make it far.
- “I anticipate that as many as a dozen states will sue the Education Department,” says Kissel. “Such large-scale forgiveness is not what Congress authorized.”
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