1) Tax Bill Is Pro-Freedom and Pro-Growth - Freedom Caucus Should Celebrate

By a vote of 51 to 50, with Vice President J.D. Vance breaking the tie, the United States Senate gave its approval to its version of the One Big Beautiful Bill. It now goes back to the House of Representatives, which is scheduled to take it up immediately.  Will our friends in the House Freedom Caucus sink the bill?

We think President Donald J. Trump is right when he posted on his Truth Social account late Tuesday:

We hope our conservative friends in the House are paying attention. In addition to preventing a $4 trillion tax hike, both bills contain these hidden gems that we’ve waited a long time to achieve:

• Implements work requirements for able-bodied Americans receiving taxpayer-funded benefits. The Senate expanded Medicaid work requirements to apply not just to able-bodied childless adults, but also to parents of children over the age of 14.

• Reverses electric vehicle subsidies set by radical climate activists.

• Opens federal lands and waters to oil, gas, coal, and mineral leasing.

• Extends tax relief for small businesses by making the 20% 199A exclusion permanent.

• Renews and expands 100% immediate expensing for equipment and machinery. The Senate made these extensions permanent, rather than the House's temporary extension.

• Increases the endowment tax on large universities. The Senate version has a rate of 8%; we preferred the House's 21%.

• Cancels Biden's illegal, unfair student loan bailouts.

• Requires states to pay a higher match for food stamps and strengthens work requirements.

• Expands health savings accounts to give Americans greater choice and flexibility in how they spend their money.  After removing all HSA provisions in the first version of the Senate bill, some were added back before final passage, including making telehealth coverage permanent, bronze and catastrophic exchange plans eligible, and allowing HSAs to cover direct primary care.  

• Incentivizes school choice scholarships that empowers American families and students to choose the education that best fits their needs. The Senate version includes scholarships only in states that opt in.  We will name and shame the states that do not.

• Ends requirement that Venmo, PayPal, and others report transactions over $600 be reported to the IRS.

• Holds universities financially accountable to the government on defaulted federal student loans.

• Increases timber sales on federal lands. The Senate opens up 7 million acres v. the House's 10 million.

• Authorizes the sale of expanded spectrum to strengthen rural broadband and secure America's technological dominance.

4) Fox Business Touts UP Immigration Study

As the US population ages, our new study finds that it's absolutely crucial that legal immigration increase to meet the needs of labor markets and keep the US economy growing.  We can't get to 3%+ economic growth without more immigrants.

Here is the Fox analysis:

The conservative advocacy group Unleash Prosperity released a report that emphasized the importance of legal immigration to the U.S. economy over the next several decades due to demographic challenges. The report noted the Trump administration set a goal of 3% or higher GDP for the next decade -- a goal that would prove challenging without increased legal immigration.

The study highlighted the role played by immigrants in the innovation of new technologies as well as entrepreneurship. It also detailed how children of immigrants typically have incomes higher than their parents along with the total U.S. population, due in part to higher rates of attaining graduate or professional degrees.

"Immigrants tend to be net contributors to the public fiscal because they pay payroll taxes but they don't have parents who collect benefits," Unleash Prosperity co-founder and economist Steven Moore told FOX Business. "Their children pay for their benefits."

5) California's "Not In My Backyard" Law Gets Rolled Back By Reality

It's taken over 50 years, but state legislators have finally repealed parts of the California Environmental Quality Act. It has stymied development in the state, exacerbated homelessness and made rents and home prices among the highest in the nation.

The original CEQD passed in 1970 and required an environmental impact report for every public project. But in 1972, state courts interpreted a "public" project as anything that needed government approval.  No other state has adopted that view.

One reason is that they have seen how California's law has been "Frankensteined" into a tool to force developers to wait years to get project approvals only to face lengthy lawsuits that were so easy they could even be filed anonymously.

Governor Gavin Newsom has now signed bills to allow many development projects to avoid rigorous environmental review and cost-inflating lawsuits.

"We've got to get out of our own damn way," he says.

But reform will come at the price of giving California's unions unprecedented control. Housing projects will become exempt from some environmental reviews but only if they use union labor at union-negotiated wages.  This will exclude many small and medium-sized developers who cannot afford the cost and gives the government the power to pick winners and losers in the construction industry.

That said, California's move will embolden regulatory reform campaigns in Blue States such as Massachusetts, New York, and Minnesota that have similar laws to those in California.  For once, the anti-housing lobby is on its backfoot and is being forced to make concessions to reality.

6) Is It Really Driverless?

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