Aug 24, 2020

Good morning. Vice President Mike Pence helped Heritage and Heritage Action kick off the multi-faceted “Fight for America” campaign. You can watch the event below. Also, in a newly released lecture, Heritage Executive Vice President Kim Holmes explains why we should embrace American exceptionalism and reject the rise of nationalism. Plus, Heritage President Kay C. James says that Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech is as relevant now as it was then. Learn why Reagan’s call to conservatism needs to be heard again.

Vice President Pence Kicks Off New ‘Fight for America’ Campaign
Vice President Mike Pence joined The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action to launch our multifaceted “Fight for America” campaign at an event in Iowa. This grassroots campaign, with each partner organization playing different parallel roles, is intended to defend America’s founding principles and values, support our police, call for accountability in our education system, and encourage Americans to fight for their country by participating in one of their most sacred rights—voting. “The truth is, these efforts of blaming law enforcement for violence in our streets, blaming law enforcement for unrest across America, have got to end. We must back the blue. We must support law enforcement for the safety of all of our families of every race and creed and color,” Pence said during his address. Watch the full event and learn how you can fight for America.

Our Future Success Depends on American Exceptionalism
These are turbulent times. America, its past, and the ideas on which it was founded are on trial. The future of the country depends on what Americans do next and how they answer the basic questions of what it means to be an American and what our national heritage is. The best answers, according to Heritage Executive Vice President Kim Holmes, lie in the concept of American exceptionalism, not in nationalism. “American exceptionalism is built on our Founding principles, not cultural and ethnic differences. Americans recognize their varied ethnic and cultural origins, but in the end, come together as Americans. Nationalism is often defined by a sole cultural or ethnic reference, regardless of the form of government,” Holmes says in this new Heritage lecture. Learn more about why we should embrace American exceptionalism and reject the rise of nationalism.

Why Reagan’s Call to Action Needs to be Heard Again Today
Today, America has a choice of two paths. We can embrace the foundational principles that created this nation of limited government and individual liberty. Or we can veer down the path of bigger, more intrusive government that promises to solve all our problems if we just turn over more of our freedom and our paychecks. Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech is as relevant now as it was in 1964, according to Heritage President Kay C. James. “Those who promote socialism haven’t given up on their plans for America, and neither can we. If we are able to succeed in taking a coherent, compelling argument to the American people that spells out why free-market, conservative solutions are better for them than the false promises of socialist utopianism, we will, in Mr. Reagan’s words, ‘preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth,’” James writes. Read more to learn why Reagan’s message is applicable to the crises we now face

President Donald Trump has nominated Heritage’s John Malcolm to serve on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Malcolm is a senior legal fellow and vice president of Heritage’s Institute for Constitutional Government. Learn more.

Heritage Foundation scholars joined a group of more than 40 prominent leaders in academia, law, and policy to defend free speech by signing a joint declaration, officially titled “The Philadelphia Statement.” Learn more.

The Heritage Foundation recently added two leading academics as visiting fellows in our Simon Center for American Studies. Dr. Wilfred McClay and Dr. Samuel Gregg will focus on highlighting American conservative values and free-market principles. Learn more.

Documentary filmmaker Christopher Rufo has joined Heritage as a visiting fellow in domestic policy studies, focusing on homelessness. Rufo spent five years in three “forgotten American cities”—Youngstown, Ohio, Memphis, Tennessee, and Stockton, California—to gather intimate stories of Americans on the edge to produce his feature-length documentary “America Lost.” Learn more.

Over the course of two weeks, The Daily Signal traveled with Vice President Mike Pence aboard Air Force 2 to Florida and Iowa. “It is a testament to the quality journalism our team produces and the credibility of our hard-working reporters,” says Rob Bluey, Heritage’s vice president of communications and Daily Signal executive editor. Learn more.

TUESDAY at noon, Heritage will co-host a virtual event with the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation on election integrity and preventing the coming crisis in the 2020 election. Featured speakers include Cleta Mitchell, partner at Foley & Lardner; Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation; J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation; and Rick Esenberg, founder, president, and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. Register for the webinar.

TUESDAY at 1 p.m., Heritage will hold a virtual conversation on homeland missile defense and plotting a clear path forward. Featured speakers include Vice Adm. Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency, and Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Register for the webinar.

TUESDAY at 2.p.m., Heritage will host a virtual event on the ongoing search for transparency with China. Featured speakers include Zack Cooper, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; Siddhartha Ghose, associate director of Transparent Development Footprints at AidData; and Regan Kwan, a research associate at the Stimson Center. Register for the webinar.

WEDNESDAY at 11 a.m., Heritage will host a virtual conversation on teacher union strike threats and the battle to safely reopen schools. Featured speakers include Rebecca Friedrichs, founder of For Kids and Country; Larry Sand, president of California Teachers Empowerment Network; and Starlee Coleman, CEO of the Texas Public Charter Schools Association. Register for the webinar.

Here are highlights from Heritage experts on TV. This week they talked about Hong Kong, China’s supply chains, learning pods, and more. Watch the clips.