Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.
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Why States Should Tune Out Washington’s COVID-19 Noise – State and local policymakers should base policy on more relevant measures of pandemic severity, such as hospitalization and death rates. That would facilitate more intelligent and tolerant approaches toward people who are reluctant to get the vaccine—approaches based on respect, not on condescension. Instead of smearing unvaccinated people as menaces to society, states can stress that vaccines protect individuals against the worst consequences of COVID-19 even if they don’t always prevent infection. States should also encourage people to listen to their doctors—not their Twitter feeds—when deciding whether to get immunized. It will be hard for state officials to make themselves heard above the Washington noise, but people will more likely respond favorably to rational and balanced messaging than to insults, coercion, and contradictory messages. Heritage expert: Doug Badger

The left’s fight against election reforms is a Trojan Horse – If the left kills the filibuster, it can pass virtually all of its agenda with just 50 Democrat votes. The door would be wide open for passing not only an election takeover but things like the economy-destroying Green New Deal; the repeal of the 2017 tax cuts that saw even the lowest income earners taking home bigger paychecks; “free” taxpayer-funded college tuition; packing the Supreme Court to increase the likelihood that its decisions are pleasing to the party in power; and so much more. These politicians aren’t fighting for civil rights. They are fighting for their own power, and they are working to convince people they are the good guys while shamelessly hijacking the mantle of the civil rights movement to do it. Heritage expert: Hans von Spakovsky

Bloated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staffs Explode Cost of Higher Education – Swarms of diversity, equity, and inclusion officers enforce left-wing ideology on college campuses, corporate boardrooms, government agencies, and even K-12 schools. It has become a vast, hive-mind apparatus that keeps activists employed, dissenters cowed, and the revolution moving forward. They are the glue holding together this top-down social revolution being foisted on America and much of the rest of the West. Americans, regardless of ideology or background, pay for the wastefulness of our colleges and universities. But Americans are not only paying the salaries of the swarms of diversity, equity, and inclusion administrators who eat out our substance, we are paying an even higher price for the destructive ideologies they impose and reinforce. Heritage expert: Jarrett Stepman

This eviction moratorium falls far outside the congressionally authorized CDC regulations—and is thus unlawful. – Both the eviction moratorium itself and the CDC’s economic intent unlawfully breach any congressional authorization. Even if Congress had authorized the CDC to enact an eviction moratorium, the moratoria are unconstitutional. Congress may regulate activity that is interstate and economic in nature. But evictions are inherently within one state.  Further, an eviction order from a court is not an economic product. CDC moratorium exceeded powers delegated to it by Congress, created economic policy through executive fiat, infringed upon the fundamental constitutional right to petition state courts & infringed upon the sovereignty of states by interfering w/ the jurisdiction of those courts. We must be vigilant against attempts to use this crisis as an excuse to further erode private property rights, enlarge federal power beyond constitutional limits, rewrite legislation by executive order or deny fellow citizens their fundamental right to access the courts, enter into enforceable contracts, and to possess private property. Congress must not permit the extension of this unlawful and unconstitutional eviction moratorium. Heritage expert: Joel Griffith

Amnesty Is Not Infrastructure – The $1.2 trillion bipartisan “infrastructure” deal merely paves the road for Democrats to pass the largest amnesty for illegal aliens in American history. Even absent this planned societal transformation, the bill is bad policy, as it is not focused on actual “hard” infrastructure. Congress should pump the brakes on this wasteful infrastructure package that will ensure amnesty for up to 22 million illegal aliens and put an end to the historic Biden border crisis. Heritage experts: Lora Ries and Mike Howell

China’s Nuclear Forces Swell: A Tri-Polar World? – It may well be time to reconsider the broader landscape of nuclear deterrence, as Washington, Beijing, and Moscow all become roughly comparable. A tri-polar nuclear balance is a very different proposition from a bipolar one, especially where two of the players are relatively closely aligned against the third. The discovery of the silo fields in western China indicates that it is well past time to start reexamining the foundations of American nuclear deterrence thinking. Heritage expert: Dean Cheng