Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.
Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.

Dealing with America's Olympic-sized debt problem – Congress should focus on core federal responsibilities and clear away countless programs that benefit narrow interest groups at the expense of the public good. Iconic champions focus on the long game, learning from their mistakes and making the changes necessary to stay on top. Congress should recognize our looming debt disaster and step away from shortsighted spending plans. Big problems like the unsustainable national debt won’t be solved quickly or easily. However, in the same way that Olympic athletes reach new heights through steady improvement and healthy choices, Congress must begin to take fiscal responsibility seriously as soon as possible. Heritage experts: David Ditch and Rachel Greszler

It’s Time for Governors to End the Pandemic Unemployment Benefits, Help Workers and Businesses Recover – After half of the states ended unemployment insurance benefits, the unemployment rate fell by more in a single month than it did over the prior five months. Strong job gains of 943,000 in July, with the unemployment rate falling half a percentage point to 5.4% is welcome news, and shows that states that ended unemployment insurance benefits did the right thing for their workers, employers, and economies. To recover from this pandemic, we must encourage people to get back to work. Notably however, even as the number of unemployed workers declined to 8.7 million in July, unemployment insurance programs were sending checks to 13 million people. That’s 4.3 million people receiving benefits who aren’t unemployed. Since the pandemic began, massive fraud by criminals stealing Americans’ identities and falsely claiming unemployment benefits has meant that unemployment checks far exceeded the number of unemployed people. Heritage expert: Rachel Greszler

Heritage Reacts to July Border Numbers: ‘Unprecedented and Unconscionable’ – The United States is fast losing its security and its sovereignty thanks to the Biden administration’s open-borders policies. One cannot look at what’s happening on our southern border and conclude anything other than the Biden administration is attempting to reshape the electorate via illegal immigration. Americans already feel that the elites in Washington disdain them, care nothing for their struggles and challenges, and in many cases, actively work against their best interests. Is there any better evidence of that sentiment than the Biden administration’s continued embrace of open borders in pursuit of perceived political benefits? The United States stands unique in history as a nation built on the rule of law, and government by and for the people. Sadly, the Biden administration is making a mockery of our laws by refusing to enforce them, and actively encouraging others to break them. It is a government ignoring the will of the people, who see this crisis for what it is, and are desperate for leaders who will act on their behalf, not those who aren’t even American citizens. The Biden administration’s embrace of open borders is only eroding trust and confidence in our government, an erosion that is accelerating day by day. Heritage expert: Lora Ries

UN climate report: An exercise in political consensus than science – There are a lot of reasons to take the IPCC’s most recent analysis of scientific understanding of climate and global warming, and projections of future warming, with a grain of salt. The report is understood by many to be the latest consensus among the scientific community on global warming, but science is not about consensus; it is about discovery. And if anything, these reports unfortunately have become more an exercise in political consensus than science. It will take time to digest the 3,900 page report, but some initial observations that aren’t making the headlines include that the IPCC was unable to determine either trends or human impact in tropical cyclones, winter storms, floods, thunderstorms, tornadoes, and certain kinds of drought. Even so, we all know that “bad news sells” and many have already published frightening headlines prophesying certain doom in response to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. Meanwhile, many on the left are using the report to cynically justify their push to advance costly and environmentally suspect policies like the Green New Deal. Heritage expert: Katie Tubb

Texas Democrats’ Embarrassing Lawsuit Against Gov. Abbott – The only thing the Texas Democrats’ attorney, Craig Anthony Washington, can reasonably expect to receive for this are sanctions. If Washington is sanctioned, it won’t be unusual for him because his state bar webpage reveals a long disciplinary history that includes several suspensions from the practice of law. But blame for this embarrassing piece of political theater does not rest on Washington. Smarmy lawyers are a dime a dozen; if he didn’t take this case, someone else would have. No, blame rests squarely on the Texas Democrats who read this disaster, looked at each other, nodded their heads, and decided that this was something they could be proud of. Heritage expert: GianCarlo Canaparo

Fact-Checking 4 Claims About COVID-19 in Florida Spike – Florida’s increase in COVID-19 cases is troubling and not easily explained. Its vaccination rate is nearly identical to the national rate, and counties with very high vaccination rates are among those reporting big increases in cases. Allegations that the state’s hospitals are overwhelmed are exaggerated, although future capacity strains can’t yet be ruled out. That’s also true of COVID-19-related deaths, which have so far remained far below previous highs. The president and his allies can’t resist politicizing the Florida case increases. Demonizing a governor of a rival party deflects from the national surge in cases, the administration’s frustration with lagging demand for vaccines (particularly among young adults and racial minorities), and the CDC’s confusing and conflicting advice on whether vaccinated people should wear masks. The administration should undertake a serious effort to learn what’s behind Florida’s surge and prepare for the potential of similar spikes elsewhere in the country. Heritage expert: Doug Badger

Curriculum, COVID, and Choice – Some 18 states this year have either created or expanded laws allowing education savings accounts, private school scholarship options and public charter schools. We should celebrate the learning options available for the first time to families in West Virginia and Kentucky and to more children in states such as Ohio and Arizona. Parents who responded to nationally representative surveys saying they do not want their children taught that America is irredeemably racist will welcome having new options in how and where their children are educated. Allowing parents to choose how and where their children learn is an education policy that respects our rights and allows competing ideas to flourish. We must still defend those rights, though, from pernicious ideas such as racial prejudice. So to parents and policymakers: Embrace the new choices in education, and do not retreat from condemning racial prejudice. The former is our hope for the future. The latter is required in the meantime. Heritage expert: Jonathan Butcher

Biden Must Not Squander the Cuban Moment – The administration has also done nothing to expand Cubans’ internet connectivity, something else that needs to happen if the Cubans’ march for freedom is to have any success. The first thing the communist regime did after July 11 was to shut down the internet on the island, an economic cost that all totalitarians are glad to pay. Dissidents who warned back in 2016 about the agreement signed between Google and the Cuban regime wonder if the tech giants are refusing do what’s necessary to help Cubans, and the Biden administration is not applying needed pressure. Instead, the administration has done the opposite, start a review of whether to restore the remittances that filled the state’s coffers with hard-to-come-by hard currency. One thing delaying a rapprochement with the Cuban regime is that it would be a clear betrayal of the brave Cuban protesters, and that it would have a clear impact in elections in Florida, a key state on the Electoral College map. But we can expect voices on the left to continue to work on the administration going easy on the communist regime. These will come from traditional liberal corners, such as the Washington Office on Latin America, which purports to support human rights in Latin America but has nothing on its website on the Cuban protests (it even issued a report on Cuba that omitted any mention of them), or from outright Marxist outlets such as Black Lives Matter, which supports the regime over the protesters. Heritage expert: Mike Gonzalez

What You Need to Know About Biden’s Ill-Conceived Executive Order on Electric Vehicles – The president’s executive order and the EPA’s proposed car regulations are all in service of Biden’s commitment as part of the Paris Agreement to halve U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in an effort to reduce global warming. But that isn’t even good climate policy. There’s a temptation in the U.S. to take a myopic approach to climate policy; that is, to not consider domestic policy in the global context of climate change. Two-thirds of all CO2 emissions come from emerging and developing nations. China emits twice as much as America. Even John Kerry, the president’s special climate envoy, has said on several occasions that industrialized nations could eliminate all greenhouse gases and it would have no impact on global temperatures by the end of the century. Biden’s electric vehicle aspirations and the EPA’s aggressive proposed vehicle emissions standards ignore those realities. And they make Americans poorer (death by a thousand regulatory cuts), which harms their ability to be resilient and adapt to change or adversity, from wherever it comes. Heritage expert: Katie Tubb

Does The World Have The Will To Stop Xi Jinping? – Western opinion is moving against Beijing—the COVID disaster has accelerated the trend. China has now been added to NATO’s agenda. In the Pacific, the focus must be on America enhancing the sovereignty of its partners. We must increase air, space, and maritime operations and make China think first about its home waters. It also means making it easier for our partners to share and obtain the military capabilities they require—breaking down the Cold War guardrails that made it difficult for allies like Japan and Australia to take advantage of American power and technology. There is no reason why America cannot expand Boris Johnson’s D-10 formula to add Asian powers to the G-7 and formally anchor western Europe in the Indo-Pacific. Deterring China is a global task. The bottom line is that Xi Jinping is a militant communist. Underneath his Savile Row suit is a Mao jacket. That he has been able to fool so many in the West says more about us than it does him. We still have time to wake up to the reality of Beijing’s threat, but only if we take the blinders off and confront the schoolyard bully. Heritage expert: Sec. Robert Wilkie