Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
Welcome back, Taliban. Welcome back ... terror? What Biden must do now <[link removed]> – The immediate problems for the U.S. are manifold. One is a resurgence of terrorist tourism. Will foreign fighters rush to Afghanistan to support the Taliban? That could well happen. Another concern is that the Taliban victory will inspire terrorist attacks. Worse, it is very unlikely that we can expect broad counter-terrorism cooperation in the region. India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey all have an interest in Afghanistan, but all their interests are different. Meanwhile, NATO countries feel misused by the Biden administration. Biden promised to consult with allies. Yet he made a unilateral decision to retreat from Afghanistan. Many NATO countries saw their citizens lives put at risk and their efforts wasted. They blame Biden. Still, there are no do-overs in the foreign policy. The Biden team dealt itself this hand, and now they have to live with it. They need to quit hiding. They need to quit playing the blame game. If they are not going to resign in disgrace, they need to get to work. It would be too much to hope Biden would just go back and kick the Taliban’s butt. There is every reason, sadly, to believe that the president’s response will be timid, tentative and risk-averse. Still even Biden can do more than nothing. Heritage expert: Jim Carafano <[link removed]>
A Statistical Analysis of COVID-19 Breakthrough Infections and Deaths <[link removed]> – According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Delta
variant represented more than 80 percent of new U.S. COVID-19 cases at the end of July 2021. This fact has almost surely added to Americans’ concerns about the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines since coverage of breakthrough cases has permeated the news. The CDC has also sent mixed messages, creating confusion and unnecessary fear. The overall evidence remains clear: Vaccines provide people with significant protection against serious illness or death from the coronavirus, including the Delta variant. Public health guidelines should reflect this reality. Heritage expert: Doug Badger <[link removed]>
Teachers unions go to court to deter critical race theory disclosure <[link removed]> – In a gaffe of epic
proportions, the NEA, in its complaint against Solas and others, has just sworn under oath that CRT is, in fact, being used in schools. It's an admission that contradicts the union’s vehement denial of the use of CRT in schools. That was the centerpiece of its strategy to get objecting parents just to shut up and go away. Whoops. Under both federal and state law, Solas had a right to examine the curriculum being used in her public school district. After the principal of her child’s elementary school explained that educators and administrators at the school did not refer to students as "girls" and "boys," but instead used gender-inclusive pronouns, Solas submitted more than 200 requests for information centering on whether and how the school’s children would be taught materials influenced by CRT and gender theory. Critical race and gender theory spring from the same Marxist fount and are often taught side by side. Heritage expert: Sarah Perry <[link removed]>

How the Left Uses Children as Pawns in Immigration Policy <[link removed]> – Section 235 of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act recklessly changed the course of U.S. immigration, requiring unaccompanied alien children to be paroled into the U.S., prohibiting them from being placed in expedited removal, and providing them taxpayer-funded guardians ad litem, and numerous other immigration benefits—all because of their unaccompanied child status. Predictably, the number of unaccompanied alien children
subsequently ballooned. Consistent with the left’s dishonest labels, this section of the law is titled “Enhancing Efforts to Combat the Trafficking of Children.” With record numbers of unaccompanied alien children trafficked to the U.S., and traffickers pocketing $14 million a day, this law is an abject failure and it should be repealed. Now, imagine what
leftists will do a few years down the road. They will argue that unaccompanied alien children of today should be given amnesty. This is how they have designed the immigration system. It is perverse, inhumane, and should be dismantled. Amnesty is bad policy and should be rejected. In the Senate’s current “amnesty through budget reconciliation” ploy, the left is using children as pawns to fulfill its political power agenda. Heritage expert: Lora Ries <[link removed]>

Pro-Amnesty Groups Supplied These 5 Players on Biden’s Immigration Team <[link removed]> – Pro-amnesty nonprofits bankrolled in part by billionaires such as George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg were farm teams
for five officials who now run the Biden administration’s immigration policy, The Daily Signal has learned. In some cases, Biden administration officials were senior staff at those nonprofits, in others they did consulting work for groups advocating a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants such as America’s Voice and
FWD.US, according to White House financial disclosure forms and other public sources. Heritage experts: Fred Lucas <[link removed]>
What Latest Inflation Numbers Mean for Your Wallet <[link removed]> – A lot
of us have noticed over the past year, it is costing us noticeably more to fill up our vehicles. Energy prices are up about 40% year over year, and there’s a lot of food items too. There’s a number of items. We talk about inflation, we’re talking about the overall increase in the price level, and that too actually has been dramatically higher than what we’ve been used to over many years. Just today, the new numbers came out for the month of July, prices rose overall by 0.5% in just one month alone. And year over year, we’re looking at increases that are 5.4% higher year over year. And that is the highest, it’s going back to 2008. So for a lot of people that have entered the jobs market in the past decade, they have never experienced a year in which prices overall have increased by this much. Heritage expert: Joel
Griffith <[link removed]>
Should more hate crimes be prosecuted? <[link removed]> – If someone is raped, the perpetrator should be severely punished, regardless of the race of the victim and regardless of the perpetrator's motivation. Whether the criminal committed his horrible act because he is vicious or because he is a vicious racist does not change the harm suffered by his victim. Whether a crime is classified as a “hate crime” or not, it must be thoroughly investigated — something most state authorities are eminently capable of doing — and the perpetrator brought to justice. The hate crimes that are occurring are currently being prosecuted. Some want to increase such prosecutions by defining so-called “hate speech” as a hate crime. “Cancel culture” and “trigger warnings” are bad enough, but criminalizing speech that some find offensive? Yes, many countries criminalize hate speech. In some places, blasphemy convictions can result in a death sentence. Thank God, we have a First Amendment — although that, too, appears to be under assault. And who will decide what is racist “hate speech” that should be criminalized? Heritage expert: Sarah Perry <[link removed]>
We Need to Understand China's Domestic Politics <[link removed]> – In developing a strategy for confronting China’s challenge to the U.S.-led global order, Washington needs to study— in addition to geopolitics—the details of China’s domestic politics at the national, local, and individual levels. Much of this information is available to be examined in open-source literature, as well as by careful monitoring of Chinese social media and interactions with Chinese interlocutors. What is needed is a persistent, systematic examination of these sources by policymakers, analysts, business leaders, news media, and citizens in general. An informed public debate among all the American stakeholders will go far in producing a more effective and nuanced strategic approach to the PRC. In addition to using this information to prevent the blunders that arise when policy drivers are not properly understood, officials should take a page from China’s playbook and use this information to
assess how various policy options will affect key Chinese decisionmakers. Officials should understand what kinds of pressure and enticements they can use to better manage their counterparts in Beijing. Heritage expert: Dean Cheng <[link removed]>

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