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Afghanistan Crisis Proves Biden Administration Can’t Be Trusted on Policy – The Biden administration may only be seven months old, but it has already proven incapable of competent leadership or sound decision-making. As leftists in Congress scheme with the White House to pass a massive, $3.5 trillion ‘reconciliation’ bill, we should ask one question: Why should we give this administration even more control of our economy and input on our lives, when it has utterly botched so many issues already? Heritage expert: Tommy Binion

‘Infrastructure' Bill Paves the Way for Left’s Radical Reconciliation Plan – The $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation monstrosity that will follow infrastructure will likely include amnesty for illegal immigrants, a massive expansion of the welfare state, job-killing tax hikes, and a Green New Deal 2.0. It will bring the 2021 spending spree to a whopping $6.5 trillion. That amounts to over $50,000 for every household in the country and is more than the cost of World War II and Obamacare combined after adjusting for inflation. These radical spending plans will only push inflation higher and mock the concerns Americans have about out-of-control spending. The result of this spending would be more centralized power and control for legislators and bureaucrats in Washington. It would create a cradle-to-grave welfare state that is antithetical to the principles America was founded on and will result in higher taxes, slower growth and potentially disastrous inflation. This reckless spending spree will move America further from the principles that have made it the greatest nation in the history of the world. Congress must reverse course and recover its fiscal sanity as soon as possible.” Heritage experts: David Ditch and Joel Griffith

Latest Alleged Election Fraud in California May Have Overturned an Election – According to the complaint that was filed on Aug. 13, and which the government will ultimately have to prove, four of the defendants registered to vote at the home of another defendant, Jace Dawson, who was also a candidate for the city council, even though they didn’t live there, in order to vote in the election. Another defendant registered to vote at Galvan’s house despite also not actually living in Compton. Dawson lost the primary election in April to Galvan and then apparently conspired with Galvan to help Galvan win the June general election. The texts outlined in the criminal complaint among the various defendants about their possession of the absentee or mail-in ballots of voters are disturbing. In one text, Dawson tells Galvan he has “the ballo[t]s but they didn’t fill it out or sign it so I have to track them down to sign the ballot at least.” Galvan responded by telling Dawson to bring “them over.” In other words, Dawson apparently had possession of voters’ blank absentee ballots, giving him and/or Galvan the opportunity to fill them out with the votes they wanted. And this was not an isolated incident with one ballot. Heritage experts: Hans von Spakovsky and Zack Smith

15 Million Votes in 2020 Election Not Accounted For, Report Finds – Almost 15 million mail-in ballots were unaccounted for in the 2020 presidential election, and more than a million more ballots were undeliverable, according to a new study. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative watchdog group on election integrity, released a research brief Wednesday assessing the effect of mass mail-in balloting in an election with a close presidential race in key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. “These figures detail how the 2020 push to mail voting needs to be a one-year experiment,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a public statement. The report found that 1.1 million mail-in ballots were undeliverable for various reasons. Election officials rejected another 560,814 mail-in ballots. Another 14.7 million mailed ballots met an “unknown” fate, the report says. Heritage expert: Fred Lucas

Media Are Only Tough on Biden When He’s Not in the Room – So, how to explain this bifurcation of media attitude toward Biden? On one hand, they are willing to castigate him from afar when he tells blatant untruths, but on the other, they will not do so when given the opportunity to question him directly. One theory on the tough media commentary is that they feel Biden has betrayed them: his embarrassing performance makes them look like fools for cheerleading for his candidacy and early presidency. It’s my opinion that during the Democratic presidential primaries, many reporters favored other contestants, such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., or Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. But when Biden became the Democratic nominee, he became their de facto candidate of choice. The reporters who were with Biden during the campaign were well aware of his drawbacks, just as they knew of President Donald Trump’s campaign arguments that Biden was ill-prepared to lead the country. Now that Biden is flailing, commentators who previously glossed over his flaws are more willing to lash out and be critical. Heritage expert: Tim Murtaugh

Afghans Who Risked Their Lives Helping US Deserve Best Efforts To Ensure Their Safety – The U.S. government’s number-one job is to protect its citizens; it must get all remaining American civilians out of Afghanistan immediately. But the Afghans who risked their lives to ensure the success of U.S. efforts there deserve more than an afterthought. They deserve our best efforts to ensure their safety. The window of opportunity is quickly closing for Afghans to flee the country. Hopefully, that window has not closed completely – especially as the Taliban begins its reign of terror. Reports are already circulating of the Taliban going door-to-door to murder people and sending frightening written warnings to individuals, especially women, former Afghan government officials and religious minorities (including Christians), saying that the Taliban knows who they are. Heritage expert: Lora Ries

Administrative Bloat at Universities Raises Costs Without Helping Students – Universities have more people pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion than they have professors teaching history. Diversity, equity, and inclusion personnel are more than four times larger than the staff that provides legally mandated accommodations to students with disabilities. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni study demonstrates that from 2010 to 2018, “non-instructional spending—including student services (29%) and administration (19%)—grew faster than instructional spending (17%).” It also found that this rapid increase in student services, which includes diversity, equity, and inclusion staff, has contributed to higher tuition while doing nothing to improve student outcomes, including graduation rates. Higher college costs are burdening taxpayers and families, while building political pressure for irresponsible and regressive proposals to “forgive” student debt. These financial harms are indeed worrisome, but the bigger threat from growing student-support staff, like those working on diversity, equity, and inclusion, is that they fundamentally undermine what colleges are supposed to do. Heritage expert: Jay Greene

2 Employees Sue Missouri School District Over ‘Equity’ Training – The women filed suit Wednesday in federal court, arguing that Springfield Public Schools violated their right to free speech under the First Amendment by forcing them to affirm beliefs with which they disagree during mandatory race-based trainings as a condition of continued employment. Southeastern Legal Foundation, which brought the suit on behalf of Henderson and Lumley, already had filed a civil rights suit in federal court in Illinois over a school district’s use of racially segregated trainings and affinity groups. It was the first major lawsuit in the nation to confront critical race theory head-on. Supervisors forced the two educators in Missouri to participate in a districtwide “equity” training program focused on racial identity, white supremacy, and systemic racism. Equity is an anodyne-sounding term that shields a pernicious reality. Heritage expert: Sarah Perry

Democrats Pursue Radical Abortion Agenda, Upending Bipartisan Consensus – Members of Congress should reject attempts to enact spending bills that don’t incorporate longstanding pro-life policy provisions. Instead, Congress should maintain the decades-long bipartisan consensus approach to pro-life policy in all upcoming spending legislation. Rather than incorporate abortion funding restrictions in a patchwork process across multiple appropriations bills each year, Congress should make these riders permanent law through legislation such as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. Congress should also codify and strengthen the Weldon Amendment through legislation such as the Conscience Protection Act so that Americans have additional legal recourse if ideological government bureaucrats refuse to enforce the law. The coming weeks will pose many challenges to the goal of protecting innocent, unborn human lives. While the recent pro-life Senate vote is encouraging, policymakers must remain vigilant and stand firm as spending measures make their way through the legislative process. Heritage expert: Melanie Israel

U.S. CDC to create new information center to forecast disease threats – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to be the 8track of today’s technology. A year and half into this pandemic, the agency is just now creating a center to analyze and forecast disease outbreaks. It’s a nice gesture but this doesn’t even to begin to address the information sharing and data gathering problems that are systemic in the CDC and throughout the Health and Human Services Department. As I wrote back in September 2020, the CDC has not yet implemented a modern and uniform information-management and reporting system despite multiple laws enacted in 2006, 2013, 2019 and 2020 to do so. What’s tragic about this is that CDC reporting is too often a one-way street—from health care workers to public health officials, but not the other way around. This means that frontline health care workers have been lacking clinical knowledge, patient data and best practices while fighting COVID-19. HHS needs to implement real reforms that go beyond this new center. Heritage expert: Doug Badger

Many Consumer Prices Are Higher: Time to Eliminate Government-Imposed Economic Roadblocks – Recent increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) have Americans worried about high inflation. Although pandemic-related disruptions in specific markets—such as food and energy—are the primary factors behind the recent CPI surge, it would be irresponsible for Federal Reserve officials to dismiss the possibility of higher future inflation, especially given the influence that expectations can have on future price levels. It would also be irresponsible for Congress to enact a $4.5 trillion deficit spending proposal, which would place additional upward pressure on prices while doing nothing to fix the constraints that caused the economic disruptions in the first place. There is no lack of consumer demand or job opportunities, so additional deficit spending will do little but lead to future inflation. Congress should enact targeted policies that mitigate the specific disturbances caused by the pandemic and government shutdowns. Heritage expert: Norbert Michel