Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.
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Biden's Justice Department clueless that censoring parents is sure to end badly – NSBA promotes CRT and has urged the Biden administration to reinstate racially discriminatory workforce development programs that President Donald Trump’s administration abolished last fall. Given the public’s rejection of CRT and state lawmakers’ efforts to prohibit racial discrimination, its positions do not reflect the interests of families or policymakers. Parents are not to be trifled with. According to Axios, more than twice as many board recall elections or campaigns were held or initiated between January and July 2021 than during all of last year. NSBA should not be worried about parents attending meetings—they should be worried about voters headed to the ballot box. Heritage experts: Mike Gonzalez and Jonathan Butcher

Don’t Be Tricked Into Allowing Big Tech to Weaponize ‘Misinformation’ – To identify—and avoid—the key takeaway of the hearing, members of Congress and the American public need to see through the glossy performance and focus on Haugen’s former role at Facebook and what she advocated for in the hearing; namely, more censorship of “misinformation.” On the plus side, Haugen released Facebook documents and described troubling issues at the tech giant that are important for Americans to know and understand. In its never-ending quest for growth, Facebook preys on younger children to set their eyes on the Instagram and Facebook platforms and to keep them there, despite knowing the dangerous—and even deadly—mental and emotional downstream effects that has on children, particularly girls. Facebook has called teens creating Instagram accounts without parents’ knowledge a unique value proposition. Heritage expert: Lora Ries

Audits restore faith in elections – What is most disturbing about the reaction to the audit report is that so many seem to think that this is the end of the review process, since the hand recount showed that Biden won and, thus, nothing else needs to be done. This attitude is especially disturbing in Maricopa County election officials, who from the very start have done everything they could to obstruct the audit and who are now claiming that since their ‘canvass’ was accurate, they don’t need to do anything else. That attitude is wrong. The audit seems to have revealed that sloppy, careless and chaotic procedures were utilized in Maricopa County during the last election. Officials there have a duty to not only investigate all of the potential problems the audit found, such as potential multiple registrations by the same individual, but to correct their procedures and implement better training for their election workers to ensure that such problems, if confirmed, do not happen again. Opposing the conduct of election audits is unwise and unjustified. Audits are a routine occurrence in the business world for good reason. Conducting random or comprehensive audits after an election in every state should also be routine. Heritage expert: Hans von Spakovsky

OPM’S Multi-State Plan Program: Time to Say Goodbye – Congress should establish a level playing field for personal choice and genuine market competition among health care plans and providers, thereby enabling Americans to secure better value for their health care dollars. To this end, Congress should repeal OPM’s Multi-State Plan program and embrace policies that would significantly lower Americans’ health insurance costs by slashing the excessive federal regulation that contributes to high health care costs, targeting existing financial assistance to the poor and the sick, and enabling all Americans to direct their health care dollars to coverage and care of their choice. Heritage expert: Bob Moffit