Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
Heritage Experts Blast New Biden Border Crisis Numbers, Lack of Transparency <[link removed]> – Heritage’s homeland security team released the following statement Thursday in response to new border apprehension numbers for December 2021. Since assuming office, the Biden administration has been slow to release official numbers, with the December numbers only becoming public through a court filing, <[link removed]> not through Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) website, as is the norm. “The numbers are shocking enough, but what’s even worse is the Biden administration’s refusal to be transparent with the American people about the scope of their failure. And the press is certainly not doing its job to expose the full extent of the crisis and hold administration officials accountable, either. Despite speaking for two hours yesterday in a rare press conference, Biden neither spoke about, nor was he asked about, the border crisis and the consequences it has created for families and communities across our country. We are in for a rough three years if this administration continues down this path of open borders. It’s time for Congress, the states, and the American people to do what the Biden administration won’t—secure our borders and hold accountable those who opened them.” Heritage Expert: Lora Ries <[link removed]>
Youngkin Off to Good Start, but Parents Need to Keep Up Counterrevolution <[link removed]> – Last year, we witnessed an unprecedented revolt by parents and other Americans against the left’s attempt to insert race-based indoctrination into classrooms. The Virginia election was the first major electoral test of the power of parents and Americans who are fed up with this indoctrination. Everyone will be watching what happens next, but the bold leadership on critical race theory so far is sure to hearten parents who sought to protect their children from harmful ideologues and encourage timid politicians. Heritage Expert: Mike Gonzalez <[link removed]>
An easy fix to IRS tax filing delays: Don’t pay IRS employees to abandon their posts in lieu of union work <[link removed]> – There’s at least one simple way to help reduce these delays: stop paying IRS employees to work for
their unions in lieu of doing the jobs they were hired to perform. Each year, taxpayers are forced to pay thousands of federal employees for work they don’t actually do. This sounds crazy for private-sector workers, but for federal employees, it’s known as “official time,” or taxpayer-funded union time.Ensuring that IRS employees spend tax-filing season doing their jobs rather than working for their union is just common sense. Ultimately, public-sector unions should not exist, but so long as they do, public unions should be financed exclusively by the employees they serve, not the taxpayers against whom they negotiate. Heritage Expert: Rachel Greszler <[link removed]>
Biden’s New Domestic Terrorism Unit Bad for Freedom-Loving Americans <[link removed]> – By prioritizing prosecution of “domestic terrorists” among Jan. 6 protesters and at school board meetings, the Biden administration has taken its eye off foreign terrorist threats, which should be the No. 1 priority for both the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., correctly stated that the fall of Afghanistan, the resurrection of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and foreign nationals from countries of special interest crossing our open southern border make for a deadly recipe for attacks by foreign terrorists. Biden’s willingness to demonize his political opponents means that we cannot
trust that the Justice Department’s domestic terrorism unit will exercise its power with neutrality and restraint. If this new unit shares the president’s fierce partisanship, its creation represents a danger to the rule of law. Heritage Experts: Lora
Ries <[link removed]> and GianCarlo
Canaparo <[link removed]>
Blackburn, GOP Call for Answers on Federal Abortion Funding <[link removed]> – Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is leading Republican lawmakers in calling on the Government Accountability Office to explain what kind of federal funding Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers are receiving. In a letter sent Tuesday, the lawmakers reminded the Government Accountability Office that the agency has prepared several congressionally requested reports in the past on
federal funding for Federally Qualified Health Centers, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly known as Marie Stopes International), and four other domestic abortion providers. Heritage Expert: Mary Margaret Olohan <[link removed]>
Congressional Democrats used to feel differently about the filibuster <[link removed]> – Biden says today that he supports eliminating extended debate only for a particular bill, not across the board. Anyone who believes that it will stop there might want to look into oceanfront property in Iowa. Biden himself rejected that idea back in 2005, arguing that eviscerating the Senate by terminating extended debate “to help in one political fight or another … would be disastrous.” He quoted historian Robert Caro, author of Master of the Senate, saying that extended debate is not about “the particular dispute of the moment, but … the fundamental character of the Senate.” When they designed our system of limited government, America’s founders were aware of another truth
— that “unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.” So said William Pitt, the first earl of Chatham and prime minister of Great Britain in the late 1760s. Biden had the prescription for avoiding this end when he said in 2005 that a “current debate, over a particular set of issues, should not be permitted to destroy what history has bestowed on us.” Heritage Expert: Thomas Jipping <[link removed]>
-
