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Gas Prices Hit New Highs Again With All 50 States Above $4 a Gallon <[link removed]> - Energy is essential to Americans’ economic well-being and their ability to live healthier, safer, and more productive lives. Just as increased prices drive up costs throughout the economy, the benefits of more affordable energy are widespread and have profoundly positive effects for American families and businesses. Policymakers should reject the false choice posed by the Biden Administration to date—renewables or conventional energy—and make policy changes in pursuit of energy abundance. Americans and the rest of the world stand to benefit greatly, as the only way to dilute the power of those who weaponize energy for political ends is to provide the world with affordable, reliable energy of all kinds. Heritage Expert: Katie Tubb <[link removed]> and Joel Griffith <[link removed]>
 
Monetary malpractice at the Federal Reserve <[link removed]>- If the economy slips into recession, you can “thank” the Federal Reserve. All around the country is the economic detritus of its monetary malfeasance. For two years, the Fed has flooded the economy with cash. That reduced borrowing costs for Congress’ spending spree, but it also got the economy addicted to cheap credit, caused asset bubbles and ignited inflation. Heritage Expert: EJ Antoni  <[link removed]>
 
Latest Cases of Election Underline Need for Vigilance and Action <[link removed]> - Election integrity continues to be an important issue to citizens across the country, regardless of their political affiliation. While many politicians on the left continue to downplay <[link removed]> the issue of election fraud to the dismay of their constituents, threats to free and fair elections continue at an alarming rate, as our newest batch of cases for The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database show. But be forewarned: According to the May 3 issue <[link removed]> of Washingtonian magazine citing one of us (Hans von Spakovsky), overseeing a
“national tracking system that monitors election-fraud cases” is a “highly controversial tactic.” Really? Heritage Expert: Hans von Spakovsky  <[link removed]>
 
Let Students Study for Final Exams, Not Worry About College Board Politics <[link removed]>- It’s final exam season, so middle school and high school students are feverishly preparing. In case students needed one more thing to worry about, some in the media are warning that students’ hard work studying for end-of-year tests may not even count—for political reasons. A recent statement <[link removed]> from College Board, creator of Advanced Placement courses and exams, says AP work stands for “clarity and transparency” and an “unflinching encounter with evidence,” and
“opposes censorship.” Some in the media <[link removed]> have interpreted that to mean that when state lawmakers reject the application of critical race theory in K-12 schools, educators may not be able to fulfill the requirements of teaching AP courses. In fact, College Board—and the media and parents—should be more concerned with the racial bias that critical race theory is ushering into K-12 classrooms <[link removed]>than state officials’ proposals that reject the theory. Heritage Expert: Jonathan Butcher  <[link removed]>
 
 Law students are not OK: The legal profession’s leftward lean <[link removed]> - Equality under the law is a bedrock principle of our society and our legal system — or at least it used to be. Unfortunately, many today have embraced the idea of equity, meaning the equality of outcomes instead of the equality of opportunity under the law. The pursuit of equity necessarily involves discriminating against some to favor others. Rather than pushing back against this discriminatory idea, the nation’s oldest voluntary legal organization, the American Bar Association <[link removed]>, has embraced it. Heritage Expert: Zack Smith  <[link removed]>

<[link removed]>SWIFT Sanctions Unlikely to Threaten US Dollar <[link removed]> - The U.S. and key allies <[link removed]> announced in March sanctions on a number of Russian banks
using SWIFT, the inter-bank payment system relied on by nearly every bank on Earth. This led to concerns <[link removed]> of Russia evading the sanctions by using the Chinese alternative, the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System, better known by its acronym, CIPS. In so doing, some say, Russia is threatening the U.S. dollar’s worldwide dominance as the reserve currency. These fears are misplaced. In the short term, CIPS is too small, while other inter-bank payment systems run by pariah countries like Russia or Iran are even smaller, and they are unlikely to be able to scale up fast enough to replace SWIFT. Heritage Expert: Peter St. Onge <[link removed]>

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