Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
Britain’s new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak must lead as a conservative <[link removed]> – Rishi Sunak, the new British Prime Minister <[link removed]>, has huge shoes to fill. The former Chancellor of the Exchequer was propelled to power following a swift leadership contest within the ruling Conservative Party, the political home of both Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Sunak faces immense challenges, including soaring inflation, a cost of living crisis, a mounting energy crisis, and the large numbers of illegal migrants crossing into the United Kingdom from across the English Channel. Sunak must lead as a conservative, pledge to advance economic freedom, secure Britain’s borders, protect Brexit and commit to increasing British defense spending to 3 percent of GDP. Economic freedom, British sovereignty, a strong national defense, and secure borders are vital. The UK must also
stand up to Putin’s Russia and Communist China, and end the futile Biden and EU-led efforts <[link removed]> to revive the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. Sunak has never been a leader on foreign policy, but the continuing war in Ukraine and growing Chinese threats to invade Taiwan will weigh heavily on his time in office, as will continuing tensions with the European Union over the Northern Ireland Protocol. Heritage Experts: Nile Gardiner <[link removed]> and Ted Bromund <[link removed]>
‘Transient Phase’: England Moves To Restrict Transgender Procedures For Kids As Biden Doubles Down <[link removed]>—The UK preceded us in this experiment on children, and they are now pulling back. The NHS is even conceding what honest observers have known for years: The massive increase in kids presenting with symptoms of gender dysphoria or confusion are likely the result of social contagion and a temporary stage that most will grow out of, if allowed to do so. The reason many of us have criticized the headlong approach into “gender affirming care” (social transition, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, surgery) is because is fast tracks kids to the end point of transition—sterilization—based on scant data that it benefits anyone. Heritage Expert: Jay Richards <[link removed]>
Whatever CDC Says About COVID-19 Vaccinations for Kids, It’s Up to States <[link removed]> - An advisory committee has recommended <[link removed]> unanimously that the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention include COVID-19 vaccines in its childhood immunization schedule for next year. The CDC is expected to adopt the recommendation. The CDC’s immunization schedule is the standard list of vaccines used by pediatricians for childhood vaccines, including shots for diphtheria, measles, mumps, and other childhood diseases. The 15-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, recommends <[link removed]> that children be fully vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19, beginning at the age of 6 months. To be clear: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal agency, has no authority to mandate childhood vaccination as a condition for school attendance. Nor is CDC asserting such authority, as it did with the moratorium on evictions, the transportation mask mandate, and other matters. CDC officials agree that this power rests solely with the states and, subject to state law, the public health authorities in various localities. Nonetheless, federal guidance—assuming the CDC accepts the advisory committee’s recommendation—carries great weight with state and local officials (including school officials), physicians, and other medical professionals. Heritage Expert: Bob Moffit <[link removed]>
Better Late Than Never: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Unaccountable Funding Scheme Ruled Unconstitutional <[link removed]> - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is “completely off the separation of powers books.” So wrote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a decision <[link removed]> last week holding that the bureau’s independent funding mechanism was unconstitutional because it violated Congress’ exclusive power to appropriate federal funds. The decision heralds trouble ahead for this powerful <[link removed]> and uniquely problematic <[link removed]> federal agency. The most remarkable feature of the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau <[link removed]> is its unaccountability. Created in 2010 by the Dodd-Frank Act, the bureau acts (in the words
of the Supreme Court <[link removed]>) “as a mini legislature, prosecutor, and court” in the realm of consumer affairs, while enjoying near total insulation from the traditional political influences felt in every other sphere of government. And this unaccountability was entirely intentional: The
agency’s architects shielded it from both presidential and congressional oversight, and entrusted control to a single, unelected director. Congress gave the bureau “capacious” authority and then set it free from all oversight to rove in search of problems and steer a course by its own lights. Heritage Experts: GianCarlo Canaparo <[link removed]> and Jack Fitzhenry <[link removed]>
Conservative Group Wins Court Bid to Block Sweeping DOJ Subpoena <[link removed]> - A federal judge quashed a Justice Department subpoena <[link removed]> going after the
communications of a private conservative group in Alabama. The Justice Department sued the state of Alabama opposing the Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, and in the course of discovery sought all information <[link removed]> from Eagle Forum Alabama regarding its advocacy for the bill going
back to 2017. Eagle Forum is not a party in the lawsuit, prompting the court to rule that the DOJ was overreaching. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Liles Burke <[link removed]>, of the Middle District of Alabama, issued an opinion stating <[link removed]>, “Considering the relevance (or lack thereof) of the requested material, the burden of production, the nonparties’ resources, and the government’s own conduct, the Court finds that the subpoenas exceed the scope of discovery.” The
Justice Department issued the subpoena in August and last month, Eagle Forum Alabama filed the motion to quash. Several Republican members of Congress, the Alabama Legislature, and conservative organizations filed a brief <[link removed]> with the court arguing on the side of Eagle Forum Alabama. Heritage Expert: Fred Lucas <[link removed]>
The
Fifth Circuit Updates Common Carrier Doctrine for Social Media Companies <[link removed]> – Last month, in a case called NetChoice v. Paxton, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, writing through Judge Andy Oldham, upheld <[link removed]> Texas’s anti-censorship bill, H.B. 20 <[link removed]>. The law, designed to stop social medial companies from censoring users based on their personal opinions, required that platforms “may not censor . . . a user’s expression . . . based on the viewpoint of the user.” The opinion highlights how important social media is to our public discourse today. Social media platforms are “the forum for political discussion and debate,” Judge Oldham wrote, “and exclusion from the Platforms amounts to exclusion from the public discourse.” The opinion also demonstrates how challenging it can be to apply old First Amendment caselaw to this new online forum. The issue in the case was whether social media platforms can be treated like “common carriers” (like mail carriers, telephone companies, and railroads) and prohibited from discriminating against their users. The plaintiffs in the case—several social media platforms—claimed that they were not common carriers and had the right to discriminate against disfavored (read: conservative) speech because censorship is itself a form of protected expression. Heritage Expert: GianCarlo Canaparo <[link removed]>
Don’t Fall for Democrats’ ‘Voter Suppression’ Myths <[link removed]> – Through Election Day, Priorities USA is
spending $15 million <[link removed]> to fight supposed "voter
suppression," the unicorn Democrats <[link removed]> trot out for two reasons: to delegitimize
elections they lose and to scare people about anti-voter fraud measures. It joins other groups that have already spent millions creating a false narrative that reforms designed to protect the integrity of elections are somehow tantamount to "Jim Crow 2.0." It's nonsense, of course. In fact, it's very easy to register to vote and easy to cast a ballot across the United States. Indeed, voter ID laws enacted over the years and recent state election reforms have never reduced <[link removed]> voter participation. But leftist groups like Priorities USA continue falsely claiming that reasonable measures to keep elections honest will do just the opposite. Heritage Expert: Fred Lucas <[link removed]>
MSNBC Host Claims Minority Republican Candidates Are Not ‘Voices Of Color’ <[link removed]>—It’s not the first time that Left Inc. makes it clear that it sees racial and ethnic categories as political entities to be used as pawns in electoral strategies and grand social engineering schemes, and do not correspond to on-the-ground realities or national interests. We saw this already a few years ago when the Alinsky-trained Marxist activist Dolores Huerta declared that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were “not Hispanics.” That only underlined the fact that it was precisely leftist activists who in the 1970s leaned heavily on the federal bureaucracy to create the Hispanic ethnic category out of whole cloth in the first place. Having given up on the “class struggle” and on workers as revolutionary agents, the New Marxist Left thought it could pursue a “race struggle” approach that would rely on grievance mongering and the oppressed-oppressor paradigm so dear to Marxists new and old, this time with “people of color” as revolutionary agents. When it turns out that those who they hoped would play cannon fodder in the cultural battle to dismantle the United States have as little interest in their scheme as the workers of old had in the class struggle, these activists cry foul. Heritage Expert: Mike Gonzalez <[link removed]>
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