We Shouldn’t Be Promoting Voting By Mail - A polling place under the bipartisan supervision of election officials and the observation of poll watchers has numerous advantages. It helps ensure not only that the ballots are completed by the registered voters and deposited in a locked, sealed ballot box, but also that the voters’ eligibility and identity are verified; that no voters are pressured or coerced to vote a particular way by candidates, party activists, and political guns-for-hire, who are all prohibited from being inside the polling place; and that no ballots get “lost” in the mail or not delivered on time. To the average person, a ballot may not be as valuable as a $500 million lottery ticket but securing our ballots so that every eligible citizen can vote in a secure, fair, and honest election is worth quite a bit. In fact, it is essential to maintaining our democratic republic. Heritage Expert: Hans von Spakovsky

November jobs report was not a blowout, it was a big disappointment - The seemingly robust headline number of 263,000 jobs comes from the establishment survey of businesses, while the unemployment rate comes from the household survey. But the household survey also has a measure of employment, and that fell by 138,000. In fact, the household survey has been flat since March of this year, with essentially no jobs added over that time. Heritage Expert: EJ Antoni

A Hard Winter Looms for Americans’ Energy Bill and Wallets. Blame Biden. - Natural gas is used for heat in only 28% of Southern households, but 55% of households in the Northeast, 64% in the Midwest, and 53% in the West. The Energy Information Administration projects heating expenditures for those households to significantly increase in all regions this winter compared with last winter: 20% in the Northeast, 31% in the Midwest, and 24% in the West. High energy prices are projected to be the worst for New Englanders, where costs are the highest for every source of home heating that the agency tracks. Overall, energy prices have increased by 18% in the past year and inflation is at 7.7%, a 40-year high. To make matters worse, real average hourly earnings have decreased by 2.8%, making it harder to pay energy bills. American households need to hope for a warmer winter to reduce some energy needs, but hope is not a plan, nor is it an energy policy. Heritage Expert: Katie Tubb

 

Red State Coalitino Halts Biden’s Cancellation of Student Loan Debt - The Supreme Court will hear the case in February, and that it will consider two questions:  (1) whether the challengers have Article III standing and (2) whether the plan exceeds the Secretary of Education’s statutory authority or is arbitrary and capricious. At least one state, Missouri, appears to have standing, the courts must answer the fundamental question: Does Biden have the power to cancel $400 billion in student debt without specific congressional authorization? In fact, one lower court already has reached this question and answered it in the negative. A federal judge in Texas ruled Thursday that the HEROES Act, the 2003 statute on which Biden bases his action, doesn’t provide any authority to cancel student debt. The court, therefore, found the administration’s debt cancellation plan unlawful and vacated in its entirely. Heritage Expert: GianCarlo Canaparo and Jack Fitzhenry

 

Supreme Court Hears Graphic Designer’s Case in Major Free Speech-Gay Rights Battle - Smith is asking the Supreme Court to allow her to promote her religious view that marriage is between one man and one woman without fear of facing retribution if she refuses to create a wedding website for a same-sex couple. “Colorado is trying to force me to create custom, unique artwork to promote ideas inconsistent with my faith and the core of who I am,” Smith said. Now, the Supreme Court will “decide whether the government can respect everyone’s freedom to say what we believe,” she added. Heritage Expert: Virginia Allen

Twitter Execs Didn’t Have a Good Explanation for Censoring hunter Biden’s Laptop, New Emails Reveal - Jim Baker, then-deputy counsel, wrote that “caution is warranted.” He suggested Twitter “assume” that the materials “may have been” hacked, even as he noted that “some facts” indicated “that the computer was either abandoned and/or the owner consented to allow the repair shop to access it for at least some purposes. Taibbi noted that some Twitter staffers seemed not to understand the basic tenets of the First Amendment and Supreme Court jurisprudence on it. He cited an exchange between Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who alerted Twitter to the “huge backlash” this move had been generating among members of Congress on the issue of “speech, as in free speech. Heritage Expert: Tyler O’Neil and Jake Denton

Why Congress Should Reject Manchin’s Permitting Bill and Enact Genuine Reform in 2023 - The bill would empower the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to designate and approve transmission line projects as “necessary in the national interest,” and to socialize costs in electricity rates across a region—regardless of whether a state uses the electricity. Unsurprisingly, the criteria for a “national interest” designation are so broad that any project enjoying political support could qualify. It’s a clever, back-door approach allowing the Energy Department and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to bypass states. Heritage Expert: Daren Bakst and Katie Tubb

Seasoned Educator Tony Kinnett Joins The Daily Signal as New Investigative Columnist - Kinnett today released his first scoop with The Daily Signal about a district-wide gender transition support plan that intentionally withholds and obfuscates gender transition information about a student from his or her parents. Kinnett obtained emails that show counselors in South Madison Community School Corporation in Indiana advising teachers to not tell parents if a student wants to use different names or pronouns in school—unless the student says parents are supportive of the move. Upon further digging, Kinnett found that the policy is not approved by any school board, even though an assistant superintendent in charge of the counseling department told the counseling staff that this gender policy was “board-approved.” Heritage Expert: Tony Kinnett  

What’s really behind the Biden administration’s Televisa Univision sale - So, instead, the Federal Communications Commission, one of those ostensibly independent parts of the permanent bureaucracy in which Biden gets to appoint the leader, decided last week to approve Televisa Univision’s sale of the 18 stations to Latino Media Network. LMN obtained debt financing from Lakestar Finance LLC, an investment group associated with Soros Fund Management, an investment management firm founded by George Soros, a multibillionaire who freely spends his vast wealth on far-left causes. Over time, Soros has transferred $32 billion to his Open Society Foundation, which funds nefarious projects across the globe. Heritage Expert: Mike Gonzalez

Climate Money is Pouring Into Washington —Watch Out for the RINOs - The new House majority should alert people to the dangers associated with chronic underinvestment in oil and natural gas. Most of the problem we face with respect to high energy prices is the result of underinvestment in oil and natural gas over the last decade. The principal cause of that underinvestment is the relentless propaganda from the left about the possibility of net zero anytime soon. National net zero goals have never been voted on; they are not national commitments. Congress should vote on net zero goals. If achieving those goals are going to be uniformly positive, surely everyone will want to get on record in favor of them. Heritage Expert: Derrick Morgan