Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
Policymakers Should Use Supreme Court Cases on Racial Preferences to Launch Reform of College Accreditation <[link removed]> - The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion on Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard in 2023, potentially rejecting race-based college admissions policies. If the Court rules that postsecondary institutions may not use race as a factor in school admissions, that decision will be a crucial step away from racial prejudice and toward meritocracy and colorblindness—two pillars of the civil rights movement. Some schools may ignore the ruling and unlawfully continue race-based policies because many employ dozens, or, more than a hundred, administrative staff who enforce racial bias, including critical race theory, on campus. State and federal lawmakers should restructure their college accreditation processes to give schools more autonomy in choosing the organizations that accredit their institutions, thereby weakening the federal accreditation cartel. Heritage Expert: Jonathan Butcher <[link removed]>
China’s Spy Balloon Proves The U.S. Homeland Is Vulnerable <[link removed]> - Is there anything Team Biden won’t drag ex-President Donald Trump into as a butt-covering maneuver? In this case, the embarrassment was the Chinese spy balloon fiasco <[link removed]>. And the butt-covering was the “leak” from a “defense official” that balloons from Beijing entered US airspace at least three times in the Trump years. Except that Trump and a pack of top ex-Trump officials then all insisted <[link removed]> they’d never been briefed on such incursions — and word came out that the incidents went undetected until the then-prez left office. Heritage Expert: Jim Carafano <[link removed]>
D.C. statehood requires constitutional amendment <[link removed]> - When Philadelphia served as our nation’s capital, Pennsylvania refused to protect members of the Continental
Congress against angry mobs. No wonder the framers of our Constitution wanted the new seat of our federal government to be free from the influence of any one state. Heritage Expert: Zack Smith <[link removed]>
Bipartisan Legislation Introduced to End Outdated Iraq War Authorizations <[link removed]> - A remarkable thing
happened in Washington this morning, especially given the vituperative atmosphere of politics today. Legislators introduced substantive legislation that is good policy, and a policy that The Heritage Foundation has been advocating <[link removed]> for years. A large bipartisan group of 22 Senators introduced <[link removed]> legislation to repeal the 1991 and 2002 Iraq Authorizations for the Use of Military Force, or AUMF. Repealing the two AUMFs is sound policy <[link removed]>. As we have written <[link removed]> previously, these two war authorizations remain in force, even though their purposes were accomplished a long time ago. Heritage Expert: Cully Stimson <[link removed]>
Why are people fleeing Illinois? <[link removed]> - Lots of people complain. But when they’re really fed up, they “vote with their feet.” And by that metric, Illinois is one of the most unpopular states in the nation. The latest Census Bureau data show that the Land of Lincoln <[link removed]> is hemorrhaging people at an astonishing rate — and public policy is likely to blame. Heritage Expert: EJ Antoni <[link removed]>
BREAKING: FBI Rescinds Memo Citing Southern Poverty Law Center After Daily Signal Report <[link removed]> -
The Federal Bureau of Investigation rescinded a report on “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” on Thursday, one day after an
FBI whistleblower <[link removed]> published the document and The Daily Signal reached out to the FBI for comment. Former FBI agents condemned the document for citing the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing smear factory infamous for branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups” and placing them on a map with Ku Klux Klan chapters. “While our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence products, this particular field office product—disseminated only within the FBI—regarding racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI,” the FBI told The Daily Signal <[link removed]> in a statement emailed Thursday. Heritage Expert: Tyler O’Neil
School choice for rural SC <[link removed]> - possible.” So declared Gov. Henry McMaster in recently proclaiming School Choice Week in South Carolina. To that end, the South Carolina legislature is currently considering a proposal to give families greater freedom to choose learning environments that align with their values and meet their children’s individual learning needs. The proposal would create education savings accounts (ESAs), letting families access about $6,000 in state funds to pay for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, online courses, special needs therapy and numerous other educational expenses. Ten states have already adopted ESA policies, including five in the last two years. Heritage Expert: Jason Bedrick <[link removed]>
Conservatives Call on States to Close Loopholes Allowing Big Money to Bankroll Election Operations <[link removed]> - Conservative organizations are calling for state legislatures to close loopholes regarding private funding of elections, after the same organization that distributed the Mark Zuckerberg election grants in 2020 issued a $2 million grant to a county in Georgia, one of two dozen states to ban private funding of election offices. “States across the country have made great strides in promoting election integrity. But now, a new alliance of left-wing partisan organizations led by the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) is working to influence state election offices behind the scenes,” says a joint statement from Heritage Action for America Executive Director Jessica Anderson and Honest Elections Project Executive Director Jason Snead. Heritage Expert: Fred Lucas <[link removed]>
-
