Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today.Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.

                                                    
Shocking Cost of the Illegal Immigration Crisis on Americans <[link removed]> - As record numbers of illegal aliens
continue to flood across our southern border, they are being dispersed into every congressional district in the country, making every state a border state. Why do open-borders advocates ignore the enormous toll on Americans that comes in the form of higher taxes, overloaded emergency rooms, increased crime in their communities, and overcrowded classrooms for their children? The financial cost of illegal immigration to Illinois, for example—hardly a border state—was $4.59 billion in 2022. That’s $930 per household. Every year. This piece covers some of the heavy financial and human toll that illegal immigration is taking on the states and their citizens. Heritage Expert: Erin Dwinell <[link removed]>
The ERA Has Just One Purpose Left: Abortion <[link removed]> - “The Equal Rights Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with abortion,” insisted Representative Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.) in an
April 2019 Judiciary Committee hearing <[link removed]>. Maloney has been the ERA’s primary House sponsor for the past 25 years. Methinks, however, that the representative doth protest way too much. The ERA-abortion connection had already been established for more than 40 years when Maloney tried to deny it. The 1972 ERA <[link removed]> provided that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.” This was the only resolution, out of more than 1,000 introduced since 1923, to gain the two-thirds support that the Constitution requires to be
sent to the states for ratification. Heritage Expert: Thomas Jipping <[link removed]>
Reason, Revelation, and Identity Politics <[link removed]> - By refusing to take seriously the questions that underlie modern rationality, the West continues to undermine itself, to increase its own doubting and internal self-loathing. It makes its politics, its education, and its societies welcoming arenas for the atheism of unreason as mere subjectivity becomes the arbiter of what is ethical and good for man to do. The pathologies of reason and religion with which is plagued should not then be surprising. But the path forward is really the path of recovery of philosophical realism, the rebuilding of biblical faith, and the reawakening of love for constitutional republics. Heritage Expert: Richard Reinsh <[link removed]>
 
Debunking Biden’s Malarkey: 7 Ways He Added a $6 Trillion to Deficits <[link removed]> - The deficit for fiscal year 2020 was a record $3.1 trillion. There’s no mystery about why: Lower tax revenue due to pandemic lockdowns <[link removed]> reducing economic activity
combined with increased spending (much of it wasted <[link removed]>) meant the year was a perfect storm
for adding to the national debt. Although some pandemic-related restrictions lingered <[link removed]>, the end of lockdowns meant the economy (and tax revenue)
largely bounced back in fiscal year 2021—and this  would have happened regardless of who was president. Similarly, the bulk of stimulus spending enacted in 2020 wasn’t designed to carry over into future years, meaning that federal spending was expected to dip in 2021. Heritage Expert: David Ditch <[link removed]>
 
Like It or Not, the U.S. Is in a Nuclear Arms Race With China <[link removed]> - The U.S. is unprepared to deter China’s growing nuclear threat. The current U.S. structure was designed more than a decade ago and is based primarily on the need to deter Russia. Back then, most believed that China would maintain only a couple of hundred nuclear weapons. The Pentagon now projects Beijing will have at least 1,000 weapons by the end of the decade. As China builds up, the U.S. will need a nuclear force that can credibly convince China that the costs of using nuclear weapons would exceed the benefits. Right now, it isn’t clear the U.S. would be able to do that. America’s nuclear force isn’t large enough to take on Russia’s and China’s at the same time, which becomes more concerning when considering the potential for increased cooperation between the two countries. Heritage Expert: Patty-Jane Geller <[link removed]>
Gov. Youngkin Demands ‘Full Transparency and Accountability’ From FBI in Wake of ‘Radical-Traditional Catholic’ Memo <[link removed]> - The FBI memo urged agents to probe the supposed nexus between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the SPLC and including a list of SPLC-designated “hate groups” for agents to target. Some of Virginia’s representatives in Congress also addressed the memo—which the FBI announced it would remove from its database last week—although Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., did not condemn it. “Religious freedom is a foundational tenet of our great nation, and the governor was stunned by the news reports on the FBI memo,” Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter told The Daily Signal <[link removed]> in a statement Thursday. “While he is encouraged that the FBI removed the document, he believes there must be full transparency and accountability from FBI leadership as part of the review under way.” Heritage Expert: Tyler O’Neil <[link removed]>
Biden DOJ is wrong: Federal law bars mailing abortion drugs <[link removed]> - Congress enacted what has become known as the Comstock Act in 1873, as a movement to stop what the American Medical Association
condemned as the “slaughter of countless children” by abortion that swept the country. Named for Anthony Comstock, the anti-vice crusader who championed its passage, the act prohibited the Postal Service from delivering “any article or thing designed or intended for the … procuring of abortion.” Expert: Thomas Jipping <[link removed]>

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