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Source: https://www.heritage.org/rss

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<title>Heritage RSS Feed</title>
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<item>
<title>Due Process and Aliens: What They Are and Are Not Entitled to in Immigration Proceedings</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/border-security/report/due-process-and-aliens-what-they-are-and-are-not-entitled-immigration</link>
<description>Some critics of the Trump Administration’s enforcement of federal immigration law, including members of the public, the media, and Congress, have made misleading claims about the due process rights that apply in immigration proceedings. Those who claim that non-citizens, referred to in our nation’s immigration laws as aliens, are entitled to the full panoply of constitutional rights enjoyed by American citizens are simply wrong and fail to differentiate between criminal prosecutions and immigration proceedings, which are civil matters.
As provided by Congress and by some court decisions interpreting the Constitution, aliens have only limited due process rights in immigration proceedings. Those rights differ depending on the alien’s status and whether he or she is outside the United States and trying to enter this country or already in the country, legally or illegally.
In fact, several federal immigration statutes specifically bar aliens from even asserting certain claims in federal courts. Federal courts assuming jurisdiction over such claims by aliens are violating federal law, and any orders they issue ought to be declared void ab initio, or invalid, by an appellate court.
<h3>Immigration Proceedings: Criminal vs. Civil Actions</h3>
Regardless of their legal status, aliens are entitled to the same constitutional due process rights provided to criminal defendants who are citizens when they are being criminally prosecuted for assault, rape, burglary, kidnapping, murder, or other crimes.
However, immigration proceedings to bar an alien’s entry or to remove or deportREF an alien present inside the United States are not criminal proceedings. As the Supreme Court of the United States first outlined in 1893 in Fong Yue Ting v. U.S., a decision in which it rejected habeas corpus petitions filed by Chinese citizens who claimed that they were being unlawfully detained by U.S. marshals “without due process of law”:
<blockquote>The [immigration] proceeding…is in no proper sense a trial and sentence for a crime or offense. It is simply the ascertainment, by appropriate and lawful means, of the fact whether the conditions exist upon which Congress has enacted that an alien of this class may remain within the country. The order of deportation is not a punishment for crime.… It is but a method of enforcing the return to his own country of an alien who has not complied with the conditions upon the performance of which the Government of the nation, acting within its constitutional authority, and through the proper departments, has determined that his continuing to reside here shall depend.REF</blockquote>
The Court added that an alien being removed by the government is not being “deprived of life, liberty, or property” and that “the provisions of the Constitution securing the right to trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments [therefore] have no application.”REF That is also why federal immigration officers do not need a warrant issued by a judge before arresting and detaining aliens and why aliens are not entitled to be advised of their Miranda rights or to the assistance of a government-appointed lawyer during their deportation proceedings.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (1966). The Supreme Court held that under the Fifth Amendment, criminal defendants must be warned that they have a right to be silent, that anything they say can be used against them in a court of law, that they are entitled to an attorney, and that if they cannot afford an attorney, one has to be appointed by the government to represent them before they can be questioned.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
The fact that the removal process is a civil proceeding was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in 2010 in Padilla v. Kentucky.REF The Court held in that case that a criminal defense attorney provided ineffective assistance of counsel when he misinformed his client, a permanent resident alien charged with transporting drugs, of the possible immigration consequences of pleading guilty. While that guilty plea in his criminal prosecution made “his deportation virtually mandatory” under federal immigration law, the Court noted that it had “long recognized that deportation is a particularly severe ‘penalty’” and is not “in a strict sense, a criminal sanction.” The Court emphasized that “[r]emoval proceedings are civil in nature.”REF
Aliens are not even entitled to the protection of the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution. Article I, Section 9, Clause 3 provides that no “ex post facto Law shall be passed” by Congress.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;See The Heritage Foundation, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, https://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/63/ex-post-facto.&lt;/p&gt;">REF Ex post facto laws impose criminal punishments on conduct that was lawful when it was done. In 1954, in a case involving the deportation of an alien who had been a member of the Communist Party before such membership had been made a deportable offense, the Supreme Court held that “it has been the unbroken rule of this Court that [the Ex Post Facto Clause] has no application to deportation.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Galvan v. Press, 347 U.S. 522, 531 (1954). The alien was a member of the Communist Party from 1944 to 1946, and membership in the Communist Party was not made a deportable offense until Congress passed the Internal Security Act of 1950.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Aliens also cannot claim “selective prosecution” when they are contesting removal. In 1999, the Supreme Court held that “an alien unlawfully in this country has no constitutional right to assert selective enforcement as a defense against his deportation.”REF
The due process rights in civil immigration proceedings are far more limited, as outlined and defined by Congress in federal immigration laws and the procedural rules promulgated by the Attorney General for the conduct of federal immigration proceedings. In addition, federal immigration courts are not Article III courts in which judges must be confirmed by the Senate and enjoy life tenure; rather, they are administrative “courts” within the Department of Justice. Immigration “judges” are not federal judges at all; they are employees of the Justice Department who are selected by the Attorney General and who act as the Attorney General’s “delegates in the cases that come before them.”REF
<h3>Aliens Attempting to Enter or Reenter the United States</h3>
Aliens attempting to enter the United States have no constitutional due process rights to contest the government’s denial of their entry, and that includes (with only very limited exceptions) previously admitted aliens who are trying to reenter. Furthermore, no federal court has the authority to overrule the decision of the executive branch to exclude an alien.
In 1950, in U.S. ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, a woman who had served as a civilian employee of the U.S. War Department in Germany and who was the German war bride of an honorably discharged American serviceman, was denied entry without a hearing based on a decision by an immigration official and the Attorney General that her admission would be prejudicial to the United States.REF The Supreme Court said that “whatever the rule may be concerning deportation of persons who have gained entry into the United States, it is not within the province of any court, unless expressly authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the Government to exclude a given alien.” The Court also emphasized more importantly that the due process rights of such aliens are limited to “the procedure authorized by Congress”REF if Congress provides such a procedure.
Any alien who seeks admission “may not do so under any claim of right.” Such admission “is a privilege granted by the sovereign United States Government” and will be granted “only upon such terms as the United States shall prescribe.”REF The “exclusion of aliens is a fundamental act of sovereignty” and “stems not only from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation.”REF
In 1953, the Court emphasized this once again in Shaughnessy v. U.S. ex rel. Mezei, stating that “[c]ourts have long recognized the power to expel or exclude aliens as a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control.”REF Mezei involved an alien who had lived in the United States for 25 years but was denied reentry by an immigration official and the Attorney General without a hearing after trying to return from Hungary, which was behind the Iron Curtain at the time, “on the basis of confidential information, the disclosure of which would be prejudicial to the public interest” for security reasons.REF
The Court declared that aliens “who have once passed our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings conforming to traditional standards of fairness encompassed in due process of law.… But an alien on the threshold of initial entry stands on a different footing.” The only “due process” to which aliens seeking to enter the country are entitled is whatever “the procedure authorized by Congress is.” That is “due process as far as an alien denied entry is concerned.”REF
The Court emphasized that because the “action of the executive officer” to deny admission to an alien is “final and conclusive, the Attorney General cannot be compelled to disclose the evidence underlying his determination in an exclusion case.” Thus, “courts cannot retry the determination of the Attorney General.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Id. The Immigration and Naturalization Service was in the Department of Justice until creation of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003; hence the reference to the Attorney General determining admission into the country in this 1953 case.&lt;/p&gt;">REF The fact that an alien has previously been admitted is irrelevant. As the Court outlined: “For purposes of the immigration laws,” the Court observed, “the legal incidents of an alien’s entry remain unaltered whether he has been here once before or not. He is an entering alien just the same, and may be excluded if unqualified to admission under existing immigration law.”REF
The Supreme Court confirmed its views in 2020 in Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissgiam.REF The alien in that case was caught 25 yards inside the United States and claimed asylum; eventually, an immigration judge confirmed an immigration official’s denial of his claim. The Court threw out his habeas corpus claim as barred by federal immigration law and reemphasized that more than a century of precedent establishes that a decision by an executive or administrative officer, acting within the scope of authority previously conferred by Congress, is all the process that is due for aliens seeking initial entry to our country.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;The Supreme Court overturned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals holding that the bar on habeas corpus claims by aliens in federal immigration law violates the Suspension Clause of the U.S. Constitution.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Congress has provided the President with virtually unfettered authority to exclude any aliens. In addition to the multiple grounds provided in 8 U.S.C. § 1182, section (f) of the statute gives the President the right to suspend the entry of “any aliens or of any class of aliens” if he determines that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
In 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the President’s authority under that section in Trump v. Hawaii. President Donald Trump had suspended the entry of aliens from certain countries after “conclud[ing] that it was necessary to impose entry restrictions on nationals of countries that do not share adequate information for an informed entry determination, or that otherwise present national security risks.”REF The Court concluded that this provision gives the President “broad discretion” to bar the entry of aliens and that the language of the statute “exudes deference to the President in every clause.”REF
The one very limited exception to the ability to exclude even returning aliens was illustrated in a 1953 decision, Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding. In Colding, an alien seaman who was a permanent resident was out of the country for four months as the chief steward on an American-registered ship homeported in New York. The Supreme Court overturned the government’s refusal to allow his reentry on security grounds without a hearing, treating him as a “continuously present alien” resident who was entitled to a hearing “at least before an executive or administrative tribunal.” But that was because the alien had been cleared by the Coast Guard and was employed and stationed on an American ship that qualified as American soil for purposes of jurisdiction.REF Those are highly unusual circumstances that rarely occur.
It should be noted that under 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(13), lawful permanent residents are not generally considered to be seeking admission to the United States when returning from a visit abroad. That rule, however, does not apply to such residents attempting to reenter if, among other exceptions, they have:
<ul>
<li>“Abandoned or relinquished” their status,</li>
<li>Been “absent” from the U.S. continuously for more than 180 days,</li>
<li>“[E]ngaged in illegal activity” abroad,</li>
<li>Left the U.S. in the middle of removal proceedings, or</li>
<li>Committed certain crimes.</li>
</ul>
<h3>First Amendment Rights and Aliens</h3>
Aliens seeking entry to the United States have no First Amendment right that would somehow give them the ability to contest the government’s refusal to admit them because of their views, opinions, or other speech. (The citizens who may have invited them to speak also have no such right.)
In 1972, in Kleindienst v. Mandel, the Supreme Court upheld the Attorney General’s refusal to waive the denial of a visa to Ernest Mandel, a Belgian journalist who described himself as a “revolutionary Marxist,” under a provision of immigration law barring the entry of those who advocate or publish the “doctrines of World communism.”REF Mandel had previously been admitted to the United States under a waiver of this prohibition by the Attorney General and had been invited to speak at Stanford University and numerous other universities and conferences. Although a lower court determined that Mandel had no First Amendment right to entry, it held that the government’s rejection of his visa violated the First Amendment rights of the professors and students who invited him.
The Supreme Court agreed that “Mandel personally, as an unadmitted and nonresident alien, had no constitutional rights of entry to this country as a nonimmigrant or otherwise.”REF However, it disagreed with the lower court’s First Amendment holding. Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion noted that the “[Supreme] Court, without exception, has sustained Congress’ ‘plenary power to make rules for the admission of aliens and to exclude those who possess those characteristics which Congress has forbidden.’”REF Moreover:
<blockquote>Were we to endorse the proposition that governmental power to withhold a waiver must yield whenever a bona fide claim is made that American citizens wish to meet and talk with an alien excludable under § 212(a)(28) [of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952], one of two unsatisfactory results would necessarily ensue. Either every claim would prevail, in which case the plenary discretionary authority Congress granted the Executive becomes a nullity, or courts in each case would be required to weigh the strength of the audience’s interest against that of the Government…according to some as yet undetermined standard.REF</blockquote>
The Court further found that the “dangers and the undesirability of making that determination…are obvious” and that it was “for precisely this reason” that this “decision has, properly, been placed in the hands of the Executive.”REF
Even aliens who are legally inside the United States do not enjoy the full panoply of First Amendment rights. Federal campaign finance laws, for example, prohibit foreign nationals (with the exception of permanent resident aliens) from participating in local, state, and federal elections of candidates for office by making any contributions, donations, or expenditures related to campaigns—activity in which citizens have a right to engage under the First Amendment.REF In upholding this prohibition in 2011 in a First Amendment challenge filed by two aliens who were lawfully present in the United States with temporary work visas, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit explained that:
<blockquote>The Supreme Court has long held that the government (federal, state, and local) may exclude foreign citizens from activities that are part of democratic self-government. For example, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government may bar aliens from voting, serving as jurors, working as police or probation officers, or teaching at public schools. Under those precedents, the federal ban at issue here readily passes constitutional muster.REF</blockquote>
As the Supreme Court has said, “a State’s historical power to exclude aliens from participation in its democratic political institutions [is] part of the sovereign’s obligation to preserve the basic conception of a political community.”REF
Additionally, Congress has imposed restrictions on lawfully present aliens that, if violated, make those aliens deportable even though such restrictions could not be imposed on a citizen because they could violate a citizen’s First Amendment rights. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1227, for example, the Secretary of Homeland Security can order the removal of aliens “in and admitted to the United States” for activities that the Secretary of State “has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”REF An alien who “endorses or espouses terrorist activity or persuades others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization” can also be deported.REF
The government clearly could not prosecute and punish a citizen because of speech that the Secretary of State believes could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Moreover, while providing “material support” for a terrorist organization is a criminal violation of the law,REF the government cannot prosecute a citizen for simply publicly endorsing a terrorist organization like Hamas. But such actions would subject an alien to deportation, thereby demonstrating the difference between the First Amendment rights of citizens and the much more limited rights of aliens.
<h3>Removing Aliens Who Are Inside the U.S.</h3>
Expedited Removal. Some aliens who are in the country illegally are subject to expedited removal, which severely limits their access to federal courts or any type of administrative hearing process. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, an alien arriving at the border can be removed “without further hearing or review” if he or she is deemed inadmissible by an immigration officer unless the alien requests asylum or asserts a credible fear of persecution if returned to his or her native country.
This provision can also be applied to aliens who have been inside the country for less than two years and, instead of being properly admitted or paroled, had entered without inspection at an established border crossing. In other words, if an inadmissible alien attempts to enter or makes it into the country illegally but is found and detained within two years, that alien can be removed without a hearing or any other proceeding.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;8 U.S.C. § 1225(b). Any alien is “inadmissible” who is “present in the United States without being admitted or paroled, or who arrives in the United States at any time or place other than as designated by the Attorney General.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(A)(i).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
There is also an expedited removal proceeding for aliens convicted of one of a specified list of criminal offenses.REF These range from such crimes as misdemeanor shoplifting and theft all the way to felony firearms, drug offenses, domestic violence, stalking, and child abuse as well as terrorism and espionage.REF In such cases, the Secretary of Homeland Security can order the removal of an alien who is not a permanent resident alien. The only limitation on that authority is that the order cannot be enforced for 14 calendar days and the alien must be given “reasonable notice of the charges” and “a reasonable opportunity to inspect the evidence and rebut the charges.”REF
Removal of Aliens Through the Immigration Court System. Once outside that two-year, statutorily granted grace period, aliens who are in the country illegally are entitled to the due process of a hearing in the administrative immigration court system, not the federal Article III court system. Such immigration court proceedings are conducted by the Executive Office for Immigration Reviews (EOIR), an agency inside the U.S. Department of Justice that was established in 1983. EOIR is “responsible for adjudicating immigration cases” and does so “under delegated authority from the Attorney General.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;See Exec. Off. for Immigration Review, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, About the Office, https://www.justice.gov/eoir/about-office (accessed June 14, 2025). Procedural rules under which the immigration courts operate are contained in 8 CFR § 1003 et seq.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Immigration judges, who are employees of the Justice Department, determine the eligibility of an alien to remain in the United States or to be removed, including the legitimacy of an asylum claim or other possible justifications for a waiver of applicable immigration provisions. Those judges are authorized by Justice Department regulations to hold in absentia hearings when the alien does not appear at the hearing.REF Large numbers of aliens who are illegally in the country fail to appear for their scheduled hearings, most likely because they know they have no valid reason for overcoming removal and remaining in the country legally.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Andrew R. Arthur, “The Massive Spike in Immigration Court ‘No-Shows,’” Center for Immigration Studies (Feb. 2, 2024), https://cis.org/Arthur/Massive-Spike-Immigration-Court-NoShows (accessed June 24, 2025); Andrew R. Arthur, “GAO: One-Third of Immigration Court Aliens Are No-Shows,” Center for Immigration Studies (Dec. 30, 2024), https://cis.org/Arthur/GAO-OneThird-Immigration-Court-Aliens-are-NoShows (accessed June 24, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Aliens are entitled to legal representation in such hearings, but “at no expense to the government.”REF Aliens can cross-examine witnesses and have a right to review and rebut the evidence presented by the government, but hearsay evidence is not barred as it is in federal and state courts. Aliens also have no right to review evidence that, “if disclosed, [would] harm the national security…or law enforcement interests of the United States.”REF
Appeals of an immigration judge’s decision are filed with the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is also an administrative court within EOIR.REF Such appeals must be filed within 30 days.REF Deportation orders issued by immigration judges are enforced by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an agency within the Department of Homeland Security.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;See U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Security, Enforcement and Removal Operations, https://www.ice.gov/about-ice/ero (accessed June 24, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
As previously noted, immigration judges act as “delegates” of the Attorney General, as do the members of the Board of Immigration Appeals.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;See also Lopez-Telles v. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 564 F.2d 1302 (9th Cir. 1977) (“Immigration judges, or special inquiry officers, are creatures of statute, receiving some of their powers and duties directly from Congress, 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b), and some of them by subdelegation from the Attorney General, 8 U.S.C. § 1103.”).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Therefore, all of their decisions are subject to the “decisions of the Attorney General (through review of a decision of the Board, by written order, or by determination and ruling pursuant to [8 U.S.C. §1103]).”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;8 CFR § 1003.1(d)(1)(i). See also Andrew R. Arthur, “AG Certification Explained,” Center for Immigration Studies (Nov. 5, 2019), https://cis.org/Arthur/AG-Certification-Explained (accessed June 24, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF That statute provides the Attorney General with virtually plenary power over the adjudication of all “laws relating to the immigration and naturalization of aliens,” subject to the “power, functions, and duties conferred upon the President.”
Thus, for example, even if an immigration judge and/or the Board of Immigration Appeals grants an inadmissible alien a waiver from removal, the Attorney General can overrule that decision and direct the implementation of whatever other policies, procedures, and rules are required to enforce federal immigration laws against any and all aliens. As an example, this power of “referral and review” was exercised in 2008 by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to overturn a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals in a specific case in which the judge and the Board refused to grant an alien’s request for a waiver of removal.REF
Most important, federal law prohibits what is apparently happening in federal district courts where judges are presiding over aliens with outstanding deportation orders disputing their removal from the United States. Federal district courts have no original jurisdiction to decide whether an alien may remain in the United States whether through a trial or de novo review of an immigration trial court’s decision. Authority to review decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals rests solely with the federal circuit courts of appeal. This is the “exclusive means of review” provided by Congress in federal immigration law for any “order of removal entered or issued” by the administrative immigration court system.REF Thus, any order issued by a federal district court and not a court of appeals in such a case violates federal law and should be considered void ab initio.
Additionally, any appeal of a deportation order affirmed by the Board of Immigration Appeals must be filed within 60 days with the relevant court of appeals. Therefore, appeals filed by aliens years after the issuance of a deportation order contesting the finding of ineligibility due to the government’s delay in enforcing the order are also invalid because they were filed long past the filing deadline.REF
Moreover, the statute also provides that “no court shall have jurisdiction to hear any cause or claim by or on behalf of any alien arising from the decision or action by the [Secretary of Homeland Security] to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases, or execute removal orders against any alien.”REF The Supreme Court upheld this provision depriving federal courts of jurisdiction in 1999 in Reno v. American–Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.REF
Temporary Protected Status. Aliens with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) are lawfully present in the country but are not included in the jurisdiction of the immigration court system. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1254a, the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to provide temporary lawful status to aliens who cannot safely return to their native country due to an “ongoing armed conflict”; “an earthquake, flood, drought, epidemic, or other environmental disaster…resulting in a substantial, but temporary, disruption of living conditions”; or other “extraordinary and temporary conditions” unless allowing them to remain would be “contrary to the national interest.”
This statute gives the Secretary the sole discretion to make this decision by “designating,” after “consultation with appropriate agencies of the Government,” a foreign state as a country whose citizens will receive TPS. In fact, the statute prohibits federal courts from interfering in the executive branch’s decision on such a designation and whether any aliens will receive TPS or such designation will be revoked. It specifically provides that “[t]here is no judicial review of any determination of the [Secretary] with respect to the designation, or termination or extension of a designation, of a foreign state under this” statute.REF Thus, aliens whose TPS is revoked have no due process rights to contest that revocation and can be removed immediately from the country.
Despite that stark prohibition on judicial review, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stay a blatantly unlawful decision by a California federal district court that enjoined the government’s recent cancellation of TPS for certain specified Venezuelan citizens that was originally granted in 2021 and renewed in 2023. However, on May 19, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on an emergency appeal filed by the government, issued a stay of the injunction pending disposition of the case in the Ninth Circuit and a possible writ of certiorari filed with the Supreme Court.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Noem v. National TPS Alliance, No. 24A-1059 (U.S. May 19, 2025). The lower court decisions are National TPS Alliance v. Noem, No. 25-1766 (N.D. Cal. March 31, 2025), and National TPS Alliance v. Noem, No. 25-2120 (9th Cir. April 18, 2025). The only Supreme Court justice who would have denied the stay was Ketanji Brown Jackson.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
<h3>The Alien Enemies Act</h3>
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) gives the President the authority to apprehend and remove any aliens 14 years old and older when “there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government” of which those aliens are “natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects.”REF
This statute imposes few limitations on the President. If an alien is “not chargeable with actual hostility, or other crime against the public safety,” he shall be allowed time to recover and remove his “goods and effects,” according to the time allowed for that as provided in “any treaty then in force between the United States and the hostile nation or government.” If there is no such treaty, the President gets to decide how much time is reasonable “consistent with public safety, and according to the dictates of humanity and national hospitality.”REF
Moreover, no judicial warrants are necessary to arrest, detain, and remove aliens subject to the President’s proclamation invoking the AEA. The AEA specifically says that federal marshals “for such removal shall have the warrant of the President.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;50 U.S.C. § 24. When the Alien Enemies Act was passed, the U.S. Marshals Service was the first and only federal law enforcement agency, having been established by the Judiciary Act of 1789.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
On March 15, 2025, President Trump issued a proclamation under the AEA directing the removal of members of Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua (TdA) as a “designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;President Donald Trump, “Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua,” Presidential Proclamation 10903, 90 FR 13033 (2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF The proclamation describes TdA as operating in “conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela.” The “result,” says the proclamation, “is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.”REF
After five members of TdA who were detained and being removed from the country filed a lawsuit in federal court in the District of Columbia, Chief Judge James Boasberg issued temporary restraining orders prohibiting the government from removing those five aliens or any other aliens subject to the proclamation. He also provisionally certified a class action of all similarly situated aliens with those five gang members serving as representatives of the class.REF
However, the Supreme Court, responding to an emergency motion filed by the government, entered an order staying that ruling and vacating the restraining orders.REF Not only that, but the Court held that Boasberg never had jurisdiction over the actions of the government. Challenges to actions under the AEA, the Court said, can be brought only by habeas corpus petitions, and such petitions can be filed only in the judicial district where the detainee is confined: “The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia.”REF Thus, Boasberg had no legal authority either to consider the claims in the first place or to issue any orders against the government.REF
According to the Court, “judicial review under the AEA is limited,” although a court can review “questions of interpretation and constitutionality” involving the AEA as applied to a specific alien, as well as “whether he or she ‘is in fact an alien enemy fourteen years of age or older.’”REF In addition, it is “well established” that aliens are entitled to due process in immigration removal proceedings, but that is limited to receiving notice that “they are subject to removal under the” AEA, and notice must be provided “within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”REF
In a second case involving TdA gang members, the Supreme Court issued an injunction against the government removing the aliens until sufficient notice had been given to the aliens. The Court held that “[u]nder these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster.”REF However, it refused to specify “the precise process necessary” to satisfy due process requirements and instead remanded the case to the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to make that determination.REF
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
As federal immigration law and court precedents make clear, aliens do not have full access to all of the constitutional rights afforded to citizens. In immigration cases, which are civil and not criminal proceedings, aliens have only certain limited due process rights as defined by Congress and prior Supreme Court precedents. Those rights differ depending on the status of the aliens and whether they are outside the United States and trying to enter this country or are already in the country, either legally or illegally, as well as their visa or other status.
Moreover, a number of federal immigration statutes bar aliens from even asserting certain claims in federal courts, prohibit any federal court from reviewing specified actions of the federal government such as enforcement of deportation orders by the Attorney General, or limit which federal courts have jurisdiction over particular claims by aliens. Federal courts that try to assume jurisdiction over such banned, prohibited, or limited claims by aliens are violating federal law, and the Supreme Court, if necessary, should tell them so.
Hans von Spakovsky is Manager of the Election Law Reform Initiative and Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2025 08:49:21 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Hans von Spakovsky</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/border-security/report/due-process-and-aliens-what-they-are-and-are-not-entitled-immigration</guid>
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<title>A Pro-Life Agenda for the 119th Congress and the Administration</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/life/report/pro-life-agenda-the-119th-congress-and-the-administration</link>
<description>With a pro-life majority in both the House and the Senate, Congress can—and should—pursue a pro-life, pro-family agenda. But the numbers do not lie: The majority in the House is razor thin, and the majority in the Senate is not filibuster proof. This means that Members must be insistent, creative, and willing to stand their ground.
<h3>Congress Must Pursue Pro-Life Policies</h3>
Congress must protect unborn children who survive abortion attempts, permanently prohibit taxpayer funding for elective abortion, defund abortion providers like Planned Parenthood, protect women and girls from dangerous abortion drugs, protect rights of conscience, and repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
Abortion Survivors. Babies can and do survive abortion attempts. While some states provide legal protection for these babies—and criminal penalties for medical providers who fail to provide them with care—many states do not.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Melanie Israel, “The Necessity of the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 4939, February 21, 2019, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2019-02/IB4939.pdf.&lt;/p&gt;">REF The Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;S. 6, Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/6/all-actions (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF would require that an abortion survivor receive the same care as any other newborn. In January 2025 the Senate voted on the bill but could not reach the 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Ibid. January 22, 2025: Cloture on the motion to proceed to the measure not invoked in Senate by yea–nay vote of 52 to 47, Record Vote No 11.&lt;/p&gt;">REF Two days later, the bill passed in the House.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 21, Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/21 (accessed June 16, 2025). Passed by yeas and nays 217 to 204, one present, Roll No. 27.&lt;/p&gt;">REF Congress should continue trying to protect abortion survivors; protecting these babies should not be remotely controversial.
Abortion Funding. Congress must not allow taxpayer funding of abortions. For nearly 50 years the Hyde Amendment has banned federal funding for most abortions. Similar language applies across government funding streams from State and Foreign Operations (SFOPS) to the Department of Justice (DOJ), to the District of Columbia via the Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) appropriations. The “Hyde family” of provisions’ lifesaving impact is possible because they are included in each annual appropriations bill. But, instead of relying on this patchwork of annual appropriations amendments, Congress should make the Hyde policy permanent. This would be accomplished through the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 7, No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2025, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7 (accessed June 18, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, as well as the largest provider of sterilizing cross-sex hormones in the country. Planned Parenthood’s most recent 2023–2024 annual report reveals that it ended the lives of more than 400,000 unborn babies in one year.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Planned Parenthood Federation of America, A Force for Hope: Annual Report 2023–2024, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/ec/6d/ec6da0d6-98e5-4278-8d11-99a5cba8e615/2024-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Non-abortion services, such as cancer screenings and prenatal services, have declined over the years, while government funding is at an all-time high.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Melanie Israel, “Abortion, Government Funding for Planned Parenthood at an All-Time High,” The Daily Signal, May 13, 2025, https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/05/13/abortion-government-funding-for-planned-parenthood-at-an-all-time-high/.&lt;/p&gt;">REF The most recent annual report reveals that Planned Parenthood received almost $800 million in government funding in one year.REF Government funding sources include Medicaid reimbursements, Title X Family Planning Program grants, and COVID-19 relief programs, such as the Paycheck Protection Program.
Because money is fungible, every dollar that taxpayers provide to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion activities frees up money for Planned Parenthood to devote to abortion. Taxpayers should no longer be forced to subsidize Big Abortion. Legislation, such as the Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 272, Protecting Life and Taxpayers Act of 2025, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/272 (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF and the End Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Providers Act,<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;S. 125, End Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Providers Act, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/125 (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF would end taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood once and for all. Congress can also defund Planned Parenthood via the budget reconciliation process, discussed below.
Dangerous Abortion Drugs. Abortion pills are used in more than half of all abortions in the United States. These dangerous drugs harm women and girls who abort, or try to abort, their babies this way. One recent study found that the adverse-event rate for these drugs is 22 times higher than the rate reported on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) label.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Jamie Bryan Hall and Ryan T. Anderson, “The Abortion Pill Harms Women,” Ethics and Public Policy Center, April 28, 2025, https://eppc.org/stop-harming-women/ (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF The Obama and Biden Administrations removed many important safety protocols for these risky drugs, sanctioning dangerous practices, such as sending abortion drugs by mail and allowing abortionists to prescribe them without women receiving an in-person evaluation. The abortion pill’s politicized approval process, the FDA’s ideologically motivated negligence of post-marketing oversight, and the health and safety risks of these drugs are detailed in previous Heritage Foundation Backgrounders.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;For further reading, see Melanie Israel, “Chemical Abortion: A Review,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3603, March 6, 2021, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/BG3603.pdf, and Melanie Israel, “Dangerous Abortion Drugs Are a Threat to Women’s Health and Safety. What Now?” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3891, February 26, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/BG3891.pdf.&lt;/p&gt;">REF Congress can and should step in. The Support and Value Expectant Moms and Babies Act, or SAVE Moms and Babies Act, would put a stop to mail-order abortion drugs and restore safety protocols that were wrongly removed during the Obama and Biden Administrations.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 685, SAVE Moms and Babies Act of 2025, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/685 (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Conscience Protection. No person should ever face discrimination for declining to perform, participate in, or pay for an abortion. Federal law acknowledges as much, with permanent laws such as the Church and Coats–Snowe Amendments, as well as the Weldon Amendment, which is an annual rider to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) appropriations.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Melanie Israel, “What Congress and the Administration Can Do to Protect Conscience Rights,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 4795, December 7, 2017, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2017-12/IB4795.pdf.&lt;/p&gt;">REF But when these policies are violated, an individual or entity’s only recourse is to file a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at HHS and hope for a remedy. During the Biden and Obama Administrations, the OCR failed to address or remedy complaints of conscience violations. The Conscience Protection Act<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;S. 1756, Conscience Protection Act of 2025, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1756 (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF would codify the Weldon Amendment. It would also provide a private right of action so that Americans can have their day in court if they allege that their conscience has been violated, instead of leaving them at the mercy of a government bureaucracy that may or may not prioritize protecting conscience rights. Congress should also amend Title VI to cover religious discrimination in all federally funded programs.
The FACE Act. The Free Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, enacted in 1994, prohibits physically obstructing, injuring, intimidating, or interfering with anyone “obtaining or providing reproductive health services.”REF Proponents argued that the act was necessary due to widespread activity, such as blockades, and harassment and violence directed at abortion clinics and workers. While sufficient laws exist at the state level to address criminal activity, the Justice Department under President Joe Biden weaponized the FACE Act against peaceful pro-life Americans while failing to vigorously apply FACE Act protections that apply to churches and pregnancy centers, which faced increasing attacks after the leak of the Dobbs decision draft overturning Roe v. Wade.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Melanie Israel, “A Pro-Life Progress Report for the 118th Congress,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3898, March 24, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/life/report/pro-life-progress-report-the-118th-congress.&lt;/p&gt;">REF As a Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum further explains, Congress could have addressed the problem “in a way that minimized the likelihood it would be weaponized against individuals and used to suppress ordinary pro-life activity and expression,” but did not. “Instead, abortion advocates used the controversy over some pro-life activities to create a weapon for attacking and suppressing a much broader range of pro-life activity and expression.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Thomas Jipping and Seth Lucas, “Congress Should Repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act,” Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum No. 373, March 3, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/LM373_0.pdf.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
To address this abuse, President Donald Trump pardoned 23 pro-life activists convicted under the FACE Act. These are encouraging steps. Congress should go further and repeal the FACE Act, which can be accomplished through the FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 589, FACE Act Repeal Act of 2025, 119th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/589 (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
<h3>Power of the Purse</h3>
In order to promote pro-life policies via federal spending, Congress should: 
Retain Existing Funding Prohibitions for Abortion. Appropriations bills, including omnibus bills and continuing resolutions (CRs), must retain all existing pro-life and conscience-protection riders (such as the Hyde provisions).
Incorporate Additional Pro-Life Policies into Appropriations and Omnibus Bills and CRs. In addition to incorporating the policies of standalone legislation as appropriations riders, many more life-affirming policies can be included in government funding bills. For example, Congress can require the FDA to strengthen existing protections for abortion drugs or prohibit review of new drug applications for new abortion methods. Congress can prohibit funding for morally and ethically unsound research using embryonic stem cells and fetal tissue obtained from abortions and limit the number of human embryos created without a reasonable likelihood of implantation through in vitro fertilization—like much of the world already does. Congress can also make clear that Hyde protections include prohibitions on federal funding of abortion-related travel.
Defund Planned Parenthood in Budget Reconciliation. The budget reconciliation process, which Congress uses “to navigate decisions on spending, taxes, and budget deficits,”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;The Heritage Foundation, “Heritage Explains: Budget Reconciliation,” undated, https://www.heritage.org/political-process/heritage-explains/budget-reconciliation.&lt;/p&gt;">REF offers a prime opportunity to defund Planned Parenthood. Unlike regular order in the Senate where a 60-vote threshold is needed to pass legislation, reconciliation requires a simple majority of 51 votes. For a policy to be included as an amendment to a reconciliation bill, it must meet certain requirements, such as being related to the underlying bill and not increasing the deficit.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;For further reading on the reconciliation process for the 119th Congress, including additional information about parameters that must be met to be included in a reconciliation bill, see Richard Stern, “Budget Reconciliation: A Tale of Two Chambers,” Washington Examiner, February 21, 2025, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/in_focus/3325439/budget-reconciliation-tale-two-chambers/ (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Previous reconciliation attempts have already laid out the road map to defunding Planned Parenthood: In both 2015<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 3762, To provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 2002 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2016, 114th Cong., 2nd Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/3762/text#:~:text=December%2031%2C%202014.-,SEC.%20206.,- FEDERAL%20PAYMENTS%20TO (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF and 2017,<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 1628, American Healthcare Act of 2017, 115th Cong., 1st Sess., https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1628/text#:~:text=2017%E2%80%9D%20after%20%E2%80%9C2017%E2%80%9D.-,SEC.%20103,-.%20FEDERAL%20PAYMENTS (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF initial versions of reconciliation bills included such a provision. Specifically, the bills prohibited making money available to a “prohibited entity,” defined as certain organizations that provide abortions. These bills ultimately did not make it into law.
In May 2025, the House passed reconciliation legislation called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 119th Cong., https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/all-actions (accessed June 16, 2025). May 22, 2025: Roll No. 145, 215 yeas, 214 nays, one present.&lt;/p&gt;">REF The bill includes a provision prohibiting certain abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid funding for a 10-year period, and the Senate version includes a defunding provision for a one-year period.REF
Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual reportREF reveals that the abortion giant received almost $800 million in federal funds in a single year. Meanwhile, it aborted more than 400,000 unborn children. Planned Parenthood’s “market share” of known abortions in the United States is roughly 40 percent.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;This estimated market share is based on publicly reported data for Planned Parenthood compared to abortions overall. Planned Parenthood reported 392,715 abortions in its previous annual report: Above and Beyond: Annual Report 2022–2023, https://cdn.plannedparenthood.org/uploads/filer_public/ec/f4/ecf43d92-fcd2-4d11-b299-e67b5c3ac394/2024-ppfa-annualreport-c3-digital.pdf (accessed June 18, 2025). The Guttmacher Institute estimated approximately 1,037,000 abortions in 2023. See ibid., and Isaac Maddow-Zimet and Candace Gibson, “Despite Bans, Number of Abortions in the United States Increased in 2023,” Guttmacher Institute Policy Analysis, March 2024, https://www.guttmacher.org/2024/03/despite-bans-number-abortions-united-states-increased-2023 (accessed June 18, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize Big Abortion. Stripping Planned Parenthood of the bulk of its federal funding through reconciliation is a prime opportunity to achieve this long-standing goal.
<h3>President Trump Can Undo Four Years of Attacks on Pro-Life Policies</h3>
During his four-year term, President Biden repeatedly used administrative and regulatory policy to advance his radical pro-abortion agenda. Though the to-do list remains long, President Trump has already begun to reverse the damage. So far, the President has:
Issued an Executive Order to Disentangle Taxpayers from Abortion Funding. On January 24, President Trump issued an executive order making clear that it is U.S. policy “to end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;The White House, “Presidential Actions: Enforcing the Hyde Amendment,” January 24, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/enforcing-the-hyde-amendment/ (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF The order also revokes two of President Biden’s executive orders that (1) imposed a government effort to promote and fund abortion and to politicize enforcement of the FACE Act, and (2) promoted abortion access, including via Medicaid payments for abortion-related travel.
Reinstated the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy. This policy is an expanded version of the Mexico City Policy. Under this policy, nongovernmental organizations must certify that they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning” as a condition for receiving U.S. funds.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Kellie Moss and Jennifer Kates, “The Mexico City Policy: An Explainer,” Kaiser Family Foundation, February 12, 2025, https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/the-mexico-city-policy-an-explainer/ (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Originally announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984, the Mexico City Policy was enforced by all Republican Presidents and suspended under all Democratic Presidents (most recently President Biden). During his first term, President Trump expanded the policy and renamed it the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy. It now applies to a wider range of global health funding than the Mexico City Policy.REF The policy does not reduce the amount of available global health funding. Rather, it ensures that the American taxpayer is not subsidizing international abortion organizations, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation. President Trump reinstated the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy on January 24, 2025.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;The White House, “Presidential Actions: Memorandum for the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Administrator of the United States for International Development,” January 25, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/memorandum-for-the-secretary-of-state-the-secretary-of-defense-the-secretary-of-health-and-human-services-the-administrator-of-the-united-states-for-international-development/ (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Defunded the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). President Trump initiated the process to defund the UNFPA on January 24, 2025.REF The Kemp–Kasten Amendment to SFOPS appropriations authorizes the President to withhold federal funding from any organization that “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;The Kemp–Kasten Amendment last appeared explicitly in FY 2024 appropriations (Public Law No. 118–47, Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024). In March 2025, Congress enacted a continuing resolution for FY 2025 funding that carried over riders from the previous appropriations bill, including Kemp–Kasten (Public Law No. 119–4, Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extension Act, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Under Republican Presidents, including President Trump, Kemp–Kasten has been used to withhold funding from the UNFPA due to its complicity in China’s coercive and inhumane population control policies.
Renewed Membership to the Geneva Consensus Declaration. On January 24, 2025, the United States renewed its membership to the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD).<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;News release, “United States Renewed Membership in the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family,” Marco Rubio, U.S. Department of State, January 24, 2025, https://www.state.gov/united-states-renewed-membership-in-the-geneva-consensus-declaration-on-promoting-womens-health-and-strengthening-the-family/ (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF The GCD is a partnership of more than 35 countries united in the goal of improving women’s health, preserving human life, strengthening the family, and protecting national sovereignty. The GCD originated during President Trump’s first term as countries pushed back against aggressive abortion promotion within the United Nations ecosystem. President Biden withdrew from the GCD shortly after taking office in 2021.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;The White House, “Presidential Action: Memorandum on Protecting Women’s Health at Home and Abroad,” January 21, 2021, https://srhrindex.srhrforall.org/uploads/2022/07/2021_Memorandum-on-Protecting-Womens-Health-at-Home-and-Abroad.pdf (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Committed to Promoting Pro-Woman, Pro-Family Policies on the International Stage. In a recent statement at the United Nations, the United States declared that it will “no longer promote radical ideologies that replace women with men in spaces and opportunities designed for women. Nor will it devastate families by indoctrinating our sons and daughters to begin wars with their own bodies—or each other.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;United States Mission to the United Nations, “U.S. National Statement Delivered at the 69th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women,” March 14, 2025, https://usun.usmission.gov/u-s-national-statement-delivered-at-the-69th-session-on-the-un-commission-of-the-status-of-women/ (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Froze Millions of Dollars of HHS Funding for Abortion Providers. In March 2025, HHS froze $27.5 million in Title X Family Planning Program funding (roughly one-eighth of the program’s $200 million budget) to certain groups, including Planned Parenthood, over potential violations of President Trump’s executive order banning discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies in government as well as the private sector. According to an HHS spokesperson, funding was paused for 16 Title X grantees while the Administration reviews these organizations to ensure that they “are in full compliance with Federal law and applicable grant terms, and to ensure responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Alice Miranda Ollstein, “Trump Admin Cuts Tens of Millions from Planned Parenthood,” Politico, March 31, 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/31/trump-admin-cuts-tens-of-millions-from-planned-parenthood-00261763 (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Restored Millions in Family Planning Funding to Pro-Life States. The Trump Administration restored Title X Family Planning Program funding that had been previously denied by the Biden Administration in Oklahoma<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Emma Murphy, “Trump Administration Partially Restores Oklahoma Health Department’s Family Planning Funding,” Oklahoma Voice, April 7, 2025, https://oklahomavoice.com/briefs/trump-administration-partially-restores-oklahoma-health-departments-family-planning-funding/ (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF and Tennessee.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech, “Trump Restoring Millions in Family Planning Funds,” The Hill, April 2, 2025, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5228623-trump-restoring-millions-in-family-planning-funds/ (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Both states, which have enacted strong pro-life laws protecting women and unborn children in recent years, would not counsel women on abortions—something the Biden Administration demanded as a requirement to receive Title X grants.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Ensuring Access to Equitable, Affordable, Client-Centered, Quality Family Planning Services,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 86, No. 192 (October 7, 2021), pp. 56144–56180, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2021-10-07/pdf/2021-21542.pdf (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
Rescinded the Department of Defense (DOD) Abortion Travel Policy. On January 29, 2025, the DOD rescinded the Biden Administration’s memorandum that, among other things, instructed employees to make travel and transportation allowances available for abortion if such services are not available locally.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Defense, Per Diem, Travel, and Transportation Allowance Committee, “UTD for MAP 04-25(S), ‘Remove Travel for Non-Covered Reproductive Health Care Services,’” memorandum for Military Advisory Panel, January 29, 2025, https://media.defense.gov/2025/Jan/29/2003634768/-1/-1/0/UTD_FOR_MAP_04-25%28S%29_REMOVE-TRAVEL-FOR-NON-COVERED-REPRODUCTIVE-HEALTH-CARE-SERVICES.PDF (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Between June and December 2023, the policy was used 12 times and cost taxpayers nearly $45,000.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;C. Todd Lopez, “DOD Releases Usage Numbers for Reproductive Health Care Travel,” U.S. Department of Defense, March 26, 2024, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3719375/dod-releases-usage-numbers-for-reproductive-health-care-travel/ (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF In the interest of transparency, the DOD should publicize 2024 data as well.
Released a Pro-Life Budget Request for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026. In May, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released its budget request for the upcoming fiscal year.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;The White House, “The President’s FY 2026 Discretionary Budget Request,” May 2, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/information-resources/budget/the-presidents-fy-2026-discretionary-budget-request/ (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF The request includes long-standing proposals, such as Hyde protections across multiple departments (foreign and domestic), conscience protections, and bioethics-related funding restrictions for certain research. New requests include additional protections separating foreign aid funding from organizations that perform or promote abortions, additional conscience protections for medical students, stripping Planned Parenthood of any HHS funding, and ending funding for fetal tissue research. While the proposal is a request and Congress will ultimately decide FY 2026 funding and dollar amounts, the Administration has outlined its strong commitment to pro-life policymaking throughout the government.
Rescinded Emergency Medical Treatment And Labor Act (EMTALA) Guidance. On May 30, 2025, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rescinded Biden-era guidance that wrongly claims that federal law on emergency medical care requires that doctors perform elective abortions.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, “Rescinded Reinforcement of EMTALA Obligations Specific to Patients Who Are Pregnant or Are Experiencing Pregnancy Loss,” May 29, 2025, https://www.cms.gov/files/document/qso-21-22-hospitals-rescinded-05292025.pdf (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
<h3>Further Action Needed</h3>
Previous Heritage Foundation Backgrounders, listed in the appendix, have detailed the full scope of President Biden’s policies that need to be reversed and policies from President Trump’s first term that should be reinstated. The policies listed below, while not exhaustive, encompass vital ways in which the Administration can restore and build on President Trump’s pro-life policies.
HHS should:
<ul>
<li>Restore the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division within HHS’s OCR, reinstate the 2019 regulation<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Protecting Statutory Conscience Rights in Health Care; Delegations of Authority,” Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 98 (May 21, 2018), p. 23170, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/05/21/2019-09667/protecting-statutory-conscience-rights-in-health-care-delegations-of-authority (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF that strengthened enforcement of conscience rights statutes, and robustly enforce conscience rights laws against states and hospitals found to be in violation.
<ul>
<li>This includes restoring the $200 million per quarter Medicaid disallowance on California for its violations of the Weldon Amendment<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Guidance Portal: HHS Issues Notice of Violation to California for Its Abortion Coverage Mandate,” January 24, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20220503145548/https://www.hhs.gov/guidance/document/hhs-issues-notice-violation-california-its-abortion-coverage-mandate (accessed June 18, 2025)&lt;/p&gt;">REF for forcing people, including an order of nuns, to buy insurance that includes abortion coverage. The Biden Administration did not hold California accountable for its violations.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Conscience and Religious Freedom: State of California Letter,” August 13, 2021, https://www.hhs.gov/conscience/conscience-protections/ca-letter/index.html (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Reinstate pro-life regulations, including:
<ul>
<li>The regulation that requires Title X Family Planning Program grant recipients to physically and financially separate all abortion activity from Title X activity and prohibits promoting or referring for abortion.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Compliance With Statutory Program Integrity Requirements,” March 4, 2019, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/03/04/2019-03461/compliance-with-statutory-program-integrity-requirements (accessed June 18. 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
<ul>
<li>HHS should ensure that the reinstated version of the Title X regulation reverses the Biden-era prohibition on funding groups that offer fertility awareness-based methods (FABMs),<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;FABMs are used to “track daily external observations that reflect ovulation and the internal hormonal changes women experience throughout their cycle.” In addition to avoiding or achieving pregnancy, FABMs can also help to “identify potential abnormalities of the menstrual cycle,” which can help doctors and clinicians to “address a range of reproductive health issues.” For more information, see Marguerite Duane et al., “Fertility Awareness-Based Methods for Women’s Health and Family Planning,” Frontiers in Medicine, Vol. 9 (May 2022), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9171018/#abstract1 (accessed June 18, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF but not other contraceptive methods, in Title X programs.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>The regulation that enforces the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) requirement that insurers be transparent about a plan’s abortion coverage and collect a separate payment for elective abortion coverage in qualified health plans (QHPs) approved to be sold on the exchanges.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Exchange Program Integrity,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 84, No. 248 (December 27, 2019), p. 71674, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/12/27/2019-27713/patient-protection-and-affordable-care-act-exchange-program-integrity (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>The regulation that enforces the ACA’s nondiscrimination provision in section 1557, making clear that discrimination on the basis of “sex” does not encompass “gender identity” and abortion.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Nondiscrimination in Health and Health Education Programs or Activities, Delegation of Authority,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 85, No. 119 (June 19, 2020), p. 37160, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/06/19/2020-11758/nondiscrimination-in-health-and-health-education-programs-or-activities-delegation-of-authority (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Ensure that no federal funding goes to entities that conduct research on unethical and obsolete fetal tissue obtained from elective abortions and prioritize ethical alternatives instead.</li>
<li>Maintain both moral and religious exemptions from the ACA’s contraception mandate and promulgate a regulation that enforces the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.</li>
<li>Invite states—via the CMS—to seek Medicaid Section 1115 waivers (and resolve any currently pending) to prohibit abortion providers from participating in state-run Medicaid programs. Abortion is not health care, and states should be free to work with qualified providers that are not part of the abortion industry.</li>
<li>Ensure that all offices offering grants, contracts, and other funding respect the religious and moral beliefs of applicants and do not discriminate against faith-based organizations.</li>
<li>Require the FDA to collect all serious adverse events—not just deaths—associated with dangerous abortion drugs and reverse the Biden Administration’s reckless policy of allowing abortion pills to be shipped by mail and dispensed without in-person interaction with a physician.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;For more information on dangerous abortion drugs and FDA policy, see Melanie Israel, “Abortion Drugs Are a Threat to Health and Safety. What Now?” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3891, February 26, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/BG3891.pdf.&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>Rescind or revise pro-abortion Biden-era regulations, including:
<ul>
<li>A regulation implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) wrongly defining a medical condition related pregnancy to include abortion (and thus requiring employers to provide accommodation).<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “Implementation of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act,” Final Rule and Interpretive Guidance, Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 77 (April 19, 2024), pp. 29096–29220, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/19/2024-07527/implementation-of-the-pregnant-workers-fairness-act#footnote-1-p29096 (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>A regulation that purports to strengthen protections for sensitive private health information but would turn medical professions in pro-life states into criminals if they cooperate in certain investigations related to abortion (even in cases involving rape, trafficking, and abuse).<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “HIPAA Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy,” Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 82 (April 26, 2024), pp. 32976–33066, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/26/2024-08503/hipaa-privacy-rule-to-support-reproductive-health-care-privacy (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>A regulation that requires the Office for Refugee Resettlement to facilitate abortions for unaccompanied children in its custody.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Unaccompanied Children Program Foundational Rule,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 84 (April 30, 2024), pp. 34384–34617, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/30/2024-08329/unaccompanied-children-program-foundational-rule (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>A regulation that undermines the prohibition on elective abortion funding within the Indian Health Service.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Removal of Outdated Regulations,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 84 (April 30, 2024), pp. 34144–34148, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/30/2024-09152/removal-of-outdated-regulations (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>A regulation on Title IX that, among other things, redefined pregnancy to include abortion.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Education, “Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Sex in Education Programs or Activities Receiving Federal Financial Assistance,” Final Rule, Federal Register, Vol. 89, No. 83 (April 29, 2024), pp. 33474–33896, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/04/29/2024-07915/nondiscrimination-on-the-basis-of-sex-in-education-programs-or-activities-receiving-federal (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF In January 2025 a federal court blockedREF the regulation from going into effect; any future Title IX regulation must not be used as a vehicle for abortion education, referrals, or access.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
The FDA should:
<ul>
<li>Revisit the safety and approval of chemical abortion pills. Given new research that highlights real-world complications far beyond what the drug label acknowledges,REF the FDA should at the very least restore its original safety protocols that required in-person interaction with a doctor and did not allow mail-order abortion. The FDA should also work with the Drug Enforcement Administration to regulate chemical abortion pills as a controlled substance due to the danger of diversion and abuse.</li>
</ul>
The Department of State should:
<ul>
<li>Combat gender ideology in multilateral fora like the United Nations and the World Health Organization and fight the promotion of abortion under the guise of human rights.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Grace S. Melton, “No, Abortion Is Not a Human Right,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3799, November 16, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-11/BG3799.pdf.&lt;/p&gt;">REF
<ul>
<li>The Trump Administration’s actions—such as rejoining the Geneva Consensus Declaration and integrating the key functions of the U.S. Agency for International Development into the State Department to ensure that programs such as the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has been used to fund abortion, and other vital assistance programs are conducted in accordance with U.S. law (and that they protect life and family)<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Max Primorac, “How USAID Went Woke and Destroyed Itself,” Heritage Foundation Commentary, February 10, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/how-usaid-went-woke-and-destroyed-itself.&lt;/p&gt;">REF—are important steps for achieving this goal.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Abandon policies of cultural colonialism,<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Max Primorac and Grace Melton, “The Global South Fears the Biden–Harris Admin’s Agenda,” RealClearWorld, October 14, 2024, https://www.realclearworld.com/2024/10/14/the_global_south_fears_the_biden-harris_admins_agenda_1064906.html (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF which promote abortion and other divisive policies in other countries instead of focusing on security and economic flourishing.</li>
<li>Nominate pro-life personnel to key international roles, including the Ambassador to the United Nations and the Office of Global Women’s Issues.</li>
</ul>
The Department of Defense should:
<ul>
<li>Amend the Biden-era policy<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Joseph Clark, “DOD Amends Assisted Reproductive Services Policy for Seriously, Severely Ill or Injured Active Duty Service Members,” U.S. Department of Defense, March 11, 2024, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3702693/dod-amends-assisted-reproductive-services-policy-for-seriously-severely-ill-or/ (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF that provides assisted-reproductive-technology services for service members injured during active duty and return to the original policy in which the qualifying person must be married, and third-party gametes are not permitted. Funding for surrogacy-related costs should be prohibited.</li>
</ul>
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) should:
<ul>
<li>Rescind the Interim Final Rule on abortion procedures and abortion referrals and counseling to veterans at VA medical facilities.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “Reproductive Health Services,” Interim Final Rule with Request for Comments,” Federal Register, Vol. 87, No. 174 (September 9, 2022), pp. 55287–55296, https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/09/09/2022-19239/reproductive-health-services (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Potential action appears to be underway.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, “Reproductive Health Services,” Pending EO 12866 Regulatory Review, RIN 2900-AS31, March 5, 2025, https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDetails?rrid=872014 (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Between September 2022 and September 2023, the VA provided 88 abortions.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Rebecca Kheel, “VA Says It Performed 88 Abortions in the Past Year, But Congress Again Threatens Subpoenas in Pursuit of More Details,” Military.com, October 19, 2023, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/10/19/va-says-it-performed-88-abortions-past-year-congress-again-threatens-subpoenas-pursuit-of-more.html (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF In the interest of transparency, the VA should disclose current figures.</li>
<li>Amend the Biden-era policy<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;News release, “VA Expands In Vitro Fertilization for Veterans,” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, March 11, 2024, https://news.va.gov/press-room/va-expands-in-vitro-fertilization-for-veterans/ (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF that provides assisted-reproductive-technology services for veterans and return to the original policy in which the qualifying person must be married, and third-party gametes are not permitted.</li>
</ul>
The Department of Justice should:
<ul>
<li>Rescind the Biden-era memorandum<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Legal Counsel, “Application of the Comstock Act to the Mailing of Prescription Drugs That Can Be Used for Abortion,” slip opinion, December 23, 2022, https://www.justice.gov/olc/opinion/file/1560596/dl?inline (accessed June 17, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF about interpretation of the Comstock Act, which prohibits mailing “any article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing an abortion.”REF As explained in a Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum, the Office of Legal Counsel’s interpretation of Comstock is so narrow “that it would be virtually unenforceable…. The plain and ordinary meaning of [Comstock] unambiguously prohibits mailing abortion drugs.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Thomas Jipping and Sarah Parshall Perry, “The Justice Department Is Wrong: Federal Law Does Prohibit Mailing Abortion Drugs,” Heritage Foundation Legal Memorandum No. 324, February 8, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/life/report/the-justice-department-wrong-federal-law-does-prohibit-mailing-abortion-drugs.&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>Prosecute criminals who have attacked and firebombed pregnancy-resource centers and churches because they are pro-life.</li>
<li>Investigate late-term abortions in Washington, DC. Publicly shared images of abortion victims at a late-term abortion facility in 2022 indicate that some preemie-sized babies may have been aborted using the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure. One baby still in the amniotic sac may have been born alive and left to die.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Mary Margaret Olohan, “1 Year Later: DC Mayor Stonewalls Probe into Aborted Babies’ Bodies,” The Daily Signal, March 23, 2023, https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/23/one-year-later-dc-mayor-stonewalls-probe-into-aborted-babies-bodies/.&lt;/p&gt;">REF</li>
<li>Promulgate a regulation that enforces the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and launch its own Conscience and Religious Freedom Division.</li>
<li>Vet and approve only pro-life judges for appointment to the bench.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Pro-Life President, Congress Must Protect Life</h3>
During President Trump’s first term, his Administration and Congress made profound gains for the pro-life cause. But President Biden and his pro-abortion allies in Congress worked hard to undermine or reverse those victories. President Trump is already working to undo the damage, and Congress can strike a blow against Big Abortion. But Congress and the Administration must act fast, or else squander this historic opportunity.
Melanie Israel is Visiting Fellow in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family at The Heritage Foundation.
<h3>Appendix</h3>
Pro-life actions and policies of President Trump’s first term are compiled in the following Heritage Foundation reports:
<ul>
<li>“Defending Life: Opportunities for the 115th Congress,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 4656, February 23, 2017, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2017-02/IB4656.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2017-02/IB4656.pdf</a>.</li>
<li>“The Pro-Life Agenda: A Progress Report for the 115th Congress and the Trump Administration,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3280, January 24, 2018, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/BG3280.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2018-01/BG3280.pdf</a>.</li>
<li>“Defending Life: Recommendations for the 116th Congress,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 4981, July 24, 2019, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/IB4981.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2019-07/IB4981.pdf</a>.</li>
<li>“The Pro-Life Agenda: A Progress Report for the 116th Congress and the Trump Administration,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3471, February 24, 2020, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/BG3471.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/BG3471.pdf</a>.</li>
</ul>
Pro-abortion actions and policies of President Biden’s term are compiled in the following Heritage Foundation reports:
<ul>
<li>“Defending Life: Recommendations for the 117th Congress,” Heritage Foundation Issue Brief No. 6060, March 22, 2021, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/IB6060.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/IB6060.pdf</a>.</li>
<li>“Pro-Life Progress Report for the 117th Congress and Administration,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3700, May 3, 2022, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2022-05/BG3700.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2022-05/BG3700.pdf</a>.</li>
<li>“A Pro-Life Agenda for the 118th Congress,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3750, March 1, 2023, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/BG3750.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2023-03/BG3750.pdf</a>.</li>
<li>“A Pro-Life Progress Report for the 118th Congress,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3898, March 24, 2025, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/BG3898.pdf">https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/BG3898.pdf</a>.</li>
</ul>
</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:41:17 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Melanie Israel</dc:creator>
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<title>One Step the U.S. Must Take To Restore the Navy</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/one-step-the-us-must-take-restore-the-navy-0</link>
<description>We used to make so many ships. We don’t make them anymore very much, but we’re going to make them very fast, very soon.”
That’s what President Trump said when he issued his executive order to restore America’s maritime dominance. Many in Congress have voiced their support, but there’s a major problem: The budget doesn’t reflect it. Unless lawmakers make big changes or pursue a separate naval act with large block buys of warships, they will fail to send the required demand signal to the shipbuilding industry.
Increasing shipbuilding capacity requires ship orders. “Put in the orders, finance shipyard expansion, and stand back”—that’s how industrialist <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Arthur-Herman-Freedoms-Forge-II-Paperback/dp/B07Z9BT83J/ref=sr_1_4?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.qmCtAOMqEWQpJMdTYRpZz4jUV3odjl78qKpLkFOpZ4DmockMV5tUhnfYqkfLRfd8jFWeYgSKH19_Rz1pT-1Gw1hvVB-liqCx4JY-NOd_rWuPBCLDaJWx_wP9BADmrl4ulW-LcWxrz5gCQ8zVnPjtY0Pj5dbc15QkHQlN3rZ8GQSE5xpcfVxikkoZM8sDoYK0F3RRgwjhJwAwb0G4DHNEyA2kYnx3hjLOyk79DS28Q8k._838xeDazi1zy6GeaBuilIYV216HFHT2bomT8blLVTk&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;hvadid=713546071645&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvexpln=67&amp;hvlocphy=9067609&amp;hvnetw=g&amp;hvocijid=11447261705918935602--&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvrand=11447261705918935602&amp;hvtargid=kwd-329903943244&amp;hydadcr=22534_13730692&amp;keywords=freedom%27s+forge&amp;mcid=1e31e0f1038239869ba5c76376ebfb84&amp;qid=1750253172&amp;sr=8-4" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Bill Knudsen</a> unleashed the nation’s massive naval buildup prior to and during World War II.
Today, Congress and the president have a rare opportunity, through reconciliation and the fiscal year 2026 budget, to reverse the nation’s maritime decline. Yet the procurement dollars for warships are nowhere near where they need to be.
Senator Roger Wicker (R., Miss.) recently captured growing exasperation: “I am disturbed by the shipbuilding account, which plummeted to $20.8 billion from last year’s $37 billion. . . . This shortfall reflects efforts to game the budget in anticipation of congressional reconciliation funds, which were intended as supplemental, not a substitute.”
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/shipbuilding-revitalization-requires-reforms-the-navy-shipbuilders-and-congress">Shipbuilding Revitalization Requires Reforms from the Navy, Shipbuilders, and Congress Alike</a>
As the debate continues in Washington, the clock is fast ticking down to a <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/08/22/chinas-window-for-attacking-taiwan-shorter-than-time-frame-for-rebuilding-us-navy/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">showdown in Asia</a> as China’s Communist Party bolsters its military advantages by building warships—400 to the U.S. Navy’s 292, and shipbuilding capacity more than 200 times greater than America’s.
In short, we need a bigger Navy—and delaying orders for warships is counterproductive.
President Trump has repeatedly stated that revitalizing the nation’s commercial and naval shipbuilding industries is a national priority; however, we do not have the warship orders needed for Fiscal Year 2026 to allow investment in infrastructure and labor at shipyards.
While the reconciliation bill contains tons of important funding for Golden Dome, munitions, and airpower, <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2025/06/16/navys-preliminary-budget-undercuts-shipbuilding-senator-says/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">the warships being ordered are below what is needed</a>. Now it will likely fall to the National Defense Authorization Act or a separate naval act to deliver the orders for the warships needed to send a demand signal that exceeds what the current shipbuilding plan calls for.
Had past commitments been held to building a 355-ship Navy, which is memorialized in law by Congress (<a href="https://www.congress.gov/115/statute/STATUTE-131/STATUTE-131-Pg1283.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">NDAA FY18 sec. 1025</a>), the Navy <a href="https://www.secnav.navy.mil/fmc/fmb/documents/19pres/longrange_ship_plan.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">would have 318 warships today</a> instead of 292. The reality, after decades of such malaise, is that the Navy needs a <a href="https://www.defensedaily.com/fleet-forces-and-secnav-argue-for-more-maintenance-yards/navy-usmc/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">new public shipyard</a> to keep our too small nuclear fleet at sea (<a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/weapons/RL32665.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank">66 submarines required</a>, today <a href="https://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvr/getpage.htm?pagetype=shipbattleforce" rel="noopener" target="_blank">there are 47</a>), and <a href="https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-posture-of-the-department-of-the-navy-in-review-of-the-defense-authorization-request-for-fiscal-year-2026-and-the-future-years-defense-program" rel="noopener" target="_blank">recent hearings</a> make clear the nation hasn’t got the shipbuilding capacity to build a fleet to pace the threat from China.
This <a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/foundational-improvements-better-us-navy-shipbuilding" rel="noopener" target="_blank">decade-long slide</a> cannot be reversed overnight. Building ships already in series production can take three to five years, while adding new suppliers to the defense industrial base can take two to three years—all late to the task when it comes to deterring China. That makes the following three imperatives vital:
<ol>
<li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Naval-Power-Action-Seizing-Initiative-ebook/dp/B0F4NDX6DV/ref=sr_1_2?crid=I2ORSTZL5VBH&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.o62Gn3bWc1rc6z_D5-DsGZafZCg2Zy1fv7kG2VKBIMqz7d2cOEsvUfTcWR1Dox4vEye87Ii65NHJeV0aPXblgg.6ITN06KgBv5dzj7JGlDOjaZekAbYI8EFk5RFKhas5Io&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Brent+sadler&amp;qid=1750169116&amp;sprefix=brent+sadle,aps,183&amp;sr=8-2" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Operate the fleet in new ways</a> and complicate operational planning for China’s Secretary General Xi Jinping. The option to use aggression will appear increasingly unrealistic without the minimum of ships and munitions to back it up, especially as allies such as Japan and the Philippines are also bolstering their defenses.</li>
<li>Invest in the capacity to build and repair warships. This includes building novel unmanned vessels able to be put to sea faster than conventionally designed and operated warships. At the same time, Congress and the president need to provide a significant order of new warships, backed by a budget, to fund the necessary infrastructure. This is the intent of a proposed <a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/modern-naval-act-meet-the-surging-china-threat" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Naval Act</a> and new contracting mechanisms, such as <a href="https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/05/us-navy-shipbuilding-crisis-a-plan-to-catch-up-with-china/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">SAWS</a>.</li>
<li>Increase ship orders above the planned shipbuilding plan to fuel infrastructure expansion. Buy more than two Virginia-class subs and more than two Arleigh Burke–class destroyers, fund aircraft carriers ahead of time, and put as much funding and advanced procurement orders into shipbuilding accounts to send business that grows the supplier base.</li>
</ol>
Today, there is a rare opportunity to make needed investments to grow naval industrial capacity, founded on orders for warships, in time to respond to a conflict this decade. Sadly, recent rumors of lackluster warship orders in budgets being contemplated, if true, fail to demonstrate the urgency that President Trump has called for in revitalizing shipbuilding and expanding the U.S. Navy.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/us-navy-must-do-more-address-chinas-growing-maritime-threat">U.S., Navy Must Do More To Address China’s Growing Maritime Threat</a>
We need a budget for a naval expansion. Anything less is not dealing with <a href="https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/to-receive-testimony-on-the-posture-of-united-states-indo-pacific-command-and-united-states-forces-korea-in-review-of-the-defense-authorization-request-for-fiscal-year-2026-and-the-future-years-defense-program" rel="noopener" target="_blank">reality</a>.
Underfunding and ordering only one attack submarine in FY 2026 also jeopardizes wider strategic efforts. Hence, we need to be ordering a minimum of two (preferably more) Virginia-class subs a year, both to meet Navy plans and to ensure the success of initiatives such as AUKUS. Similar increases are needed for orders of destroyers, frigates, and amphibs.
The bill for the nation’s defense is due, and the momentum and political capital to fix shipbuilding are available now. The president and the American people want to revitalize American shipbuilding and the U.S. Navy, but without increased procurement dollars and expanded orders, the reforms and infrastructure investments won’t be enough.
Shipyards exist to build ships, but without orders, nothing happens. It’s time for Congress to change that.
</description>
<pubDate>Tue, 01 Jul 2025 12:00:44 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Brent Sadler</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/one-step-the-us-must-take-restore-the-navy-0</guid>
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<title>The $122 Million That Can Protect America’s Technological Edge</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/the-122-million-can-protect-americas-technological-edge</link>
<description>In the DOGE era, there’s a time to cut, and there’s a time to invest. Programs that promote American security must be preserved, while programs that fail Americans must be eliminated.
Thankfully, the Trump administration understands the balancing act that must take place—an understanding that’s reflected in its recent proposal to increase the Bureau of Industry and Security’s (BIS) budget by $122 million.
BIS plays a vital role in keeping the U.S. ahead of China in the high-stakes AI race. The bureau uses export controls to determine who can access the world’s most cutting-edge technologies (like advanced AI chips)—meaning its work directly affects national security.
The Trump administration’s proposed funding increase represents one of the most cost-effective national security investments America could make.
In FY2023, BIS processed export license applications valued at $220.5 billion, over 1,000 times its budget of $191 million. Every dollar invested in BIS protects countless dollars in intellectual property, competitive advantage and future innovation.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/trump-must-protect-american-ai-china">Trump Must Protect American AI From China</a>
While BIS’ return on investment is staggering, the agency remains critically understaffed and under-resourced relative to the scope and complexity of its mission.
Currently, BIS operates with just 585 total employees, a shockingly small workforce given its critical mission of protecting national security via export controls. Compare that to, for example, the International Trade Administration, which has a staggering 2,278 employees despite focusing solely on trade promotion and unfair trade practices.
BIS’ Export Administration division has just 218 employees and is responsible for reviewing over 30,000 license applications per year—applications that, in FY2023, took about 43 days each to fully review. The Export Enforcement team, which investigates and prevents export control violations, has only 247 staff members, who must “scrutinize miniscule details of direct exports from the United States, in-country transfers abroad, re-exports of licensed and unlicensed U.S. items, as well as the export from abroad of certain foreign-produced items.”
The complexity of these tasks has continued to increase as new items are added to export controls and as new parties are added to the list of entities requiring special screening.
Because of this understaffing, BIS has a limited global footprint.
Currently, Export Control Officers (ECOs) are stationed in just 9 international locations, with domestic export enforcement offices in only 12 U.S. cities. A single export control officer is responsible for all South-East Asia and Australia, a region central to AI chip smuggling. This leaves vast regions with minimal oversight. Thus, BIS funding is essential for maintaining visibility across global supply chains and preventing the circumvention of their controls.
But not only is BIS’s workforce spread thin, but its IT infrastructure remains trapped in the past. The agency relies on systems developed in 2006 and 2008, and while its infrastructure has received some updates, it simply cannot handle the current number of applications BIS receives.
While the FY2025 budget proposed a $122,000 increase to develop and replace these antiquated systems with modern cloud-based capabilities, this represents only a first step toward the technological modernization the agency urgently needs. The FY2025 budget also proposed an increase in funding to integrate available data and AI tools that would reduce the time analysts need to investigate companies and their export activities and create automatic alerts when suspicious export patterns emerge. But without sustained and increased funding for 2026, this system risks becoming outdated before it can deliver its full operational impact.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/5-ways-restore-americas-defense-industrial-base-without-new-spending">5 Ways To Restore America’s Defense Industrial Base Without New Spending</a>
BIS’s role is currently expanding faster than its capacity—and in 2026, it must scale, not stall.
The consequences of inadequate funding are not abstract. We’ve already seen evidence of critical technology diversion, including advanced AI chips making their way to China via Singapore despite export controls. When critical technologies fall into the wrong hands, America is at risk of losing its economic and technological advantage.
While the U.S. contemplates funding increases, China continues to concoct sophisticated procurement networks designed to circumvent our controls and acquire our most advanced innovations.
Fortunately, BIS stands in the way—but it cannot succeed without adequate resources. The proposed $122 million increase would transform BIS from an understaffed agency struggling to keep pace with its expanding mission to a modernized effective guardian of America’s most critical technologies.
Last year’s proposal from the House Appropriations Committee to slash the BIS budget by millions was a mistake. Congress should recognize this funding increase for what it is: a prudent investment in the U.S.’s economic and national security that will pay dividends for generations to come.
In the high-stakes competition with China and other adversaries, the U.S. cannot afford to skimp on technological security. We must give the president every tool possible to protect our economic and technological edge. The dollars we invest today will determine whether the global digital future is shaped by America or by China.
The choice is still ours to make.
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2025 16:04:34 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Autumn Dorsey</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/the-122-million-can-protect-americas-technological-edge</guid>
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<title>The Web of Radical Groups Backing ICE Riots, Hamas, and Iran</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-web-radical-groups-backing-ice-riots-hamas-and-iran</link>
<description>Promoting revolution never goes out of business, and lately, business is booming.
Activists in the revolutionary ecosystem that organize street mayhem are veering sharply from anti-deportation actions <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DLFguFGxHie/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>to pro-Iran ones</a>. They may have to swap in flags of the Islamic Republic for the Mexican ones they’ve been waving in Los Angeles, or the Hamas ones they waved earlier, but so be it.
Unless, that is, the ceasefire that President Donald Trump announced late Monday sticks. In that case, the organizations in the ecosystem will move on to the next crisis, manufactured or not, that offers an opportunity to tear down society.
Who are these organizations lining up behind Iran’s theocracy? Some are committed to the anti-Israel cause, sort of a raison d’être for the Tehran regime at this point. But many others are secular, Marxist organizations that just want the destruction of the West in general.
The <a href="https://www.kgun9.com/news/community-inspired-journalism/midtown-news/party-for-socialism-and-liberation-hosts-protest-against-u-s-involvement-in-israel-iran-war" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>Party for Socialism and Liberation</a>; the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IiRW3SeRvk" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>Act Now to Stop War and End Racism</a> Coalition; <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?ref=watch_permalink&amp;v=604815672646841" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>Black Lives Matter</a> groups, especially the LA and Grassroots branches, the most radical BLM groups now; Code Pink: Women for Peace; <a href="https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/1936828307678335161?s=12" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>Students for Justice in Palestine</a>, the most active of the activist organizations in last year’s campus encampments; the Palestinian Youth Movement; Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network; Al-Awda: The Palestinian Right to Return Coalition; etc., have all sharply swung to defend Iran.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/border-security/commentary/texas-lawmakers-have-failed-their-constituents-immigration-enforcement">Texas Lawmakers Have Failed Their Constituents on Immigration Enforcement</a>
This is only rank opportunism. Last week, these same groups were protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Los Angeles and other cities, where they brandished Mexican flags while carrying out violent attacks, to the point that Trump had to federalize the California National Guard and send in Marines.
Prior to that, these same groups were busy organizing pro-Hamas riots on U.S. streets and campuses. And before that, they were part of the tightly knit network that supported the BLM riots that rocked our streets in 2020 after George Floyd’s death, and before that, Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown’s death, and every year in between.
And, of course, before that, they were involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, protests against former President George W. Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and the 1999 anti-globalization Seattle riots. In fact, some of these organizations are fiscally sponsored or funded by remnants of the Nicaragua Network, which opposed President Ronald Reagan’s efforts to keep Central America free of malign Cuban and Soviet influence.
That’s close to half a century ago, folks.
Take Samidoun, one of the <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/samidoun/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>groups condemning</a> “in the strongest terms the Zionist aggression against the Islamic Republic of Iran.” It is at the center of an intricate web that illustrates the interconnectedness of the revolutionary ecosystem.
Western intelligence agencies have <a href="https://ngo-monitor.org/ngos/samidoun/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>identified Samidoun as a front</a> for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP is a secular terrorist group <a href="https://www.irb-cisr.gc.ca/en/country-information/rir/Pages/index.aspx?doc=443631#:~:text=(PFLP-GC)-,The%20Popular%20Front%20for%20the%20Liberation%20of%20Palestine-General%20Command,with%20Israel%20(CDI%2013%20Nov." rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>described</a> as “pan-Arab” and “Marxist-Leninist”—not the Mullahs’ cup of tea, one would think.
But the Iranian regime, bereft of real friends and allies in the region and the world, has long relied on terrorist proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the PFLP. Now that Iran’s last client state, Bashar al Assad’s government, has fallen, Syria’s new leaders <a href="https://www.newarab.com/news/syria-expels-leader-leftist-palestinian-faction" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>have recently expelled</a> the PFLP leader from the country.
In the West, Samidoun’s “leadership has declared solidarity with a variety of far-left causes worldwide, including militant Black and Native American activism in the United States,” <a href="https://www.influencewatch.org/organization/samidoun-palestinian-prisoner-solidarity-network/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>according</a> to Influence Watch.
It was incredibly active in the campus encampments that interrupted university life last year. The Wall Street Journal reported that Samidoun held “Resistance 101” virtual training for Columbia University students in March 2024. Samidoun coordinator Charlotte Kates addressed the students, as did her husband, PFLP Central Committee member Khaled Barakat.
Samidoun, recognized as a terrorist organization in this country, came to Iran’s defense on the same day that Israel launched Operation Rising Lion and started bombing military targets in Iran. It said in a statement that “Iran is being targeted today because it stands with Palestine and the Resistance.”
Added Samidoun: “The moment requires clear and explicit solidarity and action to confront the Zionist-imperialist war machine.”
Samidoun’s members have been instigating action. U.S.-based law professor Helyeh Doutaghi, <a href="https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2025/03/28/yale-law-school-terminates-scholar-amid-terrorist-link-allegations-cites-refusal-to-cooperate/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>fired by Yale</a> Law School in March for belonging to Samidoun, <a href="https://x.com/bullfrog35/status/1936916376809259057/photo/1" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>has been calling</a> for Iran to target U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and “any state that enables aggression by allowing its airspace or territory to be used for attacks against Iran.”
Doutaghi is deeply enmeshed in the ecosystem, having been <a href="https://blackallianceforpeace.com/events/2023/1/28/intpeoplestribunal" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>co-chairwoman of the self-styled</a> International People’s Tribunal on US Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures.
Other members of the “Tribunal” belonged to the Communist Party of Kenya, the ANSWER Coalition, and The People’s Forum. The last two are part of a network funded by an American millionaire who lives in Shanghai and has connections to the Chinese Communist Party.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/secret-chinese-links-behind-anti-israel-groups-fostered-elias-rodriguezs-hate">Secret Chinese Links Behind Anti-Israel Groups That Fostered Elias Rodriguez’s Hate</a>
Zohran Mamdani, another activist embedded in this ecosystem, just won the New York City Democratic Party primary for mayor. Mamdani cofounded Bowdoin College’s chapter of SJP, while his father, Mahmood, <a href="https://x.com/canarymission/status/1936938795632414875" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>delivered the keynote address</a> for the organization’s first national conference in 2011, at Columbia University, where he teaches.
Samidoun itself is fiscally sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice, which Mary Mobley and I called “the very embodiment of the ecosystem” in a <a href="https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/report/how-the-revolutionary-ecosystem-sustains-pro-palestinian-protesters-and-the" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>Heritage Foundation paper</a> last year.
AFGJ is the funnel through which funders such as the Tides Foundation, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Arca Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Brightwater Fund—all of which also fund BLM—send money to radical activists and fund BLM.
Also a fiscal sponsor of BLM’s Movement for Black Lives, AFGJ “is so Marxist that it started out life in the 1980s in Managua under the rule of the Sandinistas, calling itself the Nicaragua Network back then,” we wrote.
AFGJ’s leaders wrote, “The Sandinistas always told the Nicaragua Network, ‘What you can do to most help us is to change your own government.’ We took that instruction to heart.”
This goes a long way to explain why groups hop from one cause to the next—this month Gaza, next ICE raids, next Iran. As the late David Horowitz used to say, in the 1960s, the slogan was, “The issue is never the issue; the issue is the revolution.”
</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 10:54:24 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Mike Gonzalez</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-web-radical-groups-backing-ice-riots-hamas-and-iran</guid>
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<title>Universal Basic Income Has Failed Before, but Can It Help Impoverished Children?</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/welfare/commentary/universal-basic-income-has-failed-can-it-help-impoverished-children</link>
<description>The idea of a universal basic income—a taxpayer-funded minimum monthly payment meant to reduce poverty and improve opportunity—is alluring.
That’s especially true for low-income mothers of newborns. Unconditional cash payments could help parents meet their babies’ needs during their crucial development years, and could spare them some of the hassle of navigating a bureaucratic maze of dozens of different means-tested welfare programs.
Yet a randomized trial that did just that came up empty-handed.
A study by 15 scientific scholars found that the “Baby’s First Years” universal basic income trial had zero impact on child outcomes.
The “Baby’s First Years” randomized controlled trial consisted of 1,000 racially and ethnically diverse mothers who were recruited from 12 postpartum hospital wards during 2018-2019.&nbsp;
Those hospitals included four cities: New Orleans, New York, Omaha, and Minneapolis/St. Paul.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/welfare/report/understanding-marriage-penalties-welfare-and-their-impact-society">Understanding Marriage Penalties in Welfare and Their Impact on Society</a>
All the mothers had incomes below the federal poverty level: about $21,000 for a family of three in 2019 (most participants also had 1 or 2 older children). Participants assigned to the trial group received $333 per month ($4,000/year) and those assigned to the control group received $20 per month ($240/year) for the first four years of their children’s lives. The money was delivered electronically via a MasterCard debit card co-branded with “4MyBaby.”
The study examined four primary outcomes among the children: “language, executive function, social-emotional development, and resting high-frequency brain activity,” and three secondary outcomes: “visual processing/spatial perception, pre-literacy skills, and diagnosis of developmental conditions.”
Since income tends to have a positive effect on child outcomes, the researchers expected to find a significant difference in children receiving the larger UBI benefits. Instead, they found zero evidence of differences across all seven measured outcomes.
“Our strong test of the impacts of four years of unconditional cash transfers on the development of young children living in low-income families finds consistent null results, which may indicate that cash income alone does not have a causal effect on young children’s development in the contemporary policy context,” they concluded.
This finding reinforces the fact that, far from being a promising welfare catch-all, universal basic income is, at best, costly and ineffective. At worst, it harms those it aims to help.
Take a recent UBI experiment in Texas and Illinois, which found that it caused people to work less and earn less; incentivized more leisure at the expense of productive activities; and increased periods of non-employment.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/medicaid/commentary/medicaid-deserves-be-cherished-and-loved-and-reformed">Medicaid Deserves To Be “Cherished and Loved”—and Reformed</a>
Moreover, UBI failed to improve the quality of employment, failed to improve long-term food security, did not increase access to or utilization of health care, did not lead to lasting physical or mental health improvements, and did not improve personal finances.
While the Baby’s First Years program focused on child outcomes as opposed to those of the parents, if parents’ responses mimicked those of the Texas and Illinois trial, then their shift away from productive activities could explain the lack of positive child outcomes.
Moreover, while the study found no difference in outcomes for children at age 4, past studies suggest that universal basic income could actually hurt children’s long-term outcomes by increasing dependence on government.
Policymakers should seek to help low-income children and families by giving them a hand up instead of a handout. That includes streamlining existing welfare and workforce services, as Utah has done through itHED: s One Door policy, as well as removing barriers to things like affordable childcare, apprenticeships, and flexible work options.
</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 10:43:17 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Rachel Greszler</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/welfare/commentary/universal-basic-income-has-failed-can-it-help-impoverished-children</guid>
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<title>USAID Fraud Case Proves Folly of Awarding Contracts to “Disadvantaged” Contractors</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/usaid-fraud-case-proves-folly-awarding-contracts-disadvantaged</link>
<description>Want to know how American taxpayers were cheated out of more than half a billion dollars for more than a decade? Blame the inevitable corruption that flows from rewarding federal contracts, grants and funds based on skin color rather than competence, efficiency and optimum benefit to the public.
That’s the only conclusion one can draw from the guilty pleas of an official at the U.S. Agency for International Development—the agency liberals love—and three other corporate executives. In essence, the executives, who are Black, bribed a USAID contracting officer, Roderick Watson, who is also Black, to steer contracts their way through set-asides and sole-source contracts available to minority contractors (you know, “disadvantaged” contractors) without a competitive bidding process.
Mr. Watson received $1 million in cash, laptops, tickets to suites at NBA games, a country club wedding, a down payment on not one but two residential mortgages, cellphones, a vacation on Martha’s Vineyard and jobs for his relatives. The bribes were often concealed through electronic bank transfers listing the government official on the contractors’ payrolls, using shell companies, and false invoices.
Shell companies? Gosh, did they receive advice from Hunter Biden? And did Mr. Watson say hello to President Obama when he was on Martha’s Vineyard?
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/how-usaid-went-woke-and-destroyed-itself">How USAID Went Woke and Destroyed Itself</a>
The contractors who pleaded guilty include Walter Barnes of Potomac, Maryland, owner and president of PM Consulting Group LLC doing business as Vistant; Darryl Britt of Myakka City, Florida, owner and president of Apprio Inc.; and Paul Young of Columbia, Maryland, a subcontractor of Vistant and Apprio.
Messrs. Barnes and Britt got themselves certified as qualified small businesses under the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 8(a) contracting program. This program awards contracts to businesses owned at least 51% by “U.S. citizens who are socially and economically disadvantaged” and have personal net worth, gross income and assets below specified dollar amounts.
“Socially and economically disadvantaged” is usually code for the color of the skin or gender of the business owner, and Messrs. Barnes, Britt and Young took full advantage of that.
As the press release from the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office outlines, Mr. Watson sent contracts their way by “manipulating the procurement process at USAID” that took advantage of “non-competitive contract awards, disclosing sensitive procurement information … providing positive performance evaluations to a government agency, and approving decisions on the contracts, such as increased funding and a security clearance.”
The conspiracy among these fraudsters also demonstrates how easily minority contractors game the system. At first, Apprio was the prime contractor being awarded USAID contracts. After Apprio lost its qualification status under the 8(a) program, the conspirators made Vistant the prime contractor, and Apprio became the subcontractor so they could continue to steal federal funds based on their supposed “disadvantages.”
Of course, the only ones disadvantaged in the end were American taxpayers.
The contractors also used Mr. Watson to fraudulently obtain loans, credit agreements and private equity investments, listing the USAID official as a reference for their “outstanding” performance as government contractors. Naturally, Mr. Watson neglected to inform anyone that he had been bribed into awarding those contracts and giving such an outstanding performance review.
That included a $14 million loan to Vistant, out of which Mr. Barnes paid himself a $10 million dividend. No, really: $10 million!
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/the-smithsonian-institution-audit-only-the-start">The Smithsonian Institution Audit Is Only the Start</a>
The bottom line is that this bribery and fraud scheme would not have happened if the federal government required all contracts to be awarded on a competitive basis and did not play favorites based on skin color, gender or any other factor that has absolutely nothing to do with doing work for the government.
The federal government owes it to Americans to make efficient use of their hard-earned taxpayer dollars. No contracts of any kind should be awarded based on any condition other than being the best-qualified contractor capable of delivering the highest-quality products or services for the best possible price.
Period, end of story.
None of these individuals has been sentenced, so we don’t know how long they will spend in prison. The Justice Department has entered into “deferred prosecution agreements” with the two companies, Apprio and Vistant, for “cooperating in the investigation.” Apparently, they do not have the financial wherewithal to pay back the huge amount they stole from all of us. According to the Justice Department, both companies met the “burden of establishing an inability to pay the criminal penalty sought.”
Accordingly, there is a civil settlement in which Apprio will pay back $500,000 and Vistant will pay $100,000. That’s $550 million in illegally obtained government contracts versus a $600,000 payback.
Nice work if you can get it.
</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2025 09:38:12 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Hans von Spakovsky</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/usaid-fraud-case-proves-folly-awarding-contracts-disadvantaged</guid>
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<title>The Power Behind Israel’s Economic Strength in War</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/event/the-power-behind-israels-economic-strength-war</link>
<description>Join Heritage as the Embassy of Israel’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Noach Hacker, offers a deep look at the strength and strategy behind Israel’s economy. This conversation will outline how, over decades, Israel quietly prepared not only for military threats, but also for the economic impact of extreme conflict. Just as the country demonstrated extraordinary military capability in recent days, its economy has shown remarkable stability and strength during 360+ intense days of fighting which came to a climax in 12 days of Operation Rising Lion.
 
Israel now stands at a rare economic turning point. With the shadow of a nuclear Iran lifted, momentum is shifting fast, bringing a wave of global confidence, renewed investments, and a clear runway for accelerated growth. The next chapter is not just promising—it’s set to redefine what economic resilience looks like on the global stage. 
 
<a href="http://www9.heritage.org/Event-Email-Sign-up.html?_gl=1*1qr8e90*_ga*MjA3ODY0ODUxMC4xNjg5MDIxMDI5*_ga_W14BT6YQ87*MTcxMzIxMDQ0NC41NjcuMS4xNzEzMjEwNTg3LjU3LjAuMA.." tabindex="-1" target="_blank">Sign up to receive invitations to all public events.</a>
<a href="https://www.heritage.org/events/terms-and-conditions-of-attendance">Terms and Conditions of Attendance</a>
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2025 17:19:56 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Heritage Foundation</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/middle-east/event/the-power-behind-israels-economic-strength-war</guid>
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<title>Forget the Battle of the Sexes, This Generation Wants a Battle-Mate</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/forget-the-battle-the-sexes-generation-wants-battle-mate</link>
<description>Motherhood lies at the heart of every women’s movement: as something to escape, to champion, or, for many, something they want, but do not know how to fit in given their career goals and dating pool. Girl-boss feminism and the tradwife movement bring this tension to the surface in today’s cultural debates.&nbsp;
On one side stands the “girl-boss” feminist: the career-driven, self-before-all-else woman who measures her worth by promotions, paychecks, and personal achievements. Personal happiness and career success come first.&nbsp;
On the other side stands the “tradwife” ideal: a blend of 1950s aesthetics and modern homesteading. Such women tend to wear aprons and flowing dresses, tend gardens in galoshes, bake sourdough, and document it all on homemaking blogs. The movement puts family and their home first, but sometimes at the expense of intellectual engagement.&nbsp;
Both movements claim to offer women fulfillment. Yet both miss what many women—and frankly, many men—intuitively know: the highest vision for marriage and family isn’t found in prioritizing personal ambition or in simply wanting the right things, but in cultivating one’s gifts to build a strong, thriving home.&nbsp;
For too long, those cultural narratives have suggested that a woman’s intelligence and ambition find their primary fulfillment in the marketplace and are secondary to the traits husbands are looking for in women as wives and mothers. But in practice, this leaves the home impoverished.&nbsp;
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/courts/commentary/faith-freedom-and-child-formation">Faith, Freedom, and Child Formation</a>
This is why I believe what men and women really want isn’t yet another round in the battle of the sexes over motherhood, but a renewed vision of men and women as battle-mates—partners fighting side by side, especially when it comes to how mothers invest in their children and the home. Most men do want smart, hard-working wives, but not necessarily career queens. They want women who value home and family enough to channel their talents into building a strong, loving household.
One young woman my husband knew in college illustrated this dilemma. She openly talked about how much she valued marriage and dreamed of being a stay-at-home mother to many children. Yet she was admittedly vocationally unmotivated and disinterested in learning. She embodied the outward signs of traditional femininity—braids, dresses, and homemaking skills—but lacked the depth and mastery required of a mother entrusted with shaping the hearts and minds of children. Outward femininity and the right priorities are only half the battle. If we fail to encourage and channel all that ambition and capability into the home itself, it’s worth asking the last line of&nbsp;Finding Nemo: “Now what?”
This is where I think many of the “trad” debates go astray today. The enduring presence of the tradwife movement is a positive indication that women are dissatisfied with the life script they’ve been offered with girl-boss feminism. The answer, however, shouldn’t be to denigrate ambition, but to channel it.
Some of my favorite examples of women who fully invested themselves in raising exceptional children include Maye Musk, who encouraged and channeled Elon’s brilliance, now one of the richest men alive and the CEO of multiple world-leading companies. Susanna Wesley diligently taught her sons Greek, Latin, and theology, raising two of the foremost pastors, evangelists, and hymn writers of the eighteenth 18th century. Pauline Einstein did what no one else could: nurture and draw out the genius of her son, Albert. And, more recently, Melania Trump stands as a modern exemplar.
I remember how encouraged and seen my mother—and many other stay-at-home moms in her community—felt watching Melania Trump step back from the public spotlight during the first Trump administration to prioritize raising her son, Barron. Far from neglecting her role as First Lady, she fulfilled it in the fullest sense: giving her child the attention, care, and formation he needed in those critical years. It validated the sacrifices my mother and her friends made to invest their best years into shaping their children, not just building careers.
I’m also inspired to see Mrs. Trump take on a more active leadership role during their second term, especially now that her child is older. It is a powerful reminder that we should view our life through the lens of seasons; as many have said,&nbsp;you can have it all, but not all at once.&nbsp;
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/report/crossroads-american-family-life-the-intersection-tradition-and-modernity">Crossroads: American Family Life at the Intersection of Tradition and Modernity</a>
Her official portraits from the first and second terms capture this progression. Traditionally, First Lady portraits are warm, feminine, and inviting—meant to soften the imposing presence of their husbands. Mrs. Trump’s 2017 portrait fits that mold: while the President appears severe, her presence softens him, making him more approachable. But her 2025 portrait reflects something deeper—a complementary strength forged through years of political battles. She no longer merely softens; she stands as a battle-mate, fully at her husband’s side.
In Genesis 2, God tells Adam He will create a “suitable helper” for him. While this translation is accurate to the Hebrew, it has unfortunately led many to see women as subordinate helpers—something like domestic servants. But a closer reading reveals that&nbsp;ezer kenegdo&nbsp;refers to something far stronger.&nbsp;
Throughout the Old Testament,&nbsp;ezer&nbsp;is used primarily in military contexts—to describe God helping His people in battle or David’s mighty men coming to his aid. It conveys the idea of strong help offered to one in need, not servitude. The word&nbsp;kenegdo&nbsp;can be translated “like opposite”—meaning Eve is like Adam in nature, yet distinct, complementing and completing him with her own strength. Her role is neither superior nor inferior, but essential—for their home, their community, and their nation. It is this vision of an&nbsp;ezer kenegdo—a true battle-mate—that Régine Mahaux’s portrait of Mrs. Trump so powerfully conveys.
Men don’t want the battle of the sexes. They want a battle-mate. They want a woman who delights in bringing her full self to the family mission—shaping children, stewarding culture, and standing strong alongside her husband.&nbsp;
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2025 14:10:09 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Emma Waters</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/marriage-and-family/commentary/forget-the-battle-the-sexes-generation-wants-battle-mate</guid>
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<title>How To Thaw America’s Frozen Housing Market</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/how-thaw-americas-frozen-housing-market</link>
<description>Despite four months of very low inflation numbers, reduction of government waste, and strong real wage growth, the Biden-era homeownership affordability crisis still dogs America’s middle class. To fix the broken housing market and make homes affordable again, lawmakers and the public need to understand what caused this cost-of-living crisis.
When President Biden took office, homeownership was not only affordable, but more affordable than the long-run average. But as the government spent the nation into oblivion, that quickly changed.
To accommodate the profligate spending of Biden and the radical liberals in Congress, the Federal Reserve created trillions of dollars out of nothing and purchased debt issued by the Treasury. Simultaneously, the Fed kept interest rates artificially low to reduce borrowing costs for the federal government.
These monetary manipulations sparked the worst inflation in over 40 years. Prices everywhere exploded, but housing costs were particularly hard hit. That’s because the same artificially low interest rates that made it cheap for the Treasury to borrow also made it cheap for potential homebuyers to borrow—and borrow they did!
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/tech-advancing-your-standard-living-isnt-thanks-government">Tech Is Advancing. Your Standard of Living Isn’t—Thanks to Government</a>
What people really care about when it comes to buying a home is not so much the home price as the monthly payment, since that’s what must fit in their budget. Record low interest rates allowed potential homebuyers to get ever-larger mortgages and thereby bid up the price of homes for sale, on top of the rising prices from inflation.
The party was not to last, and the worst inflation in four decades was predictably followed by the fastest rise in interest rates in just as long. Suddenly, mortgage interest rates below 3 percent were replaced by nearly 8 percent rates. When monthly mortgage payments quickly doubled, demand dried up, and the housing market began to seize.
The situation also rapidly deteriorated for homeowners, whose below-3-percent mortgage interest rates became golden handcuffs. Selling a home almost always means losing the old interest rate and getting a new mortgage at today’s rates. Therefore, sellers faced the same prospect of their monthly payment skyrocketing if they borrowed the same amount for a new home.
The only way to make the math work in this situation is to sell an existing home for such a large premium that the owner has a very large down payment for the next home, reducing the amount borrowed and the size of the next mortgage. That offsets most of the pain from the tripling of interest rates.
It also means that the price of the median existing home is so stratospheric that it has eclipsed the price of the median new home—a rarity. It’s especially shocking since new home prices have never been higher.
Inflation has pushed up the cost of new home construction by a third in less than five years. Homebuilders today can’t lower their prices, despite high interest rates, because they need to cover their record-high costs on materials and labor. Since many homebuilders finance their projects with credit, high interest rates are another cost increase.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/end-the-war-manufacturing-agenda-restore-industrial-production-the">End the War on Manufacturing: An Agenda to Restore Industrial Production in the United States</a>
It’s no wonder homebuilder sentiment has collapsed to the lowest level in years while pending home sales are near a record low and a full two-thirds of Americans think homeownership is out of reach for those under 40. The deadly one-two punch of high home prices and high interest rates has essentially killed the starter home.
It’s tempting to blame this problem just on high interest rates and then call upon the Fed to lower rates as an easy fix. But that would merely treat a symptom, not a cause, and any relief to the housing market would be temporary.
Artificially reducing interest rates by one or two percentage points again would simply allow potential homebuyers to borrow more, restarting the bidding war while also sparking more inflation. Pushing interest rates below 3 percent again would eliminate the premium on existing mortgages, but would cause even worse inflation and necessitate even higher interest rates thereafter.
The only way to really thaw this frozen housing market is to allow interest rates to fall naturally. The interest rate is just the price to borrow money, and the biggest borrower is the federal government. Excessive borrowing in Washington DC is the real reason everything from mortgage interest rates to Treasury yields to credit-card interest rates are sky-high today.
Reducing government borrowing will reduce the demand for borrowed money, and that will bring down the price, which is the interest rate—it’s Econ 101. Therefore, if Congress wants to help the housing market, they must spend—and borrow—less money.
</description>
<pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2025 13:56:37 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>E.J. Antoni, PhD</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/how-thaw-americas-frozen-housing-market</guid>
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<title>How To Keep the U.S. Maritime Revival Afloat</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/how-keep-the-us-maritime-revival-afloat</link>
<description>For those working to restore America’s maritime industry, these are good days indeed. Once President Trump made the issue <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21OKfEYge-8">a rallying cry</a> in his address to Congress on March 4, the wheels were set in motion. Several <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/restoring-americas-maritime-dominance/">executive orders</a>, article <a href="https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/enforcement/section-301-investigations/section-301-chinas-targeting-maritime-logistics-and-shipbuilding-sectors-dominance">301 complaints</a>, <a href="https://www.freightwaves.com/news/us-plans-phased-approach-to-port-fees-for-chinese-ships">tariffs</a>, and a <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/1541/text">comprehensive maritime bill</a> have followed, all with the same purpose: rebuilding America’s maritime might.
Yet this revival is now at a critical moment as it transitions to execution.
The fact that there is bicameral, bipartisan support for such a national endeavor, forcefully backed by a popularly elected president, is historic. The nation has not seen this level of maritime interest since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. Americans are clearly aware of the dangers before us and the <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/america-is-finally-getting-its-maritime-strategy-right">strategic importance</a> of having a strong navy and commercial fleet.
The White House, Congress, the Navy, the Maritime Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Federal Maritime Administration, and the U.S. Trade Representative are all leading numerous efforts to attain this goal. However, ensuring that such a dispersed group collaborates effectively with industry leaders and allied nations is a tall order.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/revitalizing-shipbuilding-expanding-warship-orders">Revitalizing Shipbuilding by Expanding Warship Orders</a>
This will require coordination at the national level, which is why some are calling for a <a href="https://news.usni.org/2024/01/30/lawmakers-call-on-biden-to-create-a-new-maritime-policy-czar">maritime czar</a> or a national <a href="https://www.federaltimes.com/naval/2024/01/30/lawmakers-seek-national-coordination-support-for-maritime-industry/?contentQuery=%7B%22includeSections%22%3A%22%2Fhome%22%2C%22excludeSections%22%3A%22%22%2C%22feedSize%22%3A10%2C%22feedOffset%22%3A725%7D&amp;contentFeatureId=f0fmoahPVC2AbfL-2-1-8&amp;User-Agent=Mozilla%2F5.0+%28Windows+NT+10.0%3B+Win64%3B+x64%29+AppleWebKit%2F537.36+%28KHTML%2C+like+Gecko%29+Chrome%2F102.0.5005.63+Safari%2F537.36">maritime security coordinator</a>. The fact is, without such leadership, today’s program of maritime rejuvenation will devolve into a form of&nbsp;<a href="https://makeagif.com/i/PvF6mm">children’s soccer match</a>—with agencies and officials chasing and fighting over the same ball but never kicking it into the goal.
Over seven months have passed since Election Day, and the momentum behind the effort is at risk of stalling without the leaders in place to turn the President’s orders into action.
At the top of the list is securing a new maritime administrator. The current nominee, <a href="https://www.congress.gov/nomination/119th-congress/141/10">Steve Carmel</a>, has been waiting since May 6 for a Senate confirmation hearing. If <a href="https://www.klgates.com/How-Long-Until-Biden-Nominates-The-MARAD-Administrator-11-20-2020">the past is prologue</a>, this critical leadership role could remain unfilled for many more months, putting the national maritime effort at risk.
Another key player in this effort is the <a href="https://www.secnav.navy.mil/rda/pages/ASNRDAorgchart.aspx">Assistant Secretary</a> of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition. During Joe Biden’s presidency, this key shipbuilding role <a href="https://www.navy.mil/Leadership/Flag-Officer-Biographies/BioDisplay/Article/3730837/nickolas-h-guertin/">remained vacant</a> for almost three years, just as the Navy’s <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-donald-trump-can-rebuild-americas-naval-strength">shipbuilding problems exploded</a>.
Despite these key offices remaining unfilled, the White House hasn’t wasted any time. By early March, President Trump announced the creation of the <a href="https://breakingdefense.com/2025/03/trump-announces-new-white-house-shipbuilding-office/">Shipbuilding Office</a>. It is this office that will formulate and coordinate the overall effort, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/restoring-americas-maritime-dominance/">drafting and issuing</a> a raft of orders kickstarting the national maritime rejuvenation.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/5-ways-restore-americas-defense-industrial-base-without-new-spending">5 Ways To Restore America’s Defense Industrial Base Without New Spending</a>
Following the May 23 <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-national-security-council-nsc-50ac71e10b9700a0c0e4266afc958cc3">National Security Council reorganization</a> and <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/problems-with-the-national-security-council-run-deep">staff reductions</a>, the emphasis is necessarily shifting from policy formulation to coordinating execution. This will further emphasize the importance of having key players in place to execute the President’s orders.
That said, the national maritime rejuvenation now begun is coalescing around five themes:
<ol>
<li>Protecting the American maritime industry from predatory practices, notably from China.</li>
<li>Allying with <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/chips-ships-next-step-us-rok-alliance-214456">like-minded maritime</a> partners to create a marketplace where America’s maritime revival can take root.</li>
<li>Nurturing innovation to create a new, globally competitive American maritime paradigm shift in logistics, ushering in a <a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/regaining-us-maritime-power-requires-revolution-shipping">revolution in shipping</a>.</li>
<li>Building the ships and shipyards of the future that can put to sea a modern commercial fleet and navy.</li>
<li>Training and growing the maritime workforce and merchant mariners required by a modern first-class strategic commercial fleet.</li>
</ol>
To deter war and protect from economic coercion, the nation needs a <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-to-fix-americas-ship-problem">strong maritime industry</a> and <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/make-navy-great-again-213446">navy</a>. Delivering on that complex task requires a network of leaders in government, the military, and industry. The vision is clear, and the tools to execute that vision are available. It is now the time to move the ball down the field—as a team.
This piece originally appeared in <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-to-keep-the-us-maritime-revival-afloat">The National Interest</a>
</description>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2025 14:36:45 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Brent Sadler</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/how-keep-the-us-maritime-revival-afloat</guid>
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<title>Twisting the Truth: Extreme Weather and the Climate Narrative</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/climate/commentary/twisting-the-truth-extreme-weather-and-the-climate-narrative</link>
<description>As America braces for another storm season, only the media storms are more predictable than upcoming hurricanes and tornadoes. Even before the dust settles after natural disasters, headlines often warn that gusts of wind and funnel clouds are proof the Earth is boiling.
Politicians rush to blame carbon emissions while their supporters flood social media warning of the inevitable doomsday caused by climate change. It all becomes one message: If we do not pass sweeping climate legislation now, more devastation is on the horizon.
But there is one inconvenient truth for these protests: the data do not support the narrative.
As the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/heritage-foundation/">Heritage Foundation’s</a>&nbsp;chief statistician, Kevin Dayaratna, points out in his new book, “Cooling the Climate Hysteria,” the claim that climate change is causing more and stronger tornadoes and hurricanes in the U.S. “is unsupported by the relevant trend data.”
According to meteorologists Joe D’Aleo and Roy W. Spencer, there is no foundation to the rising rhetoric that climate change is driving an increase in storm frequency and severity. The long-term numbers within their chapters show no significant trend of increasing frequency or violence of U.S. storms over several decades. In fact, both storm types are well within their historical norms. Some have even trended downward since 1970.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/climate/report/calculating-the-social-cost-carbon-the-give-model-epa-model-not-ready-prime-time">Calculating the “Social Cost of Carbon” with the GIVE Model: An EPA Model Not Ready for Prime Time</a>
Looking at hurricanes, Mr. D’Aleo finds that from 1900 to today there is no significant increase in the number of or intensity of hurricanes making landfall in the United States. Data show that some of the deadliest and most powerful hurricanes, such as the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, or Camille in 1969, happened before the rise of global CO2 emissions.
Tornado data show a similar story. Mr. Spencer finds the average number of EF2-EF5 tornadoes, which cause considerable amounts of damage, have trended downwards in the past 70 years despite emissions.
There is a rise, however, in the total number of weak (EF0-EF1) tornadoes recorded from 1950 to 1990. This nuance can be explained by the increase in detection technology, such as the Doppler radar.
With this increased ability to detect tornadoes in less populated areas, along with the overall economic growth and the spread of population, it is not that more tornadoes are appearing, but rather the fact that we have detected more of the existing tornadoes compared to previous years. This explains why, since 1990, there has been a relatively flat trend line in the annual weak tornado counts.
So what explains this disconnect between perception and reality?
Headlines often point to mounting disaster damage as proof of worsening storms. This narrative confuses economic effects with meteorological intensity. While the explicit value of damage has increased, this does not consider the amount of economic growth and inflation that has occurred.
Compare an F3 tornado in an open, unoccupied field to an F3 tornado decades later in the same area that has had residences built and infrastructure put in place. Obviously, the latter tornado will cause more mayhem, but that does not change the actual intensity of its wind speed.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/energy/commentary/we-must-move-fast-avert-national-electricity-crisis">We Must Move Fast To Avert a National Electricity Crisis</a>
Or consider a home on the coast of Florida that cost $25,000 to build in 1960 but $25 million in 2020. The same hurricane would wreak more destruction in 2020 due to higher land values, construction costs, and amenities in the home.
Thus, it’s important to normalize the data for accurate representation when analyzing the costs of natural disasters.
The normalized cost trend line for tornadoes was decreasing, while it remained relatively flat for hurricanes. This undermines claims that climate change is driving more destructive storms and instead points to economic trends that increase the costs of U.S. natural disasters.
Looking at the data, no statistically significant trend displaying an increase in frequency or intensity emerges amongst tornadoes and hurricanes. Yet, the media still spread this narrative because fear is an effective tool to advance political goals.
With every storm, there is a race to use the disaster as justification to pass radical climate legislation that raises electricity and transportation costs, such as carbon taxes, gas stove bans, and internal combustion engine bans. With every additional demand to shift policy, we stop asking whether those policies are efficient, effective, or necessary.
The true storm in the United States is no longer the weather. It’s political leverage. We need to understand that our climate has always been dynamic—and that now more than ever, it is human resilience, not alarmism, which is our greatest asset.
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:50:33 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Ryan Strasser</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/climate/commentary/twisting-the-truth-extreme-weather-and-the-climate-narrative</guid>
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<title>An America First Human Rights Agenda</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/america-first-human-rights-agenda</link>
<description>The essence of President Donald Trump’s America First approach on the world stage is national sovereignty and self-determination. It is a firm rejection of the globalist, supranationalist approach of his Democratic predecessors, Joe Biden and Barack Obama. The United Nations and the European Union are increasingly perceived in Washington today as relics of globalism that have actively worked <a href="https://www.state.gov/opening-remarks-by-secretary-of-state-designate-marco-rubio-before-the-senate-foreign-relations-committee/">against the interests of the United States</a> and seek to constrain the world’s superpower.
The United States is not abandoning the fight for human rights, but rather realigning it with the original vision of America’s Founding Fathers. The American people do not depend upon international courts or conventions to protect their civil liberties. They are defined by the U.S. Constitution.&nbsp;
In the Trump era, the United States clearly does retain a vital national interest in defending human rights on the international stage. The key difference today is that it is not couched within meaningless global treaties, useless UN bodies infiltrated by dictatorial regimes, or supranational courts, which all too often are dominated by the enemies of freedom. Nor does it pander to the woke cultural elites of the West, who seek to advance a radical LGBT agenda at the expense of traditional American values.&nbsp;
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/the-unmasking-usaid">The Unmasking of USAID</a>
It is clear that under Trump’s approach, the United States will never subject itself to the rulings of an international criminal court or a pan-American version of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The American people are sovereign, and their borders should be secure from foreign power or control.
The U.N.’s broken human rights apparatus is largely irrelevant to the new administration. The United States <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/withdrawing-the-united-states-from-and-ending-funding-to-certain-united-nations-organizations-and-reviewing-united-states-support-to-all-international-organizations/">withdrew</a> from the hugely discredited U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), cut American funding for the United Nations, and <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/02/06/us-news/trump-slaps-sanctions-on-icc-over-netanyahu-arrest-warrant/">condemned</a> the U.N.-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) over its ludicrous arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.&nbsp;
There is a growing recognition in the United States that the United Nations has become a vehicle for <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/joe-bidens-sham-unrwa-funding-freeze-209177">targeting Israel</a> and advancing <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/corrupted-birth-unrwas-forgotten-history-209624">antisemitism</a>. The Trump administration has made the fight against global antisemitism a priority, both abroad and at home, as we have seen with the federal campaign against the pro-Hamas movement on American <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/can-higher-education-survive-political-bias">university campuses</a>, including Harvard.
Trump’s robust approach has already had a significant impact on America’s foreign aid policy, too. The United States should expect that international assistance will be given only to those nations that share America’s principles. This is why the administration is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/28/trump-usaid-abolish-earthquake-congress/">dismantling</a> the Agency for International Development (<a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/a-better-way-to-reform-usaid">USAID</a>) altogether and overhauling America’s development aid programs. Foreign assistance to countries such as <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/u-s-pushes-back-against-south-africas-anti-american-diplomacy">South Africa</a>, which is embarking upon land appropriation policies and has refused to act against <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/whats-the-truth-about-south-africas-genocide-of-white-farmers/">racially motivated killings of farmers</a>, has seen its <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/06/aid-trump-south-africa">development aid</a> completely cut off.
The America First human rights focus is primarily based on protecting freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and conscience, and freedom of expression, as well as respect for democratic elections and property rights. Strikingly, a priority for the Trump administration has been to advance this approach in Europe, where some of these key freedoms have come under threat in recent years, including in much of the 27-member European Union.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/next-defund-the-united-nations">Next, Defund the United Nations</a>
There is now an expectation from Washington that its allies across the Atlantic share America’s approach to human rights, especially as the United States invests a significant amount of resources in defending Europe through the <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/urgently-needed-europeanized-nato-212357">NATO alliance</a>.
In his landmark speech to the Munich Security Conference in February this year, Vice President JD Vance <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCOsgfINdKg">warned</a> his European audience of the “threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values—values shared with the United States of America.” In the wake of Vance’s address, which sent shockwaves throughout Europe, the Trump administration has <a href="https://statedept.substack.com/p/the-need-for-civilizational-allies-in-europe">called for</a> stronger defenses of free speech from the UK to Germany and has been sharply critical of the arrest of individuals for silent prayer near abortion clinics or for their statements on social media.
This is the first American presidency to focus on basic freedoms in allied Western democracies. It is a radically different approach to that taken by Democratic administrations, which had been silent in the face of the erosion of fundamental freedoms in Europe. This is prompting much-needed public debate across the Atlantic, especially in the United Kingdom, America’s closest friend and ally. Under the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, thousands of British citizens have been <a href="https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arrests-a-day-for-offensive-online-messages-zbv886tqf">arrested</a> for posting “offensive” messages on social media.&nbsp;
The goal of this strategy is to strengthen Western civilization and the values that have underpinned it for centuries. This is an admirable and vitally important goal, which will ultimately give the West far more power in standing up to totalitarian regimes such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran that threaten the security and freedoms that we cherish.
This piece originally appeared in <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/an-america-first-human-rights-agenda">The National Interest</a>
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:42:56 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Nile Gardiner, PhD</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/america-first-human-rights-agenda</guid>
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<title>Tech Is Advancing. Your Standard of Living Isn’t—Thanks to Government</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/tech-advancing-your-standard-living-isnt-thanks-government</link>
<description>Since the widespread rollout of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022, the world has begun to grapple with a wave of technological progress unlike anything seen since the advent of the internet. The pace of innovation is accelerating, self-driving cars are becoming more commonplace, and Tesla is developing a commercially available humanoid robot designed to assist with basic household tasks.
For some, this future seems dystopian; for others, it is thrilling. But one pressing question remains: Will all this innovation meaningfully improve the average person’s standard of living any time soon?
At first glance, the answer might seem obvious. Yet, it remains uncertain whether these technological advancements will meaningfully improve everyday life, at least not without significant government deregulation. Three of the most significant challenges lie in the areas of housing costs, healthcare costs, and education costs.
Take housing. Census data and inflation figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that while median household income has risen by more than 45% over the last decade, inflation (excluding housing) has climbed about 21%, effectively erasing much of those income gains. Meanwhile, housing prices have surged by over 70%. In dollar terms, median home values increased from $175,000 in 2014 to $303,000 in 2023.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/trump-must-protect-american-ai-china">Trump Must Protect American AI From China</a>
These increases indicate that home values have outpaced both overall inflation and income growth at a staggering rate. What was once the cornerstone of the American Dream, owning a home, now feels increasingly out of reach for many Americans.
This growing affordability crisis is echoed in demographic data from the National Association of Realtors. In 1981, the median age of a first-time homebuyer was just 29. By 2024, that number had jumped to 38, an increase of nearly a decade. Even more striking, the median age of repeat buyers rose from 36 to 61 over the same period. These figures highlight a clear shift: homeownership is increasingly delayed, turning what was once a milestone of early adulthood into a luxury reserved for late middle age.
Housing isn’t the only area where costs have exploded. A viral post on X (formerly twitter) recently featured a hospital bill from 1956 for the birth of a child. The total? Just $107—$1,280 when adjusted for inflation. Today, that same hospital birth can cost as much as $18,000, with insured patients often still paying up to $3,000 out-of-pocket.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while inflation has risen 300% since 1980, the cost of medical services has soared by over 700%. This disparity underscores a system where healthcare innovation has not translated into affordability or access for the average American.
The situation is just as troubling when it comes to education. College tuition costs have skyrocketed well beyond the pace of general inflation. As shown in the chart below, since 1980, the cost of college tuition has increased by more than 1,200%, while inflation rose over 300%. This stark divergence underscores how higher education has become dramatically more expensive in real terms.
In 1980, a year of tuition at a public four-year college averaged around $804 (around 3.3 thousand adjusted for inflation). Today, it is nearly $10,000, with private institutions charging even more. Despite advances in online learning, these innovations have not translated into affordability. Instead, many graduates leave school burdened with debt and face an uncertain job market that may not offer salaries high enough to justify the cost of their degrees.
Across college tuition, healthcare, and housing, one common thread explains much of the price explosion: government intervention, often well-intentioned, but with unintended consequences.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/economic-growth-hiding-plain-sight">Economic Growth Hiding in Plain Sight</a>
In&nbsp;higher education, the federal government’s expansion of student loan programs has poured taxpayer money into the system. With guaranteed access to loans, colleges have had little incentive to control costs, knowing students can borrow almost unlimited amounts. This demand-fueled inflation has allowed universities to build lavish amenities as administrative ranks have swelled. Meanwhile,&nbsp;students&nbsp;are left&nbsp;with mountains of debt and often questionable returns
In healthcare, government programs like Medicare and Medicaid have distorted pricing mechanisms, while regulatory burdens and insurance mandates have added layers of compliance costs. These policies limit competition and transparency, driving up the cost of everything from routine procedures to life-saving drugs. Even insured patients often face staggering bills due to a system riddled with inefficiencies, inflated pricing, and nontransparent billing.
In housing, zoning laws, land-use regulations, environmental reviews, and restrictive permitting processes, especially in high-demand areas, have strangled new supply. Government-imposed limits on density, height, and land use make it exceedingly difficult and expensive to build new homes, particularly affordable ones. Meanwhile, rent control and other well-meaning interventions often backfire by discouraging investment and reducing housing availability in the long run.
Together, these examples illustrate a harsh reality: when government policies interfere with market dynamics, the costs are often passed directly onto the consumer, whether it is a student, a patient, or a prospective homeowner.
Without serious reform, especially deregulation that restores market incentives, new technologies will continue to flourish in theory, while the average American sees little change in practice. If policymakers want the promise of the AI era to translate into meaningful gains in living standards, they must first get government out of the way.
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 11:23:00 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Alexander Frei</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/tech-advancing-your-standard-living-isnt-thanks-government</guid>
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<title>Why the U.S. Should Give Australia Its Old B-2 Fleet</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/why-the-us-should-give-australia-its-old-b-2-fleet</link>
<description>America’s venerable <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/air-forces-unfixable-b-2-bomber-can-be-summed-2-words-211168">B-2 stealth bomber fleet</a> is in its twilight years. As part of America’s bomber fleet since the 1990s, it serves both conventional and nuclear missions. Over the next 10 years, the B-2 stealth fleet will be gradually replaced by the next-generation stealth bomber, the <a href="https://theaviationist.com/2025/01/31/northrop-grumman-second-b-21-raider-lrip-contract/">B-21 Raider</a>, which is currently <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/b-21-raider-mothership-bomber-213460">in production</a>.
Under the current plan, the B-2s will be retired to the “Boneyard” at <a href="https://www.dm.af.mil/">Davis-Monthan Air Force Base</a> outside of Tucson, Arizona, where over <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/Story/Article/4117196/aircraft-boneyard-supports-dod-readiness-saves-taxpayer-dollars/">4,000 aircraft</a> currently sit after decommissioning. Many have been and are still cannibalized for spare parts.
Every aircraft <a href="https://www.twz.com/21914/the-air-force-cant-say-what-it-plans-to-do-with-its-retired-b-2-bombers">retired</a> to the Boneyard carries a financial burden. While the exact cost of decommissioning the B-2 remains uncertain, it is reasonable to assume that retiring such an advanced strategic stealth bomber would come at a significant expense, far more than the cost of retiring a simple B-52 bomber or a cargo aircraft. Given the still state-of-the-art stealth technology and secretive nature of the stealth bomber, it will require extra security and maintenance.
Each B-2 costs over <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-air-forces-b-2-bomber-costs-2000000000-210161">$2 billion</a> to develop and build. Rather than prematurely retiring these valuable assets, the United States should consider transferring all <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-us-air-force-now-only-has-19-b-2-spirit-bombers-210999">19 of the B-2s</a> to an ally, free of charge.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/aukus-should-build-center-experimentation-western-australia">AUKUS Should Build a Center for Experimentation in Western Australia</a>
Key allies in Europe or Asia would benefit from such a transfer, whether they took all or part of the fleet. But there is one option that offers intriguing possibilities: gifting the total fleet to Australia.
Granting the stealth bomber in its totality to Australia would allow the bombers to live out the full extent of their operational lifespan. Indeed, the B-2s can probably <a href="https://www.airandspaceforces.com/usaf-to-retire-b-1-b-2-in-early-2030s-as-b-21-comes-on-line/">operate until 2040</a>. By gifting the B-2 fleet to Australia, these aircraft could keep flying and provide increased allied resilience at the edge of a contested region, and complicate Chinese decisionmaking at the same time.
<a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-ensure-aukus-success-213891">Canberra</a> has recently invested heavily in its defense posture, including long-range missile systems, nuclear-powered submarines through <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/04/09/3-billion-up-from-down-under-to-help-u-s-build-submarines/">AUKUS</a>, and cutting-edge cyber capabilities. What it lacks is an airborne <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-should-examine-plan-b-21-as-it-weighs-up-long-range-strike-options/">strategic strike platform</a>. The B-2 would fill the gap immediately and extend its ability to carry out long-range conventional land attack missions.
A fleet of stealth bombers capable of striking deep into contested zones from Australian soil would dramatically change the strategic calculus for China. It would force Beijing to contend with potential multiple axes of attack not only from U.S. bases to its north and east but also from the south. Australia could dispatch bomber strikes from the northern part of the country. Such a development would force China to shift air and missile defenses to cover its southern and southeastern flanks, thereby diluting its ability to concentrate forces elsewhere.
Northern bases like <a href="https://www.eurasiantimes.com/australian-air-bases-supports-us-b-2-airstrike/">RAAF Tindal</a> are already undergoing upgrades to support long-range U.S. bombers. From those runways, a <a href="https://www.northropgrumman.com/what-we-do/air/b-2-stealth-bomber/10-cool-facts-about-the-b-2">B-2 can reach</a> virtually any target in the Indo-Pacific within a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/us-b-2-bombers-bunker-busters-alternatives-2025-06-18/">matter of hours</a>.
There are, of course, many ways to bolster Australia’s deterrence posture—to include increased <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-armys-newest-units-are-needed-in-the-indo-pacific">rotational deployments</a> of American servicemembers, larger numbers of Australian and American cruise missiles, increased intelligence sharing between the United States and Australia, and modernized Australian maritime capabilities—and all of these should be pursued. However, these efforts still fall short of addressing the absence of a long-range airborne strike platform.
In fact, Australian defense strategists are already considering how such capabilities can be integrated as part of a modern long-range power projection capability. This aligns closely with <a href="https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/media-releases/2024-04-17/2024-national-defence-strategy?utm_source=chatgpt.com">Australia’s 2024 National Defence Strategy</a>, which explicitly calls for enhanced long-range strike capabilities as part of a more lethal and integrated force structure.
Some Australian voices have <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/australia-should-examine-plan-b-21-as-it-weighs-up-long-range-strike-options/">identified</a> the B-21 Raider as a potential long-term solution, offering a faster and more flexible option compared to nuclear submarines, with the capability to carry multiple weapons due to its stealth. Unlike submarines, which have longer deployment and resupply cycles, the B-21 can conduct multiple sorties in a shorter timeframe, allowing for <a href="https://www.defenceconnect.com.au/air/13128-an-aukus-remix-delivering-greater-military-power-faster-the-b-21-raider">sustained operations</a>. The B-21’s range also allows it to operate from bases deep within Australia, reducing vulnerability to adversary strikes and logistical challenges.
However, given the B-21’s current developmental status and <a href="https://theaviationist.com/2025/01/31/northrop-grumman-second-b-21-raider-lrip-contract/">slower rate of production</a>, acquiring the B-2 bombers could serve as an effective interim measure until the Royal Australian Air Force can acquire the B-21s in the 2040s.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/indias-fifth-generation-fighter-ambitions-time-choose-time-build">India’s Fifth-Generation Fighter Ambitions: Time to Choose, Time to Build</a>
In addition, transferring the B-2 to Australia would further demonstrate that Western allies are willing to share technologies and capabilities that remain lethal and strategically relevant in support of their shared national interests.&nbsp;
The transfer would also open new opportunities for joint training with the United States and Pacific allies. Australia’s vast, sparsely populated interior provides ideal airspace for the kind of training required for low-observable aircraft—training that is increasingly difficult to conduct in the crowded skies over the continental United States.
By integrating B-2s that were adjusted to carry only conventional—not nuclear—munitions into Australia’s defense strategy, the United States can strengthen regional stability while empowering its allies with relevant, credible, and lethal capabilities needed to project strength.
Beyond the immediate benefits, such a transfer would pave the way for a deeper cooperation between the United States and Australia on next-generation strike capabilities. By servicing and operating B-2s, the <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/tags/royal-australian-air-force">Royal Australian Air Force</a> could learn valuable lessons and acquire the skills required to potentially operate B-21 Raiders in the 2040 timeframe, exactly when the B-2s will reach the end of their operational lifespan.
An Australian fleet of B-2s would be a signal. It would signal to China that the United States and its closest allies can strike with precision from great distances, and that any Chinese aggression will be met with force. Anything less would be a gamble with the balance of power in the region.
This piece originally appeared in <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-the-us-should-give-australia-its-old-b-2-fleet">The National Interest</a>
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 10:57:15 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Robert Peters, Parker Goodrich</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/why-the-us-should-give-australia-its-old-b-2-fleet</guid>
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<title>Trump’s Culture War Offensive Is Working</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/trumps-culture-war-offensive-working</link>
<description>The past month has seen bold advances in Donald Trump’s crusade to recapture cultural ground that the Left had conquered in recent decades. Whether on museums, media, or universities, the president is on the offensive and the Left is in retreat.
Last week alone saw advances on two fronts: a congressional win against NPR and PBS, and a retreat by the Smithsonian.
The House of Representatives’ 214-212 vote on Thursday to rescind $1.1 billion that Congress had already appropriated for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit that distributes taxpayer money to NPR, PBS, and public radio and television stations, was a milestone. The tightness of the vote reveals the stakes.
Ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act authorizing the CPB in 1967, every Republican president and Congress has tried to bring public broadcasting to heel.
But all efforts have failed. Democrats have voted in unison to protect their interests, and thus those of NPR and PBS, and enough Republicans have thought, “Well, PBS may give my party 85% negative coverage, but if I vote for it, my local station will spare me.”
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/american-history/commentary/trumps-righteous-smithsonian-reforms">Trump’s Righteous Smithsonian Reforms</a>
Last week’s vote saw four of those, but not enough to save the broadcasters’ bacon this time. The rescission package now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 advantage. That still won’t make it a cake walk, and timid senators will find any excuse not to take a stand on an important issue.
But Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO), lead Senate sponsor of the rescissions package, <a href="https://punchbowl.news/article/senate/rescissions-package-path/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>told Punchbowl</a>, “I think broadly there’s a lot of agreement that we need to move forward on it.”
Eliminating public funding for NPR and PBS is an important step in the cultural reconquista. The Left uses both institutions to tear down America’s cultural and historical narrative and put in place a distorted counternarrative. And, of course, the Left funds this with money from every American taxpayer.
Another such institution is the Smithsonian, the world’s largest museum complex, with 21 museums and 14 educational and research centers. Trump in March issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/restoring-truth-and-sanity-to-american-history/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>executive order</a> that, right at the start, identified the problem: “Over the past decade, Americans have witnessed a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”
Museums, added the order, “should be places where individuals go to learn—not to be subjected to ideological indoctrination.” It instructed Vice President J.D. Vance to “effectuate the policies of this order through his role on the Smithsonian Board of Regents.”
The first <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/patriotism-unity/3440609/smithsonian-institution-audit-only-the-start/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>meeting</a> of the board with the vice president was last week. Vance worked the room with a mixture of persuasion and outright pressure, according to published reports from the always secretive meeting, and he got results.
Initial reports emphasized how the board had circled the wagons around Secretary Lonnie Bunch III, under whose leadership much of the wokeness has come in, and rebuffed Trump’s firing of National Portrait Gallery head Kim Sajet.
But Sajet was gone in a matter of days, resigning “on her own.” Bunch put out a <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3441626/national-portrait-gallery-director-kim-sajet-resigns-trump-attempted-firing/" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>statement</a> thanking her for putting the Smithsonian’s interests “above her own.”
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/commentary/trump-bringing-about-regime-change-not-seen-1933">Trump Is Bringing About a Regime Change Not Seen Since 1933</a>
The Smithsonian also agreed to <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/smithsonian-to-conduct-wide-content-review-requested-by-trump-94012153?st=vLn2o8&amp;reflink=article_copyURL_share" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>conduct a wide audit</a> of all its content in order to eliminate biased material and perhaps even personnel.
Then, it emerged that Bunch <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/smithsonian-privately-admits-to-straying-from-nonpartisan-mission-amid-trump-feud/?bypass_key=ZW4zRThQRml6VkZTbExHRlROeXVTQT09OjpjVUpIUlV0b1ltNWliVTVMY0VKRFUydHpSWFYxWnowOQ%3D%3D?utm_source%3Demail&amp;utm_medium=breaking&amp;utm_campaign=newstrack&amp;utm_term=40263979&amp;utm_source=Sailthru" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>emailed</a> staff to admit to bias. “On occasion, some of our work has not aligned with our institutional values of scholarship, even-handedness and nonpartisanship,” he wrote. “For that, we must all work to do better.”
Even better, in his budget request to Congress, Trump asked the legislature <a href="https://www.si.edu/sites/default/files/about/fy2026-budgetrequestcongress.pdf" rel="noopener" target="_blank" title>not to fund</a> the Smithsonian’s creation of a Latino Museum. Early exhibits of the planned museum have revealed that the Left will use it as an incubator of grievances against the United States, a place to stoke resentments among Americans with roots in Iberia or her colonies.
Instead, Trump wants the Smithsonian to return to sharing collections on the culture and history of these Americans across the complex’s many museums—reviving the so-called Smithsonian Latino Center of old, rather than sectioning off this part of American history in a segregated institution under the direction of woke curators.
Acting on my own capacity, I was one of more than 20 scholars with these roots <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/news/latino-scholars-urge-congress-to-defund-marxist-national-museum-of-the-american-latino/">to sign a letter</a> supporting the president’s decision not to fund this mistake.
On the university front, lest we forget, it was less than a month ago that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that she had ordered the cancellation of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, barring the school from enrolling foreign students.
The second Trump administration understands the supreme importance of these ideological battles. And, as the past 30 days have shown, its decision to go on offense is working.
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 10:43:32 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Mike Gonzalez</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/trumps-culture-war-offensive-working</guid>
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<title>Time to Double the Production Rate of the B-21</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/time-double-the-production-rate-the-b-21</link>
<description>The Air Force’s newest strategic bomber, the B-21 Raider, was unveiled in December 2022<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Thomas Novelly, “The Air Force Reveals New B-21 Bomber, Keeping the Pilot for Now,” Military.com, December 5, 2022, https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/12/03/air-force-reveals-new-b-21-bomber-keeping-pilot-now.html (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF at Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The aircraft builds on decades of stealth technology and provides vital long-range, deep-strike capability necessary to deter adversaries for the next several decades.
This technological marvel was many years in the making. Initial concepts for the program began in 2011, and the Engineering, Manufacturing, and Development contract<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Colin Clark, “Northrop Garners Huge Win with New Bomber; LRSB $564m per Plane,” Breaking Defense, October 27, 2015, https://breakingdefense.com/2015/10/northrop-garners-huge-win-with-new-bomber-lrsb/ (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF was awarded to Northrop Grumman in 2015. Given the appropriate secrecy surrounding the program, it is not known the current B-21 inventory or production rate. However, the Air Force has stated a need for at least 100 aircraft<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Peter Suciu, “The U.S. Air Force May Only Get 100 B-21 Raider Stealth Bombers,” The National Interest, June 6, 2024, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-air-force-may-only-get-100-b-21-raider-stealth-bombers-210611 (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF and an expectation of procuring 10 aircraft per year once in full-rate production. At best, the nation is unlikely to have even 100 aircraft until the late 2030s. This is both too little and too late to deter Chinese aggression against American interests or American allies.
<h3>The Need for a Second Production Facility</h3>
The nation needs a second production facility for the B-21, regardless of the final number of aircraft to be procured. The Defense Department should set a production rate of 20 aircraft per year. This demand signal will allow Northrop Grumman to build a second production plant. Although the cost of building a second facility is likely to approach $800 million,<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Northrop Grumman, 2024 Annual Report, https://cdn.northropgrumman.com/-/media/Project/Northrop-Grumman/ngc/who-we-are/corporate-responsibility/NOC---12312024---Annual-Report---FINAL.pdf?rev=61a869bcfe0c49a2a6832b141846ca1d (accessed June 16, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF the return on investment is extraordinarily high.
An additional facility will increase the rate at which the nation can build, field, and operate the B-21 fleet. Deterring China from aggression is a long-term strategy<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Department of Defense, 2022 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America: Including the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review and the 2022 Missile Defense Review, 2022, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/trecms/pdf/AD1183514.pdf (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF that requires action today. Increasingly, it is understood that deterrence cannot be achieved without credible, survivable, and sufficient long-range conventional strike capability. The B-21 provides this foundational capability. America simply cannot wait until the late 2030s to field sufficient capacity for this vital deterrence role.
A second facility will also allow the U.S. to increase total B-21 inventory. It is necessary to procure the number of aircraft actually needed—not the number that fits under some arbitrary budget topline. The Air Force has an unfortunate history of taking the opposite approach, albeit by the direction of their political masters. The F-22 Raptor and B-2 Spirit<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;U.S. Air Force, “B-2 Spirit,” 2025, https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104482/b-2-spirit/ (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF are prime examples of programs curtailed by budgetary constraints rather than strategic necessity. The F-22, an unmatched air superiority fighter, saw its production capped at 187 aircraft,<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Nicholas Werner, “Why Did the U.S. Air Force Cancel the F-22 Raptor?” Jalopnik, June 1, 2025, https://www.jalopnik.com/1870624/reason-us-air-force-canceled-f-22-raptor-explained/ (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF far short of the original requirement for over 700. Similarly, the B-2 Spirit was limited to a fleet of only 21 operational aircraft, falling dramatically short of the envisioned 132 units.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Christian D. Orr, “B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber: The Most Expensive Plane Ever ($2.13 Billion Each),” The National Interest, December 29, 2023, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/b-2-spirit-stealth-bomber-most-expensive-plane-ever-213-billion-each-208234 (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF Both decisions were driven by the incorrect belief that smaller, technologically superior forces could substitute for larger fleets.
<h3>Production Costs</h3>
Moreover, the B-21 program, like its technological predecessors the B-2 and the F-22, involves significant up-front development and research costs, including engineering, testing, and certification.&nbsp;These costs are spread across the total number of aircraft produced. The smaller the inventory, the higher the total per unit cost. Conversely, as production increases, the cost per aircraft generally decreases due to factors like efficient manufacturing processes, lower material costs per unit, and the spread of fixed costs over more units.&nbsp;Increasing the number of the B-21 fleet—and potentially selling B-21s to America’s closest allies, as the United States has done with the F-35—reduces the per unit cost of the aircraft, making it more affordable.
In addition, having a second B-21 production facility would reduce the vulnerability of having a single point of failure when it comes to B-21 production. Should the Palmdale facility be destroyed—either through an accident or as part of a planned strike by an adversary—it would delay the program by years. A second facility offers redundancy and protection against a sudden strike designed to cripple America’s ability to field the B-21.
It should also be remembered that higher production numbers increase the order volume for subcontractors who provide components for the aircraft. Increasing the order volume makes subcontractors healthier long term, which, in turn, increases the capacity and long-term viability of America’s defense industrial base. Indeed, many of the woes currently plaguing America’s defense industrial base stem from the fact that Defense Department orders are unreliable. Prime contractors typically receive single-year procurement orders, making it difficult for the primes and their suppliers to make multi-year investments or plans. Further, low-order volumes have shrunk the number of subcontractors and vendors that are necessary for a healthy defense industrial base. Maintaining a healthy defense industrial base requires incentivizing participation in the defense industry by the private sector—including among smaller vendors—which requires consistency and profitability. Doubling the production rate of the B-21 through a second facility goes far to achieve this goal.
<h3>Capacity</h3>
Capacity is a quality all its own. This is true for both the industrial capacity to build and the operational capacity to deter and fight the nation’s wars. U.S. Strategic Command Commander General Tony Cotton, USAF, recently testified before Congress<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;General Anthony J. Cotton, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, testimony before the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, Armed Forces Committee, U.S. Senate, March 26, 2025, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/testimony_of_general_anthony_jcotton2.pdf (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF that the nation needed at least 145 B-21s. Some speculate that the nation will need at least 250 B-21s.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Rebeccah Heinrichs, Mackenzie Eaglen, and Jennifer Bradley, “America’s B-21 Raiders: Deterring and Assuring in the New Cold War,” Hudson Institute, December 12, 2023, https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy/america-b-21-raiders-deterring-assuring-new-cold-war-rebeccah-heinrichs (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF
China has ambitions of global hegemony; Russia is increasingly fixated on recreating their once-dominant Soviet power; Iran and North Korea show few signs of comity. The foundation to address 21st-century challenges is sufficient force structure. A second production plant will allow the U.S. to build, field, and operate the inventory it needs—and on a timeline that respects these threats.
Additional B-21 production capacity will also allow the U.S. to consider sales of the aircraft to other nations. America’s closest allies have signaled an interest in buying the B-21. Unlike the F-22, the F-35 was designed as a capability to be shared with allies and partners.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;“Alliance-Based Deterrence: The F-35 Strengthens NATO Partnerships,” Lockheed Martin, June 14, 2021, https://www.f35.com/f35/news-and-features/alliance-based-deterrence-strengthening-nato-partnerships.html (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF The value of this approach increased the warfighting capability of our allies, improved operational and technical interoperability for our warfighters, bolstered the U.S. defense industry, and signaled to American enemies the strength of U.S.-led alliances around the world. The U.S. should strongly consider a similar approach for the B-21 and must be able to make such decisions unconstrained by self-imposed industrial-capacity limitations.
Finally, building a second B-21 production plant is a smart industrial policy decision.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Robert Greenway et. al., “A Strategy to Revitalize the Defense Industrial Base for the 21st Century,” Heritage Foundation Special Report No. 314, April 7, 2025, https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/strategy-revitalize-the-defense-industrial-base-the-21st-century.&lt;/p&gt;">REF Diversification of production limits risk posed by man-made and natural disasters. It increases workforce demands for high-pay, high-skilled labor and improves local economies outside the Palmdale area. The current plant in Palmdale was previously used to build the B-2. A second plant will also provide the infrastructure for follow-on industrial capacity beyond the B-21.
Indeed, it is already possible that Congress is moving in the direction of ordering additional B-21s for the Air Force. As a recent news article noted:
<blockquote>In another key change, the SASC version also tweaks the language associated with the $4.5 billion for the B-21 bomber program, stipulating that the funds be used for “expansion of the production capacity” of the bomber, “including tooling and expansion of the supplier base, and the purchase of aircraft only available through the expansion of production capacity”—language seemingly meant to induce the Air Force to increase B-21 production rate, rather than accelerating the buy.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Valerie Insinna, “Less Ships, More Bombs: Senate Unveils Its Version of $150B Defense Reconciliation Package,” Breaking Defense, June 4, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/less-ships-more-bombs-senate-unveils-its-version-of-150b-defense-reconciliation-package/ (accessed June 13, 2025).&lt;/p&gt;">REF</blockquote>
If Congress is, indeed, serious about expanding the B-21 fleet from 100 bombers to 145 as per General Cotton’s recommendation—or, indeed, to a number even higher than 145 bombers—it is unlikely that the single facility at Palmdale will be sufficient to produce enough of the aircraft in a timely fashion.
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
The B-21 Raider represents the future of America’s strategic bomber force, a platform designed to ensure dominance in an era of complex and evolving threats. But the success of this program hinges not only on its advanced capabilities but also on the ability to produce it at scale and speed. The House version of the reconciliation bill takes an important first step, adding $4.5B to help accelerate production and allow for an inventory above 100 aircraft. But a second production facility is essential to meeting both the nation’s operational requirements and the broader demands of allied collaboration.
History has shown the perils of settling for what seems affordable rather than what is necessary. The United States cannot afford to make the same mistake with the B-21 Raider. Quantity, as much as quality, will define the strategic balance of the 21st century. By investing in a second production line, the nation can ensure that this balance tips decisively in its favor.
Shawn Barnes is Visiting Fellow for Space Force in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation. Robert Peters is Senior Research Fellow for Strategic Deterrence in the Allison Center.
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 10:32:53 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Shawn Barnes, Robert Peters</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/time-double-the-production-rate-the-b-21</guid>
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<title>Countering China’s Economic Warfare</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/countering-chinas-economic-warfare</link>
<description>This month, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/05/16/china-colombia-brazil-bri-economy-celac-us-aid-trump/?tpcc=recirc_latest062921">Colombia announced</a> it has officially joined the <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative">Belt and Road Initiative</a> (BRI), an international development institution backed by the Chinese Communist Party. The initiative was designed with the intent to increase China’s <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/05/13/china-war-washington-still-isnt-fighting/">global monetary influence</a> through strategic infrastructure investments. This unfortunate news comes just months after Panama made the impressive <a ref="https://www.reuters.com/world/china-lodges-complaints-with-us-over-panama-canal-remarks-2025-02-05/">decision</a> to become the first country leave the BRI.
That Colombia, an American ally, would accept support from a U.S. adversary, points to a fundamental issue: the U.S. is not effectively countering China’s economic warfare.
Therefore, to protect our allies across the globe, Washington must commit to the shift from ineffective grant-based USAID to the America First aligned Development Finance Corporation.
Appealing to Colombia’s underutilized Pacific coast and a <a href="https://colombiaone.com/2025/05/14/colombia-new-silk-road-china/">$14 billion trade deficit</a>, Xi Jinping was able to convince Colombia’s Marxist President Gustavo Petro to sign a deal promising a commercial trade route from Shanghai to Puerto Buenaventura.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/the-new-cold-war-china">The New Cold War With China</a>
Colombia has long been one of America’s closest allies in the Western Hemisphere and the two have a strong and effective partnership. After decades of conservative leadership in Bogota, resulting in a more prosperous and secure Colombia, it is a shame <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/02/06/poll-most-americans-support-trumps-use-tariff-threats-against-colombia/">Colombia’s leftist leader</a> is opting to accept CCP funds.
But these instances are, unfortunately, not unique to Colombia. Developing nations cannot help but accept billion dollar offers by the CCP, especially when some politicians are <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/Doshi_USCC%20Testimony_FINAL.pdf">paid to pursue dangerous BRI deals</a>.
As if that weren’t enough, <a href="https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/peak-repayment-china-global-lending/">The Lowy Institute points out</a> that Beijing has turned into a “net financial drain on developing country budgets as debt servicing costs on Belt and Road Initiative projects from the 2010s now far outstrip new loan disbursements.”
Moreover, the BRI will collect <a href="https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/peak-repayment-china-global-lending/">$35 billion in debt</a> this year from some of the most economically disadvantaged nations.
This is coercion at its finest.
The <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/06/14/chinas-malign-influence-growing-rep-michael-mccaul-says/">BRI</a>, established in 2013, responded to the developing world’s need for roads, railways, ports and other key infrastructure that USAID and other Western donors were not keen to finance. Quickly, the BRI posed a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies, as Beijing leveraged the inability of poor countries to pay back these loans into military and political assets.
Meanwhile, USAID’s mission was corrupted by politicized left-wing initiatives and detached from any free market economic reforms that would prompt wealth creation and wean poor countries off aid dependency, leaving our global partners no other option for infrastructure development.
“What should be an effective tool of U.S. foreign policy,” Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Max Primorac testified in <a href="https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/117889/witnesses/HHRG-119-FA00-Wstate-PrimoracM-20250213.pdf">February before the House Foreign Affairs Committee</a>, “has turned into a highly partisan global vehicle focused on spending ever higher amounts of money instead of achieving concrete outcomes consistent with American interests.”
Worse, taxpayer dollars were used to finance blatantly ideological social agendas within USAID. In fact, Secretary Rubio recently pointed out that only <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/05/21/secretary_rubio_at_usaid_only_12_cents_of_every_dollar_was_real_humanitarian_aid.html">12 cents to every dollar</a> were directed to real aid.
All along, China’s economy has <a href="https://economicsinsider.com/comparing-us-and-china-gdp-numbers/">grown to two-thirds the size of America’s</a>—a level of economic competition the U.S. never faced from Russia during the Cold War. And the BRI only further accelerates China's economic trajectory. In fact, the BRI is could even boost Chinese GDP by an additional $7.1 trillion by 2040.
Allowing Beijing to continue expanding its economic influence while simultaneously courting critical U.S. allies like Colombia presents a clear and substantial strategic threat to American security and global interests.
For these reasons, America should immediately offer a financial alternative to the world.
The <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/after-months-cuts-state-department-officially-shuttering-usaid/story?id=120267238">dismantling of USAID</a> offers the U.S. government an opportunity to transition from its ineffective grants-based aid approach towards one that promotes trade and investment tied to American interests and values.
In close coordination with and following the political direction of Secretary Rubio’s State Department, the U.S. Development Finance Corporation (<a href="https://www.dfc.gov/about-us">DFC</a>) has the potential to play that role.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/trump-must-protect-american-ai-china">Trump Must Protect American AI From China</a>
Established in 2019 through the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R45461">BUILD Act</a>, the DFC seeks to “advance U.S. foreign policy and strengthen national security by mobilizing private capital around the world.” Today, the institution partners with the private sector to mobilize capital for high-impact development initiatives around the world, ensuring significant and sustained impact.&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.dfc.gov/what-we-do/investment-stories">Recent examples</a> underscore this potential: the DFCs expansion of natural gas processing capacity in Iraq and strengthening of critical mineral supply chains in Angola demonstrate the agency’s ability to generate lasting results where USAID fell short.
Through its <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/04/trump-3-trillion-investment-american-economy/">investment</a> campaigns and debt financing opportunities, the DFC is not only a viable alternative to the CCP’s BRI for developing nations, but also a method through which the U.S. can assure mutually beneficial opportunities abroad.
And fortunately, it abides by international labor and environmental standards in contrast to Chinese companies known for corrupting foreign officials to win contracts.
In crude terms, <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/03/24/usaid-squanders-millions-atlas-network-shows-how-to-foster-genuine-international-development/">USAID</a> was meant to use money as a powerful tool of statecraft. They failed, and BRI stepped in.
However, Washington must understand that USAID’s shortcomings do not invalidate the broader value of economic engagement.
Currently, <a href="https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/hearing/reauthorizing-the-u-s-development-finance-corporation/">Congress is preparing</a> to extend and strengthen the Build Act and provide DFC with additional resources. This is a critical step to ensure the security and prosperity of allies and partners like Colombia while effectively countering China’s growing malign influence.
</description>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jun 2025 09:35:13 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Anna Gustafson, Ellyn Chatham</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/china/commentary/countering-chinas-economic-warfare</guid>
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<title>Texas Lawmakers Have Failed Their Constituents on Immigration Enforcement</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/border-security/commentary/texas-lawmakers-have-failed-their-constituents-immigration-enforcement</link>
<description>The phrase “Do-Nothing Congress” dates back to the 1940s, but the 90th Congress that President Truman criticized was a model of activity compared with the Texas House. When lawmakers in Austin adjourned recently, they killed prospects for several immigration and border security bills aimed at eliminating the state’s illegal-migration crisis.
Despite Texas having the <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/us-immigration-policy-program-data-hub/unauthorized-immigrant-population-profiles" rel="noopener" target="_blank">second-largest</a> illegal alien population in the U.S., the 89th legislative session failed to pass meaningful enforcement measures or revoke opportunities incentivizing aliens to reside in Texas in violation of federal law.
Texans <a href="https://www.politico.com/2024-election/results/texas/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">mandated</a>&nbsp;bold legislative action to address the <a href="https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&amp;&amp;p=2dfea076dd12e960f8024c8c1fe55cdd0461cef8cf0f0885c1a7b311ec995365JmltdHM9MTc0OTE2ODAwMA&amp;ptn=3&amp;ver=2&amp;hsh=4&amp;fclid=0ee6bf7a-3c54-6bf4-3ba7-ab863d536a5f&amp;psq=heritage+preventable+crime+map&amp;u=a1aHR0cHM6Ly9kYXRhdmlzdWFsaXphdGlvbnMuaGVyaXRhZ2Uub3JnL2ltbWlncmF0aW9uL2JvcmRlci1pbnNlY3VyaXR5LWFuZC1sYXgtbGF3LWVuZm9yY2VtZW50LWxlYWQtdG8tcHJldmVudGFibGUtY3JpbWUvaW5kZXguaHRtbA&amp;ntb=1" rel="noopener" target="_blank">preventable</a> threats posed by illegal immigration. Yet as the final gavel fell, the message delivered to Texans was one of commitment, not to U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants but to bureaucracy, inaction, and delay.
Several bills introduced this session would have made a tangible difference as they paralleled federal law, ensured public safety, and upheld fiscal responsibility. Here’s what Texas House leadership ignored this session.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/border-security/commentary/congress-must-not-reduce-border-security-spending">Congress Must Not Reduce Border Security Spending</a>
Current Texas statute requires only state agencies, institutions of higher education, and adult-entertainment businesses to validate employees’ work eligibility through the E-Verify system. Senate Bill <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00324E.pdf#navpanes=0" rel="noopener" target="_blank">324</a> would have expanded that requirement to many other businesses. American jobs and wages serve as the No. 1 incentives for aliens to unlawfully enter or remain in the United States. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1324a" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Title 8 U.S. Code § 1324a</a> expressly prohibits the employment of unauthorized aliens, making E-Verify a necessary instrument for states to comply with federal law.
Until recently, illegal aliens qualified for in-state tuition at Texas public universities, while non-Texan U.S. citizens were forced to pay out-of-state rates, in direct violation of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1623" rel="noopener" target="_blank">8 U.S.C. § 1623</a>. Senate Bill <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=89R&amp;Bill=SB1798" rel="noopener" target="_blank">1798</a> ensured that resident rates would no longer be applied to illegal aliens, but the bill was never considered before the full body of either chamber.
Thankfully, a new lawsuit settlement permanently prohibits Texas from unconstitutionally issuing educational benefits for illegal aliens while U.S. citizens are ineligible for the same benefit, whether they are Texan or not. The legislature allowed S.B. 1798 to die without an existing case law precedent to eliminate the state’s unlawful practice.
The legislature also killed other good bills that would have required disclosure of citizenship status on real estate transfer documents (targeting illegal alien settlements such as <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/02/25/texas-colony-ridge-raids-arrests-immigrants-ice/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Colony Ridge</a>), prohibited land titles for illegal aliens or “designated countries,” and increased criminal penalties for unlawfully present aliens.
Defenders of the legislature argue that the state’s failure to give illegal aliens a Texas-sized goodbye is the result of a codified time restriction rather than willful stonewalling by leadership. <a href="https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/CN/htm/CN.3.htm#3.5" rel="noopener" target="_blank">Article III Section 5</a> of the Texas Constitution restricts both chambers from considering business not considered appropriations, gubernatorial recess appointments, or emergency items designated by the governor for the first 60 days of session.
It was not procedural matters that killed immigration bills this session. While both chambers are given the same 140 session days, only one gets to work quickly. The state senate <a href="https://www.texaspolicyresearch.com/the-slow-start-why-texas-lawmakers-cant-consider-most-bills-at-the-beginning-of-session/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">assigned</a> committee placements on the fourth day of session and passed its first bill favorably out of committee on the 15th day of session.
By comparison, the Texas House waited until the 31st day to hand out committee assignments, 27 days after the senate.
The only worthwhile immigration bill sent to the governor’s desk this session was <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00008F.pdf#navpanes=0" rel="noopener" target="_blank">S.B. 8</a>. This bill requires some local law enforcement agencies to enter into memorandums of agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the <a href="https://www.ice.gov/identify-and-arrest/287g" rel="noopener" target="_blank">287(g) program</a> outlined in the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The senate <a href="https://journals.senate.texas.gov/sjrnl/89r/pdf/89RSJ04-01-F.PDF#page=4" rel="noopener" target="_blank">suspended</a> regular order of business as necessary in order to send S.B. 8 to the house by April 2, but representatives did not vote on the bill before the full house until May 25, nearly two months later and only a few days before adjournment.
The reality is that most immigration legislation was dead on arrival in the house, as demonstrated by their lack of scheduled hearings, suspension of regular order of business, placement on calendars—or, really, any meaningful consideration.
&gt;&gt;&gt;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.heritage.org/border-security/commentary/sanctuary-cities-forced-comply-federal-immigration-rules-due-innovative">Sanctuary Cities Forced To Comply With Federal Immigration Rules Due to Innovative Program</a>
<aside>
Lawmakers will dodge this criticism by pointing to <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/884/billtext/pdf/SB00004F.pdf#navpanes=0" rel="noopener" target="_blank">S.B. 4</a>, an immigration and border security package passed back in 2023, which created the offense of illegal presence. The simple fact that the legislature convened multiple times to act on this issue (one regular and four gubernatorially mandated special sessions) demonstrates that the legislature easily dismisses the agenda for immigration enforcement.
</aside>
S.B. 4 served as a necessary protective measure for Texas when the Biden administration allowed a foreign invasion into the state, but Texas still has a lot of work to do. For starters, Texas does not target employers’ business licenses as consequence for hiring illegal aliens. Texas also neglects to enact vehicle laws that prevent solicitation for day labor; nor does it impose taxes on remittances sent abroad or require banks to verify immigration status.
Texas has failed to penalize nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that smuggle illegal aliens around the state, despite data that the state had the highest density in the country of cellphones reasonably suspected to belong to illegal aliens detected at NGO facilities, according to a <a href="https://itsyourgov.org/investigation/ngo-trafficking-of-illegal-migrants/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">report</a> by the Oversight Project.
President Trump issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-american-people-against-invasion/" rel="noopener" target="_blank">executive order</a> terminating federal grants the Biden administration had awarded these private groups to transport illegal aliens, which created a lucrative business model that NGOs capitalized on in Texas. Unless the state legislature codifies a ban on licenses, contracts, and grants for NGOs involved in assisting illegal aliens, this system could be revived by future leftist administrations. The Heritage Foundation published a <a href="https://www.heritage.org/model-legislation/model-state-statute-concealing-harboring-and-shielding-aliens" rel="noopener" target="_blank">model statute</a> on its website to ensure states are safe against organizations transporting illegal aliens.
Although Texans empowered the legislature with the direction to end illegal immigration, a key takeaway from the 89th regular session is that proposing immigration enforcement in Texas is a sure way to kill a bill.
</description>
<pubDate>Fri, 20 Jun 2025 10:16:00 -0400</pubDate>
<dc:creator>Brandy Perez</dc:creator>
<guid isPermaLink="true">https://www.heritage.org/border-security/commentary/texas-lawmakers-have-failed-their-constituents-immigration-enforcement</guid>
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<title>America’s Competitive Heritage</title>
<link>https://www.heritage.org/american-history/report/americas-competitive-heritage</link>
<description>We are one year from America’s 250th birthday—born on the Fourth of July 1776, announced by our Declaration of Independence. The party is already underway, with books and symposiums, spruced-up historic sites, essays such as this one, and, in Washington, an official “U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission.”
The Declaration’s self-evident truths—human equality, liberty, pursuit of happiness, self-government—will be parsed and plumbed. Did you realize they were phrased in iambic pentameter, throwing down the gauntlet at the Brits in the cadence of Shakespeare and Milton? Its short list of “unalienable rights” will invite conservative paeans to natural law and liberal recommendations to extend the list. Its litany of King George’s abuses will be contested. Some were trumped up and will get Pinocchios from modern fact-checkers—but they were meant to be taken seriously if not literally, and led to key provisions in the Constitution. Incumbent Presidents and Congresses cannot manipulate their tenures; the President cannot dissolve Congress; Congress cannot discharge the President except in extraordinary circumstances.
The main object of attention will be the Founding itself and the momentous epoch it launched. The Declaration’s preamble did not fall from the sky, nor from the pens of Locke and Montesquieu. It was an instrument of statecraft, written by representatives from 13 colonies with disparate interests and values who found sufficient common ground to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on a risky bet on nationhood. Their studied neglect of slavery, even as they laid the moral foundations for its eventual abolition, will be vigorously debated. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln recast the Declaration’s “truth” of human equality as a “proposition” to test later generations, and its birth of freedom as needing rebirth. Many celebrants will say that we were a nation of immigrants from the start and came to be defined by our cultural diversity and spirit of liberal pluralism.
I believe there was a principle at work in 1776 that was undeclared but implicit in the Founders’ words and deeds, something so embedded in their lives and thinking that they took it for granted. That was the principle of competition. The free-market economy, with multiple suppliers competing for resources, workers, and customers, was an American departure from British monopolies and mercantilism—and incited many of the disputes that led to revolution. Competition became the driving force of American science, religion, and culture—enshrined in the First Amendment’s policy of laissez-faire. And it was the foundation of our politics and government. Through regular elections, separation of powers, and federalism, incumbents and challengers compete for votes while government institutions compete for jurisdiction and power.
Competition is a universal condition, present in all societies and throughout the natural world, but it has been codified, systemized, and given ample rein in America like nowhere else. Our touted “liberal pluralism”—mutual toleration among a mosaic of groups and cultures—is better described as competitive pluralism. We proselytize ardently on behalf of matters moral and practical, personal and political, and build institutions that actively compete for adherents, prestige, and prerogatives. Properly regulated, this competition generates knowledge and improvement. Americans have been more concerned with regulating and harnessing competition than with suppressing it—and first learned to do so in our founding epoch.
I came to this view in preparing a paper for one of the birthday commemorations, the American Enterprise Institute’s “America at 250” project. My assignment was to write about the Founders’ capitalism, a well-trodden subject. The Constitution promoted private property, freedom of contract, and limited government, and early Supreme Courts actually took its provisions seriously. Alexander Hamilton’s financial brainstorms during the George Washington Administration—nationwide banking, stable currency, well-managed public debt, securities markets—set the new nation on a path of unprecedented economic growth.
It’s a great story, with many lessons for our dissipated modern age. But I thought it neglected a critical question: Where did those market-friendly policies come from? Historians quote pro-property-rights passages from the Federalist Papers and note that Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776 and was studied by several Founders. But this is cherry-picking. “Crony capitalism,” making sport of property and contract, was prevalent in the colonial assemblies and early state legislatures. Hamilton’s policies were bitterly contested and enacted through a fair amount of political subterfuge. The economy grew spectacularly in the new republic in the face of many policy uncertainties and adverse measures.
I found the answer in our 150-year colonial experience before the Founding. Robert Frost’s “The land was ours before we were the land’s / She was our land more than a hundred years / Before we were her people”REF is poetic license. The colonial settlers had built a de facto nation before they declared themselves an independent people. And the building blocks were enterprise and competition. The land was a gift outright that came with severe demands. Settlement of a raw wilderness required personal assertiveness and risk-taking, active commerce with the distant Old World, and creative adaptation of British and Dutch laws and customs.
Social practices—the “folkways” of David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed—varied widely from New England to the mid-Atlantic to Virginia and the South.REF Politics and government were accordingly localized and distinctive, with differently situated colonies competing for settlers and finance. The abundance of land and natural resources, and the industriousness and cultural similarities of the settlers, kept colonial politics from descending into dog-eat-dog tribalism. (The same could not be said of competition with the native tribes.)
These circumstances profoundly shaped the Founders’ work. Fragmented political authority and competition in government gave running room for enterprising men, who were numerous, to establish a prosperous economy. There were three phases of evolution: colonial, founding, and national.
<h3>The Colonial Period (1620–1770)</h3>
America was settled by adventurers, some of them well-off but fleeing religious persecution, some facing worldly problems, some poor outcasts—all of them seeking a new life in a faraway land. Well into the 18th century, the pilgrimage began with a perilous ocean voyage followed by daunting uncertainties and challenges. There was plenty of land and water, and eventually towns and a few cities, but making one’s way would take hard work, resourcefulness, and resilience. Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 appraisal was that “nature and circumstances have made the inhabitant of the United States an audacious man.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 279.&lt;/p&gt;">REF Historian Carl N. Degler wrote in 1959 that “capitalism came in the first ships.”REF They were venture capitalists, investing in themselves. They left their native world, where labor was abundant and cheap and land was scarce, for a new world where land was abundant and crying out for labor.
Enterprising Religion. Many settlers were religious refugees and strongly communitarian, but their leaders were necessarily self-reliant and practical. Puritan John Winthrop and Quaker William Penn came from wealthy, well-connected English families and became enthusiastic colonial developers. Their dissident heritage, soon joined by many denominational start-ups, made competition the defining feature of American religion. Some sects advocated religious tolerance; others would have been happy with an Old World–style monopoly. The conditions of colonial life settled the matter. The vast, sparsely settled territory made tidy parishes impossible. The population was culturally diverse and included many who were irreligious or mere deists. Economic development was imperative, and merchants and traders found religious preferences bad for business. When adopted a century later, the First Amendment’s protections of religious freedom were not a philosophical dispensation but rather a codification of facts on the ground.
Religion was also the proving ground of our celebrated practice of voluntary association. Americans, Tocqueville wrote, “so completely confuse Christianity and freedom…that it is almost impossible to have them conceive of the one without the other.” They build schools and missionary churches on the frontiers so that the next generation may be “as free as the one from which it has issued.”REF
The Business of Settlement. The colonies began as either joint-stock companies owned by private investors or royal land grants to favored individuals. Privatized, for-profit colonization reflected English political traditions and, in the 1600s, the distracted circumstances of its kings and ministers through decades of war and revolution. In contrast, the Spanish came as conquistadores for church and state, and the French trappers as agents of the crown with no political rights of their own.
The colonies were rich in resources but starved for goods and credit and isolated by a mighty ocean. Seaborne commerce required capital investment, reliable connections in foreign ports, and management of the enormous risks of ocean transport. This led to the rise of the businessman, recounted in the first of Bernard Bailyn’s studies of early America.REF In New England, merchants became influential personages, equaling and eventually supplanting Puritan church leaders in colonial government. They were a force for economic and political reform along competitive lines—blithely ignoring the mother country’s mercantilist shipping restrictions, and defeating efforts to establish homegrown government monopolies in the colonies.
Insurance and Self-Mastery. The merchants, in financing complex voyages with multiple perils, hit on the idea of treating risk as a commodity—separate from the physical commodities being transported and subject to estimation, valuation, and competitive exchange. Markets in marine insurance contracts soon appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. University of Chicago historian Jonathan Levy has shown how the invention of insurance led to the distinctly American conception of freedom as self-ownership.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Jonathan Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012).&lt;/p&gt;">REF If the future could be reckoned with, rather than passively accepted as implacable fate, then the individual could take responsibility for his own life’s course.
Which eventually included the enslaved persons aboard many of those ships. From records of slave ships and court proceedings, Levy shows how insurance contributed to abolition. Slaves, like other cargo, had been insured by their owners. Could the shipowners recover their losses from a slave revolt—or not, because the slaves had taken charge of their lives and attendant risks? If modern personhood meant self-mastery, why shouldn’t black persons be masters of their own selves?
From Aristocratic Endowment to Democratic Capital. The colonists’ most important economic innovation was converting land from aristocratic endowment to democratic capital, analyzed in the pathbreaking scholarship of Yale Law School’s Claire Priest.<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Claire Priest, Credit Nation: Property Laws and Institutions in Early America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021), and Claire Priest, “Currency Policies and Legal Development in Colonial New England,” Yale Law Journal, Vol. 110, No. 8 (June 2001).&lt;/p&gt;">REF English law and custom treated land as the foundation of hereditary social status and social stability—fenced off from mere commerce by primogeniture and entail, restricted from use as security for borrowing and investment. In contrast, the colonial joint-stock companies and land barons distributed their land widely and cheaply in order to promote remunerative settlement and development. Outright squatting, which was illegal in Britain, was natural and hard to police in the wilderness. Colonial legislatures established public records of deeds and mortgages and gave squatters rights to the value of their property improvements.
They also liberalized creditors’ remedies against debtors’ land—which lowered interest rates and made land routine security for commercial investments and everyday transactions. Merchants would provide cash-starved farmers with supplies in exchange for a portion of next fall’s harvest, secured by an interest in the farmers’ land. Justice Joseph Story, in his 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution, observed that the colonial legal reforms made land “a substitute for money.”REF
The Invention of Money. The land and its promise soon became the foundation of actual money. The colonies suffered from a lack of currency, the result of British hoarding of specie (silver and gold coins). The solution was “fiat money,” another momentous invention. Beginning in the late 1600s, colonial governments issued “bills of credit,” promising to redeem them at some future date, and set up “land banks” that issued bills as mortgage loans. In this manner, they created portable, plenteous currency. It was backed not by specie, which they lacked, but by land and credit—credit being confidence in future growth—which they possessed in abundance. Monetary performance was mixed at best, with many cases of overissuance and severe inflation. But government money was a new, complex phenomenon, and the variety of tyro colonial practices and results generated rapid learning-by-doing. (Pennsylvania was a leader in stable money.) This was America’s first deployment of “laboratories of democracy”—competitive federalism—and produced steady policy improvements and economic growth.
On the eve of the revolution, Britain’s North American colonies had become the most prosperous society on earth. Income, living standards, and literacy were much higher than in Britain and Europe and in the Spanish and French colonies. Adult men averaged five feet, nine inches, about three inches taller than Brits and Europeans. In the northern colonies, more than 70 percent of families owned their own land. Population was surging thanks to high fertility and immigration.
The disputes over taxes and trade that led to war were about self-government, not commerce per se. But they were powered by entrepreneurial success. If the rebels had been poorer, or conventionally risk-averse like the Tories among them and the Canadians to the north, they would have stuck with the bargain of British rule for British protection. But “audacious men” had already risked everything to settle the territory. Now they wanted political freedom, and they had acquired the resources to make a fight of it.
The Founders personified that heritage. Most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were accomplished men of commerce—merchants and farmers, shippers and shopkeepers, investors and speculators and land developers, such as Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Robert Morris, and James Wilson. The lawyers and pamphleteers among them had substantial experience in trade and finance. They were utterly unlike the usual revolutionaries—radical intellectuals, malcontent lawyers, romantic noblemen, and ambitious military officers, such as those who formed the Committee on Public Safety in the contemporaneous French Revolution. Our Founding Fathers were brilliant, learned, and conscious of their historic calling. But they were also pragmatic, accustomed to the give-and-take of business affairs, comfortable with competing interests, and amenable to compromise. They had built their world and aimed to preserve and improve it, not overthrow it.
<h3>The Founding Period (1770–1790)</h3>
The War of Independence came at a terrible cost. More American lives were lost per capita than in any subsequent war, incomes fell drastically, and towns and harbors were decimated. The war was financed by desperate emissions of paper money, which eventually became virtually worthless. And war was followed by years of economic depression, plummeting foreign trade, and domestic political turmoil. The Continental Confederation and many states were effectively bankrupt and unable to service their debts or pay the soldiers who had won independence.
Still, the exigencies of war spurred many improvements in manufacturing, transportation, and communications. With victory, they were ready for nation-building. Gordon Wood writes that the 1780s were:
<blockquote>[T]he most critical moment in the entire history of America…[revealing] for the first time all the latent commercial and enterprising power of America’s emerging democratic society. In the 1780s we can actually sense the shift from a premodern traditional society to a modern one in which the business interests and consumer tastes of ordinary people were coming to dominate.REF</blockquote>
With peace, the Declaration’s battle-cry that all men are created equal, with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, “released the aspirations and energies of common people as never before.”REF
Government was, as ever, a lagging indicator, but caught up fast. The 1780s state assemblies were nests of post-war recriminations and inside dealing. But the first state constitutions, drafted by the likes of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, introduced written charters with popular consent, separation of powers with a single executive and independent courts, and bills of rights protecting speech and religion. The national government of the Articles of Confederation was seriously deficient, lacking authority to raise revenue and negotiate foreign trade agreements. Yet the Continental Congress turned in an outstanding record. It concluded a peace treaty with Britain that nearly doubled American territory, and induced the largest states to relinquish their claims to western land for the formation of additional states. It consecrated much of the new territory with its Northwest Ordinance—protecting property and political and religious freedoms; forbidding slavery; laying out a brilliant system for plotting and selling the land in fee simple (building on the colonial legal reforms); and establishing townships and schools.
Inherited Federalism. On the score of competitive government, the most striking achievement of the 1780s was adventitious: a strong system of federalism. The Articles of Confederation were a loose compact of 13 newly independent states, and the Continental Congress voted by state and required a supermajority of nine. The arrangement was a natural outgrowth of the colonial system and gave the states a head start in forging a proper national government. The impresarios of the Philadelphia Convention of 1787—James Madison, Washington, and Hamilton—were disgusted with the impotence of the Confederation and the parochial machinations of the state assemblies. Madison showed up with a plan to abolish sovereign states in favor of a unitary national government. This was to be accomplished through a bicameral Congress apportioned by population in both chambers, equipped with an absolute veto over state legislation. The scheme died in the opening days. Delegates from smaller states were implacably opposed—and many others felt it was redolent of the British Parliament’s oppression of colonial assemblies and would incite popular opposition when the time came for ratification.
The Convention proceeded to draft a Constitution in which the states were equally represented by their own delegates in the Senate and were major players in national elections for President and Congress. The document made federal law supreme and fixed widely acknowledged problems in the Articles—the federal government could impose taxes and tariffs and regulate commerce, and state governments could not (among a few other things) enact ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, or laws “impairing the obligation of contract.” But the states continued to possess plenary powers beyond the specific prohibitions, while the federal government was one of enumerated powers with a strengthened form of the separation-of-powers architecture pioneered by the state constitutions.
Edward C. Banfield described the Convention’s federalism as “an accident”—a product not of “reason and choice” but of “competition and struggle.”<span class="annotation__highlight" data-annotation="&lt;p&gt;Edward C. Banfield, “Was the Founding an Accident?” in Edward C. Banfield, Here the People Rule: Selected Essays, 2nd. ed. (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1991), p. 7.&lt;/p&gt;">REF It could also be described as an inheritance. The distributed political structure of the colonial and confederation periods shaped the Philadelphia deliberations, which adapted that structure to the needs of a new nation.
The Inheritance Justified. That structure promptly acquired a philosophical warrant. Although Madison despaired of the system of “shared sovereignty” as it emerged in Philadelphia, he left with an enlarged view of the matter. In the ratification debates, Madison “embraced the very ambiguity [he] had condemned as a fatal weakness of the Constitution as its central strength,” writes historian Joseph J. Ellis.REF His Federalist essays 10, 39, and 51 laid out what may be called the competitive theory of federalism:
<ul>
<li>The first protection against tyrannical government is a large nation—“a greater number of citizens, and a greater sphere of country.” An “extended republic” will encompass so many factions competing for legislative favors that it will be difficult to assemble oppressive majorities.</li>
<li>The second protection is separation of powers into executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Here Madison draws explicitly on the experience of competitive markets—“[The] policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.”</li>
<li>Federalism combines the two protections “happily for the republican cause.” First, the “practicable sphere” of a federated nation is larger and more various than a single authority could effectively govern; second, “a double security arises to the rights of the people” by dividing powers not only within each level of government but also between the two levels.</li>
</ul>
<h3>The New Republic (1790–1890)</h3>
The American economy took off like a rocket in the 1790s, propelled, no doubt, by the spirit of democratic freedom noted by Wood, now fortified by an able national government and new protections of property and contract. But economic historians agree that the immediate cause was the genius financial policies designed by Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton and embraced by President Washington—a national banking system, the federal government’s assumption of state debts, and a stable national currency backed in part by specie and in part by well-managed debt.
These were the first fruits of the Constitution’s checks and balances. Congress on its own, or a parliamentary government in which the executive is appointed by the legislature, would never have adopted such radical measures. They were the upshot of “energy in the executive” confronting, and eventually prevailing upon, a surprised, reluctant legislature. It began a distinctively American form of institutional competition. In most nations, the head of government is chosen from longtime denizens of the national legislature. Our Congress, while holding immense formal power, must contend with a President with his own political base and a disposition impatient with legislative divisions and inertia.
Federalism has added powerfully to this dynamic. Since Andrew Jackson inaugurated the democratic presidency, only four men have moved from Congress to the Oval Office (Benjamin Harrison, Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama), while the President has often been a state governor challenging an inbred Washington establishment (Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush).
Hamilton’s financial program was also the advent of policy federalism. Debt assumption freed the states from inherited burdens they were ill-equipped to manage—while giving the fledgling national government instant gravitas and the means of establishing a uniform national currency, backed by a debt portfolio secured by its immense land holdings. The Bank of the United States, mainly privately owned, offered complete banking services and prompt nationwide remittances—but possessed nothing like the monopoly of the Bank of England. The Constitution forbade the states from issuing fiat money but said nothing about banks! States seized the opportunity to charter banks that issued bills of credit alongside the national currency, made easy loans to their state governments and private customers, and were attuned to local interests. State-chartered banks, numbering three in 1790, grew to 28 in 1800, 102 in 1810, and many hundreds thereafter. As early as 1800, the ownership capital of the state banks, and the value of their bills circulating as money, surpassed those of the Bank of the United States.
Capitalism in Nation-Building. Financial federalism set the stage for a highly productive division of labor in nation-building. The national government specialized in land acquisition through purchase, treaty, and conquest from Mexico and in military defense of the expanding territory. Most of the land was disbursed to settlers and investors, first at nominal prices and then, in the Homestead Act of 1862, in gifts outright, totaling 270 million acres, in 160-acre lots to settlers who agreed to live on and improve their properties. This was supply-side democratic capitalism, promoting private economic growth and widespread ownership at the cost of immediate government revenue. It was also legislative populism at its best: As Yale’s David Mayhew has observed, “It is a wonder that any incumbent politician ever lost an election.”REF
But the national government was ill-equipped for the tasks of development. The Jefferson–Madison Republicans, who supplanted the Washington–Hamilton Federalists in 1801, thought it lacked constitutional authority to build turnpikes, canals, bridges, and other infrastructure. Another problem was congressional politics: Westward-ho transportation routes inevitably favored some states and regions at the expense of others, which defeated legislative efforts to forge majority coalitions for new revenues and appropriations.
The states moved into the vacuum with gusto, launching a multitude of ambitious projects on their own. In the period 1790–1860, when the federal government spent only $60 million on transportation development (mostly lighthouses and river-and-harbor projects), the states, numbering 33 by 1860, spent more than $450 million, financed mainly by heavy borrowing in league with the proliferating state banks. The results included some spectacular successes (the 1817–1825 Erie Canal was profitable even before it was completed), some equally spectacular failures (overborrowing led to a cascade of state defaults in the 1839–1843 financial panic and ensuing depression), and numerous in-betweens, with performance improving notably in the years leading to the Civil War.
At the same time, the states pioneered the for-profit business corporation, which had hardly existed before 1790 in America or anywhere else. State charters limited the liability of investors for corporate obligations and defined the rights and obligations of shareholders, directors, and managers. Corporations could thereby raise much greater capital than traditional partnerships and sustain operations beyond the lives of their founders. Ownership shares traded in securities markets alert to the policies of different states. The innovation brought private equity and specialized management into banking and transportation and more—insurance, water utilities, mining, manufacturing, and the era’s high-tech disrupters, railroads and telegraphs. By 1860, America had 20,000 business corporations, more than the rest of the world combined. Most were small, local concerns, but many were big, ambitious enterprises. Railroads, many with interstate brands (“Baltimore and Ohio”), were state-supported ventures until the 1850s.
In this manner, American economic development was driven by pell-mell competition among states, regions, and private enterprises, not central national planning. Competitive development generated conflicting and duplicative projects—but that was inevitable in circumstances that were highly fluid and unpredictable, and the sorting out of successes and failures yielded valuable knowledge about the best course of empire. Decentralized development harnessed the nation’s tremendous variety of population, demography, culture, climate, natural resources, and forms of agriculture, industry, and trade.
Federalism in Policy Reform. The alliances of state governments with private business interests involved many cases of political market-rigging and outright bribery. Here, as in the introduction of official money in the colonial period, interstate competition was an effective teacher. Early state banks were owned in part by states themselves (in a few cases, entirely), which gave the states strong incentives to limit new entry and protect local banking monopolies. Early corporations were created by “special charters” granted by legislatures for specific projects with special privileges. But competition for settlers led the states to expand voting suffrage and qualifications for officeholding, which shifted politics toward consumer interests.
By mid-century, most states had introduced “free banking” and “general charters”—which permitted entrepreneurs to obtain charters administratively, without limits on entry or corporate purposes, simply by filing papers demonstrating compliance with general policies. Increasingly, states raised revenue with taxes rather than corporate ownership and dividends. These reforms did not usher in a libertarian Elysium by any means, but they did enact open competition as the governing principle of American finance and commerce.
By 1888, the 100th anniversary of the Constitution’s ratification and first national elections, the United States spanned a vast continent and had become the world’s largest economy and greatest industrial power. The colonial and founding bequests of political and economic competition, and the deeds of heroic and quotidian enterprise they kindled, were fundamental causes of this preeminence. Americans may or may not have understood the sources of their stupendous prosperity, but it was theirs to enjoy, employ, and contend with in a looming new era.
<h3>Coda</h3>
The Progressive era beginning in the late 1800s was the first of a succession of political eras that departed ever further from our period of national development—New Deal, Great Society, down to today’s unnamed conglomerate of welfare and regulatory programs. Urbanization and industrialization, the abolition of slavery and later of Jim Crow, waves of new immigrants, and fundamental changes in technology and demography transformed American society, culture, and politics. Attentions turned from the creation of wealth to its uses and abuses, and its control and distribution.
A constant across these eras has been the attenuation of competition in government and, as a result, competition in the private economy. In Washington, separation of powers is a shadow of what it was as recently as 30 years ago: The “executive state” has grown immensely in size and scope, the President has replaced Congress as the nation’s lawmaker, and Congress has been reduced to partisan flailing at executive initiatives. State policies have been regimented, and interstate competition suppressed, by money and edicts from the national government. America remains a capitalist economy par excellence, with bracing competition and creativity in many sectors, including some with large corporations and market shares. But banking, finance, insurance, energy, and automobiles have become so thoroughly politicized that it is sometimes difficult to tell whether companies are agents of the marketplace or the government.
Yet, competition is not a tool that was useful for nation-building and then became outmoded. It remains a central principle of the American order in science and religion, art and literature, sports and spelling bees, and today’s populist rebellion against domineering elites. While not among the Declaration’s principles, competition has much in common with them. It is rooted in human nature and God’s creation; it is part and parcel of the practice of liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and it is aspirational, requiring legal rules, social norms, and self-restraint to adjudicate its boundaries and realize its promise.
Today, competition occupies a lesser place in the political lexicon because politicians and public officials, armed with coercive power, prefer “cooperation,” which sounds nice but is often a threat. The two are in fact complements. As Adam Smith explained at the time of the Founding, sympathetic cooperation is the domain of family, friends, and tightly-knit communities, while competition is the best means we know for promoting cooperation in the impersonal wider world. Reintroducing competition into the operations and policies of government would be the best possible way to celebrate our 250th.
Christopher DeMuth is Distinguished Fellow in American Thought at The Heritage Foundation. This essay draws on his chapter, “Colonial Capitalism and the American Founding,” in Yuval Levin, Adam J. White, and John Yoo, Capitalism and the American Revolution (AEI Press, 2025).
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<pubDate>Wed, 18 Jun 2025 13:00:04 -0400</pubDate>
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