Think Tanks - Washington Examiner

No Labels election plans frustrate center-left think tank leader

Brady Knox — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 20:45:54 +0000

A center-left think tank is frustrated over a possible third-party presidential run from No Labels, warning that it would result in former President Donald Trump being elected.

The think tank Third Way dismissed the insistence of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and No Labels that a third-party run would not be a spoiler that benefits Trump, warning such a run would all but guarantee that the Republican retakes the White House. First releasing a memo warning of the possibility in March, Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett stood firm on his claim to the Hill on Monday, arguing that evidence further backs up their fears.

RETIREMENT RUINS: FOUR SEATS REPUBLICANS EXPECT TO PICK UP AMID EXODUS FROM CONGRESS

Bennett said No Labels’s leadership appears to be “the only people on planet Earth who think they can win,” adding that the concern around a third-party run was, “on a scale of 1-100, it’s 100.”

“We honestly believe in a head-to-head race, these latest polls notwithstanding, Biden wins because of the dynamics of the electorate,” he argued, adding that Biden will be boosted by “the way that people are going to be thinking about Trump by the time we get to next November and are reminded of who he is and what he stands for.”

Bennett warned No Labels isn’t just a throwaway run but could jeopardize President Joe Biden’s chances.

“But we think if there’s a well-funded, reasonably high-profile alleged moderate as an alternative, [Biden] loses,” he said.

In a March memo titled “Donald Trump Should Never Again Be President,” Third Way emphasized the impressive fundraising figures from No Labels, including more than $46 million pledged or raised as of September 2022.

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No Labels brushed off the criticism in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

“We aren’t concerned about Third Way’s predictions for the election a year from now, and, most importantly, voters aren’t either,” No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy said. “Polls clearly reveal that most Americans want a better choice for president in 2024 than what the two parties are likely to provide, and No Labels will continue working to ensure they have that choice.”

Down with the college admissions cabal

Frederick M. Hess and Greg Fournier — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 10:55:05 +0000

College admissions are in a disastrous state. The 2019 “Varsity Blues” scandal showed just how easy it was to buy and sell access. Lawsuits that challenged, and put an end to, race-based admission preferences illuminated how elite colleges sell seats to deep-pocketed donors and favored children of alumni. Meanwhile, most colleges have dropped requirements that students take the SAT or ACT.

Through all the self-dealing, social tension, and scandal, the cottage industry of grifters who pass for “college admissions consultants” has quietly prospered. This says much about the state of higher education. After all, there are few fields of endeavor as untroubled about enabling such unapologetic parasites. Even ventures often denounced as “inequitable,” such as medical concierge practices or the merchants of high-occupancy toll lanes, are usually selling time savings, better service, or an improved experience.

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Admissions consultants are in the business of helping their clients buy access. Period. They help manufacture a persona for students seeking to cadge a spot at the elite colleges that specialize in giving their students a leg up in the world. This is a lousy deal for pretty much everyone, except the consultants: It puts a heavy thumb on the scale for wealthy students. It leaves participating parents feeling extorted. It infuriates those other parents who see their hardworking children get the shaft. This $3 billion industry is bad for meritocracy, democracy, and parents’ pocketbooks.

The consultants themselves can be remarkably frank about what they’re doing. The big-dollar influence peddlers at Ivy Coach have explained, “Over the years, many folks have been surprised by our fees. Some have derided us. … [But] as the adage goes, ‘You get what you pay for.’”

Is there some discernible benefit from all this, other than helping clients poach seats from nonclients? Well, here’s how Command Education, one of the biggest players in the space, markets itself. Command Education’s website brags about how the firm’s “in-house design team” helped a would-be Ivy League student “create a website where she displayed her art portfolio” and launch a YouTube channel.

And it was just getting started. “Equipped with her new graphic design skills,” the site explains, “she and her [Command Education] mentor created and executed a business plan to offer her graphic design services to local artists and small businesses, redesigning logos and creating promotional and sales materials.” In short: The consultant built this student a website and a business plan so that she could fiddle with PowerPoint and then brag about her entrepreneurial streak.

Command Education cheerily reports the student wound up at Yale University.

How much does all this “assistance” cost? The Independent Educational Consultants Association reported in 2018 that the average “comprehensive” consulting package cost between $4,000 and $6,700. Those already substantial averages, though, obscure the truly eyepopping figures pocketed by the industry’s big players.

Command Education reports that its most popular package costs $85,000, with other fees ranging from a “few hundred dollars per hour” to more than $100,000 for its “all-inclusive multi-year package.” Top Tier Admissions charges $13,800 for 15 hours of “writing guidance” (Read: We’ll write your admissions essay for you). Ivy Coach reported charging “up to $1.5 million” for a five-year “full-service package” in 2018 — fees so exorbitant that it was actually kicked out of the IECA.

At these prices, companies obviously are doing more than tweaking application essays or prepping students for the SAT. They’re tailoring clients to be the kind of Stepford applicant who will pass muster with the liberal tastes that prevail in college admissions offices. Command Education boasts that it turns its clients into “award-winning nonprofit founders, community organizers, [and] political activists.”

That’s why the consultants offer a line of high-priced opportunities designed to pad a resume. San Francisco-based IvyMax offers “Global Philanthropy Leadership Programs,” which allow students to “travel to a desert in Mongolia to build sustainable-energy sources, or to Ningxia, China, to work on microfinance lending outreach.” The firm explains that the 15-day programs include time “each day for writing ‘reflections,’” designed to serve as “fodder for college essays upon returning home.”

Comprehensive packages frequently begin in eighth grade. Top Tier Admissions touts its ability to help 13- and 14-year-old middle schoolers “pursue high-impact activities, deepen their scholarly profile, prepare for standardized tests, maintain strong grades, and plan out classes to maximize course rigor.” This can all have troubling, if predictable, consequences. Former Stanford University Dean of Freshmen Julie Lythcott-Haims has observed, “I knew a large number of college students who had lived fully scheduled lives year-round as children and who, as young adults, couldn’t really tell you why they’d done most of it.” It turns out that being formfitted to the specs of college admissions staff may not be great for maturation, well-being, or sense of self.

It would be a problem even if this practice was just an affectation of the ultrawealthy, who can afford these eyepopping prices. But as selective colleges deemphasize testing and embed notions of social justice in “holistic” admissions, all while selling fast-pass access to Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and elite graduate schools, more middle- and low-income families feel pressed to play this toxic game.

And they’re not wrong to feel that way. This summer, Harvard University researchers Raj Chetty, David Deming, and John Friedman released a damning study making clear that “holistic” admissions practices at selective colleges actually amplify the massive advantage enjoyed by students from the wealthiest families. The more opaque the admissions process, the more it’s driven by networks, resume padding, and social capital. And this is what the admissions grifters are selling.

Chetty et al. found that outliers such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which emphasizes test results more than essays and interviews, were more likely to enroll a socioeconomically diverse student body. But fewer and fewer four-year colleges put a lot of weight on those kinds of arm’s-length measures. More and more emphasize the kinds of things that are easy for students to manipulate. Indeed, more than half of four-year college students report lying on their college application, with 39% misrepresenting their race or ethnicity and 34% writing untrue stories in their admissions essays.

The result is fear and confusion among collegegoers and their parents, emotions on which the admissions consultants feed. A few years back, the New York Times depicted the experience of immigrants who’d spent $15,000 on college consultants they’d found “advertised in Chinese-language magazines and newspapers, offering an Ivy League entry to immigrant parents.” The fee covered a three-day workshop and a consultant who “recommended which extracurriculars to pursue and which to discard to build a personal narrative for his applications.” That “personal narrative” looms so large because there are shibboleths required by elite colleges and parents can be desperate to find out what they are.

Educational consulting in the United States is a burgeoning industry, with 400% growth between 2005 and 2019. By 2019, there were more than 8,000 people in the college admissions counseling industry. While hard numbers are scarce, a 2006 report by Lipman Hearne found that 26% of students who scored 1150 or above on the SAT reported using an admissions counselor. The IECA commented that the results showed a rate about triple that which had been generally assumed. Ivy Coach asserted that the study “grossly underreported the percentage of high-achieving students using private college counselors.” And the racket has grown, by leaps and bounds, since 2006.

Are colleges troubled by their role in enabling and encouraging all this? After all, in 2020, admissions leaders from over 360 American universities airily proclaimed their “commitment to equity and to encourag[ing] in students self-care, balance, meaningful learning, and care for others.” After the Varsity Blues admissions scandal, in which it turned out that colleges were cheerfully engaging in or turning a blind eye to corrupt dealings, over 140 college admissions deans insisted they weren’t really looking for students who “started a new project or conducted service in a far-away country” and that they “value students who are authentic and honest in their applications.”

Experience and admissions data suggest that college officialdom doesn’t mean any of this. In the aftermath of the FBI’s Varsity Blues sting, college presidents blamed American decadence for the corruption, not their own personnel and practices. And especially following the more recent striking down of race-based preferences by the Supreme Court, college officials have signaled that they intend to put even more weight on “impressive-looking” activities and narratives that feature tales of deprivation and oppression, giving applicants ever more incentive to be inauthentic and dishonest.

Given the opportunity to design application processes that are less opaque, secretive, and susceptible to manipulation, colleges have consistently opted to push the very behaviors that enable the consultants to flourish. Consider that three of the five experts touted on the “Ivy Coach Leadership” webpage were formerly admissions counselors at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Dartmouth College. Top Tier Admissions founder Michelle Hernandez previously worked as an admissions counselor also at Dartmouth.

These grifters have helped craft selective admissions systems that are stuffed full of paeans to “equity” but rigged to reward affluent, connected applicants. Then, after they tire of selling seats to wealthy donors, they go work for firms where they can sell their insider “expertise” at a hefty price. They make those Beltway bandits who do the government-to-lobbyist shuffle look like pillars of integrity.

And, of course, the college consultant class feeds on an elite college admissions racket that is increasingly disconnected from any straightforward conception of academic merit and shaped by social engineers with particular agendas. If colleges instead had clear, transparent admissions requirements, there would still be a market for tutors and test coaches, who are at least glancingly interested in academics and learning, but far less opportunity for influence peddling.

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Yet the college consulting racket is not a matter of a few thousand bad actors preying on hapless, defenseless colleges. Rather, it’s just another iteration of the same self-dealing that characterizes so much of elite higher education. As selective colleges auction admissions slots to deep-pocketed donors, reserve seats for the children of connected alumni, and favor those who’ve learned to mouth politically correct sentiments, they’ve corroded the kind of merit-based admissions process that might keep the influence peddlers at bay. Confronted with misconduct, college leaders have denied responsibility and vaguely blamed America’s innate sins. While we’ve tended in recent years to focus on the way these pathologies play out on campus, it’s crucial that we not forget the remora that feed on the doorways into and out of the college system.

It may not make sense to regulate this unsavory racket, but surely colleges concerned about either merit or “equity” should wish to do all they can to downsize the demand for it. And all of us, left, right, and center, should see the value in shaming the members of this anti-democratic, anti-meritocratic cabal.

Frederick M. Hess is the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Greg Fournier is a research assistant at AEI.

Time for scrutiny of DEI policies in US Courts, Judicial Conference

Zack Smith and Matthew Turner — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 16:55:34 +0000

Opinion

Time for scrutiny of DEI policies in US Courts, Judicial Conference

Zack Smith

& Matthew Turner

November 07, 2023 11:55 AM

Opinion

Time for scrutiny of DEI policies in US Courts, Judicial Conference

Zack Smith

& Matthew Turner

November 07, 2023 11:55 AM

Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts listens as first lady Jill Biden speaks at the National Archivist swearing-in ceremony at the National Archives on Sept. 11, 2023, in Washington.

Federal courts have their own administrative state, and that’s a problem.

Like many of its executive branch counterparts, the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts
came into existence
during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal push to establish supposedly expert administrators.

Established in 1939 after FDR’s failed court-packing plan, the “AO” (as it has come to be known) nominally has a narrow
mandate
—“to provide administrative support to federal courts.” In fact, two federal appellate courts that have examined the relationship of the AO vis-a-vis the federal judiciary have
said
that the AO “was created to perform, and historically has performed, a limited ministerial function.” It was not, they said, “intended to govern or make policy for the Judiciary.”

It would raise serious constitutional concerns for it to do so, since the AO itself is a not an entity under Article III of the Constitution. That job instead has been assigned to the Judicial Conference of the United States, which
serves
as the “Judiciary’s principal policy-making body.”

The chief justice presides over the Judicial Conference,
which is
“comprised of the chief judge of each judicial circuit, the Chief Judge of the Court of International Trade, and a district judge from each regional judicial circuit, who is elected for a term of not less than three nor more than five successive years as established by majority vote of all circuit and district judges of the circuit represented.”

Still, the chief justice appoints the AO’s director, who is
under
“the supervision and direction of” the Judicial Conference.

Today, the AO
maintains
a sprawling portfolio and has engaged in actions that have directly injected the courts into hot-button political controversies. Worse still, the AO’s actions seem to contradict the Supreme Court’s own recent
precedent
in the area of racial preferences.

For instance, an
article
published earlier this year highlighted just a few of the AO’s problematic diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, where the AO has been touting its work to promote “diversity” in the profession, particularly along “racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and sexual-orientation dimensions.”

While the Judicial Conference should rein in these problematic policy decisions, it has unfortunately allowed some of these same pernicious themes to creep into its views, too.

As part of its 2020 Strategic Plan for the Federal Judiciary, it
emphasizes
that “Judges must be encouraged to give special attention to diversity in their law clerk hiring process.” Of course, that diversity lies largely along racial, ethnic, and sexual orientation dimensions.

And the
reports
of the Judicial Conference’s various committees are rife with references to programs under consideration to increase the diversity of staff and employees and among members of the bankruptcy and magistrate benches.

At its next meeting, the Judicial Conference should engage in a serious discussion about whether these various initiatives and programs
undermine confidence
in the judiciary.

They give the impression that the courts themselves are not being colorblind in their actions and are instead relying on something
other
than merit when making hiring and firing decisions.

And the Judicial Conference (again, headed by the chief justice) must grapple with whether these programs can still pass
muster
in light of the Supreme Court’s
decision
this past June (written by the chief justice) striking down Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s affirmative action programs.

There’s some precedent at the state level for reviewing such programs being implemented in our court systems around the country. The Florida Supreme Court, for example,
exercised
its administrative oversight to prohibit programming that required certain diversity quotas from qualifying for continuing legal education credit. Other state high courts should similarly exercise their oversight authority, and the Judicial Conference must do the same here.

Our Constitution is colorblind, and our courts must be colorblind, too, in all of their actions. To do otherwise undermines the very foundations of our court system—and our country.

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This article originally appeared in the Daily Signal and is reprinted with kind permission from the Heritage Foundation.

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Donors use power of the purse to send loud rebuke to colleges’ shameful silence on pro-Hamas protests

Mike Gonzalez — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 16:15:59 +0000

Opinion

Donors use power of the purse to send loud rebuke to colleges’ shameful silence on pro-Hamas protests

Mike Gonzalez

November 07, 2023 11:15 AM

Opinion

Donors use power of the purse to send loud rebuke to colleges’ shameful silence on pro-Hamas protests

Mike Gonzalez

November 07, 2023 11:15 AM

Supporters of Palestinians gather in the Loop in Chicago on Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023.

Students from across the U.S. and Europe have taken to the streets to defend the indefensible or “contextualize” that which no context can justify; that is, mass killings and gang rape in the
Holy Land
on Oct. 7. Many of their elders now wonder how kids they raised to be civilized seem to be stumped by how to react to such barbarism.

Society will need to answer that question, but even before that, some people with the power of the purse and the power of the law are doing something to correct the moral confusion that has gripped universities in the aftermath of
Hamas’ horrendous massacre
of Jews.

In the U.S., billionaire alumni are withholding donations from elite schools. Some politicians, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have also tried to establish some order in state universities.

The donors have attracted the most attention, because cutting off money will hurt the universities. Elite Ivy League colleges—such as Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown, etc.—have endowments in the billions of dollars, so the departure of a few donors will hurt them less than state colleges.

But most of the attention during these crises is often shed on the Ivies, and they have been among the worst equivocators in a time that calls for moral clarity. It’s also unknown whether there will be a cascade effect, with smaller donors now reconsidering their contributions.

It’s fun to wear the sweat pants with your school’s logo and put its decal on the back of your car, but many will draw a line at antisemitism and mass rape.

Plus, the donors have published their letters, embarrassing university leadership. Among the best has to be the one that billionaire David Magerman sent to the University of Pennsylvania because of the tepid response to the crisis by the university’s president, Liz Magill.

“Over the past month, I have been deeply embarrassed by my association with and support for the University of Pennsylvania,” Magerman wrote in the letter on Oct. 15, adding:

The leadership of
the university
has failed to demonstrate the values I expect from an institution that purports to educate young adults and prepare them for a lifetime of leadership and to be emissaries for good in the world.

Magerman noted that Marc Rowan, another billionaire donor to Penn, “has called for your firing as a response to your failures in leadership, but I feel your firing is unnecessary, because it is wholly inadequate.”

If in fact the University of Pennsylvania as an institution has such a misguided moral compass that it can fail to recognize evil when it is staring us all in the face, I don’t think replacing you will accomplish anything. Frankly, I don’t think there is anything anyone can do to redeem the school, short of rebuilding its moral foundations from the ground up.

That last line captured how many Americans, not just those in the donor class, are reacting to the moral confusion coming from campuses following the Hamas massacre. Something must be done to the universities to rebuild them as moral centers that will engage in truth-discovery and instruct future generations on what’s best in our societies. Right now, to many, it is clear that universities have become the opposite; namely, places where a Marxist professoriate indoctrinates young minds.

One politician who has tried to do something is DeSantis, who has instructed the chancellor of the Florida university system, Ray Rodrigues, to deactivate the pro-Palestinian group National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has organized the most antisemitic demonstrations in U.S. campuses following the massacre.

Aiding DeSantis in this effort is a Students for Justice in Palestine
toolkit
that defends the Hamas atrocity, billing it as “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.” It also says that “We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.” Seizing on the appearance of that statement as a declaration that Students for Justice in Palestine does not only support the terrorists, but are in fact part of them, DeSantis nudged Rodrigues to
disband
the group’s chapters at Florida universities.

In Europe
, whose universities rely less on individual donors and where there is less federalism within countries (the European Union’s growth has been such that government by nation-states is now called federalism, but this is problem to be tackled another day), it has been the national governments and cities that have taken the lead.

Thus, in France, President Emmanuel Macron on Oct. 12 had his interior minister ban all pro-Palestinian demonstrations, in order to contain the growth of antisemitic acts. Just as French police started using tear gas to dispel pro-Hamas demonstrations, Macron went on television and said, “Let us not bring ideological adventures here [to France] by imitation or by projection. Let us not add national fractures … to international fractures. Let us stay united.”

And the government of the German capital, Berlin, is strictly enforcing a ban on pro-Hamas demonstrations in a bid to avoid the scenes of tens of thousands of protesters
defending terrorists
in British cities.

These actions by donors, governors, presidents, and mayors are welcome, but as necessary as they are, they’re treating symptoms, not curing the disease. After calm returns, society will have to ask itself, what have we allowed to happen among the young and the immigrant populations?

Great care was taken in decades gone by to instill in them national values. Now we see what happens when we cease doing that.

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This article originally appeared in the Daily Signal and is reprinted with kind permission from the Heritage Foundation.

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New report sheds light on expansive Biden student loan forgiveness scheme

Beth Akers — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 15:30:32 +0000

Opinion

New report sheds light on expansive Biden student loan forgiveness scheme

Beth Akers

October 31, 2023 11:30 AM

Opinion

New report sheds light on expansive Biden student loan forgiveness scheme

Beth Akers

October 31, 2023 11:30 AM

President Joe Biden speaks about student loan debt forgiveness.

Last week, the Urban Institute
published
a new report examining, in detail, the implications of President Biden’s latest scheme to forgive as much student debt as possible before the next election cycle: the SAVE repayment plan. This report brings much needed clarity to the question of exactly how Biden’s misguided attempts to forgive student debt through executive order will result in an unanticipated and undesirable allocation of resources.

Announced
in January, this plan would at least partially forgive many borrowers’ debts by allowing them to pay back just a small share of what they originally borrowed. Analysis of the program at the time of the announcement revealed that the plan would essentially be a
boondoggle
, but this new report details a bit more about where those wasted dollars will actually be spent.

In addition to lowering the share of income that borrowers must pay on a monthly basis, the SAVE plan forgives any unpaid interest that results from borrowers making less than their full scheduled payments.

The result of this Frankenstein, de facto loan forgiveness program is that typical students in a certificate degree program would repay just 35% of their original balance, and one in an associates’ degree program would repay just 69% of their original balance. Before the SAVE plan was put in place, the typical borrower on each of these paths would have repaid the entire sum of the amount the borrowed. That’s because the typical borrower ultimately earns an income that makes repayment of their debt affordable and thus doesn’t qualify for existing safety nets that reserve benefits for needier student borrowers.

Within the set of bachelors’ degree programs, the rate of implicit subsidy varies across sectors. The highest subsidy will go to borrowers who attended for-profit institutions, as they tend to have borrowed at higher levels to be able to afford enrollment and ultimately reap relatively low earnings after graduation. Borrowers attending public institutions, which are typically more affordable, will benefit from the least forgiveness.

The one good bit of new from this report is that benefits do seem to be concentrated among less-educated borrowers. And the typical borrower with graduate debt won’t seem to benefit. Since education is correlated, broadly, with education, this likely is consistent with a more progressive distribution of aid that might otherwise have been achieved through different policy design. But in reality, funds shouldn’t be allocated broadly and should be instead targeted to those who are struggling to repay their debt regardless of the amount they borrowed or the level of education they received.

The report’s authors, Jason Delisle and Jason Cohn,
state
that “as the SAVE plan is set to provide larger benefits to a broader set of borrowers and may even encourage many students to take on student debt, policymakers must ensure the program is administered in an efficient and fair manner.”

Expanded eligibility for aid must be accompanied by new constraints on borrowing or accountability measures for institutions. While the Administration’s
new gainful employment (GE) rules
will hold some institutions more accountable for the economic outcomes of their graduates, Delisle and Cohn calculate that the SAVE plan will still forgive mass amounts of debt for graduates even after factoring in the new GE rules. These rules are not strong enough to counteract the negative effects of Biden turning IDR into a de facto entitlement program.

Without more forceful accountability measures, this ill-conceived policy will only exacerbate the existing challenges in higher education finance that have brought the issue to the forefront of our national political discourse.

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This article originally appeared in the AEIdeas blog and is reprinted with kind permission from the American Enterprise Institute.

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Heritage’s Project 2025 a socially conservative plan for US national security

Jamie McIntyre — Fri, 06 Oct 2023 09:30:29 +0000

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is an ambitious plan to dismantle, downsize, and radically reshape the federal government so that it more closely tracks with the moral, cultural, and political values of the current conservative movement.

Its centerpiece is a 30-chapter playbook, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which is designed as a blueprint for a Republican president, whether Donald Trump or someone else, to deconstruct what Heritage calls the “Administrative State,” which it defines as policymaking by unelected bureaucrats.

HUNTER BIDEN’S NEXT MOVE IS TO AVOID A TRIAL ALTOGETHER: LEGAL EXPERTS

“This is an agenda prepared by and for conservatives who will be ready on Day One of the next administration to save our country from the brink of disaster,” writes Heritage President Kevin Roberts in the book’s foreword.

The 920-page manifesto, the work of 400 conservative scholars and policy experts, contains hundreds of proposals to reduce the entrenched bureaucracy, promote family values and individual rights, boost defense spending, and purge the government of what Roberts called a “totalitarian cult known as ‘The Great Awokening.’”

“The next conservative President must end the Left’s social experimentation with the military, restore warfighting as its sole mission, and set defeating the threat of the Chinese Communist Party as its highest priority,” Roberts writes.

The chapter on the Pentagon, written by Trump’s last acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, calls for bigger defense budgets, more nuclear weapons, an effective defense to deny China the ability to invade Taiwan, and more burden sharing with European and Asian-Pacific allies.

But the chapter also contains a long list of changes aimed at rooting out what the document calls “woke culture warriors.”

“The DOD is also a deeply troubled institution,” Miller writes. “Historically, the military has been one of America’s most trusted institutions, but years of sustained misuse, a two-tiered culture of accountability that shields senior officers and officials while exposing junior officers and soldiers in the field, wasteful spending, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and (most recently) the Biden Administration’s profoundly unserious equity agenda and vaccine mandates have taken a serious toll.”

The Pentagon operates under diversity mandates included in the 2021 version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act.

The version passed by the House this year would rescind those mandates but only if the Democratic-controlled Senate agrees and President Joe Biden signs off on it.

Project 2025 envisions a colorblind U.S. military culture where recruiting, admission to service academies, and promotions are based solely on ability, performance, and merit.

“Entrance criteria for military service and specific occupational career fields should be based on the needs of those positions. Exceptions for individuals who are already predisposed to require medical treatment (for example, HIV positive or suffering from gender dysphoria) should be removed, and those with gender dysphoria should be expelled from military service,” Miller writes. “Physical fitness requirements should be based on the occupational field without consideration of gender, race, ethnicity, or orientation.”

Military leaders should focus on restoring “standards of lethality and excellence,” not “pursuing a social engineering agenda,” the Heritage playbook suggests, adding that should be a requirement for confirmation of senior officers.

To “eliminate politicization, reestablish trust and accountability, and restore faith to the force,” the document makes the following recommendations:

Eliminate Marxist indoctrination and divisive critical race theory programs.
Audit course offerings at military academies to remove Marxist indoctrination.
Eliminate tenure for academic professionals.
Abolish newly established diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and staff.
Reverse policies that allow transgender people to serve in the military.
Reinstate, restore rank, and provide back pay for service members discharged for refusing the COVID-19 vaccine.
Strengthen protections for chaplains to carry out their ministry according to the tenets of their faith.

If implemented, Heritage’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project appears likely to further inflame the culture wars that have already roiled the Pentagon.

A November 2021 survey by the Ronald Reagan Institute registered a sharp decline in trust and confidence in the U.S. military, dropping to 45% from 70% in 2018.

In his first message to the force, Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, who just took over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 1, stressed what he called the “primacy” of honing warfighting skills. “Deterrence depends on being your adversary’s worst nightmare in a fight,” he wrote.

But Brown, the first black man to lead a military service and the second black chairman, has come under fire for pursuing a diversity agenda while serving as chief of staff of the Air Force, and his nomination was opposed by some conservatives, including Heritage President Roberts.

While Biden’s nominees to head the Army and Marine Corps were confirmed with just a single “no” vote between them, 11 senators voted against Brown, among them Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).

“He’s got some woke policies,” Tuberville said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “I heard some things that he talked about race and things that he wanted to mix into the military. Let me tell you something: Our military is not an equal opportunity employer. We’re looking for the best of the best to do whatever; we’re not looking for different groups, social justice groups. We don’t want to single-handedly destroy our military from within,” Tuberville said.

When pressed for examples, Tuberville cited Brown’s efforts to increase the number of minority Air Force pilots, of whom only about 2% are black.

“He came out and said we need certain groups, more pilots, certain groups to have an opportunity to be pilots. Listen, I want it to be on merit. I want our military to be the best. I want the best people. I don’t care who they are — men, women — it doesn’t make any difference.”

“I strongly push back on this idea that the military is not an equal opportunity employer. It absolutely is. It should be. It makes you a better and stronger military. He’s just flat out wrong,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, a retired rear admiral, responded on CNN.

“I have been in many commands at sea and ashore where the diversity of the command itself made it better. It brings new perspective and fresh perspectives to the decision-making process,” Kirby said. “It’s because we provide equal opportunities for all Americans to serve their country and defend this country that we are better at doing it.”

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Brown, whom Trump nominated to head the Air Force, now has completely different responsibilities as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

His job is to serve as senior military adviser to the president and the secretary of defense, and while Brown’s four-year term runs three years into the next administration, it is entirely within the prerogative of the next president to replace him anytime his advice is no longer valued.

Heritage Foundation head defends think tank’s Reaganite credentials on Ukraine aid

Julia Johnson — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 09:00:21 +0000

A top conservative think tank has become increasingly critical of Congress pushing through continued aid to Ukraine, as well as potentially tying it to disaster aid for Hawaii following the deadly wildfires.

The Heritage Foundation is now pushing back against critics of its own, who see the Ukraine war stance at odds with the conservatism of former President Ronald Reagan.

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“I think what some people in town are finding unusual is that Heritage is calling them out for equating Reagan’s peace through strength with something that has never been congruous with that — and that is that we spend money however [and] whenever we want, with no conversation about when we stop spending that money, and for that matter what the strategic objective is,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told the Washington Examiner in an interview.

“That’s not peace through strength. In fact, it’s a road to being very weak,” he added.

Ahead of a battle over spending bills when the House of Representatives returns from recess next week, President Joe Biden requested $40 billion in emergency funding from Congress to cover a variety of matters, including continued support for Ukraine. About $24 billion of the sum would go to Ukraine amid its war with Russia.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has also warned that its disaster relief fund is low, something the emergency package would further address. The recent wildfire in Hawaii has already prompted a response from FEMA, given the significant damage and displacement.

Biden’s ask is a serious concern for Heritage, Roberts explained. “There can’t even be an up or down vote on a stand-alone bill on disaster and emergency relief. It’s being paired, by the president and his allies in Congress, with the Ukraine aid. That does injustice to both policy questions,” he said.

Roberts emphasized that the missing piece with these kinds of packages is conversation and transparency. According to the think tank’s leader, he would be able to accept if the outcome wasn’t ideal so long as a conversation had occurred in the legislature.

Noting that a majority of people now say Congress shouldn’t authorize more funding for Ukraine, Heritage is demanding that aid to the country be cut off until the Biden administration provides “a direct and immediate path to end the conflict in Ukraine and Congress comes up with a way to ensure that our aid is responsibly distributed,” as Roberts wrote in an op-ed last week.

“A clear majority of Americans are opposed to increasing the aid to Ukraine, while they, of course, want the Ukrainians to win,” he said of the poll on Monday.

Roberts maintained that Heritage has been consistent for 50 years. “The main reason that President Reagan called us his think tank is because of our commitment to limited government and limited spending at the federal level,” he explained.

“Occasionally — I might even argue rarely — there are times when the American people ought to spend part of their taxpayer money on helping allies around the world. When that has happened, personified by President Reagan, he was always transparent about why we’re spending the money, what the endgame was going to be, and updated the American people,” he said.

Roberts also drew a distinction between the Soviet Union during the Cold War and Russia today.

“Russia is not the threat that the Soviet Union was in the 1970s. China has taken that place. And we need to be prepared as a people not just to defend our ally Taiwan, but to be able to defend our own people against this,” Roberts said.

“Our men and women of high rank in the Pentagon are fighting the last war rather than preparing for the next war,” he added.

Heritage debuted its ad opposing the Ukraine aid during the first Republican debate. The issue was a source of disagreement among the presidential candidates onstage, though Roberts wished they had focused more on the questions the think tank raised.

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“The conversation, the decision can’t be based on heartstrings. It’s got to be based on these questions that Heritage keeps asking,” he said.

“We’re 100% steadfast that until and unless we have a strategy, we have an endgame, there’s transparency on the money and real accountability, we will remain 100% opposed every single time this comes up in Congress,” Roberts added.

New conservative research group EPIC looks to stave off long-term budget disaster

Zachary Halaschak — Wed, 09 Aug 2023 09:00:58 +0000

A new upstart think tank founded by a former Trump official is looking to work behind the scenes to educate lawmakers and staff about how to right the country’s fiscal ship.

The Economic Policy Innovation Center, or EPIC, had its soft launch last month and is planning to ramp up to a hard launch in September. The right-of-center group, helmed by president and CEO Paul Winfree, has two other employees with backgrounds in economic policy but is hoping to expand over the coming six months.

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Winfree served in the Trump administration as deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy, the deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, and the director of budget policy and formed the think tank after his work at the Heritage Foundation. Winfree told the Washington Examiner during a recent interview that the group is going to be doing a lot of hiring over the next few months as it hopes to make a name for itself on Capitol Hill and at the national level.

Winfree said something that separates EPIC from others in the policy space is a focus on more long-term economic questions and how to solve them, particularly by focusing on more behind-the-scenes work on Capitol Hill rather than splashy public outreach campaigns.

EPIC isn’t looking to be another group focused on the biggest issue of the day but rather sees itself helping to prepare for and educate on major policy battles coming down the pipeline, he explained.

“What we’re going to be working on and thinking about is more longer-term issues. Where do we want to go?” Winfree said. “Looking out into the future, and ultimately, how do we get there, and then how do we build the coalitions and policy movement to be where we want to be out in five, 10, 15, 20, 25 years.”

For instance, one thing that EPIC is already dialed in on, and will work closely with policymakers to prepare for, is the enormous fiscal cliff that Congress and the White House will face in 2025, shortly after the next election cycle.

At the center of the fiscal cliff are expiring tax provisions within the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, more commonly referred to as the “Trump tax cuts” or “Republican tax cuts.” Additionally, this year’s contentious debt limit deal’s expiration lines up with the 2025 expiration of the slew of tax provisions, including the doubled estate tax and the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes paid.

“When you look at all of those things together, ultimately it creates a fiscal cliff-like situation that isn’t all that dissimilar from the 2012 [and] 2013 fiscal cliff with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts except for size and scope,” Winfree said. “So there is the potential for it to be much, much larger than basically what Congress and the White House had to come together on in 2012 and 2013.”

He said that if nothing happens between now and then with regard to policymakers planning on how to use that opportunity to enact a pro-growth agenda, then Congress and the White House are likely merely to kick the can down the road once.

“Ultimately, you have a series of fiscal events that are on the horizon that all are meaningful for the fiscal trajectory of this country but also create opportunities for economic policy reforms that are larger than the scale of those cliffs themselves,” Winfree said of his group’s plans for the lead-up to 2025.

Winfree, a Ph.D., framed his academic background as a bit unique — that of an “economic historian.” He clarified that he is not a historian of economic thought but rather someone who is an economist and applies the techniques both in theory and empirics to questions in history.

“So, say, understanding what led to American economic development or how we got into the Great Depression and ultimately got out of the Great Depression. Big questions like that,” he said, adding, with that in mind, he tends to take a longer-term approach to policy.

Winfree said his group intends to follow a fairly straightforward sequence that he finds is the best way to make policy. The first is educating policymakers about the matters at stake and what is coming down the line, the second is getting the policy itself right, and then the politics come into play. He said if the education, policy, and politics sequence is hit correctly, then a policy agenda can become a success.

He said at the outset of EPIC’s formation, there would be a tremendous amount of work that the group will do on educating lawmakers and policy staff on Capitol Hill about what good economic policy looks like or how to use the budget process most effectively.

Joining Winfree at EPIC is Brittany Madni, the executive vice president of the group. Madni brings experience on Capitol Hill, where she previously served as the deputy chief of staff and legislative director for Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), as well as holding roles with other GOP offices.

A recent addition to the team is William Beach, who completed a four-year term as the commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. He is serving as EPIC’s senior fellow in economics and also comes from an economic policy background.

As EPIC works to build its team over the next year, it is looking to recruit employees with academic backgrounds in economics, as well as with work in the policymaking space, Winfree said.

Looking to 2024, Winfree said EPIC has already been in touch with the Republican presidential campaigns and noted that the group has closer relations with some campaigns than others, although he didn’t specify which ones.

“But we’re talking to everybody, and I found everybody to be very receptive,” he said.

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In terms of finances, EPIC has received seed funding from a group of people and organizations, a handful of which are foundations, according to Winfree, who said he is in talks with a lot of people who are free-market advocates and in the right-of-center policy space.

“And I’m getting a lot of good feedback from the donor community in general and a lot of excitement,” he said. “So I see lots of opportunities over the next year and actually next few years to ultimately build EPIC up beyond our plan to ramp up within the next six months to a year.”

Rethinking the impact of the lockdowns

Samuel J. Abrams — Tue, 18 Jul 2023 16:31:12 +0000

Opinion

Rethinking the impact of the lockdowns

Samuel J. Abrams

July 18, 2023 12:31 PM

Opinion

Rethinking the impact of the lockdowns

Samuel J. Abrams

July 18, 2023 12:31 PM

Single father with kids going to school

We are only beginning to make sense of the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications of the lockdowns that forced people to stay home. It is an endeavor that will take years to flesh out.

Eszter Hargittai’s
Connected in Isolation
is one of the first large-scale attempts to do just that and looks at how the United States managed the pandemic vis-à-vis Italy and Switzerland. Across all three nations, Hargittai found some common threads with the internet serving as a lifeline for people “
suddenly relying on it for the most essential of daily needs
.” And, unsurprisingly, Harigittai found that better-educated and wealthier individuals gained more and had a far easier time navigating and succeeding within this newly emphasized ecosystem.

Hargittai’s work demonstrates the impact of “societal positions” and resources on outcomes during the lockdowns, but the book notably failed to discuss how race and ethnicity played a role in managing the shutdowns and reacting to the significant socio-economic and spatial changes that COVID-19 brought to communities around the globe. This omission is worth mentioning because a
prevailing narrative in the United States
during the pandemic was that racial and ethnic minorities were being impacted far more harshly than whites;
it was argued
that racial and ethnic minorities bore a disproportionate mental health burden during the COVID-19 pandemic and non-whites were generally
far more isolated
, lonely, and depressed than whites.

Unsurprisingly, a plethora of policy decisions and critical resources were allocated with this understanding. Data from AEI’s
COVID-19 and American Life Survey
of over 3,500 adults fielded in the late spring of 2020 during the lockdowns suggests that some of these racial divides are severely overstated.

Consider socialization patterns as social distancing entered the nation’s lexicon and face-to-face interactions became rare. The survey asked respondents if, in the past week, they had a video call with friends or family. In total, about 60% of Americans had a video call with either friends or family. Seventy-two percent of those with a post-graduate degree and 67% with a bachelor’s degree reported chatting with friends and family. As education declines, so too did the number of people who responded in the affirmative. Fifty-seven percent of those with some college and 53% of those with a high school degree or less reported talking with family or friends.

Looking at income, a similar pattern occurred. Seventy-two percent of those earning $100,000 or more reported calling friends or family. Fifty-eight percent of those making between $40,000 and $90,000, and 54% of those making under $30,000 reported calling friends or family.

The narrative gets flipped on its head when looking at race. Sixty-eight percent of blacks, 67% of Hispanics, and 71% of Asians reported having a video call with family or friends. Only 55% of whites reported the same.

Moreover, the AEI data challenge
the many headlines declaring
that minorities had higher rates of anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic. When asked about feeling lonely or isolated, whites were actually slightly more likely to state that they felt lonely a few times a week or more—36%—compared to 34%of blacks. Forty-one percent of Hispanics and 38% of Asians reported feeling the same way. Similarly, when asked about feeling depressed, whites had higher self-reported levels of regular depression (36%) compared to blacks (31%). Hispanic respondents were higher again at 41% with Asians notably lower at 23%. During the lockdowns, there were non-trivial percentages of the population understandably dealing with real mental health issues related to depression and isolation, but at no point were there orders of magnitude differences between blacks and whites who were all dealing with the consequences of the lockdowns.

Without question, racial disparities exist in the United States which intersect with factors like education, family structure, and even neighborhood and community structure. The pandemic exposed even more. But, the impact of race on outcomes by itself is often dangerously overstated with those on the Left regularly alleging negative, harmful consequences for non-whites as a default and without sufficient evidence.

The global pandemic lockdowns are a perfect example of this misstep and it turns out that non-whites were more likely than whites to connect with friends and family digitally during the lockdowns despite stories to the contrary. And, relatedly, levels of depression and isolations were remarkably similar across the population regardless of racial and ethnic groups. None of this is to suggest that many Americans were not isolated and disconnected from others, but it is time to look at what really drove the differences and reduce the narratives that suggest the disparities are a result of one’s race and ethnicity with other factors ignored and relegated to the background; we as a nation are more than that.

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This article originally appeared in the AEIdeas blog and is reprinted with kind permission from the American Enterprise Institute.

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Inflation and crime have ‘soured’ the American dream

Paul Bedard — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 13:40:33 +0000

Inflation, crime, and political partisanship have “soured” the nation on the American dream, though most continue to believe they have achieved it or are on their way to the red, white, and blue goal of a home and a better life.

In the fourth edition of its study of the American dream, the Archbridge Institute said that the younger and less educated have a gloomier view of reaching that goal, spelled out in a 1913 book, and that could be an indicator of larger, troubling issues looming.

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“It seems like that the tumultuous times brought about inflation, fears of an economic recession, and a continuing polarizing political scene,” according to the report, “have soured the mood of the American people.”

Gonzalo Schwarz, the president and CEO of Archbridge, told us: “While belief in the American Dream remains strong overall, it is troubling that doubt has begun to creep in, especially among younger and less educated people.”

Schwarz, the author of the report, provided a copy to Secrets exclusively. He urged those questioning the American dream to keep the faith. “The American Dream can serve as a source of hope and unity for a diverse, divided nation. Instead of focusing on what divides us, we should embrace our shared vision for the pursuit of better, richer, and fuller lives,” he told Secrets.

His report, timed for the July Fourth celebration of the country’s 246th birthday, is mostly positive. Consider:

Seventy-five percent believe they have reached or will reach their version of the American dream.
Most believe that they are living fuller, better lives than before.
Eighty percent believe they have the same opportunities as their parents.
Seven out of 10 are outearning their parents.

“In the fourth edition of our study on attitudes about the American Dream and economic opportunity we continue to see a strong belief in the promise of the American Dream,” said Schwarz, whose institute is devoted to helping people reach the dream.

He also highlighted the warning signs especially among young people and those who haven’t gone to college. Consider:

Those who believe the American dream is out of reach increased from 18% last year to 24%.
Fewer young people feel they have the same opportunities as their parents.
The dream of homeownership has declined.

“There are worrying trends where the percentage of people who are more pessimistic about the American dream and opportunity has increased compared to last year,” Schwarz said, citing the data mined from 2,187 Americans by NORC at the University of Chicago and its AmeriSpeak panel.

The report cited several reasons for the mood change.

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“We see a more negative picture from last year in terms of how many people believe the American dream is out of reach. The more negative outlook can stem from many reasons like continued inflation rates, high interest rates than have increased and depressed the economy in the name of stemming that inflation, a looming economic recession, a slowdown in the housing industry due to high interest rates, higher crime rates in several major cities, labor force participation is still lower than in the past and more people can be disengaging from the labor market working from home,” it said.

A federal report on Friday indicated inflation remains stubbornly around.