October 7th, 2023
Advancing American Freedom released the following statement after Iran-controlled Hamas terrorists declared war on Israel.
“The horrific violence we are now seeing waged on Israel has been made possible by the Biden administration’s weakness on the world stage. Israel has every right to defend itself against these brutal attacks,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “America will always stand with Israel against the Iranian regime and its proxies.”
October 10, 2023
Advancing American Freedom issued the following statement on the unanswered FOIA request to the Biden administration on their remarks expressing “strong opposition” to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, characterizing their existence as “provocative.” The FOIA request was submitted in May of 2022 and has now gone 500 days without answer from the Biden administration, and FOIA requests, by law, are required to be answered in 20 days.
“Israel just survived its darkest day after enduring a brutal attack from Hamas with more hard days to come, and Jewish communities around the world are reeling from the horrors of the past few days. Their terror has only been exacerbated by the lukewarm responses of the United States,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “The Biden administration in 2022 made remarks in “strong opposition” to Jewish communities residing in Judea and Samaria and considered them “provocative,” calls that have gone unexplained despite repeated demands. Hesitation to stand with our allies has consequences. After the barbaric attacks on Israel these past days the American people still deserve answers for these shameful remarks and whether the Administration still deems Jews living in peace in their homeland as ‘provocative.’”
Background
Advancing American Freedom has been calling out the rise of antisemitism on the Left and in this administration. See Executive Director Paul Teller’s op-ed here from August.
October 2, 2023
Advancing American Freedom issued the following statement after California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Laphonza Butler, who is registered to vote in Maryland and is the head of EMILY’s List, a pro-abortion fundraising outfit, to serve out the remainder of the late-Senator Feinstein’s term.
“Democrats are so committed to abortion that their first-choice appointment is an out-of-state Senator who leads the wealthy abortion lobby,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “Democrats have long made clear they are the extremists on abortion, and Governor Newsom’s appointment further represents the lengths they will go to defend abortion.”
September 29, 2023
Advancing American Freedom released the following statement condemning the SAFER Banking Act, which would further allow marijuana to be sold without penalty across the country by backstopping marijuana “business” bank accounts.
“The sale of marijuana is a federal crime, but soft-on-crime politicians have used loopholes to ignore the law and allow marijuana to be sold across the country,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “Now they want the Fed and the FDIC to backstop illegal bank accounts. It is time for Congress to show moral leadership, or next we will be voting on a marijuana bank bailout.”
September 29, 2023
Advancing American Freedom issued the following statement after the Eighth Circuit upheld the rights of families and students in the Linn-Mar school district in a case that challenged a school policy that allowed the facilitation of a child’s gender transition without the knowledge of the parents and punished students for not using student’s preferred pronouns:
“Families are the cornerstone of our society, and the Eighth Circuit has upheld the rights of families and their students in their ruling,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “Parents and students deserve to have a voice, and students deserve to attend schools where they can’t be bullied into woke ideology through vague policies. Advancing American Freedom will continue to be a voice for parents and students across the country.”
“The Eighth Circuit has made clear that vague school guidelines cannot be used to prohibit free speech of a student, and schools across the country with similar bullying gender ideology policies for their students should pay attention,” said J. Marc Wheat, General Counsel for AAF. “Iowa has fought hard to put in place commonsense policies for parents and students in the public education system, and Advancing American Freedom will continue to defend the rights of parents and students against the Far-Left’s gender policies.”
Background
AAF filed an amicus brief for the Linn Mar school district and launched a parents’ rights campaign in February.
In March, AAF filed its second amicus brief in Massachusetts.
In May, AAF filed its third amicus brief in Florida.
September 27th, 2023
Advancing American Freedom Foundation led an amicus brief co-signed with 70 other groups and organizations in Buckeye Institute v. IRS, in a case compelling 501 (c)(3) organizations to disclose their donors for IRS surveillance.
“This demand from the Internal Revenue Service is both invasive and unjustified; nonprofit organizations are protected by the First Amendment and should never be forced by the government to disclose their donors,” said J. Marc Wheat, AAF General Counsel. “The IRS’s requirement chills donors’ First Amendment speech and assembly rights out of fear of the IRS mishandling confidential information or political retribution for private donations. Advancing American Freedom will continue to defend American’s rights against burdensome regulations that leave them vulnerable to the government.”
The amicus brief is linked here.
September 26, 2023
Advancing American Freedom released the following statement after Ford announced its pause of construction of an electric vehicle battery plant involving a Chinese electric vehicle battery company.
“There is no such thing as a private company under the authoritarian rule of the Chinese Communist Party, and American companies should seriously assess their business ties as a result. Ford is protecting American national security by pausing construction and should be commended for putting American interests first,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “Republicans in Congress need to continue their oversight of Biden’s green agenda, which too often ties the American economy with China’s and hurts the American worker — but benefits the CCP.”
John Shelton, Policy Advisor
In May, just one month after a tragic freight train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation rushed to pass a new railway safety bill. Unfortunately, the Railway Safety Act only serves to empower federal bureaucrats while doing precious little to prevent future derailments.
The fact that the bill was written before the completion of the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the causes of the East Palestine accident is a telltale sign of bad legislation. It suggests that pre-existing policy preferences are being repackaged as an appropriate response to the Ohio tragedy.
Since the bill does not start with recognizing the determinants of the derailment, it can only rush to judgement in creating new rules and regulations. The bill does not identify any market or procedural failures that would justify new regulations. It is simply proffered as evidence of government “doing something.”
The vast majority of freight in the US is transported by truck, not rail. In 2020, trucking carried 12.5 billion tons of freight, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of total freight weight. Railways, in comparison, carried only 1.4 billion tons. When it comes to accidents, truck crashes involving hazardous materials are more frequent and far more deadly. Yet trail derailments, though comparatively rare, garner wall-to-wall media coverage, artificially creating the demand for government action where it is completely unwarranted.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that some of the proposed regulations in the Railway Safety Act seem designed to sound good to the casual observer but actually have no bearing on railway safety. For example, the bill requires two person crews, despite the fact that railroads have reduced crew size while improving safety in recent decades. Virtually all of rail traffic in Europe is moved by one-man crews. In 2016, the Federal Railroad Administration proposed a rule requiring train crews to have two operators – only to rescind the rule three years later, once the data demonstrated no correlation between larger crew size and safety. For what it’s worth, the East Palestine crash was manned by a crew of three people.
Other provisions simply add needless complications and expenses so typical of our bureaucratic state. For example, despite crews being qualified to carry out pre-trip inspections, the bill requires a (unionized) mechanical inspector to conduct an additional inspection at a specified site. If the nearest site is further away than the train’s destination, the crew would need to pass its intended stop, get inspected, then double back to the original destination. The bill gives no consideration to the higher costs, lost time, or greater environmental impact such goose chases will cause.
While the bill does expand oversight of hazardous materials, it grants Secretary Buttigieg nearly open-ended rulemaking authority. The last thing any conservative should support is giving any bureaucrat more power over anything – especially one as incompetent as Pete Buttigieg.
Instead, we should be deregulating railways. During their four years in office, the Trump-Pence administration repealed regulations on electronically controlled pneumatic brakes, brake safety inspections, two-person crew requirements, minimum rail safety requirements, recurring safety audits, and ethylene oxide. And yet, despite this massive deregulation, train derailments were down on average compared to the Obama administration. In fact, according to the Association of American Railroads, derailments are down 31% since 2000.
Today, American railroads are safer than ever before. Hazmat incidents are down 78% since 2000, and mainline accidents are down 44% thanks to technology upgrades over the years. The Railway Safety Act will not make our communities any safer – but it will add layers of needless bureaucracy that will make every product shipped by rail more expensive.
