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.
Advancing American Freedom today filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court on behalf of the American Hindu Coalition and 20 other amici arguing that the Fairfax County School Board’s policy changes for admission to the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) discriminated against Asian Americans and violated the civil rights of Hindu Americans, as a majority of the Asian American students affected trace their roots to India.
“America has long been a country that rewards hard work and effort without regard to race or ethnicity, but the American education system has lost sight of this principle, allowing admission policies that unfairly discriminate against Asian American students WHO are otherwise qualified,” said AAF General Counsel J. Marc Wheat. “The Supreme Court’s decision to do away with race-based admission must apply to schools across the country in the face of massive resistance, and we must continue to seek to build a nation that provides an abundance of opportunity where hard work is rewarded.”
The amicus brief is linked here.
Advancing American Freedom sent the following letter to the House Judiciary Committee ahead of the hearing, stating that DOJ had failed to produce a single document in response to AAF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request.
“Any agency that cannot be transparent with the American people and erodes the trust of the public is an agency that invites more scrutiny from the legislative branch,” said J. Marc Wheat, AAF General Counsel.
You can read the letter here.
Advancing American Freedom issued the following statement ahead of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on the price setting scheme in the ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’
“The so-called ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ continues to be a disaster for the American people. Price controls endanger citizens who count on innovation in the healthcare industry to manage serious health conditions and diseases,” said AAF Executive Director Paul Teller. “AAF applauds the work of the House to bring attention to the critical issues in the burdensome ‘Inflation Reduction Act.’”
Background
