Reopen America - April 2020

Today, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue that represents a big win for school choice advocates and for religious liberty. The case revolves around a tax credit given to individuals and businesses for contributions to an education scholarship program for private schools, including religious schools, and a rule promulgated by the Montana Department of Revenue forbidding the use of scholarships at religious schools.

The Executive Branch of our federal government is massive; so massive that no one knows exactly how many federal agencies there are. Nevertheless, the Executive Office of the President (EOP) must efficiently manage the massive amount of regulatory actions that come from these innumerable agencies. Tasked with being the primary check-point for regulations before they are implemented, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, otherwise known as OIRA, is the most important federal agency that you’ve probably never heard of.

Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Wyo.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) have introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY 2021 to create a database of beneficial owners of businesses with 20 or fewer employees. This amendment, which is based on the ILLICIT CASH Act, S. 2563, is similar to the Corporate Transparency Act, H.R. 2513. The Corporate Transparency Act, which FreedomWorks opposed, passed the House in October.

The House and Senate are in session this week.

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to cosponsor the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration (FAIR) Act, S. 4074. Introduced by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Angus King (I-Maine), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), and Mike Lee (R-Utah), the FAIR Act would reform federal civil asset forfeiture laws to increase the evidentiary standard needed to subject property to permanent seizure and restore the presumption of innocence in federal civil forfeiture proceedings.

Today, Congress will take an unprecedented step in the fight towards making Washington, D.C. the 51st state in the Union. On Election Day 2016, voters in the District voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to send a petition to Congress to admit them as a state. Today, the House of Representatives will consider and vote on H.R. 51, The Washington, D.C. Admission Act. This legislation would do precisely that.