Reopen America - April 2020

On behalf of our activist community, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to support the Bring Entrepreneurial Advancements To Consumers Here In North America (BEAT CHINA) Act, H.R. 6690. Introduced by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), the BEAT CHINA Act would provide tax incentives to medical and pharmaceutical companies to bring their manufacturing operations to the United States.

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to cosponsor the Right to Test Act, S. 3769, introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). This bill would let states approve coronavirus testing to be used in their state without the interference of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA).

The COVID-19 crisis has held the United States in a public health and economic headlock since the start of quarantine periods about two months ago. Each week shows increased job loss, victims of the virus, and emotional health problems. FreedomWorks activists are, sadly, not immune to the devastation inflicted by Coronavirus.

Famed investor and liberal political activist Bradley Tusk raised eyebrows with what he and many on the left dubbed provocative: a defense of “Big Pharma” in the U.S. The premise is straightforward: for the medical community to conduct the type of R&D required to combat challenges like coronavirus, they cannot be subject to strict price control regimes so popular among progressives.

Although the United Nations (UN) and their subsidiary, the World Health Organization (WHO), were created to be conduits of best practices and policies internationally, their approach to the tobacco industry is counterproductive. Rather than pursue a path of harm reduction, that acknowledges the existing risk of tobacco use and tries to mitigate them within existing realities, both the UN and WHO have prevented any engagement with the tobacco industry. The UN should take a page from the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) successful tobacco playbook and engage with tobacco industry participants.

The Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing recently, led by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) to further investigate the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granting Ligado Networks’ application to use spectrum. This was not the first attempt by Inhofe to sow misinformation on this issue, nor was it the last. Inhofe released a letter, co-signed by a number of other Senate colleagues, repeating some of the falsehoods echoed during the hearing and that the defense industry has been pushing.