Reopen America - April 2020

America’s student population of around 67.8 million have been hit hard by the changes caused by the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent government responses to it. Primary, secondary, and college students have had to shift their learning from the traditional classroom, to an unfamiliar virtual one. If there’s one thing for certain however, it’s that children are very adaptable to changing circumstances, while the educational system very much isn’t.

Senate Democrats alone blocked the potential for the full Senate to move to consider the Just and Unifying Solutions To Invigorate Communities Everywhere (JUSTICE) Act, S. 3985, before breaking for Independence Day recess this year. Introduced by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in an effort to address policing reform in the wake of the murder of George Floyd which spurred protests and riots across the country, the JUSTICE Act would make small strides toward holding police accountable.

On behalf of FreedomWorks’ activist community, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to cosponsor the Duplication Scoring Act, H.R. 7438, introduced by Rep. Paul Gosar (R- Ariz.). This simple bill would require the analysis of certain legislation for the purpose of preventing duplication of and overlap with existing government programs. An updated version of existing legislation H.R. 4365 sponsored by former-Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), Rep. Gosar’s bill would provide much-needed information to Congress and to the American people before Congress passes bills that do things that already exist.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to mark up a bill that is a classic piece of Washington, D.C. misdirection. The Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act, S. 3398, presents itself as a bill targeted at fighting the spread of child pornography (rebranded as “child sexual abuse material,” or “CSAM”), which obviously no decent person would oppose. However, the actual impact of the bill reaches far beyond this purpose, simultaneously threatening both tech platforms’ liability protections and their ability to deploy strong encryption for their users, endangering innocent Americans’ security in the process.