Random Excerpts

The above functions have recently been managed by policy councils through a tiered interagency policy process. This process helps to identify differences of opinion and reach a decision without having to take every issue to the President. It can be used to address a single question or monitor a recurring issue on an ongoing basis. Typically, the process involves multiple Cabinet departments and agencies that have a pertinent role, policy interest, or disagreement. Each policy council’s process could involve the following committees:

American foreign policy has long benefited from cooperation with the countries of Europe (generally, the EU), and any conservative Administration should build on this resource. Yet the transatlantic relationship is complex, with security, trade, and political dimensions.

Data Systems. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the disastrous public health consequences of the CDC’s failure to follow multiple congressional mandates to modernize its data infrastructure. Current reporting methods are burdensome for frontline medical workers, yet they result only in fragmented data that are not available in real time or usable across systems.

Finally, USCIS should pause the intake of applications in a benefit category when backlogs in that category become excessive. Once USCIS adjudicators can decrease that caseload to a manageable number, application intake should resume.

ESG Practices as a Cover for Anticompetitive Activity and Possible Unfair Trade Practices. It has long been suspected, and is now increasingly documented, that corporate social advocacy on issues ranging from “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DED to the “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) movement also serves to launder corporate reputation and perhaps obtain favorable treatment from government actors. In a recent Senate Judiciary hearing, Senator Josh Hawley asked FTC Chair Lina Khan if the FTC had conditioned merger reviews on ESG or critical race theories adopted by the firms involved. Khan responded by saying that she turned down deals when firms offered social justice policies in return for approving unlawful deals. In response to a similar question from Senator Tom Cotton, Khan responded that firms try to come to the FTC to get out of antitrust liability by offering climate, diversity, or other forms of ESG-type offerings, but that there is no ESG loophole in the antitrust laws.”

USSS should keep visitor logs for all facilities where the President works or resides. The Biden Administration has evaded such transparency with President Biden spending a historic amount of time for a President at his Delaware residence. This has left the American people in the dark as to who is influencing the highest levels of their own government.

IfOIDO remains a DHS component, the Secretary should immediately issue a directive stripping CRCL of its immigration portfolio. OIDO is in a better position with dedicated resources and immigration experts to perform this function than CRCLis. Allowing both offices to conduct detention oversight is duplicative and wasteful.

The Fed’s mortgage-related activities are a paradigmatic case of what monetary policy should not do. Consider the effects of monetary policy on the housing market. Between February 2020 and August 2022, home prices increased 42 percent.”° Residential property prices in the United States adjusted for inflation are now 5.8 percent above the prior all-time record levels of 2006.” The home-price-to-median-income ratio is now 7.68, far

Publish a foreign adversary transparency list. As part of the FCC’s ongoing work to secure our networks from entities that would do the bidding of our foreign adversaries, the FCC should do more to shine the light of transparency on the scope of the problem. To this end, the FCC should compile and publish a list of all entities that hold FCC authorizations, licenses, or other grants of authority with more than 10 percent ownership by foreign adversarial governments, including the governments of China, Russia, Iran, Syria, or North Korea. A bipartisan bill that would require

• Project sponsors should be required to show that projects have positive economic value to taxpayers, and sponsors should guarantee that all federal financing will be repaid through properly structured loan terms, including a minimum equity commitment from all project sponsors.