They Already Do

What to know: The president of the National Border Patrol Council warns that when Title 42 ends, the criminal Mexican cartels are “going to control our entire southwest border.”

The TPPF take: The cartels already have operational control of the border.

“And they largely control the Mexican government, which has descended into a hopelessly corrupt and lawless narco state where officials who dare to enforce the law end up assassinated, often in publicly gruesome ways,” says TPPF’s Chuck DeVore “With the would-be immigrants pouring across the border come rivers of deadly drugs as border agents are diverted to processing people who claim asylum rather than intercepting drugs.”

For more on the border, click here.


Better Public Schools

What to know: The Texas State Board of Education met recently and charted a path to a more responsive SBOE that better reflects the views of the vast majority of Texans.

The TPPF take: The SBOE will take a bigger role in setting out the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards, the state standards for what students should know and be able to do.

“In its second meeting of the year, the SBOE laid a strong foundation for future success,” says TPPF’s Michael Barba. “The SBOE is improving the TEKS drafting process, empowering innovative public school charter applicants, and protecting the God-given right of parents to direct their children’s education. We look forward to the June meeting where the board will vote on 2022-23 charter applicants.”

For more on SBOE, click here.


They’ll Make It Up in Volume?

What to know: Ford is losing more than $66,000 for every electric vehicle it produces—startling numbers, in light of a planned EPA “tailpipe rule” that tightens emissions standards, which the EPA hopes will force more Americans into buying EVs (for their own good).

The TPPF take: C.S. Lewis once observed, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”

“If we fail to stop the tailpipe rule, then we empower the moral busybodies even more,” says TPPF’s Robert Henneke. “This is the brute force application of policy preferences—forcing choices onto consumers. And like Obamacare, the result will be disastrous—it won’t be millions of Americans happily motoring to work and back in electric vehicles; most of us can’t afford them. Instead, we’ll increase pressure on the poor, who have to drive longer distances to work and who are priced out of the electric vehicle market. We’ll put pressure on a grid that’s not ready for it, and gas-powered vehicles will become stupidly expensive.”

For more on the tailpipe rule redux, click here.