Heard at Heritage

Congress passed the Congressional Review Act in 1996 to prevent agency rules from going into effect before Congress had the opportunity to expeditiously review and nullify ones that it deemed unwise. None of the three Presidents since then—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama—used the CRA to rein in the administrative state. President Donald Trump has. In April 2019, the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum reading the CRA broadly for executive and independent agencies alike. This panel will discuss the potential effect that the OMB Memorandum might have on the regulatory state. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this, the 40th year of the Taiwan Relations Act, it bears evaluating the state of the Taiwan-US relationship. There are many positive signs, arms sales, significant unofficial diplomatic contact, and a peak in Congressional activity. There are also signs of reserve on the part of the US administration, including uncertainty over the sale of F-16 fighter jets that have been under consideration for more than 10 years, a failure to pick up on the idea of a US-Taiwan Free Trade Agreement, and a low key opening of the new American Institute in Taiwan. On the other side of the relationship, Taipei is election season, with a range of possible outcomes. So where are US-Taiwan relations to day and where are they headed in the short to medium term. Please join us for an assessment, led by Deputy Foreign Minster Szu-chien Hsu and a discussion with leading experts on the relationship from both sides of the relationship. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Multiple, worsening deadly conflicts grip Nigeria. Given the protracted nature of the insecurity, the international community risks becoming complacent about the profound dangers associated with the conflicts that are driven by a toxic mix of ideologies and grievances. It risks too losing sight of the terrible human toll the violence is taking.Please join The Heritage Foundation, the International Committee on Nigeria, and Save the Persecuted Christians to hear a message from Nigerians directly affected by Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province, and Fulani militia violence: Rebecca Sharibu, mother of Leah Sharibu, a kidnapped schoolgirl held as a slave for life by the Islamic State West Africa Province for refusing to renounce Christianity; Alheri Bawa Magaji and Mercy Maisamari, daughters of the Adara Chiefdom that Fulani radicals brutally attacked earlier this year; and Paul and Folsade Sule, Deborah Jacob, and Napoleon Adamu from Benue State, victims of violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt. These witnesses will shed light on the terrorist violence in the northeast and the conflict in the Middle Belt region that Nigerian leaders—a former Nigerian President, a Nobel laureate, and a national Christian group—say has devolved into a well-armed, well-funded, ethno-religious war that is destabilizing one of Africa’s most important countries. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this riveting book, bestselling author Paul Kengor and writer-director Robert Orlando show what it took to end the Cold War: leaders who refused to accept that hundreds of millions must suffer under totalitarian Communism. And no leaders proved more important than the pope and the president. Two men who seemed to have little in common developed an extraordinary bond—including a spiritual bond between the Catholic pope and Protestant president. And their shared core convictions drove them to confront Communism.To tell the full story of the dramatic closing act of the Cold War, Kengor and Orlando draw on their exhaustive research and exclusive interviews with more than a dozen experts, including well-known historians Douglas Brinkley, H. W. Brands, Anne Applebaum, Stephen Kotkin, John O’Sullivan, and Craig Shirley; the leading biographer of John Paul II, George Weigel; close Reagan advisers Richard V. Allen and James Rosebush; and Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron.You can’t understand Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan—or how the Cold War came to such a swift and peaceful end—without understanding how much faith they put in the Divine Plan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thirty years after Tiananmen Square, human rights abuses continue to proliferate in China. Hundreds of thousands, possibly as many as 3 million, Muslim Uighurs are currently held by the Chinese government in political reeducation facilities. Individuals inside these facilities are subject to indoctrination, forced labor, torture, and in some cases, even death. Collectivization of this population was achieved through the Chinese government’s rapid deployment of large-scale surveillance technology – technology that poses a severe threat to people inside and outside of China. The crisis in Xinjiang is both a human rights and national security threat that merits a strong response from the U.S. government. While the U.S. and the international community has been quick to condemn the Chinese government’s actions, it has been slow to craft a strategy that holds accountable those in China responsible for the abuses.Please join us for a discussion on next steps to respond to the crisis in Xinjiang. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Conservative Women's Network event co-hosted by Clare Booth Luce Center for Conservative Women. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Robert Kagan wrote, “Only with the advent of Enlightenment liberalism did people begin to believe that the individual conscience, as well as the individual’s body, should be inviolate and protected from the intrusions of state and church.” It is widely thought, as Kagan assumes, that religious freedom is the work of the Enlightenment. Only with the decline of religious faith and the end of the religious wars engendered by the Reformation did liberty of conscience gain a foothold in the emerging secular states of Europe. Or so the story goes.Liberty in the Things of God tells a different story. The origins of modern notions of liberty of conscience and religious freedom are to be found in Christian writers from the early centuries (e.g. Tertullian of Carthage and Lactantius), medieval churchmen and theologians, and Christian thinkers in the 16th and 17th centuries. Three features of this tradition of thinking are distinctive: religious faith cannot be coerced; conscience is a form of spiritual knowledge that mandates action; the realm of statecraft and the realm of religion are distinct and must be kept separate.Please join us for a conversation with Robert Louis Wilken about the Christian origins of religious freedom. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

America’s fiscal future is in peril. At $67,000 for every American, the $22 trillion national debt is larger than what the typical American household earns in a year. At the same time that federal debt is growing rapidly, politicians on both sides of the political aisle are making grand promises for new spending. It’s as if Washington’s elite think that the debt does not matter. A high and rising national debt exposes America to significant dangers and imposes steep costs on families, workers, and businesses. The sooner we act to correct course, the more sensible reform options we have available to avoid severe austerity measures.Join the Heritage Foundation for an enlightening panel discussion on why you should care about the national debt by discovering how debt impacts America’s economy and our financial future.The Blueprint for Balance: A Federal Budget for Fiscal Year 2020 is The Heritage Foundation’s budget proposal to guide Congress in its constitutional exercise of the power of the purse. It presents Heritage’s extensive research that, when implemented, can lead to a freer, more prosperous America with opportunity for all. With this Blueprint we demonstrate to the American people and our elected officials an approach to the federal budget that reins in out-of-control spending and debt, ensures that the government is funding its constitutionally mandated duties, and provides an environment where our prosperity as individuals and as a country grows. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Many in Washington continue to be fixated on the immediate ebbs and flows of the U.S.-China trade, investment, and technology dispute. What is the state of China’s economy and where is it trending? Rising labor costs and reduced consumption have put downward pressure on corporate profits. However, efforts by the People’s Bank of China may have staved off current risks of a bearish market in exchange for future defaults as debt in China continues to rise. How are businesses fairing in the ever-changing domestic and international operating environment? Is China’s economy a risky investment these days? And will a U.S.-China agreement make things better or worse?Join us we explore these questions and more with experts from across Washington. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few scholars have articulated such profound insights into the nature and destiny of America as the nineteenth century French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville and the twentieth century American theologian Michael Novak. Each man also had much to say about the rise and popularity of an idea that has regained great traction in America today, especially among young Americans - Socialism. The reflections of Tocqueville and Novak about the character of Socialism are deeply relevant for understanding why people, both in their time and in ours, are attracted to an economic system - whether of the command economy or social democratic variety - that has inflicted enormous political and economic damage on entire societies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.