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California should reject Assembly Bill 1383 to protect pension reform progress
AB1383 essentially repeals the most important parts of PEPRA and would add more unfunded mandates to the state’s already underfunded pensions.
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Rhode Island Senate Bill 2098 would restrict access to reduced-risk nicotine products
Tobacco-related diseases remain the leading cause of preventable death in Rhode Island, with around 1,800 residents dying per year from smoking.
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Assembly Bill 1054’s DROP proposal would increase risks for CalPERS
Lawmakers should be aware that DROP programs can create significant costs and funding risks for public pension systems.
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The FDA’s flavored e-cigarette guidance could keep adult smokers from safer alternatives
The evidence increasingly shows that flavored e-cigarettes help adults quit smoking, yet the FDA’s framework still treats those products as exceptional risks.
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California’s Senate Bill 1050 takes a narrower approach to artificial intelligence advertising disclosure
Senate Bill 1050 recognizes a genuine issue in modern advertising and takes a useful step toward addressing it.
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Alaska should tax safer nicotine products at lower rates than cigarettes
Taxing safer nicotine products like cigarettes discourages smokers from switching and keeps more people smoking.
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Louisiana House Bill 211 would rely on criminal penalties to address homelessness
The bill reflects a desire to improve public safety, but its reliance on criminalization and court involvement risks reinforcing instability rather than resolving it.
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Legislation could end Pennsylvania’s expensive and unreliable capital punishment system
House Bill 888 repeals capital punishment from Pennsylvania statutes, replacing the maximum sentence for relevant offenses to life imprisonment.
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California Senate Bill 1246 would disrupt autonomous vehicle regulatory modernization and impose rigid mandates
Rather than building on existing reforms, Senate Bill 1246 adds rigid, prescriptive rules that depart from performance-based regulatory standards.
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California Assembly Bill 1709 would violate the First Amendment and undermine parental choice
A law that would broadly exclude an entire class of minors from those spaces is an unconstitutional burden on protected speech.
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Vermont Senate Bill 198 would tax safer nicotine alternatives similarly to cigarettes
As it stands, the bill's tax structure would treat safer nicotine alternatives as equivalent to or more heavily taxed than cigarettes themselves.
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Missouri should not create special liability rules for autonomous vehicles
Singling out autonomous vehicles for special treatment on liability determination is unnecessary to advancing the safe operation of these vehicles.
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Banning autonomous commercial vehicles won’t make Alaska roads safer
Unlike human drivers, automated driving systems cannot drive drunk, drugged, drowsy, or distracted, and are programmed to follow the rules of the road.
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California can protect against defamatory deepfakes without chilling speech
The penalties placed on online platforms in Senate Bill 1142 are large enough to lead to several unintended outcomes affecting free expression.
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California’s Digital Age Assurance Act should make age disclosure voluntary to protect privacy
The Digital Age Assurance Act represents an opportunity to put parents in the driver’s seat to declare their children’s ages.
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California Assembly Bill 2169 would mandate data sharing in ways that risk user privacy and security
Opening third-party-accessible interoperability interfaces for this kind of data creates new opportunities for breaches and misuse.
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California bill would impose rigid limits on A.I. customer service chatbots
The proposed legislation would require businesses to connect chatbot users with a human within minutes.
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California Senate Bill 867 would ban all toys that include companion chatbots
The bill's approach would deny children access to potentially beneficial technologies and discourage innovation, investment, and industry collaboration.
