Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation, a research-based, public policy “think tank.” He is a health policy expert and weekly contributor at Forbes.com. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the Texas Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Dr. Matthews is a past president of the Health Economics Roundtable for the National Association for Business Economics, the largest trade association of business economists. Dr. Matthews also served for 10 years as the medical ethicist for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board for Human Experimentation, and has contributed chapters to several books, including Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate and The 21st Century Health Care Leader and, in 2009, Stop Paying the Crooks (on Medicare fraud).

He has been published in numerous journals and newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, Barron’s, USA Today, Forbes magazine and the Washington Times. He was an award-winning political analyst for the USA Radio Network.

Dr. Matthews received his Ph.D. in Humanities from the University of Texas.

Keisha Russell is Senior Counsel with First Liberty Institute, concentrating on religious liberty matters and First Amendment rights.

Keisha attended Emory University School of Law, where she was heavily involved in Emory’s prestigious Center for the Study of Law and Religion. She served on the Emory Journal of Law & Religion and two moot court teams. She was a law clerk for the Center’s Restoring Religious Freedom Project where she worked on religious liberty litigation. In her final year of law school, Keisha worked as a law clerk for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) on national and international matters affecting Israel. Keisha was a 2017 Emory University Graduating Woman of Excellence.

Prior to joining First Liberty, Keisha was a 2011 Teach For America corps member in Atlanta Public Schools. As an elementary special education teacher, she taught students with ADD, emotional behavioral disorders, and learning disabilities. Keisha is most passionate about protecting religious freedom for children in America’s schools.

Keisha earned a Bachelor’s in Communications from University of Central Florida and a Master’s in Teaching from the University of Southern California.

Keisha is licensed to practice law in New York, Texas, and Florida.

By: The Editorial Board - wsj.com - September 11, 2024 The former President let her rattle him, as he failed to make her defend her policies. Ms. Harris, less well known than the former President, ...

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?"

Anymore, it’s not as much about convincing abortion advocates to switch sides, but getting pro-lifers to speak up.

As Kamala Harris pivots to the political center in her campaign for president, a 2019 questionnaire from a leading civil rights organization spotlights her past support for left-wing causes such as taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for ...

Evangelicals for Harris, a new group supporting Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, claims her big-government entitlement programs align with Christian values, but the New Testament does… Source: Evangelicals for Harris: Christian values and entitlement programs

In the five swing-state Senate races, Democratic candidates are leading their Republican opponents by an average of 6.4 points, indicating that if the swing-state Democratic Senate candidates win b…

South Dakota is one of the most pro-life states in America. Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, South Dakota had enacted 111 statutes restricting abortion, the most of any state.