India said it conducted military strikes against “terrorist camps” in Pakistan, an expected move after it pledged retaliation for a militant attack last month in Kashmir that killed 26 people.
India said in a statement early Wednesday that it had not targeted any Pakistani military facilities in what it called “a precise and restrained response” to the April 22 attack. It later said that Pakistan forces retaliated with artillery fire into India-controlled portions of Kashmir.
OpenAI, the world's most valuable artificial intelligence company, is likely being targeted by espionage from multiple nation-states, warns Josh Steinman, a former Trump National Security Council staffer and cybersecurity company founder.
.@JoshuaSteinman: "I would be willing to bet a large amount of information that OpenAI is completely penetrated by multiple intelligence agencies—and has been for a while." pic.twitter.com/a8JCSeijFD
— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) May 6, 2025
"I would be willing to bet a large amount of information that OpenAI is completely penetrated by multiple intelligence agencies—and has been for a while,” Steinman, co-founder and CEO of Galvanick, a cybersecurity company building tools to secure industrial infrastructure and AI systems,
said in an interview with World of DaaS with Auren Hoffman.
When asked how companies can prevent espionage, Steinman conceded it's challenging but emphasized that rigorous and selective hiring practices are key. “You just have to be very mindful of who you’re hiring and where you are putting them in your company,” Steinman told Hoffman. “You need to be realistic about who your employees are.”
Watch the full interview:
Steinman referenced a bombshell Wall Street Journal report that alleges Chinese officials, during a secret meeting in Geneva, Switzerland in December 2024, privately acknowledged their role in the Volt Typhoon cyberattacks targeting U.S. critical infrastructure. According to the Journal, the officials’ remarks were “indirect” and “somewhat ambiguous” but sufficient to tie Volt Typhoon and the Chinese government to the relentless cyber assaults on American systems.
The campaign, believed to have started no later than 2023, has unleashed chaos, breaching major U.S. phone carriers, electric utilities, IT firms, internet providers, and government agencies. Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon, two Chinese groups, have been repeatedly linked to these hacks.
In July 2024, OpenAI disclosed it was the victim of a security breach in 2023 that exposed internal AI technology secrets, sparking fresh concerns of espionage by foreign adversaries, particularly China. According to the New York Times, a hacker infiltrated OpenAI’s internal messaging systems, accessing employee discussions about AI designs.
As president-elect, Trump’s transition team signaled a more aggressive stance against Chinese cyberattacks. Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for the Trump-Vance transition, told News News that the administration was “committed to imposing costs on private and nation-state actors who continue to steal our data and attack our infrastructure.”
“The Trump Administration is committed to imposing costs on private and nation state actors who continue to steal our data and attack our infrastructure,” Hughes added at the time.
Vaccine and immunotherapies companies tumbled during the afternoon cash session in New York after FDA Commissioner Marty Makary named Vinay Prasad the next director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Several media outlets cited an internal email from Makary to staff members earlier today that announced Prasad's new position to head up biologics at the FDA. This comes weeks after former biologics head Peter Marks abruptly quit.
STAT News' Adam Feuerstein shared a screenshot of Makary's email on X.
Makary told FDA workers that Prasad had published more than 500 academic articles and "done extensive research in the field of oncology and has presented at hundreds of scientific and medical conferences," adding, "He is also the author of the books, "Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer" and "Ending Medical Reversal: Improving Outcomes, Saving Lives.""
Prasad has been a sharp critic of the Covid-19 vaccine for children, as well as a critic of Marks, as per Daily Caller's Emily Kopp's note on X:
In markets, the SPDR S&P Biotech ETF (XBI) fell 6.5%. Vaccine stocks Moderna dropped 11.5% and Novavax fell 3%. Gene therapy firm Sarepta Therapeutics plunged 22%.
"The Street is reacting negatively to the news given some of the color around Prasad and his stance on covid-19 vaccines, the broader drug approval process including accelerated approvals and other comments that on the surface appear to be more anti-industry versus amicable," said Jared Holz, a health-care analyst at Mizuho Securities USA, who was quoted by Bloomberg.
Review Prasad’s YouTube channel for more insight into the new biologics chief’s views and beliefs:
RFK cuts HHS, NIH cuts grants (are they valuable), Peter Marks & More
School vax without consent/ CDC director/ RFK on defunding trials
. . .
Medicare is supposed to fund health-care services for elderly and disabled Americans. But poorly structured payments for Medicare Advantage—a program that pays private insurers to manage seniors’ health coverage—have led to taxpayer dollars increasingly being used for non-medical perks like golf equipment, ski passes, and pet supplies.
Medicare Advantage was intended to be a cost-saving alternative to traditional Medicare. But overpayments to plans have left taxpayers on the hook for an additional $1 trillion over the next decade. If Republicans want to make a real dent in the budget deficit—and head off Democratic plans to redirect the savings into expanding other social programs—they should move to rein in payments and use the savings to ease the burden on taxpayers.
The nature of Medicare Advantage benefits currently on offer suggests something is amiss. For instance, Clever Care’s Medicare Advantage plan pays for greens fees at Los Serranos Golf Club in Southern California’s Chino Hills, as well as at six other courses in the Los Angeles area. In Utah, Select Health advertises payment for “activities to help [Medicare beneficiaries] live a healthier life,” such as “ski passes at resorts around the country” including “day passes for hitting black diamond runs.”
Across the country, Humana promises coverage for “pet food, pet toys, kitty litter and flea shampoo.” Nationally, 172 Medicare plans pay for hairstyling and beauty services, while others reimburse entry fees for social clubs or hunting licenses.
Access to these perks is common. In 2024, 10 million Medicare beneficiaries were entitled to non-medical “supplemental benefits” as part of their coverage. This year, 48 percent of Medicare Advantage plans will feature “flex cards,” offering an average benefit of $966 to enrollees. The federal government, meantime, has little idea exactly what it’s paying for.
Ironically, Medicare Advantage began as an attempt to reduce Medicare costs. The federal government previously paid separately for each physician visit, hospitalization, drug, and diagnostic test incurred, inflating the volume of low-value medical services. Medicare Advantage sought to avoid this—and to reward the cost-effective coordination of preventive care—by paying private insurers up front to deliver all covered Medicare benefits to enrollees.
By the mid-2010s, Medicare Advantage was achieving considerable success. It forestalled costly hospitalizations and improved patients’ health outcomes. Plans generated savings by eliminating needlessly costly procedures, using the funds to attract beneficiaries by offering lower premiums, out-of-pocket costs, and “supplemental benefits.” Enrollment rose steadily.
Medicare Advantage’s supplemental benefits were originally limited to “health related” goods and services, such as dental care. But the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 allowed plans to offer any supplemental benefits with a “reasonable expectation of improving or maintaining the health or overall function” of chronically ill enrollees. These Special Supplemental Benefits for the Chronically Ill (SSBCI) would not need to be “primarily health related” or associated with hospitalizations, but could also be used to pay for groceries, utilities, education, sporting, and social activities—because they might yield incidental benefits to health.
Assuming that up-front payments to plans would not be changed and that uptake would be limited, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that SSBCI would not increase costs to taxpayers. Yet, as 93 percent of Medicare beneficiaries have one or more chronic conditions, eligibility for SSBCI benefits has grown rapidly. Payments to plans have also gone up.
In 2023, Uncle Sam paid Medicare Advantage plans an average of $14,380 per beneficiary, adjusting for individuals’ expected health-care needs. This has led to plans being increasingly extensive in documenting their enrollees’ medical diagnoses, in order to obtain higher payments, including for ill-defined conditions for which claims are hard to challenge.
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, an independent agency established by Congress, notes that the imperfect categorization of medical needs means that the program currently “overpays for beneficiaries who have very low costs and underpays for beneficiaries who have very high costs.” This is why Medicare Advantage plans are eager to offer costly supplemental benefits that are disproportionately attractive to physically active enrollees. Purchasing new golf clubs for Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes won’t reduce their risk of costly hospitalizations, while paying for their ski passes may actually increase it. But doing so will encourage the relatively healthy among them to enroll in plans.
Because of these “coding and selection” effects, from 2015 to 2024, Medicare payments to Medicare Advantage plans rose from 112 percent to 120 percent of what the program would have spent just purchasing medical services for beneficiaries directly. Over that time, overpayments to plans surged from $18 billion to $77 billion per year. Much of this largesse was spent expanding “supplemental benefits” from $960 to $2,520 per beneficiary. But it has also served to swell insurers’ profits.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that overpayments to Medicare Advantage will cost $1.2 trillion over the next decade. That’s more than ten times the likely savings generated by the Department of Government Efficiency.
In his confirmation hearing to head Medicare, Mehmet Oz endorsed the suggestion that cutting Medicare Advantage overpayments would be a better way to finance the extension of President Trump’s tax cuts than trimming Medicaid—winning him plaudits from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren. Leading Republicans Senator Bill Cassidy and Representative Greg Murphy have also advocated this approach.
Medicare benefits already greatly exceed seniors’ premiums and prior tax contributions to the program, and retirees are substantially wealthier than working Americans. Democrats had proposed cutting overpayments to Medicare Advantage to fund expansions of other social welfare programs. They haven’t abandoned those plans. Republicans would do well to capture the savings first and use it to reduce the burden on working taxpayers.
by John Hinderaker
Three hours ago, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon told Harvard to forget about applying for future grant money from the federal government: it won’t be forthcoming. This is an obvious sequel to battles the administration has been fighting with Harvard and other universities. Those fights involve the administration’s efforts to block or retrieve funding that had already been committed by the Biden administration. Whatever the legal merits of those efforts may be, they raise the obvious question: what about funding going forward? McMahon’s letter answers that question.
McMahon’s letter launches a broad-based attack on Harvard, recalling various scandals of the last few years. This is probably the most important language:
Perhaps most alarmingly, Harvard has failed to abide by the United States Supreme Court’s ruling demanding that it end its racial preferencing, and continues to engage in ugly racism in its undergraduate and graduate schools, and even within the Harvard Law Review itself. Our universities should be bastions of merit that reward and celebrate excellence and achievement. They should not be incubators of discrimination that encourage resentment and instill grievance and racism into our wonderful young Americans.
The above concerns are only a fraction of the long list of Harvard’s consistent violations of its own legal duties. Given these and other concerning allegations, this letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided. Harvard will cease to be a publicly funded institution, and can instead operate as a privately-funded institution, drawing on its colossal endowment, and raising money from its large base of wealthy alumni. You have an approximately $53 Billion head start, much of which was made possible by the fact that you are living within the walls of, and benefiting from, the prosperity secured by the United States of America and its free-market system you teach your students to despise.
Emphasis added. The most salient point is that the Supreme Court has specifically found that Harvard engages in race discrimination. I don’t think Harvard has yet internalized this reality. Everything Harvard says suggests that it continues to regard race discrimination as one of its most cherished values. As long as this is true, I agree with the administration that it should send our tax dollars somewhere else. If Harvard issues a sincere mea culpa and makes a credible effort to leave race discrimination behind, I think the administration should rethink its position. But that certainly hasn’t happened yet.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/05/forget-it-harvard.php
Republicans in Congress are getting into some dangerous territory when discussing tax reform. They are desperately looking for ideas to pay for an extension of the personal income tax cuts from the 2017 Trump legislation. The problem is Republicans have targeted employer-based health plans for increased taxes because it will raise a significant amount of revenue. Instead of cutting spending, like Republicans promised on the campaign trail, they are looking for some targeted tax hikes to use as pay-fors. However, hiking taxes on employer-based health insurance plans is going to be a political disaster for Republicans.
The idea of taxing these health insurance plans is destructive to our American system of employers paying the health care costs of employees. Tax reform is supposed to be good for American citizens, yet destroying employer-based health insurance will make many Americans view tax reform as a tax hike. Furthermore, when American workers find out that some want to hike taxes on them to pay for other tax cuts, the political ramifications for Republicans could be devastating in the midterm elections.
Our American tradition of providing stable health care benefits is the essence of our employer-provided health system. Keeping it tax-free is consistent with the long-standing tradition which allows employers to provide great plans for employees. A proposal which eliminates the exemption for employer-based health care will disproportionately hurt those in high-cost areas. The bottom line is that this idea is a tax hike hidden in a Republican sponsored tax reform bill.
Taxing the most dominant source of health coverage for American citizens seems like political suicide when one digs into the numbers. According to The Commonwealth Fund, “employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) is the primary source of health coverage in the United States, covering 178 million people, including 63 percent of working-age adults (ages 19 to 64).” Those numbers are far more than those covered by Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare. American workers like the idea of having flexible plans which provide good coverage, and they will be angry if Republicans in Congress devise a plan to hike taxes in a way that deters employers from continuing the best plans or raises the costs on employees for employer sponsored coverage.
The irony is that if this idea becomes part of the tax reform bill, Congress will end up having an unpopular piece of legislation – the opposite of the 2017 Trump plan. Health insurance offered by employers is something that has widespread support. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in a poll conducted in 2022 found that 96% of Americans believed it is important that a job offer health insurance. The survey found that 54% were highly satisfied with their plan and 70% agreed that their health insurance was worth the cost. Attacking a popular element of access for working Americans to health care will be a political disaster waiting to happen if Congress does not back away.
The politics and policy just don’t add up. Republicans are already going to have a hard enough time holding on to control of the House of Representatives without passing a tax plan that enrages a large swath of MAGA oriented voters and independents. The balance of power right now is 220 Republicans to 213 Democrats in the House with two vacancies that likely will go to Democrats. A five-seat majority is slim and the caucus is difficult to control, and despite this - Republicans seem to want to give an easy issue to Democrats for the 2026 midterm elections. If the 178 million people using employer-based health coverage go to the polls and this issue becomes the one which decides control of the House, many incumbent Republicans may end up dumped into Obamacare coverage or Medicaid by virtue of their own short-sighted tax plan.
Aside from the bad politics, the policy implications of this possible change in tax law could be catastrophic. Ryan Ellis writes at National Review, this plan “would be the biggest booster possible for enrollment in government-controlled Obamacare and Medicaid programs. Conservatives should not achieve tax reform by making socialized medicine a reality.” Republicans are unwittingly pushing American workers into socialized medicine with this idea.
There is nothing conservative about hiking taxes on working Americans. The proposed tax hike using employer-based health care is a terrible idea and Congress should run far away from this idea as soon as possible.
Travelers who aren’t REAL ID compliant by the upcoming deadline this week will still be able to fly but should be prepared for extra scrutiny, the head of Homeland Security said Tuesday.
Kristi Noem told a Congressional panel that 81% of travelers already have IDs that comply with the REAL ID requirements. She said security checkpoints will also be accepting passports and tribal identification when the deadline hits Wednesday.
Those who still lack an identification that complies with the REAL ID law “may be diverted to a different line, have an extra step,” Noem said.
“But people will be allowed to fly,” she said. “We will make sure it’s as seamless as possible.”
REAL ID is a federally compliant state-issued license or identification card that Homeland Security says is a more secure form of identification. It was a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission and signed into law in 2005, but implementation has been repeatedly delayed.
https://nypost.com/2025/05/06/us-news/noem-reveals-how-travelers-without-real-id-can-fly-for-now/
