Equipping Schoolchildren for a Better America

 As the nation soon celebrates its 250th birthday, it is worth recalling that religious freedom and practice were vital to the birth of our constitutional republic and are necessary to sustain it. The various school choice laws in states, along with the new Federal Scholarship Tax Credit law, are a growing confirmation that the government respects the free exercise of religion by allowing the choice of religious schools by parents for their children.

This federal law, effective in 2027, has the potential to transform K-12 schooling to a high-quality, more competitive system, and help sustain religious freedom and practice in America. It will financially empower parents with potentially billions of dollars in scholarship opportunities to direct their children’s education in any school setting, public, charter, private, religious, or homeschool.

By making more parents effective “customers” of K-12 education for their children, this law will expand options for how and where their children are educated. No longer will parents have to subject their children to baleful influences in an educational setting that undermines their faith, while parents also will be in a stronger position to influence schools to improve quality and respect their faith.

Scholarships will be funded by private contributions from individuals to scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) that serve students in K-12 education. Donors will receive a 100 percent credit against their federal income tax liability for a maximum $1,700 per year -- a huge financial incentive that will accumulate billions of new scholarship dollars for use in elementary and secondary education.

This July 4th, represents another historic milestone as the 200th anniversary of the deaths of the second and third presidents, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson -- providentially, each dying on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Both these founders of our nation had plenty to say about religious freedom.

President Adams understood that religious practice was integral to the success of constitutional government. In October 1798, he penned a letter to the Massachusetts Militia that contained this admonition:

We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

 

In January 1802, President Jefferson wrote his famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, quoting the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which reaffirmed that religious organizations were protected against government interference, rather than the misapplied claim that religion was to be walled off from public life:

[The] legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" thus building a wall of eternal separation between Church & State.

 

Beyond improving academic quality and parental satisfaction, this federal tax credit 

scholarship law reflects both these constitutional perspectives in that the government is safeguarding religion without injecting itself in religious practices or favoring one in lieu of others. 

Recent Supreme Court case law further captures this crucial balance. For example, in Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue (2020), which upheld that state’s tax credit scholarship program, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the Court, “the Establishment Clause is not offended when religious observers and organizations benefit from neutral government programs.”

Indeed, the federal tax credit scholarship will make access to religious schools more affordable for lower-income families nationwide who desire that option for their children, and enhance access to educational goods and services for children in public schools. Importantly, the federal government remains neutral in parents' educational decisions for their children.

One caveat in this federal scholarship law is that governors must decide whether their state participates to benefit their resident students with the new scholarships. Thus far, 30 states have “opted in” while 20 have not. Several governors in the latter category are waiting for the U.S. Treasury Department to issue rules and guidance on the new program.

It is vital for people of faith and for religious organizations to take full advantage of this law and help it succeed by (1) urging governors of every state to “opt-in” to allow the program to benefit their resident students; (2) ensuring SGOs are established and connected to parochial schools; and (3) spreading the word to donors at every income level to contribute to SGOs to award scholarships to children to attend those schools.

The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit law will financially empower exponentially more parents to access the highest quality, most suitable education of their choice for their children, including faith-based schools that will enable religious freedom to thrive. This will better prepare succeeding generations of young people to know and respect our nation’s constitutional foundations, the rule of law, and the democratic process.

Peter Murphy is Vice President at the Invest in Education Foundation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/07/equipping-schoolchildren-for-a-better-america/

Why are we still funding Planned Parenthood?

 by Susan Quinn

he evils of the abortion giant know no bounds. Not only are they in the business of slaughtering the preborn, but they’re expanding their empire into “transgender medicine” for children.

And, the funding limits extended to Planned Parenthood using our tax dollars are set to expire, meaning we must demand that Congress seriously curtail, or eliminate, all funding for Planned Parenthood permanently.

Last year, Congress restricted funding for abortion and “transgender” interventions for only one year, and on July 4, that restriction expires; Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough maneuvered the provision to stand for one year, not the proposed ten, apparently due to its inclusion in the reconciliation bill.

Funds are being restricted for abortion procedures on a state-by-state basis, but the transgender “treatments” have significantly expanded at Planned Parenthood to compensate for the shortfall:

A report by the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) and the American Principles Project found that Planned Parenthood has expanded into the lucrative ‘transgender medicine’ business in a big way, capitalizing on sex-rejecting treatments and mutilation of gender-confused youth.

[snip]

The numbers are significant and disturbing. According to the report, cross-sex hormone treatments and procedures are now accessible at nearly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood clinics, outstripping access to abortion. Data is limited, but some states reported a more than 400 percent increase in sex-rejecting procedure visits between 2018-2025.

 

The federal government provides substantial funding to PP. The 2024–2025 report lists the following facts:

• Taxpayer funding in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements hit $832 million, nearly $2.3 million per day – an increase of $39.8 million from the previous report and representing 39% of Planned Parenthood’s overall revenue. 
• Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding has increased by 50% since 2014.

Planned Parenthood laments its loss of funding and the difficulties it has experienced:

For the organization itself, the withdrawal of funds has already done ‘irreversible damage’ and led to the closure of 51 of its health centers last year, according to Nora Walsh-DeVries, its vice president for political and legislative affairs.

‘Our fantastic affiliates across the county have done so much work to still see as many patients as they can and cover the costs and make sure patients can still come at no cost to them, but that's just not a sustainable way to operate,’ Walsh-DeVries told NOTUS. ‘Any further defund will just continue this devastation.’

Members of Congress are not optimistic about being able to pass a third reconciliation bill and instituting another funding ban. These are the questions we must ask:

• We’re living in a post-Roe world, so why does the federal government continue to fund abortions?
• Instead of the taxpayers, shouldn’t private donors be benefactors of the abortion giant? If they want to support abortion and sexually mutilating, why should they get our money to do so?
• When other national organizations have put a pause on transgender “treatment” programs because the science and harm is becoming undeniable, are we willing to fund Planned Parenthood’s expansion of it?
• Do we, as citizens, have the social appetite for the killing of babies and mutilating of children?

It’s time to take a stand against these abhorrent treatments that destroy and damage the lives of our citizens. Congress must withdraw all funding of Planned Parenthood.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/07/why-are-we-still-funding-planned-parenthood/

Mamdani’s rent freeze makes him a fascist

 The New York City Rent Guidelines Board recently approved Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s key campaign promise to “freeze the rent,” and it will cause economic chaos.  More importantly, it exposes a point the far left wants everyone to forget: The left has used the same lies and playbook for 90 years, and the various forms of collectivism are closely related.  The far left will soon repeat its usual 90-year-old propaganda, claiming it is fighting “fascism.”

The definition of fascism from the Library of Economics and Liberty (Econlib) differentiates the two concepts.

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. ...

Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest” — that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities.

Note the difference between the two collectivist concepts: Whereas socialism sought control through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines socialism as

a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

 

In a fascist system, the means of production are privately owned but publicly controlled, as in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “freezing the rent” of privately owned buildings — as was the case in National Socialist Germany and other fascist regimes.  Therefore, it should be clear that there isn’t much difference between the two systems.

This was well known decades ago, before the far left started rewriting history, while accusing the pro-freedom right of rewriting history.  A number of prominent personalities have stated these obvious facts, such as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., associate professor of history at Harvard:

In certain basic respects — the totalitarian state structure, the single party, the leader, the secret police, the consuming fear of political and intellectual freedom — fascism and Communism are clearly more like each other than they are like anything in between.

Also Democrat President Harry S. Truman, in a news conference on March 30, 1950:

There isn’t any difference between the totalitarian Russian Government and the Hitler government and the Franco government in Spain. They are all alike. They are police state governments.

Since then, the constant gaslighting has been that these two very similar collectivist ideologies are somehow far apart — on opposite ends of a mythical political spectrum, no less.  Dinesh D’Souza recently offered a short explanation on why this happened.

How did fascism — built on state control of industry, education, banks, churches, and media — end up labeled as “right wing” when those are traditionally left-wing platforms? Filmmaker and author @dineshdsouza joins PragerU CEO @realtalkwithmarissa to unpack how progressive academics redefined fascism after World War II to distance it from the left.

But as you can see, from the practical and definitional aspects of the word, fascism is clearly from the left.  As articulated by President Trump, it demands absolute allegiance.

In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance.

This is going to be very important in the next few months, for these critical reasons:

• Zohran Mamdani is a collectivist; a communist; and, as we have proven, a fascist.
• It should also be clear that these ideologies belong on the far left.
• And as sure as the sun rises, the fascist far left will trot out the lie that it is fighting “fascism.”

Thus, it will be vitally important to have these facts at hand to counter the lies we know are coming.  The fascist far left has been able to get away with this gaslighting for far too long.  It’s time to fight back with the facts.

D Parker is an engineer, inventor, wordsmith, and student of history, former director of communications for a civil rights organization, and a long-time contributor to conservative websites.  Find him on Substack.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/07/mamdani-s-rent-freeze-makes-him-a-fascist/

Anthropic’s biggest healthcare bets: 6 key moves

 Anthropic has rapidly expanded its footprint in healthcare this year, rolling out a HIPAA-compliant AI platform for providers, investing in drug discovery and public health initiatives, advancing cybersecurity programs aimed at protecting critical infrastructure and weighing in on the future of AI regulation. 

Here are six of the company’s biggest healthcare moves so far in 2026, as reported by Becker’s:

1. At June 30 event in San Francisco, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, Anthropic’s life sciences head, said Anthropic is launching an internal drug discovery program with a focus on neglected diseases that traditional pharmaceutical companies would not consider commercially attractive.
   
   
2. On June 10, Anthropic published two policy frameworks calling for stronger federal oversight of advanced AI systems, including mandatory safety testing, independent evaluations and penalties for companies that violate safety requirements. The company highlighted cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure, including hospitals, as a key risk area and urged investments in more secure software and modernization of legacy systems. Anthropic also opposed federal preemption of state AI laws unless national regulations meet or exceed the standards outlined in its proposals.
   
   
3. On June 9, Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5 and Claude Mythos 5, a new class of AI models the company says accelerated parts of its internal drug design work by about 10 times. Anthropic reported the models demonstrated advanced capabilities in drug discovery, protein engineering and genomics, including generating novel scientific hypotheses and autonomously completing complex biology research tasks. While Fable 5 is available broadly, the more powerful Mythos 5 is currently limited to select partners and researchers.
   
   
4. On June 2, Anthropic expanded Project Glasswing, adding 150 organizations to its initiative aimed at identifying and remediating critical software vulnerabilities using its unreleased Claude Mythos Preview model. The company said initial participants uncovered more than 10,000 high- and critical-severity flaws, prompting the program’s expansion into sectors including healthcare, energy and communications. Anthropic also signaled plans to broaden access to its cybersecurity tools while continuing to develop safeguards designed to prevent misuse of the model’s advanced cyber capabilities.
   
   
   
5. In May, Anthropic committed $200 million in grants and Claude-related support to the Gates Foundation, with a focus on advancing healthcare initiatives. The partnership will dedicate resources to accelerating drug and vaccine development and helping governments make better use of health data, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
   
   
6. On Jan. 11, Anthropic launched Claude for Healthcare, a HIPAA-compliant version of its AI platform tailored for providers, payers, life sciences organizations and patients. The platform includes tools for prior authorizations, claims appeals, care coordination, regulatory submissions and patient support, while integrating with healthcare data sources such as CMS coverage databases, ICD-10 codes and provider registries. Anthropic also expanded its life sciences offerings to support clinical trial operations and regulatory workflows.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-technology/ai/anthropics-biggest-healthcare-bets-5-key-moves/

CMS targets 340B, site-neutral pay in 2027 outpatient rule

 CMS plans to cut what Medicare pays hospitals for drugs bought through the 340B program and push site-neutral payment into a new category of outpatient services, two proposals that together would pull billions of dollars out of hospital outpatient revenue beginning in 2027.

The changes are part of the 2027 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgery Center proposed rule, issued July 2 by CMS. The rule would affect roughly 3,500 hospitals and 6,400 ASCs.

“Medicare beneficiaries deserve a program that pays for the right care, in the right setting, at the right time,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a news release framing the package around patient affordability and lower out-of-pocket costs. “This proposed rule focuses squarely on patient affordability by strengthening our utilization management tools, aligning drug payments with actual acquisition costs and removing site-of-care disparities that have unnecessarily driven up costs for millions of seniors.”

Hospital groups condemned the rule within hours of its release, focusing their fire on the 340B and site-neutral provisions.

Nine things to know:

1. 340B drug payments would be slashed to average sales price minus 33.4%. Citing a hospital drug acquisition cost survey CMS conducted from Jan. 1 through April 7, the agency is proposing to pay for 340B-acquired drugs at the drug’s average sales price minus 33.4%, down from the current average sales price plus 6%. CMS estimates the change would cut Original Medicare drug payments by $4.55 billion and beneficiary drug payments by $1.15 billion in the first year. Because statute requires budget neutrality, CMS would raise outpatient payments for non-drug services by an equivalent amount, shifting dollars away from 340B hospitals and toward providers broadly.

2. The 340B “remedy” clawback would accelerate. Separately, CMS wants to accelerate its recovery of the $7.8 billion in extra non-drug payments hospitals received under the prior 340B policy from 2018 through 2022. The agency is proposing to raise the annual offset to the OPPS conversion factor from 0.5% to 3%, effective in 2027, excluding hospitals that enrolled in Medicare after Jan. 1, 2018. At that pace, CMS estimates the full recovery would be complete by 2029. Hospital groups have opposed compressing this timeline, and this proposal would do exactly that.

3. Site-neutral payment would expand to imaging. CMS is proposing to pay physician office rates for imaging without contrast — such as X-rays and MRIs — delivered in excepted off-campus provider-based departments. The agency estimates the change would reduce Medicare Part B spending by about $260 million in the first year — including $190 million in program savings and $70 million in lower beneficiary premiums — and cut beneficiary cost-sharing by about $70 million. Rural sole community hospitals would be exempt. This follows the 2026 rule’s extension of site-neutral rates to drug administration and signals that surgical services could be next.

4. Hospitals and ASCs would get a 2.4% pay bump. CMS proposes a 2.4% update to both OPPS and ASC payment rates for facilities that meet quality reporting requirements, based on a projected 3.2% market basket increase reduced by a 0.8 percentage point productivity adjustment.

5. The inpatient-only list keeps shrinking. In the second year of a three-year phase-out, CMS proposes removing 638 services from the inpatient-only list across 11 clinical families, including digestive, respiratory, urinary and maternity care. Paired with a proposed expansion of the ASC Covered Procedures List, the move gives physicians more latitude to shift cases to lower-cost outpatient and ASC settings.

6. New prior authorization would hit botulinum toxin injections. Pointing to a 42.8% jump in claim volume from 2017 to 2024 with no clear clinical explanation, CMS is proposing to require prior authorization for eight additional botulinum toxin injection codes in the hospital outpatient setting, projecting more than $17 million in net annual savings.

7. A price transparency request for information signals more requirements ahead. CMS is seeking comment on tightening machine-readable file standards, including how hospitals report contract mechanisms such as outlier payments, stop-loss provisions, rate tiering and carve-outs. The agency is also asking whether to modify or eliminate the deemed compliance policy for internet-based price estimator tools, a sign that stricter transparency mandates may follow.

8. Other provisions to watch. The rule would reweight the Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating to emphasize the Safety of Care measure group; let accrediting organizations check Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act administrative compliance during routine surveys, while CMS and the Office of Inspector General retain enforcement over patient care protections; and apply a cost-of-living adjustment to the nonlabor share of outpatient payments in Alaska and Hawaii, raising payments to those hospitals by an estimated $55 million.

9. Hospital groups slammed the rule within hours of its release. Ashley Thompson, senior vice president of public policy analysis and development at the American Hospital Association, called the package a “continued assault on the 340B drug pricing program.” She said the proposed 33.4% cut would make drugs less affordable for vulnerable patients already facing higher premiums, coverage losses and rising drug prices.

Jennifer DeCubellis, president and CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals, was similarly blunt, saying the rule “takes an axe to critical funding that supports essential hospitals” without regard for the patients they serve. She called the drug payment cuts unlawful and said CMS relied on a flawed methodology drawn from a survey covering less than a quarter of 340B-covered entities. She also said the site-neutral policy is another cut to Medicare payments that hospitals need to stay open and serve their communities, and urged CMS to reconsider.

CMS will accept public comments on the proposed rule for 60 days following its publication in the Federal Register. 

Click here to access the 723-page proposed rule. 

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/cms-targets-340b-site-neutral-pay-in-2027-outpatient-rule-8-things-to-know/

Orthofix (OFIX) expects Medicare bone stimulator reimbursement to return to prior levels

Orthofix Medical Inc. reported a regulatory update affecting its non-invasive bone growth stimulators. The FDA reclassified these devices from Class III to Class II on April 16, 2026. After initially changing billing rules from May 18, 2026, CMS later reversed course.

On July 1, 2026, CMS issued revised guidance directing that Medicare claims for devices billed under HCPCS codes E0747, E0748 and E0760 from May 18, 2026 onward be processed and paid as they were before the FDA reclassification. The company currently expects average Medicare reimbursement for these codes to return to pre–May 18, 2026 levels, though it cautions that actual results depend on how the revised rules are implemented and on future claim volumes and payer behavior.

https://www.stocktitan.net/sec-filings/OFIX/8-k-orthofix-medical-inc-reports-material-event-d04102d3e24a.html

Zuckerberg says AI agent development going slower than expected

 Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told an internal town hall on Thursday that AI agent development over the last four months has not "accelerated in the way we expected," according to a recording heard by Reuters.

Zuckerberg added that a company reorganization that included major job cuts had not been as "clean" as it could have been and that the company's bets on the new structure  "haven't come to fruition yet."

https://www.aol.com/articles/exclusive-zuckerberg-says-ai-agent-201123000.html