The ‘New’ Ninth Circuit Court Rules Trump Admin Stripping Funding From Abortion Clinics Is Constitutional

Fetus on Health

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the Trump administration can continue stripping federal funding from clinics that offer abortions.

The court upheld the Trump administration’s June 2019 declaration that taxpayer-funded clinics must stop referring women for abortions or be stripped of their Title X funding.

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Trump Administration Ends Unions ‘Skimming’ $100 Million a Year from Medicaid

by Bethany Blankley   A final rule change has been implemented by the Trump administration to ensure that Medicaid providers receive complete payments as required by law. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released the Medicaid Provider Reassignment Regulation final rule that removes states from being able to divert portions of Medicaid provider payments to third parties – including unions – outside of the scope of what the statute allows. The final rule came after CMS considered more than 7,000 comments from the public, healthcare providers, unions, state agencies, and advocacy groups during the public comment period after the changes were proposed. “State Medicaid programs are responsible for ensuring that taxpayer dollars are dedicated to providing healthcare services for low-income, vulnerable Americans and are not diverted in ways that do not comply with federal law,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “This final rule is intended to ensure that providers receive their complete payment, and that any circumstance where a state redirects part of a provider’s payment is clearly allowed under the law.” Section 1902(a)(32) of the Social Security Act generally prohibits states from making payments for…

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Rep. Angie Craig Issues Joint Letter to Trump Admin to Oppose Funding of Christian Foster Agencies

Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN-02) recently issued a joint letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in response to his department’s decision to allow a South Carolina foster-care agency to refuse housing children with same-sex couples. In January, Azar granted a waiver to Miracle Hill Ministries, a Christian agency that requires foster parents to be Christian and of the opposite sex. President Donald Trump said during last week’s National Prayer Breakfast that his administration would continue to provide agencies such as Miracle Hill Ministries with federal funding so that they can “help vulnerable children find their forever families while following their deeply held beliefs.” Craig and fellow LGBTQ colleague Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY-18) sent a letter to Azar on February 13 to protest his decision. “We write to you to express strong opposition to a waiver you department granted to South Carolina from nondiscrimination requirements for its state-contracted child welfare agencies,” the letter begins. “This harmful decision allows federally-funded child welfare agencies in South Carolina to discriminate on the basis of religion—an egregious violation of the very principles our nation and our child welfare system were founded upon.” The letter was co-signed by 95 House members, and concludes by…

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PROOF: Trio of Project Veritas Videos Expose Unaccountable Federal Government Employees Pushing a Soclialist Agenda From Within the Administrative State

By Natalia Castro   When federal bureaucrats are unaccountable to even their own managers, it can be hard to identify and correct abuse within the system. In his most recent undercover expose, James O’Keefe sought to uncover the stories of the federal government’s worst employees directly from the source. This week, Project Veritas released three videos highlighting rampant misuse of federal resources by employees for political gain. All stories have a similar thread: the employees believe they can never be fired. And they are not completely wrong, current law makes their removal extremely different despite clear evidence of abuse. O’Keefe’s team of investigative journalists went undercover speaking with federal government employees who are also active members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization dedicated to ridding the country of capitalism — the economic system responsible for freeing and uplifting millions around the world from poverty — and replacing it with socialism (also known as the economic system responsible for killing millions of people in the last century and continuing to leave Venezuelans starving and penniless). In the first Project Veritas video, Stuart Karaffa, a Department of State employee explained how he spends his day working, “I have nothing to lose. It’s impossible to fire federal employees… I’m…

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Exclusive Interview: Ben Carson on Draining the Swamp, Fighting Poverty, and Kanye West

Ben Carson

by Genevieve Wood   Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson spoke to The Daily Signal’s Genevieve Wood about his policy goals at HUD, what it’s like to serve under President Trump, and Kanye West’s recent tweets. An edited transcript of their interview is below. Genevieve Wood: Secretary Carson, thank you for talking with the Daily Signal. Ben Carson: Absolutely. My pleasure. Wood: So you’ve been in office now a year and a half almost, right? Carson: Almost. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] Wood: Coming up on it. What have been the biggest challenges for you at HUD? Carson: There have been several challenges, but the biggest challenge is when I first came in there were no assistant secretaries or deputy secretaries, so it was like drinking from a fire hydrant every day. But it worked out OK, and we had some tremendous people—career staff and political appointees—who were able to really step up to the plate and help. But that has worked out extremely well. Probably one of the things that surprised me the most was how disorganized the financial structure was. Wood: Of…

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