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Medicare Agency Just Gave Kamala Harris An In-Kind Contribution With Your Tax Dollars

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Earlier this month, Kamala Harris’ campaign announced it raised more than $200 million in the first week of her candidacy, following Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential campaign. A far larger, albeit unofficial, in-kind contribution came via the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which announced a new “premium stabilization demonstration” intended to minimize premium increases for seniors’ prescription drug coverage during the campaign’s final stretch.

It’s the continuation of a pattern: the third use by Democrats in recent years of health insurer giveaways — bailouts of questionable legality — to protect them from political headaches.

Current Bailout

The CMS announcement came due to changes in the prescription drug benefit that Democrats passed in 2022’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act. The combination of richer benefits — including a decrease in seniors’ maximum out-of-pocket drug spend — and structural changes to the benefit design meant that the average monthly bid amount for standalone Part D plans nearly tripled compared to last year.

While not all of that increase would get passed through to seniors’ premiums, CMS conceded “more variation” in plan bids, with “resulting premium changes [that] could create disruptive enrollment shifts.” As a result, CMS announced a demonstration project under which Washington will assume greater responsibility for plans’ cost overruns and provide outright subsidies to insurers.

CMS claims the “additional premium stability” provided by these bailouts could “improve the predictability of [plan] offerings.” With open enrollment for 2025 starting on Oct. 15 — weeks before the November election

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Fontes, GOP Ask AZ Supreme Court To Allow 100K Electors To Vote Full-Ballot Following Registration ‘Error’

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Arizona’s Democrat secretary of state and Republicans are asking the state supreme court to allow nearly 100,000 electors to vote “full-ballot” this November after it was discovered an error by government officials put their ability to vote in state and local races in jeopardy.

“We will not stand by as voters are disenfranchised, especially so close to an election,” Arizona GOP Chair Gina Swoboda said in a statement. “Rushing to disenfranchise voters now would not only be illegal but would severely undermine confidence in our elections.”

As my colleague Brianna Lyman reported, the issue in question came to light earlier this week when state officials revealed they “found approximately 97,000 voters who are currently listed as full-ballot voters despite having not fulfilled the requirement to provide documentary proof of citizenship to vote in statewide elections.” The error appears to have resulted “from the way the Motor Vehicle Division provides driver’s license information to the state’s voter registration system,” according to left-leaning Votebeat Arizona.

Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said these voters “lean more heavily Republican” and are between 45-60 years old, as reported in the Votebeat article.

In Arizona, voters registering via state registration form must provide documentary proof of citizenship (DPOC) to vote in state and local races. Those who are unable to provide such proof are registered as “federal-only” voters and can only cast ballots in federal races.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer filed a lawsuit with the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking that the secretary be forced

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Conservative Legal Group Sues Gavin Newsom For Hiding Child Gender ‘Transitions’ From Parents

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A conservative legal nonprofit is suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom for state prohibitions that prevent schools from telling parents about student requests to identify as a different gender without the student’s consent.

In July, the state’s far-left governor signed Assembly Bill 1955, which bars school officials from notifying parents when their children go by different names or request to use bathrooms for the opposite sex unless the children consent to the notification. The bill further bars any policy that would require schools to inform parents of their child’s gender “transition.” The pro-Trump legal foundation, America First Legal, filed a lawsuit Wednesday to challenge the law on behalf of California parents and the City of Huntington Beach, which has been resisting Sacramento radicalism since conservatives captured a majority on the town council two years ago.

“This law violates the 14th Amendment, which guarantees the rights of parents to make decisions about their minor children regarding all medical treatment — in this case, social ‘transitioning,’” the nonprofit said in a press release. “Fit parents are presumed to act in the best interest of their child. The government cannot intervene in their relationship simply because it does not like the parents’ decision.”

The California law is the first of its kind at the statewide level, as many parents grapple with whether to remain on the West Coast given the hostility toward parents who protest radical gender policy. Last year, California Republican state Sen. Scott Wilk bluntly recommended parents “flee” to keep their children.

“In the

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Melania Trump Must Pick Up Where Michelle Obama Unsuccessfully Left Off In Tackling Childhood Obesity

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Former First Lady Melania Trump is already preparing to resurface as a presidential spouse next year, and she has an opportunity to drive change and forge unity in confronting the most desperate long-term health crisis in centuries.

Now running with the unprecedented endorsement of a legacy Kennedy, the Trump family may soon reclaim White House authority and with it the opportunity to pick up where former First Lady Michelle Obama left off. Childhood obesity represents one of the few issues on which the new Republican White House can reclaim moral authority and also galvanize a bipartisan political movement with a major push to end this destructive epidemic.

When the Obama family came into office, the epidemic of childhood obesity catalyzed what at first had seemed an optimistic initiative to tackle the health care crisis plaguing our children. By 2009, nearly 17 percent of children aged 2-19 were obese, representing a striking increase from just 5 percent in 1971. In 2017, the number had grown even higher, with more than 19 percent of children in America, or nearly 1 in 5, struggling with obesity. The number of kids and teens coping with “severe obesity” reached 6 percent for the first time ever by 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The first lady’s movement obviously failed, and the campaign did so for two probable reasons: 1) half the country wrote off the celebrity-infused campaign as an unserious example of nanny-state finger-wagging from elites in D.C., and 2)

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