Back-to-school season can present challenges and opportunities as a parent. Relaxed summer schedules are replaced with classes, homework, and extracurriculars, and the transition to a new semester can be both exciting and stressful.
Fortunately, the school year is full of everyday moments parents and caregivers can use to check in on their kids. Whether it’s an early breakfast before school, the commute home, or an after-school FaceTime call from work, these small moments can let kids know we are thinking about them.
Residents of Houston’s Fifth Ward live adjacent to documented creosote contamination. The neighborhood is ninety-four percent non-Hispanic Black. It is a state-designated cancer cluster. Those who live there do not need a clinical trial to tell them that cancer is coming for their community. They need a way to find it before it’s too late.
The possibility is no longer theoretical. The NHS-Galleri study — the largest randomized controlled trial of multi-cancer early detection (MCED) ever conducted — demonstrated that a blood test can detect cancer at four times the rate of standard screening alone. Critically, it identified cancers at Stages I and II, when treatment is less invasive, less costly, and far more likely to succeed.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (August 20, 2026)–During a Senate hearing held on August 20, 2026, Senator John Kennedy asks Nancy Pelosi how she was able to gain $250 million during her 37 years as a Congresswoman.
Kennedy said, “I counted money for the state of Louisiana. Every bond issue, every disbursement, every dollar that moved through that office had to add up at the end of the day. And when a number did not add up, it was my job to find out why. He looked at her. Ma’am, this number does not add up.”
” Let us be generous,” Kennedy said.
“Using the average salary for a congressmember, $174,000 a year times 37 years. That is about $6.4 million before taxes. Ma’am, you are worth more than $200 million,” he said.
“If a person saved every dollar of salary, ma’am, never ate, never paid rent, never put gas in the car, never turned on a light, that person would need to work for over 1,400 years to reach your net worth.”
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Time and time again, we see corruption in our federal, state, and local governments, but nobody ever goes to jail. According to Spotlight PA, out of 100 Senators, 77 members are millionaires. Out of the 435 members of the House of Represenatives 60 percent are millionaires.
This financial disparity raises serious concerns about how connected elected officials are to average citizens, and it sheds light on why there is so little legislative support for term limits. We need greater transparency and reform to address these systemic issues in our government.
Healthcare costs are weighing heavily on Americans’ minds. A new Pew Research Center survey found that 73% of Americans consider the affordability of healthcare a “very big problem” for the country.
Congress has noticed. In recent months, lawmakers have held a series of healthcare affordability hearings examining why healthcare costs are rising — and what Washington can do about it. One of the most effective ways to address those concerns is by fixing Medicare’s broken physician payment system.
The U.S. government has collected roughly $340 billion in import duties since President Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs over a year ago. And the economic impact has been more complex than either the supporters, or the critics, want to admit.
But as critics have noted, tariffs are essentially sales taxes on imports — which inevitably means higher costs for Americans who buy those products. Two-thirds of Americans feel that tariffs have increased their personal cost of living.
Washington could minimize this financial burden — while still incentivizing reshoring — by making the tariff regime more targeted and flexible. In particular, it doesn’t make sense to impose tariffs on imported goods that, by definition, cannot be made in America.
America’s fight against hunger has long centered on one question: Are people getting enough food?
That narrow focus is no longer enough — and thankfully, the federal government is starting to take action. The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) just invested millions of dollars in an initiative to expand access to protein-rich foods nationwide.
That investment couldn’t come at a more critical time. Staple protein-rich foods, like beef, seafood, and dairy, are among the most expensive items in Americans’ grocery carts.
America’s fight against hunger has long centered on one question: Are people getting enough food?
That narrow focus is no longer enough — and thankfully, the federal government is starting to take action. The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) just invested millions of dollars in an initiative to expand access to protein-rich foods nationwide.
That investment couldn’t come at a more critical time. Staple protein-rich foods, like beef, seafood, and dairy, are among the most expensive items in Americans’ grocery carts.
The federal government just released its Special 301 report, which calls out foreign countries that deprive American companies of billions in revenue — and prevent the creation of countless U.S. jobs — by failing to protect their intellectual property rights.
Consider how the European Union recently changed legislation to shorten the period that new drugs can remain on the market without competition from copycats, limiting American biotech firms’ ability to earn back the money they spent developing new treatments.
The EU also hasn’t completely abandoned its proposal to allow European bureaucrats to unilaterally set licensing rates for transformative technology behind global wireless communications infrastructure, including 5G, Wi-Fi and other standardized technologies.
The government was right to recognize the EU’s increasingly hostile approach to American companies’ intellectual property rights by placing it on the report’s Watch List for the first time in two decades.Â
Our Northern and Southern neighbors are also failing us. Mexico doesn’t adequately protect clinical data that companies produce — at great cost — to validate the safety and efficacy of new drugs. And Mexico’s system for resolving patent disputes for purposes of promoting generic competition is ineffective.
Keeping it on the Priority Watch List would have helped drive that progress; unfortunately, the government downgraded it to the Watch List.
The federal government once again put Canada on the Watch List for falling short of USMCA commitments. Canada uses its Patented Medicine Prices Review Board to effectively erode the value of American-invented medicines. And its Online Streaming Act disadvantages American digital services providers.
While the United Kingdom wasn’t included in this year’s report, it deserved a spot on the Watch List. Its courts already purport to have the authority to set global licensing rates that cover U.S. and other nations’ patents. It has also proposed changes to dispute resolution for standard essential patent licensing that would enable the undervaluing of American companies’ innovations — a marked departure from peer nations’ policies on the matter.
China remains one of the most significant violators of Americans’ intellectual property rights, which is why it’s once again on the report’s Priority Watch List.
For instance, Chinese courts have increasingly tried to set global standard essential patent licensing rates, often at artificially depressed levels, that help Chinese manufacturers while undervaluing Western inventors.
It’s also taken aim at America’s biotech industry by limiting favorable regulatory treatment to medicines first marketed in China.
Like Mexico, China’s patent linkage system remains flawed. Its current policies don’t provide innovative drug companies with enough time to resolve patent disputes before generic competitors enter the market, giving Chinese generic manufacturers an unfair leg up at the expense of American innovators.
India likewise remains on the Priority Watch List. It’s taken some limited steps to improve intellectual property protections, but far more substantial reforms are necessary.
Brazil, with its patent prosecution delays and substantial administrative backlogs that keep innovators from enjoying a full period of patent protection, similarly remained on the Watch List.
This year’s Special 301 report took a meaningful step toward calling out misbehavior of adversaries and allies wherever it occurs. Ultimately, addressing these issues head-on is the first step towards reform.
Andrei Iancu served as the undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office from 2018 to 2021. David Kappos served in the same offices from 2009 to 2013. Both serve as board co-chairs of the Council for Innovation Promotion. This piece originally ran in The Hill.
Generations of Gratitude: How Other Countries Keep Our Heroes’ Memories Alive
Every Memorial Day, we honor the women and men who gave their lives for our country. Their sacrifice doesn’t just echo here at home; it’s felt and remembered across the globe.
Small business owners are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of health care. Nearly a third have stopped offering health benefits as premiums continue to climb.
It is critical that lawmakers understand the reasons for rising costs and begin to address them – or small businesses will continue to drop health coverage due to unsustainable costs. One of these reasons is hospitals’ exploitation of a little-known federal charity program. Without reforms, that program will continue to drive up costs for small businesses and the self-employed.
