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Here is the Heritage Take on the top issues today. Please reply to this email to arrange an interview.
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- South Carolina legislation HB 4624 is called the “Help Not Harm” bill – and with good reason. Approved by the House in January, it bans so-called “gender affirming” medical interventions for minors under the age of 18 and prohibits Medicaid coverage of those procedures for anyone under the age of 26.
- After passing a Senate subcommittee just days ago, the bill now heads to the full Senate Medical Affairs Committee for a vote. Lawmakers there must show the courage of their colleagues in the House because the bill is precisely the kind of legislation that America’s children need — and need immediately.
- In increasing measure, vulnerable pubescent and pre-pubescent children are being proselytized into a fictional belief that they can be “born in the wrong body.”
- The increase in a new cohort of the population — de-transitioners — is proof positive of the regretfully life-altering and experimental nature of these kind of “gender affirming” medical interventions.
- It also demonstrates that children, as easily influenced as they are, must not be used as pawns in a political play that caters to a small but vocal and well-funded minority.
- Nearly two dozen states have already enacted laws prohibiting “gender-affirming” interventions for minors in most circumstances. Now is the time for South Carolina to join them.
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- Since 2022, President Biden has used the Antiquities Act to create five national monuments, collectively spanning more than 1.5 million acres of federal land.
- While these proclamations are ostensibly aimed at preserving areas of historic or archaeological importance, they often come at the expense of established laws and local economies.
- The American Forest Resource Council has rightly challenged this executive overreach by calling on the Supreme Court to review the Antiquities Act.
- Used properly, the Antiquities Act serves a noble purpose in preserving America’s heritage. But the unchecked authority it grants to presidents enables executive overreach by circumventing congressional intent and disregarding the interests of affected communities.
- If the Antiquities Act stands, it would continue to allow the executive power of the president to undermine established law. Judicial review by the Supreme Court offers a chance to prevent a future president from pulling the rug out from under the farmers, miners, loggers and their communities.
- By reining in executive overreach and restoring accountability to the monument designation process, we can ensure that our nation’s treasures are preserved for future generations without sacrificing the law’s integrity.
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- The Biden administration has outlined a detailed prescription for even greater government control over Americans’ medications.
- If Biden’s policy agenda were enacted by Congress, federal officials would extend Medicare’s current price-control regime into the private sector, affecting American citizens’ access to new drugs and breakthrough medications.
- Under the misleadingly named Inflation Reduction Act, in 2026 Medicare will fix the prices of 10 selected drugs, and the number of medications and therapies will get progressively larger after that date.
- Biden wants Medicare to be able to negotiate prices for more than 500 different drugs over the next decade, while expanding the government’s regulatory power over the private sector.
- Though Team Biden routinely describes the process of Medicare drug pricing as a process of “negotiation”—conjuring up the image of “give and take” of private sector contracting—nothing could be further from the truth.
- Rather, any pharmaceutical research and manufacturing company that does not agree to the terms the Medicare bureaucracy sets for the “maximum price” of a drug is subject to an extraordinarily punitive excise tax.
- That’s coercion, not negotiation. Those big promised “savings” in Medicare will be offset by higher consumer costs outside of Medicare.
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