We are deeply affected by the horrifying, antisemitic terrorist murder of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky. We did not know them but knew people who did. It's a horrible day when something like this can happen in America. We pray for them and their families and loved ones. May their memory be a blessing.

He did it.

There is a classic tweet from all the way back to 2016 that goes:

Well, I'd like to see ol Donny Trump wriggle his way out of THIS jam! *Trump wriggles his way out of the jam easily* Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

It keeps being reposted because it expresses a profound truth about the teflon, unstoppable character of President Donald J. Trump. After the "One Big Beautiful Bill" passed, however, EPPC's Patrick T. Brown tweeted, and it was dead-on:

Well, I'd like to see Speaker Mike Johnson wriggle his way out of THIS jam! *Johnson wriggles his way out of the jam easily* Ah! Well. Nevertheless,

It was close. It was very close: 215-214. But the House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBA for short.

Here is where it landed on the most noteworthy provisions:

TCJA extended.

SALT. The bill raises the SALT cap to $40,000 for taxpayers with incomes up to $500,000, with the cap gradually phasing downward for those with higher incomes. For married individuals filing separately, the cap will be $20,000 (with a $250,000 income limit). Both the cap and income threshold will increase by 1% annually over ten years.

Individual Taxes. Through 2028: Elimination of taxes on tips ($40 billion cost), no taxes on overtime pay ($124 billion cost), Elimination of taxes on car loan interest ($58 billion cost), higher standard deduction for seniors (though Social Security benefits remain taxable).

Business Taxes. Small businesses, partnerships and S corporations can deduct 23% of qualified business income (up from 20%), estate tax cuts extended and expanded ($212 billion cost), extension of bonus depreciation through 2029, revived domestic R&E expensing through 2029.

Border Security. In his recent interview with Ross Douthat of the New York Times, Vice President Vance explained how the lack of sufficient infrastructure and resources for the deportation system explained the disappointing deportation numbers. According to the Immigration Accountability Project, a total of $150 billion has been earmarked for immigration enforcement and border protection efforts, including $12 billion for new border enforcement measures, including physical barriers and expanded detention capacity, funding for 10,000 additional ICE officers, 100,000 additional detention beds, more prosecutors and immigration judges, and more. The bill also includes the 5% remittances tax (why only 5%?).

Medicaid. The bill includes a number of Medicaid reforms, including: cost-sharing of 5% of benefit costs with states beginning in fiscal 2028 (currently they pay none), 75% of administrative costs (up from the current 50%), and access to Medicaid will be further restricted for illegal aliens and certain legal residents, including those on temporary work permits or with refugee status. Note the "from fiscal 2028," so essentially those Medicaid cuts are fake.

SNAP. The SNAP provisions raise the age limit for work requirements and limit access to SNAP for illegal aliens.

Pro-Family Things. The bill modestly increases the CTC to $2,500, defunds Planned Parenthood, defunds all sex-rejecting “transition” procedures, creates a new school choice tax credit that sets the stage for universal school choice, expands HSAs, and creates "Trump Accounts." Each Trump Account automatically receives $1,000 in federal seed money for U.S. citizens born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, funded through taxpayer dollars. Parents or guardians can open one account per child before age eight, with annual after-tax contributions capped at $5,000 (indexed to inflation). Notably, governments and nonprofits can contribute beyond this limit, though the bill lacks clarity on whether these contributions would receive tax deductions. The accounts must invest in a single diversified fund tracking a U.S. equity index, and can only be accessed starting age 18 for certain qualified expenses such as higher education, and is liquidated by age 30.

What's NOT There. Higher income taxes, eliminating the carried interest loophole, elimination of taxes on Social Security.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Immigration #MinorityRights — Like everyone else on the internet and every person of good will, we were absolutely thrilled to watch President Trump, in the Oval Office, confront South African President Ramaphosa about the epidemic of murders of white farmers in his country, the most underreported story about minority rights in the world. To know more, you can watch our interview with AfriForum's Ernst Van Zyle (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts)

#AI — Very interesting from Stanford's "Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence" Lab: they have created AI agents that simulate human behavior, with the goal of helping with social studies.

#AI #Healthcare — Speaking of, researchers from medical centers at Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere, have comprehensively tested AI for medical reasoning and diagnosis, and conclude: "In all experiments—both vignettes and emergency room second opinions—the LLM displayed superhuman diagnostic and reasoning abilities." This is frankly the most exciting potential application for AI.

#AI #BigTech — OpenAI has an "OpenAI for nonprofits" offering. That is to say, unless you're a religious nonprofit.

#AI #LaborMarket #DEI — The great wokeness researcher David Rozado studied several leading AI models to find out whether they discriminate based on gender when choosing the most qualified candidate for a job. He finds that "Across 70 popular professions, LLMs systematically favored female-named candidates over equally qualified male-named candidates when asked to choose the more qualified candidate for a job." As Rozado notes, "Several companies are already leveraging LLMs to screen CVs in hiring processes. Thus, in the race to develop and adopt ever-more capable AI systems, subtle yet consequential misalignments may go unnoticed prior to LLM deployment." Furthermore, "AI systems should uphold fundamental human rights, including equality of treatment. Yet comprehensive model scrutiny prior to release and resisting premature organizational adoption is challenging, given the strong economic incentives and potential hype driving the field." More here.

#Life #IVF — You may recall how we wrote about a fascinating EPPC/Heritage report on holistic fertility methods as an alternative to IVF. And now, The Daily Signal's Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell reports, "Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss., and James Lankford, R-Okla., will introduce the Reproductive Empowerment and Support Through Optimal Restoration (RESTORE) Act on Thursday to address underlying causes of infertility like endometriosis and polycystic ovarian syndrome."

#Healthcare #Reg — Entrepreneur and investor Joe Lonsdale points to the way China's superior regulatory regime may enable them to take the leadership in biotech away from the US. And so, he calls on us to "make the FDA great again"

#Education #HigherEd — The wage premium associated with a college degree has halved for lower-income Americans since 1960. Why? This is what a new NBER paper asks. The answer, tl;dr, is "First, the teaching-oriented public universities where lower-income students are concentrated have relatively declined in funding, retention, and economic value since 1960. Second, lower-income students have been disproportionately diverted into community and for-profit colleges since 1980 and 1990, respectively. Third, higher-income students' falling humanities enrollment and rising computer science enrollment since 2000 have increased their degrees' value."