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An Indian initiative is utilizing a scientific technique known as spectroscopy to prove the authenticity of traditional, handwoven silken garments over forgeries. Often making headlines in the study of planets and nebulae in our galaxy, the spectroscopy device allows for quick and indisputable textile analysis at the molecular level—giving traditional weavers the authority to market […] The post Textile Waste and Forgeries Cut from Indian Supply Chains with Brilliant Desk-Top Spectroscope appeared first on Good News Network.

The White House has released a new National Security Strategy whose central purpose is unambiguous: to ensure the United States remains the preeminent global power. At its core is a new and pragmatic China strategy.  The document opens with a blunt indictment of the past three decades of American policy, especially on China. Successive administrations—Republican and Democratic alike—embraced the delusion that flooding China with capital, technology, and market access would liberalize the Chinese Communist Party and peacefully integrate it into an America-led rules-based world order.   Instead, we financed and armed our most dangerous rival. The result is a near-peer competitor that now menaces American security, prosperity, and the free world itself.  The new National Security Strategy discards that fantasy. It is grounded in a cold-eyed recognition that the United States must compete—relentlessly and across various regions—while buying the time required to rebuild the industrial, technological, and military foundations that previous generations allowed to atrophy.  In the Western Hemisphere, the administration is reasserting the Monroe Doctrine. China’s creeping penetration of Latin America—$2.5 billion into Panama alone, second-place usage of the canal we built, Xi Jinping’s pledge to wire 33 regional nations into Beijing’s orbit—has been met with swift counteraction by the Trump administration.   Earlier this year, the Trump administration successfully urged Panama to withdraw from an China-funded infrastructure initiative. Soon after, Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison announced the sale of its controlling stake in two Panama ports to a group of investors led by American investment firm BlackRock.   In April, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reiterated the commitment to counter “malign Chinese influence” in the Western Hemisphere.   The new security strategy declares, without apology, that the United States will remain the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere and that non-hemispheric actors—China foremost among them—will be denied military footholds and strategic resources in America’s backyard.  The document delves more deeply into America’s China policy in its section on Asia. The Trump administration recognizes that the Indo-Pacific region accounts for nearly half the world’s GDP by purchasing-power parity. Free and open Indo-Pacific is vital to our national interest.  On the economic front, the administration seeks to a balanced trade relationship with China based on “reciprocity and fairness” to regain American economic independence.  The goal is clear: “If America remains on a growth path—and can sustain that while maintaining a genuinely mutually advantageous economic relationship with Beijing—we should be headed from our present $30 trillion economy in 2025 to $40 trillion in the 2030s, putting our country in an enviable position to maintain our status as the world’s leading economy.”   Some China hawks recoil at any language of “mutually advantageous” relations, hearing in it the echo of past naïveté. They are not wrong to be skeptical. Beijing’s definition of “win-win” has always meant China wins twice.   Yet, total decoupling immediately is not feasible. The United States requires time to rebuild its manufacturing capabilities and secure its supply chains. However, a measured tone does not suggest that the administration will shy away from robust competition with China or neglect the essential interests of the United States and its allies.  For instance, the National Security Strategy clearly commits to cooperating with allies and strengthening military capacity that can counter aggression in the First Island Chain near China, especially to protect Taiwan due to its strategic location in the South China Sea.   This area is critically important for the U.S. and its allies, with one-third of global shipping passing through it annually. The Trump administration vows to establish “strong deterrence necessary to keep these shipping lanes open and free from arbitrary closures by any single nation.”  Critics of Trump have sought to paint him as someone willing to compromise Taiwan’s security for trade concessions with China. However, the security strategy directly counters these speculations, offering much-needed reassurance to both Taiwan and Japan. This clarification is particularly welcome given the increasing pressure from China on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has stated that Japan would mobilize its defense forces in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.  Xi, who regards the reunification as a “core interest,” is bound to feel disappointed by the strategy’s approach, as it clearly indicates that the Trump administration firmly rejects any unilateral changes to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.   Moreover, the U.S. actively encourages allies like Japan to enhance their defense expenditures and collaborate with the U.S. to maintain the South China Sea as a free and open area.  The Trump administration has clearly learned from past policy mistakes. The National Security Strategy rejects the platitudes of the past, accepting the hard truth that great-power competition has returned—and that the United States intends to win it by bolstering its economic, technological, and military leadership, while resolutely defending its interests, security, and prosperity against China’s aggressive actions, particularly the Western Hemisphere and the Indo-Pacific.  If executed with discipline and sustained by the American people, America will remain a leading global power for many years to come.  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post Trump’s National Security Strategy Lays Out a Pragmatic China Strategy appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Amid their push to pass ambitious health care legislation, Republicans have many proposals, but no clear path to consensus. At the end of the year, President Joe Biden’s COVID-19-era boosts to premium tax credits are set to expire. Democrats messaging on the issue have repeatedly accused Republicans of taking away Americans’ health insurance, putting pressure on Republicans to deliver a popular health care package to counter their messaging before year’s end. On Thursday, as expected, both a Republican and a Democrat health care bill to address this issue failed to reach the sixty-vote threshold necessary to come to a final vote. One was the Democrat proposal to simply extend the enhanced credits for three years, while the other was the Republican-backed overhaul from Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Mike Crapo of Idaho, which would allow the credits to expire.  The vote to end debate on the Democrat bill and bring it to the floor failed by a 51-48 margin. The cloture vote on the Republican bill also failed 51-48. Cassidy and Crapo’s bill would put in place of premium tax credits new health savings accounts that would have funds deposited by the Department of Health and Human Services. The funds could not be used for abortion or gender-transition procedures. Additionally, the Cassidy-Crapo bill would widen plan options for consumers and include provisions to prevent taxpayer funds from going to illegal immigrants and transgender procedures. Alaska Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan both voted against it, with Murkowski telling reporters, “Well, neither proposal did it all for me. There were increments in both that I support. I also recognize that both proposals were destined to fail. So today was a bit of a messaging exercise. “ She added, “My message is, I want to see an extension to allow people a safe landing and not see this spike in inflation in premiums, and I want to see some reforms.” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, also voted against the Republican bill. Heritage Action, a Washington-based conservative advocacy organization, whipped against the Democrat proposal Thursday, writing in a statement that the Senate Democrats’ COVID subsidy extension bill “is an unserious attempt to mask the failure of Obamacare at the taxpayers’ expense.” Of the Cassidy-Crapo proposal, they stated that it “takes a step in the right direction” but “there is so much work yet to be done to lower costs across the Obamacare and private insurance markets.” Now that Republicans have been unable to pass the Cassidy-Crapo bill, they might look at other options. Rick Scott’s Proposal Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, for example, has a bill which would allow states to waive having to abide by elements of Obamacare and would enable consumers to shop across state lines for plans.  These waiving states would have access to “Trump Health Freedom Accounts,” a replacement of the premium tax credits under Obamacare.  These accounts would “ensure federal dollars to support families are delivered to them directly, not funneled to insurance companies,” a statement from Scott’s office reads. Ted Cruz’s Proposal Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, joining together with fellow Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, has introduced the “Personalized Care Act (PCA),” which “expands Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), enabling millions of Americans to access and utilize these tax advantaged savings tools to manage their health care costs,” per a statement from Cruz’s office. The bill “expands HSAs for individuals with Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, direct medical care, health care sharing ministries, short-term limited-duration plans, and medical indemnity plans” and raises the HSA contribution limit from “$3,550 (2020 limit) to $10,800 for individuals.” This plan would provide benefits to a much wider swathe of the population than current the premium tax credit recipients. Like other Republican plans, it also promises flexibility in how consumers use their HSA, since it “defines direct medical care and health care sharing ministries as qualified medical expenses and not health plans or insurance plans.” The Great Impasse So what comes next? Some Republicans say it is time to sit down at the negotiating table with Democrats who want to pass health care legislation before the end-of-the-year cut-off. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., told The Daily Signal that Democrats and Republicans must have a serious talk about advancing health care policy they can agree on. “Republicans and Democrats will get together, and we’ll start talking about where we have disagreements and where we have agreements. We’ll start working through the areas of disagreement,” he told The Daily Signal. “Number one is, if you’re using taxpayer money, it has to be protected by Hyde Amendment protections that it is not using any taxpayer money for abortions. That’s critical. Second of all, we’ve got to eliminate the fraud and abuse. Both Republicans and Democrats agree on that. The Republican plan did that, the Democrat plan ignored it.” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who favors a temporary extension of the credits with reforms, told The Daily Signal he thinks the majority of Democrats do not want to find a solution, but there is a sufficient subsection of them to get legislation passed. “I think a handful do [want a solution]. But fortunately, I think that there are a sufficient number,” he said. “If Schumer was serious about it, serious about coming up with a solution, he’d have done something more than just a three-year extension … trying to get us to vote for something we’d already voted against.” Murkowski told The Daily Signal she sees no point in the potential strategy of continuing to put Republican bills on the floor without negotiation. “Well, what would that do?” she said. “I’m not interested in just more bills that don’t gain the support that we need. If it’s just a pure partisan proposal each time, I think you’re going to get the result that we saw today.” Another Big Beautiful Bill? It’s worth asking whether or not Republicans might want to pursue a budget reconciliation bill to enact part of their health care agenda.  Reconciliation—a budgetary process immune to the Senate filibuster—was used to boost the premium tax credits during the Biden administration, to enact sweeping Medicaid work requirements in the July budget reconciliation bill, and was employed in Republicans’ previous failed attempt to repeal Obamacare. In fact, conservatives in the House are already calling for it. Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., told The Daily Signal on Tuesday, “We have the muscle memory of the Budget Committee, and that is my encouragement that we do this again. We can thread the needle and do a reconciliation part two with health care-specific changes, and that would require only 51 votes in the Senate. And let’s go big.” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images) But there are problems with this approach. For one thing, the premium tax credits expire in three weeks, and Republicans generally want to avoid giving Democrats a cheap talking point that the GOP let them expire without providing Americans a health care affordability alternative. “Reconciliation is slow,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told The Daily Signal.  “I think it’d be very difficult to do much on premiums and reconciliation, just because, I mean, realistically, we’ll be looking at a reconciliation bill sometime middle of next year. “ “I am not opposed to doing something on health care and reconciliation,” Hawley said. “We did try to do that in the last time around, a lot of that got kicked out by the parliamentarian, so I don’t think that will change.’ Budget reconciliation bills must be, as the name suggests, focused on budgetary issues. If the Senate parliamentarian—essentially the chamber’s rule-keeper—rules that these provisions are more policy-oriented than budgetary, they are struck from the bill under the Senate’s “Byrd Rule.” Rounds told The Daily Signal after the failed vote that he is open to some use of reconciliation for the broader health care and insurance issue, but prefers a durable, bipartisan solution. “I haven’t talked about that,” he said. “You know, you never rule out that, but I’d like to have something that would stand the test of time, and it would be better if we could do this in a bipartisan basis. And we’ll see. But right now, reconciliation is going to take a whole lot longer than negotiating on this is.” The post On Health Care, Republicans Between Rock and a Hard Place appeared first on The Daily Signal.

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer said the law doesn’t allow the Trump administration to eliminate H-1B visas. When asked by The Daily Signal if eliminating the program—a proposal popular with the MAGA base—is a possibility, Chavez-DeRemer said “I don’t think that that’s really what’s in the law.” “The law is, H-1B visa programs were created for a reason: immediacy,” she said. “Oftentimes when you cannot find an American worker to do the job and companies need access to immediacy in the workforce, that’s what those programs are. For H-1B visa programs, you want to advertise to the American worker first. You want to make sure that you cannot find an American worker first, and then you can apply for an H-1B visa program.” An H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. The Daily Signal previously reported that the Trump administration is divided about the best way to reform the controversial H-1B visa program. One faction wants to restrict the program so much that foreigners won’t be able to use it, while others think it’s useful to bring in exceptional talent, a senior administration official said. But DeRemer said there is space in the law for this program with the goal of having a trained workforce. “If these companies are going use the program, we want to make sure that they’re also training American workers so that we can offer it to them first,” she said. “And that if they’re going to use the program, that they’re not abusing that.” The Labor Department has launched Project Firewall to root out abuses to the H-1B visa program. DeRemer said 200 investigations have been launched, and she has certified one of them. “We want to make sure they’re complying with the law if they want to use the visa program and they want to stay in the program, then they have to follow the law,” she said. “I’ve had to personally certify a lot of these investigations. That’s never been done before. I’ve done one so far, but that’s a tool that we have in our toolbox, and it has not been used before.” Everything DeRemer does at the Labor Department is to protect the American workforce, she said. “We want to make sure that we’re not depressing American wages,” she said. “We’re working very hard to protect American jobs and that there is room for an H -1B visa program, but we want our companies to comply with the law.” Trump imposed a new $100,000 fee for the visas, a move that opponents said could make skilled foreigners too costly to hire. While the move was largely praised by MAGA, many said it will not make a significant difference because it will only apply to new people entering the U.S. DeRemer said companies who “really need to use the H-1B visa program” will want to “pay for that fee in order to initiate the program.” “Possibly, maybe someday we won’t need that program, but currently some companies are still needing it,” she said. “They’re willing to pay the fee to have access for those immediate workforce, and then the Department of Labor wants to make sure that we’re responding to the market demands and training the American worker.” Companies new to the program will pay the fees, anyone who has used the program before can apply for extensions, but they will have to prove they are advertising first to the American worker, she said. “Once they have an American worker trained, they can go back and hire that American worker first,” she said. “The president has been clear that we want to make sure that we’re protecting the American worker. That’s why you see his banner hanging off of my building here at the Department of Labor, because the president, every decision that he has made and that he promised to make and that the Department of Labor is doing is through the lens of the American worker.” Chavez-DeRemer, a former Oregon congresswoman, was one of the only Trump cabinet members to receive support from Democrats due to her close relationship with labor unions. When asked by The Daily Signal if she thought the Republican party was moving more in the pro-labor direction, she said she sees “pro-labor moving toward the Republican party because of the values.” “One of the things that the president talked about a lot on his campaign, in the first Trump administration and certainly in the second, was understanding that he’s the president of the American worker, protecting American workers first,” she said. “Again, every decision that he makes and every decision I make goes through that lens.” When Trump appointed DeRemer for the role, she told him she could bring management and labor together. “That was one of the things that I talked to the president about when I was being appointed for this job,” she said, “was I told him I could fill every single table, every single time, and bring business and management together so that we can answer the call of people who want to build in this country with their hands.” “They want to work, they want to have mortgage-paying jobs, and at the end of the day, they want to go home safe, and they want to provide for their families,” she continued. “That’s what I’m doing. That’s what the president is doing. And so, I would say that this coalition is coming together, and you’re going to see more labor unions side with the Republican party because they’re the voice of the American worker.” The post EXCLUSIVE: Labor Secretary Says Law Doesn’t Allow Eliminating H-1B Program Amid MAGA Calls appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Chinese-Made AI Toy Spouts Communist Propaganda

“Unexpectedly” was the word of the day Thursday for media reporting on Commerce Department numbers showing that the U.S. goods and services trade deficit fell in September to the lowest monthly level since June of 2020. According to the Commerce Department report issued Thursday, the trade deficit shrank 10.9% from August, thanks to a 3.0% increase in exports dwarfing a much smaller 0.6% rise in imports. Analysts had predicted that the September trade deficit would grow to between $62.5-63.5 billion. Instead, the trade deficit decreased $6.4 billion from its August level. At $52.8 billion, September’s trade deficit was about $10 billion lowered than predicted, prompting media to echo the pessimistic analysts’ surprise with headlines, such as: “US Trade Deficit Unexpectedly Shrinks To Smallest Since 2020” – Bloomberg “U.S. Trade Deficit Unexpectedly Narrows In September As Exports Surge” – Nasdaq.com “US trade balance shows unexpected improvement, defying forecasts” – Investing.com The $289.3 billion value of exports was the second-highest monthly total on record, while shipments of consumer goods hit a record high. Since April, President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariff policies and resulting negotiations with countries charging exorbitant tariffs on U.S. goods has helped level the import/export playing field. Despite their typical critical tone regarding Trump and his tariff policies, Thursday’s media reports of September’s smaller deficit occasionally (often begrudgingly) gave the president credit: “The U.S. trade deficit has fallen to its lowest monthly level in five years, as trade patterns adjust to President Trump's steep tariffs…Balancing the deficit has been a principal goal of Trump's tariff policies, which have changed rapidly since he took office.” – The Wall Street Journal “Because exports grew by more than imports, the U.S. trade deficit shrank, in line with the Trump administration’s goals… The recent drop in the trade deficit has moved the country toward accomplishing one of Mr. Trump’s biggest goals.” – The New York Times “President Donald Trump's protectionist trade policy, marked by sweeping tariffs, has caused big swings in the trade deficit, distorting the overall economic picture.” - Reuters