WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Under the Radar: Episode 9

Episode Date: April 7, 2025

This week on “Under the Radar,” hear about a Supreme Court case that will decide whether Medicaid must work with Planned Parenthood, an executive order aimed at increasing large business investments in the United States, a Supreme Court case giving the FDA the right to arbitrarily deny licenses to companies that sell flavored nicotine products, and more. I’m your host, Luke Miller, and on this show we’ll cover the news you didn’t catch this week from the mainstream media. While they’re covering the President’s latest tweets, here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you. Welcome, to “Under the Radar.”

This is Under the Radar on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Now, here's your host, Luke Miller. This week on Under the Radar, hear about a Supreme Court case that will decide whether Medicaid must work with Planned Parenthood, an executive order aimed at increasing large business investments in the United States, a Supreme Court case giving the FDA the right to arbitrarily deny licenses to companies that sell flavored nicotine products, and more. I'm your host, Luke Miller, and on this show, we'll cover the news you didn't catch this week from the mainstream media. While they're covering the president's latest tweets, here you can hear about the new legislation, executive orders, and Supreme Court decisions that affect you.

Welcome to Under the Radar. The first piece of news I have for you this week is a Supreme Court case about the legality of using Medicaid insurance at Planned Parenthood. The case came from a 2018 law in my home state, South Carolina, where the Governor Henry McMaster ordered that the state's Department of Health and Human Services prohibit abortion clinics from participating in the Medicaid program. Planned Parenthood is the predominant abortion clinic in the United States and in South Carolina, and federal law generally bars the use of Medicaid fund for abortion.

However, there's a lot of dispute over the fact that Planned Parenthood also provides other medical services, miscarriage care, other reproductive care, screenings for breast cancer, blood pressure, cholesterol, things like that. So the case was brought up by a Medicaid patient named Julie Edwards in South Carolina, who apparently suffers from diabetes and has used Planned Parenthood for birth control in the past. She took this case to federal court in South Carolina to challenge the 2018 law, which made it to where her Medicaid-funded insurance couldn't be used at Planned Parenthood. The case contended that Governor McMaster's order violated a provision of the Medicaid Act that allows any patient who is eligible for Medicaid to seek health care from, quote, any qualified provider. And that clause right there has been at the crux of this entire case.

So the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed that Planned Parenthood must fall under the qualified provider, because under the Medicaid Act, anyone who qualifies for Medicaid, which is federally funded insurance for people who have low income, anyone who qualifies for Medicaid can use any qualified provider that they choose. The issue here is whether Planned Parenthood counts as a qualified health care provider. Now, to put the ramifications of this case into scale, for the last 60 years while Medicaid funding has existed, it's provided medical care for over 72 million Americans in the bottom economic quintile. So the way that it works is that the way that it works is that Congress gives funding to the states for Medicaid, and according to the Constitution

Spending Clause, Congress can attach conditions to that funding that goes to the states. So they can say you can only use this funding for this particular purpose or this particular place, naturally, because when you're giving money to somebody else, you want that money to be spent in a particular way. And so that's the Constitution Spending Clause, and that applies to Medicaid funding. So traditionally, Medicaid funding has not been allowed to be used for abortions. And the argument for this case is contingent on whether Planned Parenthood is an abortion provider or health care provider. Now, the plaintiff is claiming that she's going to Planned Parenthood as a legitimate provider for legitimate health care concerns other than abortion. However, even though Planned Parenthood

in their yearly statement will tell you that they don't spend very much of their money on abortions, that's just not true. According to the Lozier Institute of Charlotte, in the latest year that I could find data from, which was fiscal year 21 to 22, Planned Parenthood performed over almost 400,000 abortions, which had been an increase of over 18,000 from the previous year, and an increase of 20% over the previous 10 years from that. In that fiscal year 2021 to 2022, abortions made up 97.1% of Planned Parenthood's pregnancy resolution services, while prenatal services, miscarriage care, and adoption referrals counted for only the other 2.9%. Now, this report also says that, Planned Parenthood gets a lot of their funding from this Medicaid program. It says that,

quote, taxpayer funding in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements hit almost $700 million or almost $2 million per day in fiscal year 2022 to 2023, making up 34% of Planned Parenthood's revenue and the Planned Parenthood's taxpayer funding has increased by 43% since 2010. So the number of abortions that Planned Parenthood is offering has gone up, taxpayer funding has gone up, and as a percent of what Planned Parenthood does, abortions are a very high percent of that. The arguments that have been happening in the Supreme Court this week have hinged mostly around whether the Congress gets to decide what a qualified provider is, or whether the individual who's getting the Medicaid funding gets to decide what a qualified provider is.

So the lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the state of South Carolina, has argued that when Congress is creating private rights, which is what the the plaintiff is arguing, which is that they have the private right to decide what a qualified provider is. The lawyer for the state of South Carolina is arguing that you have to have clear rights creating language when you're creating private rights, and Congress did not use that when they said any qualified provider. They said that qualified, because it's in a congressional provision, has to be decided by Congress, according to the constitutional spending clause, which makes a lot of sense, because it's attached to the congressional funding that's used for

Medicaid. It only makes sense that whoever's paying for the insurance gets to decide what the qualified providers are that the insurance money can be used for. However, a lot of the justices seem to not be buying that argument. So from reading the reports, it seems as though Clarence Thomas had some problems with it. Sonia Sotomayor had some problems with it. Amy Coney-Barrant had some problems with it. So not just the traditionalist judges and not just the progressive judges, there seem to be some problems with it. Brett Kavanaugh seemed to be very supportive of the lawyers for South Carolina's case. So as the Supreme Court continues hearing this case throughout this week, it'll be really interesting to see where they come down on this issue because Planned Parenthood

does use most of its money, a lot of which is taxpayer money, to fund abortions and abortion care. And it is going to be interesting to decide whether Congress gets to use their constitutional spending clause right to determine what their money gets spent on in Medicaid funding, which is a ton of money, more now than ever. I mean, last year, we spent about $890 billion on Medicaid. This year, there's supposed to be a $4 billion increase to that, and they're considering an $85 billion increase in that from from 2025 through 2034. That's expected growth in Medicaid spending. So the spending is just going up. As I talked about last week on my show in the in the appropriations bill that's the spending bill for the rest of this year, they did not cut anything from Medicaid. So there's a lot

of money that's being spent by Congress on on this government insurance program and they need to be able to exercise the constitutional spending clause to be able to determine how that money is spent. It just makes sense if they're if they're putting up the bill for insurance, they should be able to determine what a qualified provider is. And if Congress determines that Planned Parenthood is a qualified provider, then so be it. But it does not seem like they have because the standard rule is that abortion care services are not a qualified provider for Medicaid services. It'll be interesting to see what the Supreme Court decide about this. Stay tuned to hear more. The next piece of news I have for you this week is an executive order signed by the president on March 31st entitled, Establishing

the United States Investment Accelerator. So just reading through the executive order, it is the policy of the United States to modernize its processes to attract substantial domestic and foreign investment in the United States and to actively assist those building here for the benefit of our nation's economic prosperity to unleash investment from our small businesses to the largest companies. So essentially what the executive order does is requires the Secretary of Commerce to establish within the Department of Commerce this thing called the United States Investment Accelerator. So it's an office that will be within the Department of Commerce. The goal of the Investment Accelerator's office is to facilitate and accelerate investments above one

billion dollars in the United States. And the way that this office is going to do that is not by paying them subsidy, but what the office is going to do is to work with these businesses that want to invest money in the United States to help them navigate the vast US regulatory system. So it's going to help them locate mechanisms, exceptions, and opportunities in federal law that will help them to be able to more efficiently set up a business in the United States in a much more cost-efficient way. Because there's a lot of red tape that makes it really hard for foreign companies to come to the United States. And that's really what we want. And there's two reasons that we really want that. First, we are spending a ton of money as a federal government right now. And the more tax revenue

that you can have as a government, the better, especially when you're increasing spending. We don't have the tax dollars to keep up with the amount of spending that's happening. So the more businesses that are located in the United States, the more corporate tax dollars that come in, the more payroll taxes that come in, the more money flow that goes through the economy and expenditures that are made, which are taxed. The more tax dollars come into the federal government. The economy is thriving because more money is flowing through. The government has more tax dollars so they don't have to print as much money and inflate the currency. There's a lot of good things that come from more businesses investing in the United States. The other side of that coin,

which is why investment in U.S. businesses is a good thing, is that it makes us less reliant on other countries for goods. When we are so heavily reliant on imports for so many products, not just products either, but minerals, all sorts of things in the medicine supply chain and the technology supply chain and just regular grocery store products even. More products, more produce than you would think comes from China. It's kind of ridiculous if you look into it. So the less reliant that we can be on those countries, particularly our enemies for imports, the better. The way that you become less reliant on those countries is by investing in United States businesses. And the way that a lot of administrations have tried to do that is by subsidy, by paying those businesses essentially to come

to the United States. This isn't doing that. What this is doing is saying, we're going to help you navigate the ridiculous amount of red tape that it requires to invest money into the United States, which is kind of an insane thing, too, if you think about it, is we make it so incredibly hard to contribute to the United States economy if you're a foreign corporation. It just makes more business sense to not move your company to the United States. And so profitable as well, because if you are a foreign corporation, you're going to need to use the United States economy. The United States economy is the biggest in the world. You're going to need to use it if you want to make the highest profit, which is ultimately the goal of any corporation. And so while these other

corporations that are that are international are relying on the American economy. They pay low tariffs to use the to use the American markets. They don't pay American taxes. And they get the benefit of exporting all these goods into the United States. And so the actions of the Trump administration here are twofold. Well, first of all, you're going to increase tariffs on these, on these companies, on these other countries. And then you're going to make it easier for people to invest in the United States. That's going to bring more corporations into the United States. So while people are panicking about the tariffs right now, the Trump administration is doing a lot of work with these tariffs. It's going pretty far with them. But this is a recipe to bring more corporations in the United States, which is a good thing for the

United States security, and it's a good thing for the United States economy. So this executive order is a good pairing with the tariffs if the tariffs work out, as the Trump administration hopes they do. Something like this to help increase investment in the United States, particularly large business investments over a billion dollars into the United States economy is a really good economic plan. You're listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller on Radio for Hillsdale 101.7 FM. The next piece of news I have for you this week is another Supreme Court case about whether the FDA had the right to arbitrarily deny applications from companies who wanted to sell fruity-flavored nicotine products. So to trace this case back, there's a law created in 2009 called the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which requires manufacturers to get permission from the FDA before putting a new tobacco or nicotine product.

on the market. The law requires the applicant to show that marketing the product would be appropriate for the protection of public health, which is the standard that the FDA applies when considering these applications. So in 2021, Triton Distribution and VapTasia sent applications to the FDA to sell flavored vape products with names Rainbow Road, Crembrillet, and Jimmy the Juice Peachy Strawberry, which you can't really help but laugh at, for use in e-cigarettes. While there's many, many reasons to oppose these kind of products, particularly the fact that generally when fruity-flavored vape products are put out, they're marketed heavily towards children and people who are not legally allowed to use those products. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

said that the FDA couldn't deny the company's applications. Because here's what essentially happened. The FDA told these two companies, here are the regulations that you have to follow in order to be able to sell these products. The companies showed that they had followed those regulations when making the products. And then when they submitted their application, the FDA said, no, we have new regulations. That doesn't count. The U.S. Court of Appeals decided that the FDA couldn't just switch up their regulatory policies like that and said that they have to grant the companies their applications because they followed the original set of guidelines that the FDA had given them. However, this week, the Supreme Court overturned that decision. The majority

opinion given by Justice Alito explained that under the federal law that governs, the administrative agencies, courts cannot substitute their own judgment for that of the agency. They're only allowed to step in if they see that the decisions of the agency are, quote, arbitrary and capricious. That is, if they lack a rational basis or completely unreasonable. So Alito argued that federal administrative law allows agencies to change their positions as long as they provide a reasoned explanation for the change, displayed awareness that they are a changing position, and consider serious reliance interests. So again, while there's so many reasons to agree with the FDA's decision to deny these applications, particularly that these kind of fruity-flavored

vape products are marketed heavily towards children. The Supreme Court overturning this decision to allow the FDA to just change their rules like that does seem to create some problems, namely that if regulatory agencies can just change their regulations so quickly and so arbitrarily, that's going to cause companies a lot of problems. Whether a company follows those regulations or not is just completely up in the air. The companies don't know whether they're doing something right or something completely illegal, which in this case, these companies Triton and VapTasia, thought they were completely following the FDAs regulations and then they apparently weren't. And they probably burnt millions and millions of dollars creating these products that they're not going to be able to use

because the FDA just arbitrarily changed their regulations. So that's the problem here with this Supreme Court decision is that in effect, it allows the FDA to completely arbitrarily decide what their regulations are. and they can change them based off of the company. They could change them based off of the time. And what the regulations were yesterday for a company to follow aren't the same as they are today. And that just creates a lot of problems for companies. You have to establish some kind of set regulations under which companies can operate.

If you don't, then you run into situations like this where any kind of company can just burn millions and millions of dollars on products that they can't market. So this is a bit of a problematic Supreme Court decision in spite of the fact that there's a lot of reason to agree with what the FDA decided. It does create some federal overreach problems. The next piece of news I have for you this week is an executive order signed by the president on March 31st entitled Combating Unfair Practices in the Live Entertainment Market. The executive order addresses the issue of ticket scalpers who apparently are using bots and different AI profiles to purchase concert tickets and entertainment tickets and then resell them for

allegedly up to 70 times face value. I know I've seen this kind of price gouging happen with like Taylor Swift tickets and and different things like that, where people are buying tickets on mass at face value, which bypasses the rules from the Federal Trade Commission, which say that you can only buy a certain amount of tickets at the original price. Because they're trying to prevent stuff like this. That was passed in a 2016 act called the BOTS Act or the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which was signed by Barack Obama. Interestingly enough, you have an executive order signed by President Trump enforcing an act signed by Barack Obama, which is pretty cool. So essentially, this executive order is

is strengthening that better online ticket sales act for better enforcement against price scalping, particularly with the developments in AI where it's much easier for people to create separate online profiles that are able to purchase tickets en masse when they'll use like 10 or 12 different profiles. So to essentially get around the rules to buy a lot more tickets than they're supposed to be able to, then the tickets become sold out, then the value of the tickets goes up, and so they engage in what they call price scalping. So just to give an example of how that's happening for Taylor Swift's Erez tour, the original prices were as low as $49. But for one particular concert, the average resale ticket sold for $1,619, according to Seatgeek, which is crazy. That's a massive

multiplication of the original price. The problem is the fact that the artists aren't receiving any of that profit. It's just going to these ticket scalpers. They're taking advantage of the prices that the artists originally putting out and making massive, massive profits on no value added. And that's the real problem here. So this executive order targets these ticket scalpers in hopes that they can more rigorously enforce the Better Online Ticket Sales Act. The last piece of news I have for you this week is a bill that passed through the House of Representatives entitled The Impact Act, or the Innovative Mitigation Partnerships for Asphalt

and Concrete Technologies Act. What this piece of legislation does is establishes that the Department of Energy will work with higher institutions of education in order to advance American production of cement, concrete, or asphalt. The goal is to improve cost effectiveness, improve quality, durability, engineering performance, and resilience, and to improve efficiency of resource consumption and material demand. The thing that makes this bill particularly interesting is the somewhat unknown effects that concrete and asphalt have on the environment. It's not something you hear talked about very often. It's not something that many people seem to be aware of, but asphalt is one of the higher producers of

greenhouse gases. They're doing more to heat up the environment than a lot of other things that the climate activists will blame it on. This kind of asphalt absorbs and reflects heat. And as the population grows and we expand into the more rural areas of the country and add things like concrete and cement and asphalt, it's just taking up more space with that that used to be natural. They used to be grass and dirt. Things that didn't reflect the heat quite as much is now being replaced with asphalt and cement. and it's just part of expansion into some of these rural areas of the United States, but it's something that the government has to consider. And so a bill like this is looking into advancing our technology in creating asphalt and

cement so that it will have lower emissions ramifications on the environment. One possible solution to this problem that Japan seems to be the leader in right now is called Piazoelectric technology, which if you look up a video of it, it's really interesting. In Tokyo, a lot of sidewalks and things. that we would generally use as cement or being replaced with this, I'm not sure if it's metal or if it's rubber tiles. And using this kind of technology, the tiles take the energy that's created by people walking on the tiles and turn them into sustainable energy production. It's super interesting. In Tokyo, there's train stations that use it, there's malls that use it, other big places where there's a lot

of heavy foot traffic. And when people walk on these tiles, it creates energy and it powers pretty much the entire operation of these buildings. And Japan is working on the technology now that can use that on their roads as well, even though most people use the trains there, which is why they put it into the train stations. So this kind of technology is kind of is leading the way to replacing asphalt and cement and concrete because of the greenhouse gases that they emit. These tiles with the Piazo electric technology don't use as much greenhouse gas. They're lower in carbon emissions. And they actually produce energy as well. So that's one route that they could go with this is exploring that kind of technology in the Department of Energy in the United States. They probably will do that as part of

this piece of legislation. However, that technology is very expensive right now. So this is a more long-term project. But since we just spent so much money on infrastructure under the Biden administration, the next set of infrastructure changes that we're going to have to do in the United States might not be immediate. And so if we can make advancements in our technology that will work towards eliminating a significant factor in rising temperatures, then we might as well do that. That's a great thing to do. If we're going to need to keep building new apartment complexes and new schools and new things as we expand into the more rural areas of the United States, which isn't going to stop anytime soon,

the population is still growing, we're going to have to keep doing that, which means we're going to have to keep producing concrete and cement and asphalt to create new parking lots and new apartment complexes and schools, et cetera. If we're going to keep expanding that way, then the environmental concerns of asphalt and the like products are going to become a greater problem as we do that. So this bill will hopefully help us to innovate with our technology that we use for that, and hopefully that will be an environmental success in the future for the United States. So to recap this week, we had two executive orders, one establishing the United States Investment

Accelerator Office, and another targeting price scalping in the entertainment industry. We had two Supreme Court cases, one about whether Medicaid can be used at Planned Parenthood, and another which gave the FDA the right to arbitrarily deny marketing rights for flavored vape products. And lastly, we had a bill which supports innovation in infrastructure tax. technology to be more friendly to the environment. Tune in next week for more. Well, that's all I have for you today on Under the Radar. I'm your host, Luke Miller,

and I want to thank you for listening and encourage you to tune back in next time for more coverage of the news that fell under the radar. You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Thanks for listening to Under the Radar with Luke Miller, here on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM.