Authored by Jeff Patch via RealClearMarkets,

AltaMed Health Services reported $1.72 billion in revenue in 2024, which is more than many publicly traded healthcare companies. Yet unlike a public corporation, the nonprofit entity answers to no shareholders, enjoys broad tax exemptions, and derives much of its revenue from taxpayer-supported healthcare programs.

AltaMed also reported $1.66 billion in assets and its revenues exceeded expenses by $68.4 million. It operates more than 70 clinics, employs roughly 5,000 people, and serves more than 700,000 patients throughout Southern California, making it one of the nation’s largest federally qualified health center (FQHC) systems.

But AltaMed’s extraordinary growth raises another question that extends far beyond Southern California: What happens when a nonprofit grows into a multibillion-dollar enterprise while retaining the governance structure of a traditional charity?

That question has become increasingly relevant as individual nonprofit hospital systems, universities, and other charitable organizations now control hundreds of billions of dollars in assets while benefiting from tax exemptions, government reimbursements, tax-deductible donations, and public financing. Their primary accountability mechanism is a board of directors charged with ensuring that charitable resources remain devoted to public benefit rather than private profits.

Since 2001, AltaMed has paid more than $32 million in compensation to its CEO, Castulo de la Rocha, his wife Zoila Escobar, and one of their sons – which is significantly higher than most of its peer FQHCs. For instance, the chief executives of Family Health Centers of San Diego, Family HealthCare Network, and Comprehensive Community Health Centers each earned substantially less than de la Rocha in 2024 despite overseeing similarly large healthcare organizations.

Following scrutiny of excessive executive pay more than a decade ago, AltaMed adopted a split-dollar life insurance loan program designed to help retain selected executives. The program has provided substantial loans to a small group of senior leaders to finance life insurance policies. Split-dollar arrangements are technically legal, although federal officials have cautioned that similar structures have been used improperly in certain tax-avoidance schemes.

Executive compensation is only one measure of nonprofit governance. Equally important is how charitable organizations deploy their resources and whether those expenditures advance the mission for which they receive tax-exempt status.

Over the past two decades, AltaMed has built one of the country’s most prominent collections of Chicano and Latino art. It says the collection supports its “Art as a Holistic Approach to Healthcare” initiative, and that artwork displayed throughout its clinics creates a more welcoming and therapeutic environment for patients.

However, AltaMed’s involvement in the arts extends far beyond decorating clinic walls – it owns a collection of approximately 4,000 works of Chicano, Mexican, and Latin American art, the value of which exceeds $6 million. It has spent as much as $2 million on art-related activities outside the United States in places like Mexico City, Rome, Berlin, and Madrid. More recently, it has supported plans for a Museum of Chicano and Mexican Art in downtown Los Angeles, spending at least $150,000 on lobbying related to the proposal.

The organization has unquestionably expanded access to healthcare for hundreds of thousands of Californians. But AltaMed’s growing role as an arts patron raises legitimate questions about how closely those activities are connected to its charitable healthcare mission.

That is a challenge that extends well beyond AltaMed. Nonprofit executives regularly oversee budgets larger than many cities, yet they remain governed by rules and oversight mechanisms developed for a much smaller nonprofit sector.

Congress created the tax-exempt status because charitable organizations provide public benefits that markets alone may not deliver. That public trust depends on confidence that charitable assets are being used primarily to advance charitable purposes, and not the financial interests of insiders. As nonprofits continue to grow in both size and complexity, policymakers should ask whether the accountability standards governing billion-dollar charities have kept pace with the institutions they now oversee.

Jeff Patch is an Iowa-based writer focused on legal, regulatory and political challenges that impact businesses and markets. Patch is a former Des Moines Register correspondent and Politico staff writer.

Authored by Aman Tripathi via Interesting Engineering,

Energy project facilitator GridMarket and nuclear technology developer Deployable Energy have formed a commercial agreement to deploy modular microreactors across the United States. The 40-year contract carries an estimated total value of $145 billion.

The initiative intends to install more than 3 gigawatts (GW) of electrical capacity by 2035, focusing primarily on data centers, cloud infrastructure facilities, and industrial manufacturing plants.

“Demand for dependable, continuous power is growing faster than traditional infrastructure can support,” said Bobby Gallagher, Co-Founder and CEO at Deployable Energy.

The collaboration follows a successful operational test by Deployable Energy. The company recently achieved criticality with its prototype system, known as the Unity Nuclear Battery. This initial test reactor reached a self-sustaining nuclear reaction 150 days after the project began.

Speeding up domestic nuclear power deployment

The development occurred under the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Launch Pad program, which operates in accordance with a federal executive order designed to speed up domestic nuclear power deployment.

The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence applications and cloud computing infrastructure has created an unprecedented demand for baseload electrical power. Finding locations with sufficient grid capacity has become a primary obstacle for technology companies building new facility hubs.

Under the new agreement, GridMarket will use its database of evaluated commercial sites and current corporate clients to establish a pipeline for the new power systems.

The companies plan to install 500 megawatts (MW) of power capacity annually between 2030 and 2035. According to GridMarket executives, corporate clients are actively looking for alternatives to traditional electrical grid connections because standard power infrastructure cannot keep pace with the power requirements of modern computing facilities.

To shorten construction timelines

The Unity system differs from conventional utility infrastructure because it is manufactured in components at a factory rather than built entirely on-site. This modular design is intended to shorten construction timelines and allow installation directly at the site of demand, bypassing local electrical transmission bottlenecks. The microreactor operates as a combined utility system.

“Unlike the power and cooling systems running today’s data centers, the Unity Nuclear Battery delivers electricity, heat, and cooling in a single system – dramatically reducing the water intensity that has strained local communities hosting large-scale compute infrastructure,” said GridMarket in a press release.

The immediate priority for the two entities involves selecting a host location for a physical pilot installation. This initial project will serve to verify the technology under real-world operating conditions before beginning wider commercial production. Deployable Energy has committed to giving GridMarket’s client base priority scheduling for subsequent reactor deliveries.

Corporate leadership from Deployable Energy noted that current infrastructure cannot support the growth rate of digital data systems. The companies intend to publish specific details regarding the pilot site selection, regulatory approval tracking, and the initial group of commercial participants as the engineering program moves closer to the manufacturing phase.

“We believe advanced nuclear technology can become an important part of the energy mix supporting the next generation of digital and energy infrastructure,” concluded Bobby Gallagher, Co-Founder and CEO at Deployable Energy.

Authored by Prabhat Ranjan Mishra via Interesting Engineering,

A Russian company has developed a new type of rifle bullets that split into three mid-flight, according to reports. This can help increase hit probability against high-speed drones.

Developed by Russia’s Rostec, these multi-bullet “Mnogotochie” rounds can successfully hit drones. Reports have claimed that the first batches of these bullets have been delivered to Russian troops.

Effective option for combating drones

Vysokotochka, a subsidiary of Rostec, has developed “Mnogotochie”. These bullets reportedly offer high-density fire for combating drones.

Bekkhan Ozdoyev, industrial director of Rostec’s Armament Cluster, had earlier revealed that the Mnogotochie cartridges for rifled automatic weapons provide an effective option for combating drones. These are essentially standard 5.45x39mm and 7.62x39mm cartridges, but with a special bullet that splits into three parts upon exiting the barrel. This provides high-density fire. This means that shooting down a small drone with three bullets at once is much easier than with one.

Rostech previously also revealed that the 5.45x39mm caliber CT 226 and 7.62x54mm caliber CT 228 cartridges contain a three-element bullet that disintegrates in flight.

Standard cartridge case and standard propellant powder are used

The standard cartridge case and standard propellant powder are used, which simplifies serial production of the Mnogotochie at ammunition industry enterprises. Thanks to the design, all three elements are evenly separated upon exiting the barrel, improving firing accuracy and substantially increasing the probability of hitting small targets, reported TASS.

Earlier, Rostec also highlighted that small arms’ performance characteristics remain unchanged when using the Mnogotochie, eliminating the need for modifications or installation of attachments. The cartridge can also be fired with a silencer installed.

Footage released by the company shows the 5.45mm variant downing a drone hovering about 10 meters (33 feet) above the ground from a distance of 100 meters (328 feet) after four shots. Full-scale production is underway, with the first batch already delivered to the Russian military. The Mnogotochie’s three-piece nose separates after leaving the barrel, creating a controlled spread that allows a single shot to release three projectiles, reported NexGen Defense.

Reports indicate that the anti-drone round is effective at distances of up to 300 meters. While that range is relatively limited compared to dedicated air-defense systems, it is intended for situations where troops need to defend themselves against drones flying close to the battlefield.

Small commercial and military drones have become increasingly common in recent conflicts, performing reconnaissance, surveillance, and precision attack missions. Their relatively low cost and widespread availability have created new challenges for conventional military forces, driving demand for affordable countermeasures.

The development of specialized anti-drone ammunition reflects the changing nature of warfare, where inexpensive UAVs have become an important part of combat operations. Instead of relying solely on costly missile-based air-defense systems, militaries are exploring solutions that allow frontline troops to engage drones using standard firearms equipped with purpose-built ammunition.

If the new ammunition performs as intended in operational conditions, it could provide infantry units with an additional layer of defense against low-flying drones while complementing larger air-defense systems.

Authored by Evgenia Filimianova via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on July 8 proposed narrowing environmental reviews for new and renewed nuclear reactor licenses, a move the agency said would reduce costs, as the Trump administration pushes to expand nuclear energy.

The proposal would change how the NRC implements the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), limiting reviews to environmental effects that fall within the agency’s legal authority.

The NRC described the proposal as the “most comprehensive update to its environmental review regulations in decades,” adding that it would remove outdated requirements and make the licensing process more efficient.

NRC Chairman Ho Nieh said the proposal, which is open for public comment until Aug. 21, would better align the agency’s environmental reviews with what Congress intended under NEPA.

He told reporters: “For many, many, many years, NRC did much more than required by law in the National Environmental Policy Act. So this really brings us back to what NEPA demands, nothing more, nothing less.”

Nieh also said, “By concentrating on impacts the NRC can address, we’ll strengthen environmental protection while making licensing reviews more timely and predictable.”

He said that the NRC proposes to limit areas where it does not have authority over effects on the environment, such as the construction of nuclear plants.

“Dust, noise, air impacts, non-radiological water, or non-radiological effects, all of those things are examples of where they’re outside of our regulatory authority, and so we won’t be doing those in the future,” he said.

NRC’s chief environmental review and permitting officer, Kimyata Savoy, said the proposal would save reactor developers and the agency about $135 million in licensing costs for new reactors and license renewals.

Other measures under the proposal include new categorical exclusions, an update of environmental review procedures, and greater flexibility for applicants in providing environmental information.

The proposal follows a series of actions by President Donald Trump aimed at expanding nuclear power in the United States. Trump signed four executive orders on May 23, 2025, directing the NRC to license 10 new reactors by 2030 and supporting a plan to quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2050.

One of them, executive order 14300, directed the NRC to reform its licensing process. The White House said the commission had slowed nuclear development by imposing unnecessary regulatory requirements.

U.S. Energy Information Administration data show that last year, nuclear energy accounted for about 18 percent of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation.

Series of Reforms

The July 8 proposal comes one week after the NRC announced broader changes to reactor licensing and radiation safety regulations.

The agency on July 1 proposed replacing a radiation risk model that has guided U.S. nuclear regulation for about 50 years.

The NRC said the changes would modernize regulations and make it easier to build new reactors without reducing safety standards.

The proposal drew criticism from some nuclear safety experts.

Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in comments submitted to the NRC in July 2025 that there was “absolutely no technical or practical basis” for changing the agency’s use of the “as low as reasonably achievable” standard.

The regulatory changes also coincide with progress in the administration’s advanced reactor program.

The Department of Energy announced on July 1 that the third advanced nuclear reactor authorized under the administration’s pilot program achieved criticality on June 30 at Idaho National Laboratory.

Criticality is the point at which a reactor reaches a stable chain reaction capable of producing electricity continuously.

The reactor, known as Unity and developed by Deployable Energy, met the July 4 deadline established by Trump’s 2025 executive order, which required that at least three advanced reactor concepts achieve criticality outside national laboratories.

Authored by James Varney via RealClearInvestigations,

The battery recycler Ascend Elements was riding high in 2023, flush with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

The seed money provided to the Massachusetts company, which launched in 2017, was one of several large bets the Biden administration placed on the green future as it essentially created a venture capital arm at the Department of Energy and other agencies. In the movies, VCs almost always score big through their early investments in future behemoths (e.g., PayPal or Meta when it was Facebook). In real life, those jackpots are the exception, not the rule – many of the deals go south.

Alas, Washington isn’t Hollywood, and the government isn’t spending celluloid dollars. In April, Ascend Elements filed for bankruptcy, leaving U.S. taxpayers out nearly $320 million.

Government funding of private companies is receiving new scrutiny as the Trump administration is upping the ante on such efforts by demanding that the feds receive an equity stake for their largesse. While this approach is leading the government into uncharted waters, experts say the operative concept – using taxpayer money to make risky bets on private companies – has a long and troubled history. The bankruptcy of Solyndra, a maker of niche solar panels the Obama administration had given $535 million in 2009, became shorthand for the problems that occur when government tries to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

“It generally doesn’t work,” said Steven Neil Kaplan, a professor of entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Chicago’s Booth business school. “There are three problems with it, namely that the government doesn’t usually have the best information; two, it’s going to be political; and three, the incentives aren’t in place to pay for performance.”

It is still too early to assess the Trump administration’s investments in private corporations, but the hundreds of billions of dollars shoveled out the door by the Biden administration through the Investment Infrastructure and Jobs Act provide some insight into the challenges the government faces when it turns into a venture capitalist. RealClearInvestigations’ review of one sliver of that spending – $1.68 billion in grants awarded in 2023 under the umbrella of “Energy, Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Energy Programs, Energy” – demonstrates how difficult it can be to follow the money and assess the impact when taxpayer funds are doled out to private corporations.

Foreign Assets

The grants reviewed by RCI all went to companies involved in the electric vehicle battery market, either in terms of making the batteries themselves or generating the various elements that comprise an EV battery. Unlike the billions doled out by Biden’s EPA through its Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – which made the regulatory agency a large grant maker for the first time – these Energy Department deals went to existing for-profit companies rather than startups or newly formed nonprofit organizations. RCI’s analysis of the DOE grants did not find any of the glaring political connections it uncovered in the EPA disbursements.

Ascend Elements marked the biggest taxpayer bet within that package, but there were several others of $100 million or more, according to the Treasury Department’s usaspending.gov. The grants represent venture capital-like moves by the Biden administration to jumpstart and expand renewable energy initiatives in the name of fighting global warming.

Although taxpayer money is presumably spent in accordance with the government’s enumerated duties and to benefit Americans, some of the large grants went to companies that are enjoying more support abroad than at home.

For example, Synesqo Specialty Polymers USA, a branch of a Belgian company traded on European exchanges, received $178.2 million. Mike Finelli, Syensqo’s chief technology and innovation officer, highlighted the company’s moves in Europe rather than the U.S. in his response to RCI.

“Syensqo has recently launched a new company in Europe to help scale up commercial demonstration of advanced materials for solid-state batteries in Europe,” he said. “In the U.S., although the policy and cost environment is supportive, market growth is evolving at a measured pace. … Importantly, the U.S. Department of Energy grant awarded in 2023 remains active, with discussions ongoing, and we continue to serve the market from our existing production in France.”

Similarly, $100 million went to Group 14, a private company in Washington state that is “building the world’s largest factory for advanced silicon battery material.”

The company, which says it has raised roughly $1 billion for the Washington facility it hopes to open this year, acquired an ownership stake in a South Korea factory last year.

Group 14 did respond to a request for comment.

Critics of directing government funds to private companies say it can also be difficult to assess the impact of the grants – and how the money was spent – because corporations are not obligated to answer the public’s questions about their businesses. While the taxpayers may have provided a substantial chunk of these companies’ financing, they are responsible to their shareholders, not taxpayers.

The “Market Test”

Walter Block, an economist on the faculty of Loyola University in New Orleans, said the Energy Department’s 2023 grants also raised related questions about whether taxpayers are bankrolling companies that have not yet passed “the market test.”

“The government shouldn’t be involved in any of that,” said Block, a proponent of the Austrian school of economics, which prioritizes free-market principles. “Taxpayers have a right to ask how and why these things were done if the company isn’t viable in the market.”

Final grades on some of the outstanding grants can be difficult to judge when, as is the case with several of these grants, the recipients are private companies. Synesqo, however, is traded on European markets. When it received a large injection of federal cash in 2023, its stock traded near $95 per share, but its value has since declined by nearly 30%.

And to Kaplan’s point about who is making the grant decisions, that remains a mystery. Although Energy Secretary Chris Wright has trumpeted the cancellation of various Biden-era deals, the department did not respond to RCI’s multiple requests for comment. Synesqo was the only company to respond to questions.

The hope that the government, with its vast resources, can goose innovation is not new. The U.S. government’s longstanding support for basic research has led to many medical and technological breakthroughs, including radar and the Internet.

Many of those achievements, however, have come through more traditional grants to America’s great research universities, and a separate batch of such grants was also part of Biden’s green energy spending. Governments at all levels have also sought to spur business development and innovation by offering tax incentives, though usually with mixed results.

Venture capital, essentially seed money, is different and unlike more familiar government contracts, such as those for defense contracts or highways and roads. Those arrangements carry their own ethical temptations, ranging from pay-to-play schemes to overt political support, that have made politics infamous, from Tammany Hall to modern-day Chicago or Louisiana. It is those sorts of alleged insider deals that were leveled against the Biden family and now against President Trump and his offspring.

Necessary Investments

Still, not everyone is opposed to the government making admittedly risky bets. Some consulting companies actually pitch businesses on considering federal sources for venture capital.

Fred Block, a sociology professor at the University of California, Davis, whose work has been applied to venture capital models, notes that some level of success has been achieved by the Small Business Administration’s Small Business Innovation Research Program.

In addition, a 2006 study by Block and some colleagues on 100 “winners” picked by the trade publication Research & Development showed that at some point in their development, federal money had assisted 88 of them.

“The key point is the necessity of government involvement with cutting-edge projects,” Block told RCI. He noted how private research entities like RCA’s once-fabled Sarnoff Corporation are no longer around.

“You have to have collaboration between different kinds of specialists and no private company can afford to have all those people on staff,” he said.

Kaplan had also cited the SBA loans as a case where government venture money often bears fruit, but those are much smaller investments and must adhere to strict guidelines. And unlike the Energy Department grants under Biden or some of the moves made by the Trump administration, SBA decisions are made by teams of professionals rather than an anonymous federal apparatus. Again, the issue comes back to the quality of information available and who makes the calls.

“They’ve developed the expertise,” UC Davis’s Block said. “Now that appears to be gone. Who knows who or how decisions are being made now? Maybe Trump makes them in the middle of the night.”

Big Money for Recipients

While none of the individual deals stand out in terms of the federal government’s enormous spending, they often represent big money for individual recipients: The $82 million that went to Cirba Solutions, a battery recycling outfit in Charlotte, N.C., for instance, amounted to nearly twice the company’s estimated annual revenue of $39.5 million.

That sort of proportion also shows how these Department of Energy grants are different from similar big economic moves Washington has made, such as propping up the savings and loan and auto industries, or trying to keep markets solvent.

Critics of both the gigantic spending on green energy specifically, and the effort to wrench the American economy away from the fossil fuels that power most of it, warned that more Solyndras are possible.

“What’s the point of Congress authorizing billions of spending with almost no oversight?” asked Daniel Turner, the executive director of Power The Future, a conservative group concentrating on rural power. “Of course we should be concerned about what might happen. It’s absurd to have funneled so much money to green technology companies without market approval.”

Yet even in proven markets, the risks inherent in the government taking huge stakes in companies are problematic.

“When there’s so much money involved, are there conditions?” asked Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, which does not accept government donations. “There’s something very pernicious, very suspect about the idea of the government being venture capitalists, and there’s so much more at stake when it’s taxpayer dollars involved.”

There is also the possibility that a company backed by federal money makes it big, in which case new questions arise about equity, how the government may define success as venture capitalists, and whether the government may try to become an active investor, looking to influence personnel and other decisions at the company. Those factors are on top of the hoary conflicts of interest that have long bedeviled government moves.

Those questions are likely to multiply in the coming years as both parties seem more open to the government owning stock in private companies. The Trump administration has already received billions of dollars in equity stakes for money funneled to private companies (mostly tied to national security), and Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced legislation that could give the U.S. a 50% ownership of the largest AI companies. Neither the Trump administration nor Sanders’ office responded to requests for comment.

Kaplan outlined some steps the government could take to improve the process, such as only backing companies that have already passed “the market test” or shown an ability to raise significant capital. Even then, however, the same terms should attach to a government grant that do to the private investments, and thus the entire practice is problematic and best avoided, he said.

“It’s just rife with conflict and bad information,” Kaplan told RCI. “For a private investor, if you’re negative, you go out of business. But if it’s the government and it goes negative, they raise your taxes.”

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

A federal judge on July 8 said the Trump administration must not comply with an order from another federal judge and must continue to have key functions of an immigration database disabled.

Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said that officials with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies shall keep disabled the ability to look up Social Security numbers and carry out mass uploads in the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

Sooknanan ordered the Trump administration in June to disable the features, finding that recent updates to the database violated privacy laws by disclosing Americans’ Social Security numbers and other sensitive information.

Sooknanan said on July 8 that arguments from the government in favor of pausing her previous order were unpersuasive, including the argument that highlighted a July 7 ruling from Judge T. Kent Wetherell II of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida that ordered DHS to enable the functions for four states under a 2025 settlement that he had approved.

Wetherell had noted that he could have waited until the case in Washington proceeded, but that the four states had presented “unrebutted evidence showing that they are suffering real and concrete harm every day that passes without the disabled features of the SAVE system.”

He said that Sooknanan could have deferred to his previous determination that the functions were lawful, which was reached, he said, in part because the Social Security Act does not preclude disclosing Social Security numbers for immigration enforcement.

Sooknanan disagreed, describing Wetherell as having “erred in significant ways,” including by reaching a decision on the merits in the case without opinions from parties outside the federal and state governments that oppose the governments’ position.

Sooknanan said that settlements may warrant reexamination and that she acted properly by enjoining DHS from allowing officials to use the new features introduced in 2025 despite the existence of the settlement.

Even if Wetherell’s ruling ends up holding, the settlement is only with DHS, not the Social Security Administration (SSA), and only with four states, the judge wrote, so it would not prompt a stay of her earlier order with respect to the other 46 states.

DHS, which had declined to comment on Wetherell’s decision, did not return a request for comment on Sooknanan’s ruling by the time of publication.

The four states have not reacted to the competing rulings.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the League of Women Voters, the plaintiffs in the case overseen by Sooknanan, asked Wetherell this week to allow them to intervene in the case involving the states, citing the contradictory orders and their interest in the situation. He has not yet ruled on the motion.