National Doctor’s Day 2026: Why India’s improved doctor-patient ratio doesn’t tell full story

India’s healthcare system may have improved its doctor-population ratio on paper, but experts urged systemic reforms and better support for healthcare workers beyond symbolic appreciation on National Doctors’ Day.
Eggs and brinjals thrown on Mahua Moitra at TMC Meeting; High Court seeks action

TMC MP Mahua Moitra alleged that BJP workers hurled eggs and brinjals at a party meeting in Krishnanagar, accusing the police of inaction.
One year after the July 4 flood, Kerr County shows signs of trauma and healing

Crider’s dance hall is back. Homes are rebuilt. Kids swim in the river. But there’s also deep grief after the river killed 119 people and traumatized more.
On the upper Texas coast, many petrochemical facilities may not be prepared for fiercer storms

Galveston County alone is home to 22 refineries and chemical plants. Their level of emergency preparedness varies widely.
Supreme Court decision loosening campaign finance rules could be boon for Paxton in Senate race

Now permitted to spend freely in coordination with GOP candidates, national Republican committees can use their flush war chests to help candidates like Paxton close fundraising deficits.
Mamdani ripped for claiming victory over capitalism after NYC’s multi-billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout

New York City‘s mayor is again under fire after spewing outlandish claims that his socialist policies are to credit for a balanced budget in the Big Apple, just after the city received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the state. “In January, our administration inherited a $12 billion budget deficit — a fiscal crisis greater than the Great Recession,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said in a Tuesday post on X announcing that the debt had been cleared. “We balanced the budget by taxing the rich and making government more efficient,” Mamdani continued. “We did not balance this budget on the backs of working people, and we never will.” MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT But the real reason the budget it balanced is because the city was handed $1.5 billion by the state of New York in January — funded by working class taxpayers across the state — as part of a multi-year plan to bail out the fiscally-challenged city. In late May, the city received another $4 billion. Of the combined $8 billion provided to the city’s bailout fund under former Mayor Eric Adams’ tenure and now Mamdani’s mayorship, $5 billion was directly earmarked for the city to address fiscal measures. This includes allowing city government to defer pension contributions to close the budgetary gap. Mamdani’s claims about socialist policies producing results — and his failure to mention the massive bailouts provided by taxpayer dollars — did not fly on social media. MAMDANI ALLOCATES $500K FOR REPARATIONS TALKS AS NYC FACES $5.4B DEFICIT “This is a lie,” independent journalist Nick Shirley said in a reply to the mayor. “You balanced the budget by borrowing billions from the NY state government which pushed back pension payments, so you literally took money from ‘the backs of hardworking people.’ Don’t get it twisted,” he added. Commentator and journalist Nick Sortor also flamed the mayor over the loan and his classification of the bailout. “Are you saying New Yorkers can ‘balance their budgets’ by taking out massive credit card loans?” he asked sarcastically. BROADCAST NETWORKS TOUT MAMDANI’S VICTORIES, PROCLAIM SOCIALISM IS ‘RESONATING’ “Mamdani balanced the budget by taking money from Albany, who in turn taxed Rochester and Buffalo” another social media user said. “That’s who is paying for all of Mamdani’s free crap.” In a press conference earlier in the day, Mamdani claimed victory over capitalism. “Throughout this process I have been reminded of the words of the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek: ‘if socialists understood economics, they wouldn’t be socialists.’” After the Republican National Convention (RNC) posted that clip, Mamdani also faced ridicule for that. “It always looks good at first until the chickens come home to roost,” one person replied. “He’ll soon ‘deliver’ bread lines instead,” said another. Mamdani’s office did not return Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Melat Kiros becomes 28th far-left candidate to win a Democratic primary this year as socialists amass power

Melat Kiros has become the 28th candidate endorsed by a far-left group to win a Democratic primary election this cycle, according to a Fox News review. The 29-year-old Democratic socialist is now in the same company as Graham Platner, the scandal-plagued Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, as well as the trio of Zohran Mamdani-backed House nominees — Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier. Kiros ran for Colorado’s 1st congressional district and was supported by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Working Families Party (WFP) and the Justice Democrats. DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS SEIZE THE MOMENT WITH EXTREME, ANTI-AMERICAN VIEWS THAT BADLY TARNISH THE PARTY Although not all 25 far-left House candidates who won Democratic primaries this year are guaranteed to win their general election bids in November, many of them, including Kiros, are in solidly blue districts where Republican challengers have little chance of being successful. If all the far-left House candidates tracked by Fox News were to win, they’d join another 18 like-minded colleagues, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. In the best case scenario for the far left, they’d have a 43-member bloc in the House of Representatives come January 2027. WATCH: PELOSI, OMAR STAY SILENT AS MAMDANI-BACKED SOCIALIST VICTORIES SHAKE DEMOCRAT PARTY Seeing as there are just 10 Blue Dog Democrats, a left-wing sweep would substantially tip the balance of power in the Democratic Party, which is favored to retake the House majority next year. The Blue Dog Caucus is a coalition of House Democrats who describe themselves as fiscally responsible and focused on bipartisan dealmaking. They also support a strong national defense. With her victory on Tuesday, Kiros also became the sixth insurgent candidate this year to oust an incumbent. CARVILLE WARNS DEMOCRATS ANTI-ISRAEL ‘LOUDMOUTHS’ COULD COST ELECTIONS Kiros defeated Rep. Diana DeGette, who served 15 terms in Congress, by a nearly 10-point margin, according to The Associated Press. DeGette was sworn into the House in January 1997, four months before Kiros was born. DeGette supported abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and implementing Medicare-for-All, two key priorities of her opponent and leftists at large. Largely aligned on domestic policy priorities, Kiros and DeGette diverged on the issue of Israel. DeGette is a strong supporter of the Jewish nation and has also advocated for a two-state solution. Kiros took a harsher stance, accusing Israel of committing a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Kiros, who supports a full U.S. arms embargo on Israel, criticized DeGette for backing continued U.S. military aid to the country, including funding for defensive systems like the Iron Dome. Kiros’s other foreign policy ideas have drawn significant criticism, including her view that the U.S. shares culpability in the horrific 9/11 terror attacks. 9News journalist Kyle Clark asked Kiros in a June 22 interview whether she believed 9/11 was an “inevitable consequence” of American intervention. “Inevitable in the sense that we destabilized a lot of the Middle East, which led people to believe that another act of violence was the only response. And again, just like I said before, our responsibility is to get rid of those conditions that lead to violence in the first place,” Kiros said. Before her campaign, Kiros was fired from her position at the Sidley Austin law firm in 2023 after publishing an open letter criticizing law firms, including her own, that called for action against antisemitism on college campuses. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Harris reaches out to socialist mayor Mamdani in latest sign she’s shoring up support for possible 2028 bid

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is courting New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and other progressive power players as 2028 speculation builds around another possible White House bid. The phone call with Mamdani last week, first reported by Axios and confirmed by Fox News Digital, along with other closed-door meetings with progressive groups, suggests Harris is trying to shore up support from factions of the party that didn’t support her during her 2024 run. Additionally, Harris met with progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., behind the scenes at a Black women empowerment summit in Chicago, Axios first reported, and Fox News Digital confirmed. Harris reportedly has also been reaching out to pro-Palestinian groups after she faced pushback from those groups during her 2024 presidential run. Harris reached out to at least one group that was part of the “Uncommitted Movement” that developed as a result of President Joe Biden’s handling of the Israel and Gaza conflict. KAMALA HARRIS DROPS BIGGEST HINT YET ON 2028 WHITE HOUSE RUN Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani and Harris’ office for comment. News of the Harris and Mamdani call sparked criticism from conservatives online. “Kamala Harris 2020 was desperate, Kamala Harris 2024 was pathetic, Kamala Harris 2028 will be unhinged,” GOP political strategist Nathan Brand posted on X. Mamdani’s influence in the party has only grown since he was sworn into office in January, as highlighted by a clean sweep of socialist-aligned candidates he endorsed winning their races in the New York Democratic primary last month. CARVILLE WARNS DEMOCRATS ANTI-ISRAEL ‘LOUDMOUTHS’ COULD COST ELECTIONS “The fact that she’s courting people like Mamdani, these socialists and communists, it goes back to the radical leftists, because the Democrats are in big trouble as a party,” RNC chair Joe Gruters exclusively told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “They’re in the death spiral, because now they have these people inside their tent,” he continued. “This is who the Democratic Party is today: these radical leftists that want to fundamentally transform our country. And that’s why we have to fight. That’s why we have to come together, unite, and we have to win. We have to win to save the country. We have to win to move our policies forward. There’s a lot at stake. Certainly, Kamala Harris, the meeting with Mamdani and these radicals shows you where the left continues to go where they want to go, but listen, she has to kowtow to these radicals to try to win.” Earlier this year, Harris made stops in the crucial primary state of South Carolina less than a week after she dropped a tantalizing comment at the first major cattle call of Democratic presidential contenders. “I might. I might. I’m thinking about it… I’ll keep you posted,” Harris said in April at the National Action Network’s 35th Anniversary Convention, when asked by the event founder, the Rev. Al Sharpton, if she would seek the presidency in 2028. Harris, who replaced President Joe Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee but later lost the election to President Donald Trump, was greeted by the crowd with chants of “run again.”
EXCLUSIVE: Inside the secretive mine DOGE helped drag out of a decades-old bureaucratic black hole

BOYERS, Pa. — Deep inside a limestone mine more than 230 feet underground, the Trump administration marked what it called the “Last Day of Paper” for federal retirements Tuesday, giving Fox News Digital rare access to the long-secretive Pennsylvania facility where millions of government records helped keep the retirement process trapped in an analog system for decades. “It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, which I think is the reaction that I generally hear from lots of people… I believe that many [government employees] have just been constrained by a system that does not allow innovation and does not allow some element of risk-taking,” U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor told Fox News Digital in a sit-down interview. “The only thing I did that was different than any other predecessor was we gave people permission to actually solve the problems that I knew needed to be solved,” he continued. FEDERAL HR OFFICE PULLS BACK CURTAIN ON SWEEPING NDA PLAN AIMED AT CURBING GOVERNMENT LEAKS For decades, retirement applications were physically mailed between federal agencies before arriving at OPM’s Retirement Operations Center in Boyers, which houses over 400 million paper records and where workers manually processed roughly 10,000 retirements each month. OPM celebrated moving from the paper system to digitized records, explaining the millions of documents languishing in the mine will be shredded. OPM functions as the federal government’s human resources department, overseeing the policies, benefits and personnel systems that affect millions of civilian federal employees and retirees. Kupor said the Biden administration and previous officials had discussed modernizing the online retirement application, but the effort never gained momentum. “The idea of the online retirement application was an idea,” he said. “I think what happened was it never got traction.” The federal retirement system has relied on a largely paper-based process since it opened in the 1980s. Over the years, officials launched multiple modernization efforts, including pilot programs and attempts to digitize retirement applications. Despite those initiatives, the government remained dependent on paper until the Trump administration accelerated adoption of OPM’s Online Retirement Application following Musk’s public criticism of the system. The underground operation became a national symbol of government bureaucracy after Elon Musk revealed its existence last year, calling it “like a time warp,” while in the Oval Office. “Now people can retire as soon as they want, instead of waiting six months for paper to be carried into a mine,” Musk exclusively told Fox News Digital. READ: DR. OZ PUTS ALL 50 GOVERNORS ON NOTICE OVER BILLIONS LOST TO MEDICAID FRAUD Kupor shared that both Musk and U.S. Chief Design Officer Joe Gebbia deserve an “enormous amount of credit.” “It’s a great example to me of the more meta level of what Elon and the DOGE team was doing, which is rethink processes from ground zero, be creative in terms of what the solutions are and recognize that, look, you have to actually make significant change if you want to ultimately drive efficiency in the government,” said Kupor. Iron Mountain provides secure archival storage for numerous museums, archives, cultural institutions and government agencies. Its holdings include materials for Getty Images, CBS, Disney, artifacts related to the Flight 93 National Memorial—near Shanksville, Pennsylvania—and Holocaust-related collections, Fox News Digital learned. TRUMP SAYS ANTI-FRAUD EFFORTS ARE UNCOVERING BILLIONS IN WASTE, CLAIMS SAVINGS COULD BALANCE BUDGET “We have a great team who does a lot of security, and obviously we’re in a building here with other very highly secure agencies. There’s a number of kind of three-letter agencies who also have records here,” said Kupor. “I think by far the benefits of obviously getting off paper going to electronic records. Way outweigh any potential risks we might have from a security perspective,” said Kupor when asked about any security concerns the physical copies presented. Kupor argued that government innovation is key to reducing costs for taxpayers. PENTAGON ANNOUNCES INVESTIGATION INTO LEAKS, WHICH COULD INCLUDE POLYGRAPH TESTS “I think what the president has done and told us is take the skills that you have around innovation and creative thinking and apply that to modernization for the government and if we do that, we’ll not only improve the quality of service, but that is where we get efficiency,” said Kupor. “That’s how we actually deliver more for the American people without constantly going to have to go back to the till and ask Congress for more money.”
Walz post calling SCOTUS girls’ sports ruling ‘cruel’ backfires online as critics reveal what’s even crueler

Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz faced backlash from conservatives on social media after denouncing Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling on transgender athletes in women’s sports by calling it “cruel.” “As the Supreme Court says states can be cruel to trans kids, my message is clear: Here in Minnesota, we stand with and value our trans neighbors and youth,” Walz posted on X as the Supreme Court was ruling in favor of West Virginia and Idaho against trans athletes who sued to gain access to girls’ sports. Walz’s comment was immediately blasted on social media by conservatives, many of whom are from Minnesota. “What’s cruel is making a teenage girl, already uncomfortable in her own skin, change in a locker room next to a naked boy,” Minnesota Republican state Sen. Julia Coleman posted on X. “What’s cruel is letting our girls get the s— kicked out of them by biological males on the field and lose out on scholarships and more chances to compete. What’s cruel is putting your base above female safety and opportunities.” U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE MAKES NEW TRANS ATHLETE FINDINGS AGAINST USA HOCKEY “Once again you disregard the laws of America,” retired Minnesota State Patrol Lt. John Nagel, running for Congress as a Republican in Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, posted on X. “You don’t support women’s rights. You don’t stand for anything. You are the face of everything that is wrong with the Democratic party.” “Which Minnesota girl deserves to lose her spot on a team to a male athlete?” True North Legal attorney Renee Carlson posted on X. MARTINA NAVRATILOVA SAYS SHE TRIED TO WARN KAMALA HARRIS’ CAMPAIGN ABOUT TRANS ATHLETES: ‘NOBODY WOULD LISTEN’ “Tim Walz calls it ‘cruel’ that the Supreme Court ruled to protect young girls and keep men out of their sports,” a Republican National Committee account posted on X. “What’s actually ‘cruel’ is advocating for the gender mutilation of children and letting men in their locker rooms you sicko.” “True cruelty to these children is perpetuating the LIE that they can be a different gender,” Minnesota Republican state Sen. Michael Holmstrom posted on X. “The consequence of which is the destruction of lives — and the victimization of girls across the state. The DFL has lost reality.” WALZ APPROVAL RATING CRATERS TO LOWEST LEVEL EVER AND TRAILS TRUMP AMID MASSIVE FRAUD SCANDAL: ‘TIRED OF IT’ “Worst Governor in America,” Townhall columnist Dustin Grage posted on X. “Thankfully we have exposed him and he’ll be headed to retirement soon. Good riddance, Tim.” Fox News Digital reached out to Walz’s office for comment. Walz later in the day explained that his state’s position on girls in boys sports won’t change as a result of the ruling, Fox 9 Minneapolis reported. “The Supreme Court has allowed states to be as cruel as they want to be to transgender people,” Walz told reporters. “They’ve also allowed states like Minnesota to be as kind and welcoming as they can, so I kind of view this as a mixed bag.” “We’re going to view it as a positive considering what could have been done. In Minnesota, we can continue to treat our transgender athletes and youth with dignity and humanity and respect. We’ll continue to do that, nothing will change there. Anything that gets kids involved, I want them to be involved. This idea of folks who have never been to any youth event are hell-bent on making sure some kid doesn’t participate in bowling is ludicrous. I think Minnesotans find there’s a lot of other things to worry about than three little kids wanting to play sports somewhere.” In the highly anticipated rulings in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the high court upheld state laws requiring student-athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond with their biological sex at birth rather than their gender identity. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3. Now, more than half of the states in the U.S. are empowered to enforce the protection of women’s sports without fear of a legal challenge. However, there are still 23 states, including California, New York and Massachusetts, that don’t have any such laws, and some of those have laws to protect trans athletes in girls’ sports. Fox News Digital’s Jackson Thompson contributed to this report.