A federal official from Idaho is taking steps in his new post to end a nationwide practice of states collecting Social Security benefits entitled to foster youth and using it to pay for the children’s care.

In a Maryland operating room one day in November 2025, doctors made medical history by transplanting a genetically modified pig kidney into a living patient. The kidney had been engineered to mimic human tissue and was grown in a pig, as an alternative to waiting around for a human organ donor who might never come. For decades, this idea lived at the edge of science fiction. Now it’s on the table, literally.