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If Alex Azar Is Confirmed as HHS Secretary, Big Pharma's Coup of Health Care Sphere Will Be Virtually Complete
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen.
WASHINGTON
Just days after denouncing "out-of-control" drug prices, President Donald Trump appears set to show he doesn't mean it by naming a former pharmaceutical company executive to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. If Alex Azar is nominated and his nomination confirmed, then Big Pharma's coup d'etat in the health care sphere will be virtually complete.
In his public statements, Alex Azar has made clear that he is opposed to measures to restrain drug company profiteering and limit improper marketing and favors weaker drug safety approval standards.
Americans understand, passionately, that drug company price gouging leads to rationing of care. It is unethical and must end. Even President Trump says so. But it is highly unlikely that a pharmaceutical company executive who has made passionate arguments against price restraints is going to advance real reform. Much more likely is that he serves as the instrument by which Big Pharma aims to defend its monopolies and unaffordable prices.
The swamp only gets worse. Tom Price supported Big Pharma in the U.S. Congress. Now apparently Trump has decided to cut out the middleman, and let a pharmaceutical executive literally run the health department.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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'Using Fox as a Staffing Agency,' Trump Taps Sean Duffy for Transportation
"He seems to not believe that climate change is caused by human activity," one researcher said of the nominee. "(Transportation is the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.)"
Nov 18, 2024
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Monday announced Sean Duffy as his nominee to lead the Department of Transportation—the second Fox News host he has named as a presumptive Cabinet secretary, after picking Pete Hegseth as the future Pentagon chief.
Like the ex-president, Duffy is a former reality television star who shifted into politics. He was initially known for MTV's "The Real World: Boston" and "Road Rules: All Stars," then spent eight years as district attorney of Ashland County, Wisconsin.
Duffy was then elected to represent Wisconsin as a Republican congressman. After resigning from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2019, Duffy joined Fox the following year. His wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, is also part of the network.
Trump said in a lengthy statement that "during his time in Congress, Sean was a respected voice and communicator in the Republican Conference, advocating for Fiscal Responsibility, Economic Growth, and Rural Development. Admired across the aisle, Sean worked with Democrats to clear extensive Legislative hurdles to build the largest road and bridge project in Minnesota History."
"As a member of the House Financial Services Committee, Sean played a key role in shaping and strengthening Economic policies, and ensuring Transparency and Accountability in Government programs," he continued. "Sean's leadership extended to championing the needs of families, farmers, and small businesses, especially in rural communities."
"He will prioritize Excellence, Competence, Competitiveness, and Beauty when rebuilding America's highways, tunnels, bridges, and airports," Trump added. "He will ensure our ports and dams serve our Economy without compromising our National Security, and he will make our skies safe again by eliminating DEI for pilots and air traffic controllers."
DEI—or diversity, equity, and inclusion—is a term used to describe policies that promote including people of various backgrounds. In recent years, Republicans at all levels of politics have taken aim at such policies, often used by employers and universities.
"Trump is using Fox as a staffing agency. Duffy is the sixth announced administration pick that works or worked at the network," Media Matters for America senior fellow Matthew Gertz said Monday. "Duffy's transportation experience—outside of 'Road Rules'—includes blaming Boeing's ills on DEI."
In a series of social media posts, Yonah Freemark, senior research associate at the Urban Institute's Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, said that "I am having a hard time finding experience in transportation for Sean Duffy."
Freemark highlighted that based on Duffy's voting record in Congress, he has a 2% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters—even lower than the group's 14% score for Lee Zeldin, the former Republican congressman from New York whom Trump has chosen to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.
"He seems to not believe that climate change is caused by human activity," Freemark said of Duffy. "(Transportation is the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.)"
To actually become transportation secretary, Duffy must be confirmed by the Senate, which is set to be controlled by Republicans—unless Trump goes through with his threats to force through Cabinet members via recess appointments.
As The Associated Pressreported Monday:
The Transportation Department oversees the nation's complex transportation system, including pipelines, railroads, cars, trucks, and transit systems as well as federal funding for highways.
The department includes the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which regulates automakers, including Elon Musk's Tesla. The department sets fuel economy standards for cars and trucks and regulates the airline industry through the Federal Aviation Administration, one of its agencies.
Musk, the richest person on the planet, put significant resources toward electing Trump and has often been seen with him since Election Day. The president-elect announced last week that Musk will co-lead the not-yet-created Department of Government Efficiency with fellow billionaire and campaign supporter Vivek Ramaswamy.
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Trump Slammed Over Plans for National Emergency and Mass Deportations
"Mass deportations aren't just inhumane," one congresswoman said. "Trump has a recipe for economic disaster. Farmers, workers, and consumers... all pay the price."
Nov 18, 2024
Migrant rights advocates on Monday sharply criticized U.S. President-elect Donald Trump after he confirmed plans to declare a national emergency and use the military to pursue his long-promised mass deportations, despite legal and logistical barriers.
Shortly after Trump's electoral victory earlier this month, Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing group Judicial Watch, welcomed reports that the incoming administration is "prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program."
Fitton's post was on Trump's platform, Truth Social. The president-elect responded early Monday, simply saying, "TRUE!!!"
While Trump didn't provide additional details on Monday, fearmongering about immigrants has been a priority for the president-elect since he entered politics during the 2016 cycle and recent reporting has previewed what could come when he returns to the White House after campaigning on a pledge to "launch the largest deportation program in American history."
In the latest elections, Republicans retained control of the U.S. House of Representatives and reclaimed a Senate majority, but Democrat Yassamin Ansari had a decisive win in Arizona's 3rd Congressional District. She said Monday that "Trump's plan to use the military to aid mass deportation is abhorrent and hateful, and will directly impact many of my constituents in AZ-03. Using the world's strongest military to target the most vulnerable community is not leadership, it's abuse of power."
Vanessa Cárdenas, senior director of communication for America's Voice, similarly said in a statement that "Trump continues promoting anti-immigration hate and is using it as an excuse to appropriate the military for domestic law enforcement and circumvent normal checks and balances on presidential power."
Cárdenas continued:
Trump and allies are attempting to justify their potential use of the military to conduct indiscriminate mass raids and roundups by wrapping it in the language of 'invasion' and the false notion that America is under assault, and it must be repelled by force. Yet just because Trump and allies have spent recent years normalizing this idea and making this assertion doesn't make it any less radical. Let's be clear, this is the adoption of a white nationalist conspiracy theory, already linked to multiple deadly acts of gun violence against civilians, which is driving federal policy and Republican agendas.
Despite the martial language and emphasis on the border and recent arrivals, make no mistake that the Trump team is planning to target long-settled immigrants and mixed-status families as part of their mass deportations. Having legal status and even citizenship is not necessarily a shield of protection. Their pledges to end immigration enforcement priorities, while making as many people as possible deportable, is a disturbing tell that their definition of 'criminal' will look fundamentally different from most Americans' conceptions. Perhaps most disturbingly, the resulting fear and cruelty that will be on display is likely a feature and not a bug to those in charge.
Pointing to Trump's previous term, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said Monday that "my lesson from the first time around is that we absolutely cannot take things that the Trumpworld people say as gospel, given their total lack of specifics and total willingness to make grandiose pronouncements that are aimed at triggering the libs and making headlines."
"The National Emergencies Act is a specific law which unlocks specific authorities to do specific things—a president doesn't declare a national emergency and then become king. And 'use the military for deportations' isn't one of those specific things," he highlighted, citing the Brennan Center for Justice guide on emergency powers.
Reichlin-Melnick acknowledged that "last time, Trump invoked a specific emergency authority to unlock military construction funding—and direct more troops to do logistical support at the border" with Mexico.
The New York Timesreported Monday that during the Republican primary campaign, "Mr. Trump's top immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller, said that military funds would be used to build 'vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers' for immigrants as their cases progressed and they waited to be flown to other countries."
Miller—architect of the forced family separation program from Trump's first term—is set to serve as deputy chief of staff for policy in the next administration. The president-elect has also named other immigration hard-liners for key posts: Tom Homan, former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as "border czar" and GOP South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem for homeland security secretary.
"Mr. Miller has also talked about invoking a public health emergency power to curtail hearing asylum claims," according to the Times. Trump's team also plans to "expand a form of due-process-free expulsions known as expedited removal" and "stop issuing citizenship-affirming documents, like passports and Social Security cards, to infants born on domestic soil to undocumented migrant parents."
Additionally, the newspaper noted, Trump intends to bolster the ICE ranks "with law enforcement officials who would be temporarily reassigned from other agencies, and with state National Guardsmen and federal troops activated to enforce the law on domestic soil under the Insurrection Act."
Joseph Nunn, a counsel in the Brennan Center's Liberty and National Security Program, explained in 2022 that "although it is often referred to as the 'Insurrection Act of 1807,' the law is actually an amalgamation of different statutes enacted by Congress between 1792 and 1871" to enable "the president to deploy military forces inside the United States to suppress rebellion or domestic violence or to enforce the law in certain situations."
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Monday expressed concern about Trump's potential use of another law enacted in 1978.
"Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency and utilize the Alien Enemies Act to conduct mass deportations," Omar, a war refugee, said on social media. "This xenophobia and cruelty shouldn't be allowed in America. We are going to fight it every step of the way."
As Nunn's Brennan Center colleague Katherine Yon Ebright detailed last month, the law "allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation," and although "enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, it can be—and has been—wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong, have evinced no signs of disloyalty, and are lawfully present in the United States."
While Trump and his allies have prepared to use any powers they can to deport the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, rights advocates and reporters have warned of the consequences of their plans for not only those people, but also 20 million mixed-status families and citizens who would suffer from the economic consequences.
As Mother Jones' Isabela Dias recently laid out, mass deportations would have major negative impacts on care, food, and infrastructure while enriching charter flight operators, consulting firms, private prison companies, and surveillance contractors.
Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) issued a warning after Trump's Monday post, declaring that "this will hurt all of us."
Spotlighting a Monday report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) similarly stressed that "mass deportations aren't just inhumane—they'd devastate America's agricultural industry. Combined with his tariffs, Trump has a recipe for economic disaster. Farmers, workers, and consumers... all pay the price."
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Progressives Rip Morning Joe Corporate Duo for 'Ring-Kissing' at Mar-a-Lago
One veteran journalist called Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough's meeting with Donald Trump "a disgusting show of obeisance in advance."
Nov 18, 2024
On MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday, hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough assured viewers that their recent meeting with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago was not meant to "normalize" the Republican leader, whose own former chief of staff said recently would govern as a dictator.
But Trump's warning to the media after the gathering underscored the danger of treating the president-elect as just another politician whose views differ from those of the liberal news network.
Trump toldFox News that the meeting with Brzezinski and Scarborough—who celebrated New Year's Eve with Trump in 2016, only to be called "crazy" and a "psycho" by him months later after their coverage angered him—was "extremely cordial," but then issued a warning.
He told Fox he believes he has "an obligation to the American public, and to our country itself, to be open and available to the press."
"If not treated fairly, however, that will end," Trump said. "The media is very important to the long-term success of the United States of America."
Trump also immediately used Brzezinski and Scarborough's "ring-kissing," as progressive news outlet The Tennessee Holler called it, "as a trophy and saying they praised him effusively."
The Holler wasn't the only critic to compare the hosts' meeting with Trump to a scene out of The Godfather. Krystal Ball, co-host of the online political news show "Breaking Points," accused Brzezinski and Scarborough of helping to "usher the fascists in" before going to Mar-a-Lago to "kiss the ring."
In addition to drawing Trump's ire by warning ahead of the election that he was a threat to democracy and accusing him of "lying every day and destroying the country" during his first term, the hosts and their network have been hostile and dismissive of progressives who have called on Democrats to try to appeal to working-class voters instead of "Liz Cheney Never Trumpers," said Ball.
On "Morning Joe" on Monday, Brzezinski said, "For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, 'Why wouldn't we?'"
"Joe and I realized it's time to do something different, and that starts with not only talking about Donald Trump but also talking with him," she said.
Scarborough said the trio discussed and expressed their different views on issues such as "abortion, mass deportation, threats of political retribution against political opponents and media outlets." He claimed Trump "seemed interested in finding common ground with Democrats on some of the most divisive issues."
The hosts suggested Trump has done an about-face in his views on the media since the election, when he called journalists "the enemy camp" and the days leading up to it, when he said he wouldn't "mind" if reporters at a rally he held were shot.
Ryan Grim of Drop Site News joked on social media that the meeting exposed the hosts as "resistance commanders" who had turned out "to have been collaborating double agents from the beginning."
"We've been played," he added.
While the two journalists said they believe it is "time for a new approach" in covering the president-elect, Julianne McShane at Mother Jonespointed out that journalists "have tried" for years to talk with Trump about his perspective on issues.
"Trump repeatedly rebuffed sit-down interview invitations during the campaign from CBS News and NBC News, both of which Harris did do; Instead, Trump gave interviews to a bevy of right-wing male podcasters. If Trump and his team are serious about respecting the press, they will have to engage with them—respectfully, and on the issues—rather than denigrate them," wrote McShane. "It's ultimately unclear if Trump's sudden friendliness toward the media can be attributed to the MSNBC reunion at Mar-a-Lago. But one thing remains certain: You probably can't trust this one, at all."
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch wrote that Brzezinski and Scarborough's "capitulation is another of my worst fears about life under Trump 47."
"Those of us who plan to keep writing against Trump's autocratic ways are going to be marginalized as 'dead-enders' who aren't getting with the program, which will make it easier to shut us up," said Bunch.
Veteran journalist Jeff Jarvis denounced the "Morning Joe" hosts' Mar-a-Lago meeting as a "betrayal of their colleagues, democracy, and us all" and "a disgusting show of obeisance in advance."
Bunch quoted Yale historian Timothy Snyder, an expert on authoritarianism, who advised Americans as Trump took office for the first time in 2017: "Do. Not. Obey. In. Advance."
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