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health and human services
Watchdog Aims to Track Army of 'Self-Enriching Grifters' Slated to Join Trump's Cabinet
"The man who once said he was going to drain the swamp is instead flooding it."
Nov 19, 2024
As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump continues to select Cabinet picks for his second administration—and at least one is facing headwinds to confirmation despite a Republican-controlled Senate—the nonprofit consumer advocacy group Public Citizen Tuesday unveiled a new resource to keep tabs on potential conflicts of interest among Trump's appointees.
"Like the first Trump administration, this administration appears ready to staff critical government posts with as many corporate lackeys and self-enriching grifters as they can hire," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen.
The group's other co-president, Robert Weissman, said that"Donald Trump may have run for office pretending he was going to advocate for regular people, but his appointments show in reality he’s planning to govern, again, on behalf of the corporate class."
"The man who once said he was going to drain the swamp is instead flooding it," Weissman added.
Trump has already chosen many of the individuals he would like to serve in his Cabinet and other senior positions. On Tuesday he picked Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician and TV personality known as Dr. Oz, to helm the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Other high profile picks include nominating Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—a once prominent environmental lawyer who has spread false claims about vaccines—to head the Department of Health and Human Services, and selecting prominent Trump donor and the world's richest man Elon Musk to oversee a yet-to-be-created government agency devoted to slashing government spending and federal regulation. Musk will oversee that agency, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, with biotech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy.
Public Citizen's tracker so far details information for nine appointees, a list that "includes both Cabinet-level positions and other political appointments, many of which do not require Senate confirmation," according to a statement from the group. The tracker will be updated regularly and includes where the individual worked previously and former clients and/or business interests.
Sean Duffy, Trump's pick for transportation secretary, previously worked for the lobbying firm BGR Group, according to the tracker, where he lobbied on behalf coalition that included multiple airlines.
The group also details the past work of Susie Wiles, Trump's selection for chief of staff. Wiles has been a registered lobbyist on behalf of dozens of clients, including a tobacco company "that sought to block federal health restrictions on its candy-flavored cigars" and on behalf of a mining company "that wants to eliminate federal opposition to its plan to dig a massive mine in a pristine watershed," according to additional information on Wiles provided by Public Citizen that is linked in the tracker.
"As chief of staff, she'll be in a position to influence permits, approvals, and contracts that her former lobbying clients paid her to lobby for," according to the tracker.
The tracker notes that Musk's former clients and business interests include "himself" and the companies he owns, several of which are currently under federal probe. According to a longer briefing on Musk by Public Citizen, at least three of the entrepreneur's companies are currently under scrutiny for alleged misconduct by at least nine federal agencies. According to a pre-election breakdown by The New York Times, Musk's companies were "promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts last year with 17 federal agencies." Both the probes and the contracts underscore Musk's exposure to a federal government that he is slated to play a key role in.
Musk has framed his quest to curb government regulation as existential. "Unless Trump wins and we get rid of the mountain of smothering regulations (that have nothing to do with safety!), humanity will never reach Mars," he wrote on X in early October.
After Trump's victory earlier this month, legendary consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who founded Public Citizen but hasn't been formally involved with the group for decades, warned of Musk's influence.
"Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs," Nader wrote. "With Elon Musk in the lead."
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Marijuana Should Be Descheduled—Not Rescheduled
Reclassifying cannabis from Schedule I to a lower classification (like II or III) won’t bridge the widening gap between state and federal marijuana laws.
Sep 08, 2023
Nearly a year ago, the Biden administration asked the Department of Health and Human Services to reconsider how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.
Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of 1970, different drugs are regulated or prohibited according to their placement in five different “schedules.”
The federal government currently puts marijuana in Schedule 1 — the most restrictive level, which it shares with heroin, ecstasy, and other drugs. By definition, substances in this category must possess “no currently accepted medical use” or “accepted safety for use… under medical supervision.”
After a long internal process, the Department of Health and Human Services now recommends removing the drug from Schedule 1. While the explicit details of the recommendation aren’t public, Bloomberg reports that the agency is suggesting moving marijuana to Schedule III.
The HHS recommendation now goes to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which will conduct its own scientific review. In the past, most recently in 2016, the agency has categorically refused to reschedule the drug. We likely won’t know how the DEA will respond for some time.
In the meantime, some observers have lauded the proposed change as a giant step forward. But my own reaction is more restrained.
That’s because reclassifying cannabis from Schedule I to a lower classification (like II or III) won’t bridge the widening gap between state and federal marijuana laws. Simply put, rescheduling marijuana fails to provide states with the explicit legal authority to regulate it within their borders as they see fit, free from federal interference.
To date, 38 states regulate the production and distribution of cannabis products for medical purposes. Twenty-three of these states regulate the possession and recreational use of marijuana for adults. All of these state laws are in conflict with federal marijuana laws — and they will remain in conflict even if the drug is rescheduled.
That’s because Schedule III substances — which include ketamine, anabolic steroids, testosterone, and others — are uniformly regulated by the federal government. Legal access to these substances is limited to those with a prescription from a licensed physician and who obtain the product from a licensed pharmacy.
Currently, no states regulate cannabis this way — nor are they likely to reconstruct their existing laws and regulations to do so. That means citizens and state-licensed operators following the law in legal states will still be violating federal law. And the DEA will still have the same authority it has now to crack down.
A far more productive outcome of the current scheduling review would be to deschedule cannabis — to remove it from the Controlled Substances Act altogether and give states greater discretion to establish their own distinct marijuana policies. That would put cannabis in line with how we treat alcohol and tobacco, two far deadlier substances.
There’s recent precedent for this. In 2018, Congress completely removed hemp plants containing no more than 0.3 percent THC, as well as certain cannabinoids derived from them, from the federal scheduling system.
By contrast, rescheduling fails to provide any federal legal recognition for either the state-licensed cannabis industry or those adults who use the plant responsibly in compliance with state laws.
Descheduling cannabis would remove federal intrusion from state marijuana programs and respect America’s longstanding federalist principles allowing states to serve as “laboratories of democracy.”
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Biden Admin Scientific Integrity Policy Falls Short, Warn Watchdogs
"Nothing about this proposed policy would prevent a return to the reign of 'alternative facts' should Trump be reelected," said one critic.
Sep 05, 2023
A coalition of public health and science advocacy groups on Tuesday called on the Biden administration to strengthen its proposed scientific integrity policy, warning that the proposal does little to solve the problem of the political interference that was rampant in the federal government under former Republican President Donald Trump.
Shortly after taking office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order pledging to "protect scientists from political interference and ensure they can think, research, and speak freely to provide valuable information and insights to the American people," followed by a requirement for federal agencies to review how such interference can be avoided through policy changes.
More than two years later, the White House Office of Science and Data Policy joined the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in releasing a draft policy which, if finalized, would cover all scientists working within the department and could serve as a template for other federal agencies.
But without provisions for independent investigations into alleged misconduct, legal protections for scientists doing certain types of work, and with "few safeguards against scientific work being altered or suppressed," the coalition said the draft "leaves a lot to be desired."
"Scientific integrity problems at HHS have ranged from unwarranted age restrictions on emergency contraception during the Obama administration to halting important research and interfering with Covid-19 guidance during the Trump administration."
Groups including Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the Government Accountability Project, and the Center for Reproductive Rights wrote to the administration to warn that both Democratic and Republican administrations have stood in the way of scientific integrity, calling for vigilance from the Biden White House.
"Scientific integrity problems at HHS have ranged from unwarranted age restrictions on emergency contraception during the Obama administration to halting important research and interfering with Covid-19 guidance during the Trump administration," wrote the groups in their public comments on the policy. "HHS should design its scientific integrity policy to provide protections against such meddling and effective avenues for correction when interference occurs. HHS should also consider the possibility of individuals acting in bad faith using the policy to harass scientists who are doing their jobs, and HHS should erect barriers to such bad-faith attempts."
The groups listed a number of areas in which they believe the new draft policy is lacking, including:
- Protections and accountability for grantees;
- Specifics that delineate scientists' ability to communicate with the media and public about their areas of expertise, without leaving scientists vulnerable to bad-faith attacks;
- Specific protections from retaliation for those engaged in certain scientific activities; and
- Penalties sufficient to deter wrongdoing and hold accountable all violators of scientific integrity, including political appointees.
PEER pointed out that the lack of specific guidance for grantees is a "major gap" in the policy, as much of the scientific work at agencies such as the National Institutes of Health is completed by scientists who receive grants.
The group's comments notes that the right-wing Trump administration canceled teen pregnancy prevention grants and terminated federally funded research using fetal tissue, yet the policy draft does not include "specific protections against early termination of both research and service grants for political reasons."
The policy's "'Protecting Scientific Processes' section could include a prohibition against terminating intramural or extramural research funding for reasons other than breach of contract, abusive behavior, or gross mismanagement," the groups said.
"Nothing about this proposed policy would prevent a return to the reign of 'alternative facts' should Trump be reelected," said Pacific PEER director Jeff Ruch. "Under this proposed policy, every aspect of enforcing scientific integrity principles would remain a captive of the political process inside the agencies."
The policy also includes "the extremely broad statement that HHS scientists 'shall refrain from making or publishing statements that could be construed as being judgments of, or recommendations on, HHS or any other federal government policy,'" reads the letter. "A bad-faith actor seeking to harass a scientist whose work they find distasteful could claim to have 'construed' virtually any statement as a judgment of government policy."
"For instance," the groups added, "a scientist who makes a factual statement about the effect of a policy—for instance, explaining how a Trump administration directive to stop procuring fetal tissue halted work on an HIV study—could be accused of criticizing that policy decision. We recommend that HHS remove this text from its scientific integrity policy to avoid creating a weapon for bad-faith actors."
The watchdogs applauded the administration for taking steps to protect government scientists from retaliation, "rather than relying on existing whistleblower protections alone."
But the policy, they said, should include language assuring scientists that they can work "free from reprisal or concern for reprisal" and should "specifically provide protections against blocklisting/blacklisting and retaliatory investigations and offer an affirmative defense to whistleblowers who are subjected to civil or criminal lawsuits."
When Biden announced an overhaul of scientific integrity policies to protect scientists in 2021, groups including PEER said the move was a "welcome change from the Trump administration."
On Tuesday, however, Ruch warned that "little about this proposed policy would restore public faith in the credibility of government science."
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