“Somewhere off the coast of Venezuela, a speedboat with 11 people on board is blown to smithereens. Vice President J.D. Vance announces that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.”
When challenged that killing citizens without due process is a war crime, the vice president responded that he “didn’t give a shit.”
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But over 20,000 people are murdered in the U.S. each year, and yet somehow we find a way to a dispassionate dispensation of justice that includes legal representation for the accused and jury trial.
Why? Because sometimes the accused is actually not guilty.
As passions subside, a civilized people should ask: To be clear, the people bombed to smithereens were guilty, right?
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The administration has maintained that the people blown to smithereens were members of Tren de Aragua and therefore narcoterrorists.
Certainly, then, if we know they belong to a particular gang, then someone must surely have known their names before they were blown to smithereens?
At the very least, the government should explain how the gang came to be labelled as terrorists. U.S. law defines a terrorist as someone who uses “premeditated, politically motivated violence…against non-combatants.” Since the U.S. policy is now to blow people to smithereens if they are suspected of being in a terrorist gang, then maybe someone could take the time to explain the evidence of their terrorism?
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Few independent legal scholars argue the strikes are legal. Even John Yoo—a former deputy assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, who infamously authored the Bush administration’s legal justification for “enhanced interrogation techniques”—has criticized the Trump administration’s justification for the strikes, saying: “There has to be a line between crime and war. We can’t just consider anything that harms the country to be a matter for the military. Because that could potentially include every crime.””
The United States military is making extrajudicial illegal killings of potential drug traffickers, apparently killing a boat of Colombians this time. The U.S. is threatening a regime change war with Venezuela.
“Oregon’s three-and-a-half-year experiment with decriminalization is over. Last September, the state legislature overrode the ballot initiative, known as Measure 110, and recriminalized drugs.
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With few treatment facilities and lax enforcement, Portland became a safe haven for drug users to pitch tents on the street and get high out in the open. A meth user named Michael, who lives in a tent with his girlfriend on a Portland sidewalk, told Reason that he saw more drug users flow into the city after decriminalization.
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“When you look at the frustration that was built up by people who were just doing the things that everybody gets to do, get to take their kids to school, go to work. I mean, I felt it the same way,” says Schmidt. “I don’t like seeing people shooting up where I have to explain to my kids what’s happening right now, and then also maybe not feeling safe because you’re not sure if a person’s in their right mind. Like, that’s not okay.”
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decriminalization as a concept is “obviously not” doomed to fail. He points to several Western European countries and cities that have successfully implemented decriminalization policies for years.
Portugal became the first country to decriminalize all drugs in 2001. Overdoses and disease transmission fell, inspiring similar approaches in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Zurich, where the police enforced “zero tolerance” against open-air drug scenes with the goal of moving drug use off the streets and indoors.
“When you decriminalize drug possession, that doesn’t mean that you’re decriminalizing drug use on the streets. It doesn’t mean that you are decriminalizing disorderly behavior on the street. Those things need to go hand in hand. That’s what the European approach taught us,” says Nadelmann. “That sort of pragmatism is really what we need in the U.S.”
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A robust treatment infrastructure and protection of public spaces made Portugal’s decriminalization sustainable. When the country decriminalized drugs, police stepped up enforcement as the policy took effect. The authorities in Lisbon dismantled shanty towns, relocated their inhabitants, and broke up an open-air drug scene known as “the supermarket of drugs.” As Zurich decriminalized, authorities took a “zero tolerance” approach towards large public gatherings of drug users, which they described as “destructive to co-existence.”
In Portland, by contrast, decriminalization coincided with the defund the police movement and a 6 percent budget reduction for the Portland Police Bureau.
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as decriminalization took effect in Portland, the city effectively paused street camping removals because of COVID-19, exacerbating a decades-long unsheltered homelessness problem.
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The fentanyl epidemic caused a surge in overdose deaths in Portland starting in 2016. Overdoses soared in 2019, two years before decriminalization was implemented.
Only full commercial legalization could stop the fentanyl crisis because it would allow users to buy the drugs they’re seeking from reputable manufacturers, as has happened with cannabis, instead of a black market dominated by cartels selling extremely potent and deadly fentanyl.
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Portugal’s system can punish drug users for refusing treatment, but it’s rare in practice. Most who appear before the drug panel get off with a warning. Those deemed to have an addiction are referred for treatment. And a small subset of those refuse and face fines or other sanctions.”
“Trump announced the next in a long line of vanity projects: TrumpRX, a forthcoming, federally branded website where Pfizer sells steeply discounted drugs in exchange for a three-year exemption from his proposed 100 percent tariffs on imported pharmaceuticals. Imagine a strip mall furniture store with a permanent, flashy 70-percent-off sale, masking the fact that prices were inflated in the first place. TrumpRx, slated to launch in early 2026, is no different—a government-run platform that promises savings while hiding costs.
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TrumpRx isn’t healthcare reform or even a program in any real sense. It’s a carve-out for one company. Under the agreement, Pfizer will list a large share of its primary care and select specialty drugs at deep discounts on a federal site that redirects patients to Pfizer’s direct-to-consumer checkout.
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The savings are shaky because that money has to come from somewhere. Part of it, certainly, is just the market advantage of being exempted from a 100 percent tax that all your competitors are forced to pay. Any savings beyond that will be carved out of something else—less research, higher prices on other drugs, or hidden costs buried elsewhere in the system.
And for most people, the ‘discounts’ aren’t really discounts. Roughly 90 percent of Americans are insured, and their co-pays are almost always cheaper than TrumpRx’s cash prices. Medicaid patients already get the steepest rebates—more than 60 percent off by law—so TrumpRx adds little there. That leaves the approximately 27 million uninsured Americans.
But even for the uninsured, the math falls apart: A $6,000 arthritis drug at “half price” is still $3,000 in cash, a stretch on any budget. Eucrisa at $162 on TrumpRx beats few insurance copays. And $499/month for Wegovy (semaglutide) on TrumpRx compares poorly to the $25 many insured patients now pay. And all of this bypasses the way Americans actually get prescriptions. CVS, Walgreens, and the rest are cut out entirely, replaced by a federally branded coupon pop-up that punts you to a manufacturer’s checkout page. TrumpRx looks like a deal, but in practice, it helps almost no one.”
“President Donald Trump has struck a multi-pronged deal with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to lower the price of some of the company’s medicines, while clearing a path for the drugmaker to receive a three-year reprieve from certain tariffs.
The drugmaker will participate in a new direct purchasing platform named TrumpRx.gov that will let American patients buy a “large majority” of its primary care treatments and “some select specialty brands” at a discount. Those drugs will be offered at “savings that will range as high as 85% and on average 50%,” Pfizer said in a press release Tuesday.”
“The two Trump administrations have launched as many airstrikes at overseas targets as any other administration. Although childish and superficial, his renaming the Department of Defense as the Department of War doesn’t telegraph a love of peace. Nor does his authorized strike on a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean. His policies in the Middle East have amounted to little more than giving Israel the greenlight to do as it pleases. Then there were his attacks on nuclear sites in Iran and his constant threats to send troops to root out cartels in Mexico.
Whether or not you agree with these policies, they don’t adhere to any principled non-interventionist philosophy. And that takes us back to Russia and Ukraine. The problem with appeasement is that it emboldens the aggressor rather than secures lasting and just peace. No serious person is calling for American troops in Ukraine, but Trump’s insistence on blaming Ukraine and not pushing Russia for serious concessions has escalated the conflict.”
“Most U.S. drug traffickers are Americans, but the president is ordering extrajudicial maritime killings while ignoring the domestic demand that drives the market.”
“The Food and Drug Administration plans to approve a new use for the generic drug leucovorin in the coming weeks to treat kids with “cerebral folate deficiency and autistic symptoms,” according to a POLITICO Magazine opinion piece by federal health leaders published on Monday.
The officials — FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, National Institutes for Health Director Jay Bhattacharya and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz — pointed to research they say suggests leucovorin, also known as folinic acid, may help children who are deficient in folate, a vitamin. They said there was evidence leucovorin, which is currently used to treat cancer and anemia patients, can help children with autism improve their verbal communication. But they emphasized in the opinion piece that the drug “is not a cure for autism.”
While scientists say leucovorin, a form of vitamin B, could be promising for a subset of autism patients, they cautioned that the current data is limited and the drug needs more research.”