Chris Morten

Strongly recommend this excellent piece. It actually understates the US failure: Brazil and S. Korea aren’t outliers. Quite the opposite. Since 2010, 31 democracies have convicted or banned leaders from office. Accountability is the democratic norm. America is the sole outlier.

One Pivotal Trial, the New Default Option for FDA Approval — Ending the Two-Trial Dogma | NEJM This Sounding Board announces a new FDA policy that the default requirement for FDA approvals will be one robust pivotal trial plus confirmatory evidence, rather than two trials.

Notable also as the latest example of a major policy change at FDA being announced in a press release or journal article rather than the Federal Register or other "official" channel.
I find particularly galling the fact that this publication isn't open access.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

The latest cynical, destructive, anti-science move by Makary & Prasad:
Blessing FDA approval of new drugs & vaccines on the basis of just one pivotal clinical trial.
They promise to "spur biomedical innovation" (as always), but this will mean more unsafe & ineffective products in patients' bodies.

Jeffrey Epstein Was Vladimir Putin's Wealth Manager, FBI Source Claimed in Newly Released Epstein Files Jeffrey Epstein managed money for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, among other powerful world leaders, one confidential source claimed in FBI testimony

As I keep saying, the Epstein story is an offshore finance story.

And offshore finance is about elite impunity: insistence on their wealth and their persons being protected by the law, but never being subject to the law.

It's the "Every man a King" fantasy made real.

people.com/jeffrey-epst...

John Roberts is not breaking from Trump and is not neutrally applying the law. Anyone pretending otherwise needs to have a long look in the mirror and reflect on what clearly core aspect of their identity needs to believe something so laughably false

we need a rom-com that unites the people in revolutionary struggle

RFK Jr. pledged more transparency. Here's what the public doesn't know anymore Health experts say the federal government now shares less public health data, even after Robert F_ Kennedy Jr_ promised “radical transparency.”.

"[L]ayoffs to CDC staff who worked on smoking meant an important survey on youth smoking and vaping — normally out in the fall — was never released." So much for MAHA. www.wsls.com/news/politic...

lfg

Calling up your Dem senators and thanking them for doing this is how you encourage them to hold the line, no matter how low your estimation of them is

But EPA is "leviathan"

Companies reap $22bn from Trump’s immigration crackdown Palantir, Deloitte and gravel company led by ally of US president among beneficiaries

The war on immigrants is a contracting bonanza for Palantir, Deloitte—and a gravel contractor (coincidentally a Trump donor) who's gotten $6b to build the wall.

www.ft.com/content/c741...

Newly unsealed evidence makes it even clearer that Rubio and Noem knew they were targeting students based solely on their political speech and that they knew this policy was unconstitutional. They just didn’t care. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

A pitbull with a big head stand in the foreground behind them is three containers of bright, orange, poppies and a container with sunflowers in it. Behind that is a street in crosswalk with cars in it.

A screenshot of an Instagram story that includes a photo of three masked men and green military gear arresting a person who is on the ground. Below that is a photo of a black explorer and it’s license echoparklatu 22m See translation > 9:05am - One person kidnapped from Sunset & Echo Park. STAY SAFE OR COME OUT! 9:05 a. m. - Una persona secuestrada en Sunset y Echo Park Ave. MANTÉNGANSE SEGUROS O SALGAN SI PUEDEN! 306682

ICE took the flower man in Echo Park 40 minutes ago. He’s at this corner every day. I’ve bought flowers from the man and woman here for anniversaries and birthdays. Lemmy loves to smell them whenever we walk by in the mornings. I was just at the street corner 15 minutes before it happened. Fuck.

What's the plan, Chuck? I run a fake news website. You're the Senate Minority Leader. What's the plan?

This is 100% FALSE. Immigration judges do NOT play any role in issuing administrative warrants. They are generated and signed by ICE officers themselves. ICE’s own training materials say they can’t be used for a search of a home!

Here’s a blank warrant form. Note who signs it.

We are excited to share a recently published editorial in @jama.com that discusses the FDA’s review of REMS requirements for mifepristone. (1/7)

For years, @ksabeelrahman.bsky.social & I have been frustrated with what we call the Part IV Problem in legal scholarship, the expectation of neat & feasible prescriptions to end pieces. Our frustrations are heightened in this moment of authoritarianism, as we wrote today at @lpeblog.bsky.social:

Thank you for your incisive, generous, and very helpful comments!

DHS: It is horrific to see radical agitators bring children to their violent riots. PLEASE STOP ENDANGERING YOUR CHILDREN. ABC News • @ABC• 7h Two children, including a 6-month-old, were hospitalized last night after federal agents deployed tear gas during Wednesday night's protests, according to the Minneapolis Office of Community Safety.... 7:32 AM • 1/16/26 • 145

The 6-month-old that DHS is tweeting about here lived in the neighborhood and the baby’s father was just trying to evacuate his family after federal agents had shot someone.

Correct.

The Biden Admin tried to fix as much of this as possible, but the courts stopped it. As I said then, they had no idea what kind of mess they were making. And the Trump Admin has no idea what to do about it.

The mirage of AI deregulation One of the most interventionist approaches to technology governance in the United States in a generation has cloaked itself in the language of deregulation. In early December 2025, President Donald Tr...

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Mike Johnson compellingly making the case for abolishing ICE ...

Finally, we explore potential legal challenges a public PBM might face and provide a broad look at potential advocacy for a public PBM.
Please take a look!
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... necessary for public PBMs to bring down medication prices effectively. We also explain how public PBMs could or could not work with existing pharmaceutical actors, including roadblocks that warrant further research.
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Part II of this toolkit—“Visions of a Public PBM”—then shifts to analysis of more ambitious PBM programs state governments might undertake in the future. We map what we think a fully public PBM could look like. We highlight the law and policy components we think are ...
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This program is operated by a coalition of different states proposing “state-backed pharmacy solutions.” They leverage state authority and buying power to negotiate private PBM services on more favorable terms for limited populations in the states.
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www.arrayrxsolutions.com/Pharmacy-sol...

In Section I.2—“What Is ArrayRx?”—we analyze services offered by ArrayRx, a multi-state collaboration of state agencies, with a focus on the ArrayRx PBM Program.
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arrayrxsolutions.com

state governments against private PBMs.
A second goal of this toolkit is to analyze how government agencies might replace some of the functions of private PBMs and document how some state government agencies are, in fact, already doing so.
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