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The Energy Future We Could Have Had, If Only Trump Hadn't Trashed It

The Energy Future We Could Have Had, If Only Trump Hadn't Trashed It

Oil, oil, oil. The war with Iran has oil prices soaring. And no thanks, President Trump, for your other war, the one against green energy.

As Americans freak over gas prices, they are taking another look at electric vehicles. But guess what? Most domestic automakers dropped ambitious investments toward that end, leaving car lots bereft of these gasoline-replacing vehicles, at least American-made ones.

It didn't have to be that way. Barack Obama and Joe Biden launched serious programs to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Trump trashed those ambitious plans to bring Americans into an electrified era that the rest of the civilized world was racing toward. Not only did he freeze what was a massive building of domestic EV factories, but he launched a war against the campaign to install charging stations across the country — facilities that would make EV ownership more attractive.

And so here we are, dancing around $100 for a barrel of Brent crude. And we're stuck.

Let's discard a few misconceptions peddled by the Trumpian fantasy of how this all works. First off, no one was pushing for the immediate end of oil production. Our policy was to meet the growing need for energy by throwing everything at it: the clean sources of wind, solar, hydropower, geothermal and tidal — plus oil and natural gas.

Falsehood No. 2 is that America doesn't produce enough oil to meet the country's demand. The United States exports more oil than it imports. In that respect, we are energy independent, and we've been that way since 2019.

But America's producing more natural gas and petroleum than it consumes does not do much to lower gasoline prices. Oil is priced in a global market.

Sure, Trump could order that all U.S.-produced crude oil must stay in the U.S., but his friends in America's oil industry wouldn't stand for it. They're now making a ton of money off the world price.

Bear in mind that after the 1970s energy shocks, there actually was a restriction on crude oil exports. It was lifted in 2015. And let me indelicately suggest that Trump has hobbled the shift to green energy to extract money from the fossil fuel industry.

Electric vehicles generally cost more upfront but far less to run. And the higher gas prices go, the sweeter the EV deal becomes. Yet Honda has scrapped plans to build three EV models in the United States. Ford, General Motors and Stellantis — the parent of Jeep and Chrysler — have likewise scaled back on domestic EV production.

And just last week, the Trump administration sued California over its high mileage standards for new vehicles. It's also suing the state to reclaim funds set aside for expanding the network of EV charging stations.

So far, I've said not a word about climate change, but there is no chaining me down. The original campaign for green energy reflected fears of a warming planet with the resulting floods, weather chaos and the destruction of the natural world as we know it.

Trump sold his masses on the supreme importance of the price of gas. He told us the price was going down when it was going up. The size of today's spike is such that he can no longer gaslight the public on the real price at the pump. And so now he's saying that it will go down, down, down when this war is over.

The tragedy is that the energy policies we could have had are the energy policies we did have. They ended when Trump turned on the American future. That future, sadly, is here.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Kevin Stitt

How Popular Governors Rise Above Party (And Trump's Petty Manipulation)

Another exercise in nonpartisan cooperation ended sadly, as Donald Trump undoubtedly planned. Every year, the nation's governors meet with the president to discuss common concerns. Trump had initially banned two Democratic members of the National Governors Association from attending — governors Jared Polis of Colorado and Wes Moore of Maryland.

The association's chair, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, objected to Trump's banishing of two members. The governors' gathering is one of the few cross-party events still held at the national level.

"He can invite whomever he wants," press secretary Karoline Leavitt snapped like a high-school mean girl.

And Stitt responded by canceling the meeting. As he explained to Trump, "I said, 'Sir, I can't cancel an event at the White House. The only thing I said was, 'If it's not for all 50 governors, then the NGA is not the right facilitator for it.'"

Once Trump succeeded in injecting his unique brand of nastiness into what's normally a friendly bipartisan affair, he backpedaled and said, OK, Polis and Moore can attend. Mission accomplished. He had wrung maximum attention from a venue that normally escapes extensive news coverage. But by keeping the governor's confab from collapsing, he still had a full set of politicians to toy with.

About our governors. As the highest elected state officials, they manage, budget and lead in emergencies. They set educational standards and oversee road projects. In other words, they do things that matter to everyday citizens.

And facing a statewide electorate, they must appeal to a broader voter base than representatives cosseted in their gerrymandered districts. Because their job revolves around pragmatic problem-solving, governors occupy one of the political offices for which voters will cross their party lines. In addition, their party affiliation doesn't greatly change the power balance in Washington.

The job's above-the-fray nature helps explain why deep-blue Vermont has a Republican governor — and conservative Kentucky and Kansas have Democratic ones. On the Tennessee governor's official website, Bill Lee offers an extensive biography covering his deep Tennessean roots and accomplishments in office. Nowhere is there mention of political party. (Lee is a Republican.)

With congressional Republicans staring down a rough ride through the midterms, some political analysts have expressed surprise at polls showing momentum in governors' races leaning more toward Republicans than Democrats. Some wrongly hold up these Republican-friendly surveys as evidence that the party isn't in as much trouble as was widely thought.

But the real reason was already outlined above. Washington Republicans have largely submitted to Trump's grifting schemes and erratic policies — the tariff chaos being most unpopular. That makes them a different animal from Republicans in state capitals, in Montpelier, Vermont, or Columbus, Ohio.

Speaking of Ohio, Gov. Mike DeWine did himself proud by denouncing Trump's demented claim, echoed by the spineless JD Vance during the 2024 campaign, that Haitian immigrants in Springfield are eating cats and dogs. DeWine responded: "These Haitians came in here to work because there were jobs ... And if you talk to employers, they've done a very, very good job and they work very, very hard."

Trump isn't helping Republican governors seeking reelection by dragging them into his house of crazy mirrors — notwithstanding their survival in the recent past. In 2022, DeWine won again after angering Trump by saying Joe Biden was the elected president. Trump repeatedly attacked Georgia's governor, Republican Brian Kemp, for defending his state's election results favoring Biden. And New Hampshire's governor, Republican Chris Sununu, prevailed after Trump accused him of disloyalty.

Democrats are pumped for the midterms and might just supply the boost that brings defeat to otherwise popular Republicans — popular precisely because they rise above party when doing so seems right.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Feeling Insecure At Work? That Fear Is Real -- And You Can Blame Trump

Feeling Insecure At Work? That Fear Is Real -- And You Can Blame Trump

Groundhog Day's furry forecaster Punxsutawney Phil predicted six more weeks of wintry weather. What if we asked Phil to apply his insights to the frigid job market? He might answer the way an alarmed groundhog does, with chattering teeth, and then squeak, "Wheet! Wheet! Cold days are coming for American jobseekers, and they'll last a lot longer than six weeks."

Economists are using the term "deep freeze" to describe the current job outlook. These are strange times. The official unemployment rate of 4.45 percent is not a distressing number, but the reasons behind it are worrisome. Many workers are sticking with their jobs, fearful they can't find a new one.

Aside from some big-headline layoffs, most employers figure business is good enough to hang on to the staff they've got, but not strong enough to take new people on. The main reason: They have no idea what exactly is going on in the American economy.

Is it fair to pin this unsettling situation on Donald Trump? Sure, it's fair, though he doesn't deserve all the blame. What he does, reliably, is make a lot of problems worse.

Start with the tariffs. His trade war — slapping higher duties on essentially the rest of the world — was sold as a job-creation engine. It hasn't worked out that way. Since "Liberation Day," April 2, 2025, U.S. factory employment has fallen month after month. And last year, the number of job openings dropped by nearly a million.

What tariffs have done is push up prices that Americans pay for food and other everyday goods. In other words, they add to inflation. Prices haven't spiked as dramatically as some warned, but they've risen enough to leave consumers uneasy and on edge.

American companies that obtain parts and materials from abroad are now paying more for them. Some have swallowed at least some of those added costs, but much of the tariff tax gets passed onto buyers. Many companies say they will now have to pass more of those costs to consumers.

Such disruptions have hit Main Street businesses especially hard. They are less able than big corporations to deal with the confusion over tariffs. Who is meant to foot the bill? Vendors? Purchasers? Shoppers? Small companies employ almost half the American workforce.

Then there's the immigration crisis. Roundups of undocumented aliens were supposed to free up jobs for Americans. But Trump's spectacle of ICE agents sweeping up the foreign-born has created a mess for local businesses. Both legal and illegal immigrants are afraid to go to work and shop at stores. Immigrants, after all, are also customers.

Artificial intelligence isn't Trump's doing, but it's here. Analysts expect American companies to pour more money into robotics and artificial intelligence — technologies that replace human labor. A bachelor's degree will no longer shield many college grads from unemployment, as AI moves in on work many well-paid professionals considered safe.

Anthropic's "AI Assistant," Claude, can now read, write and analyze text. It can take on some accounting tasks, such as reviewing documents and drafting reports.

As demand for humans with such skills shrinks, employers looking to add staff have become super picky. That's making life especially tough for young people trying to land entry-level jobs. The office outlook is scary: a small cadre of senior executives, the "C-suite," presiding over rooms of smart machines that can match, or even outthink, Homo sapiens.

Businesses don't know which way is up, down or sideways, and Trump's daily dose of chaos isn't helping. The mystery of what will come next leaves many companies hesitant to hire.

Winter is settling in the job market. If you're feeling insecure, you may be on to something.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

The Midterms Are Democrats' To Lose -- And They May Find A Way

The Midterms Are Democrats' To Lose -- And They May Find A Way

Democrats are buzzing over the surprise victory of Taylor Rehmet in a Texas state senate race. Rehmet won by 14 points in a Fort Worth-area district Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.

That outcome inspired a piece by Republican strategist Karl Rove titled "Midterms Are Dems' to Lose — and They May." Rove doesn't gloss over Republicans' weak spots — the president's dismal approval ratings, falling consumer confidence and the daily churn of Trump-fueled chaos. But he also notes the Democrats' penchant for nominating far-left activists in moderate districts, candidates who inevitably lose the general.

Rove is right about it all, which leads to a question for Democrats: Have they internalized that a Democratic Socialist who wins New York City would be dead on arrival most everywhere else?

The recent unexpected Democratic wins feature a very different sort of candidate: as moderate, pragmatic and, above all, normal. Rehmet checks the boxes for a Texas Democrat. He is a labor leader who served in the Air Force. He focused his campaign on economic concerns and steered clear of the culture wars.

In his postelection interview on CNN, Erin Burnett tried to drag him into national politics. At the news channels, left or right, everything is Trump, all the time.

Burnett notes that Trump posted several endorsements of Rehmet's opponent. And she played the clip wherein Trump runs for cover. "That's a local Texas race," he said sheepishly. "I have nothing to do with it."

Rehmet didn't take the bait and make his victory a referendum on Trump. "Well, I don't believe he was able to vote in this race," he said flatly. "I was so focused on, you know, talking to the voters here and meeting with them."

Burnett then asked him to respond to a Republican spokesman's charge that Democratic moderates are "pushing the same radical socialist agenda" seen from New York to California. "What do you say to that, Taylor?"

Rehmet wouldn't go down that alley.

Thing is, New York's "socialist" mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is an outlier. Though an unusually skilled politician, he took less than 51% of the vote — despite being the official Democratic nominee in a heavily Democratic city.

And moderate Democrats have been winning mayoral races in California. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie is cracking down on open-air drug markets and clearing homeless encampments. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan opposes a referendum calling for an emergency five percent tax on billionaires' assets, noting that the top one percent already pay about 40 percent of California's taxes.

Back in Texas, Democrats prepare for another promising outcome. Two prominent Democrats are contending for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican John Cornyn. One is Jasmine Crockett, the firebrand congresswoman for Dallas and its surrounding areas. The other is James Talarico, a state legislator who presents himself as a progressive Christian.

Primary polls show them neck and neck, but Republicans most fear Talarico because he is more culturally attuned to the conservative state. Crockett may be entertaining, but she'd be the weaker candidate.

Both parties drew lessons from a remarkably close special election for a House seat in a mid-Tennessee district. Trump took it by 22 points in 2024. But only a year later, Republican candidate Matt Van Epps won by only 9 points. And he was running against a community organizer backed by the Democratic Socialists. Aftyn Behn came off as kooky and even invited Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a rally.

The lesson for Republicans was that their party faces real trouble in the midterms. The lesson for Democrats is broader: Nominate candidates who are bad fits for their districts, then yes, they can lose — even with the Republican brand in tatters.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump Jr. and Zach Witkoff

America First? Corrupt Trump Family Business Sold Our National Security

The U.S. makes artificial intelligence chips so special, so advanced, that the Biden administration limited their export for national security reasons. They didn't want them to get into the hands of China or Russia.

But days before Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term, go-betweens for an Abu Dhabi royal signed a secret deal that delivered $187 million into Trump family ventures -- so far, as far as we know.

Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan — nickname, the "spy sheik" — had long been frustrated in his campaign to obtain this highly sensitive AI technology. The fear was that our super chips could be diverted to China.

Under the private arrangement, Tahnoon's $1.3 billion fund paid $500 million for 49 percent of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family's crypto enterprise.

A few weeks after Trump returned to power, the United Arab Emirates was given yearly access to about half a million of the most advanced chips. Abu Dhabi is the most powerful of the seven UAE emirates. Tahnoon's brother is the UAE's president.

Zach and Alex Witkoff, both principals in World Liberty, were not left out. They are the sons of Steve Witkoff, the real estate developer whom Trump named U.S. special envoy to the Middle East. The Witkoff family is getting its cut of millions from the deal.

These machinations were complicated and secretive enough to fall under the radar of average Americans. But they amount to an underhanded sale of prized U.S. technology. To wade through the details, read The Wall Street Journal's excellent account of what went on.

Again, these controls were designed to prevent U.S. technology from aiding rival nations in developing military, surveillance and strategic AI expertise.

Another change from the Biden years: Back then, the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket was under a Justice Department probe into money laundering. Now it's made a highly lucrative deal with the New York Stock Exchange's parent company. And its founder, 27-year-old Shayne Coplan, is suddenly a billionaire.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission considered Polymarket an unregistered exchange open to market manipulation. Thus, it limited Polymarket's U.S. bets to derivative trading.

Polymarket doesn't know the identities of most of the people who trade on its platform. It's been tagged for manipulation on all kinds of bets: What would happen in Russia's war on Ukraine? Who would win the Nobel Peace Prize? Not knowing exactly who's involved lets users trade on insider information. Such activity is illegal, but who would the Securities and Exchange Commission know to go after?

Hours before the "surprise" U.S. military operation to take down Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, bets on that happening surged into Polymarket. One unnamed trader made more than $400,000.

Another form of manipulation is "washing." That's when trades are moved back and forth, creating the impression of an active market. A study out of Columbia University found evidence of wash trading in about 25 percent of Polymarket's volume.

Two months before Trump's second inauguration, FBI agents broke the door of Coplan's Manhattan penthouse apartment. They were probing charges that Polymarket was laundering money. Once Trump was in office, the Justice Department halted its investigation. Why the turnaround? Could it possibly be that Donald Trump Jr.'s venture capital firm is a Polymarket investor? (Junior is now listed as one of the company's advisers.) It should be no surprise that Coplan sat with Donald Jr. during the 2024 Republican National Convention. Thus, things are looking up for Polymarket and its founder.

What's good for America does not necessarily track the Trump family's fortunes. Historians someday will gather a compendium of the Trump era's corruption and self-dealing. And future generations will look on with appalled wonder that all this went on under the public's nose.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

At Kennedy's CDC, Measles Fatalities Are Now Just 'A Cost Of Doing Business'

At Kennedy's CDC, Measles Fatalities Are Now Just 'A Cost Of Doing Business'

Measles is a "cost of doing business," says a highly placed official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I'd like to know what business that is.

To be fair, let me finish the CDC principal deputy director's quote. Ralph Abraham said that measles is a cost of doing business "with our borders being somewhat porous for global and international travel."

Thing is, the U.S. saw over 2,200 measles cases in 2025, the highest number since 1991 — when the border was presumably less porous and after the disease had been virtually eradicated. Its latest surge in South Carolina follows outbreaks along the Utah-Arizona border.

Measles is a nasty disease. It causes body temperature to spike above 103 degrees, coughs, fatigue and its famous rash. It can lead to pneumonia, hearing loss and brain damage.

And it can end in death. In high-income countries with good medical care, 1 to 3 people die for every 1,000 measles cases. Children under the age of 5 are at extra risk.

Measles infections are growing in places where large numbers aren't vaccinated against it. In South Carolina's Spartanburg County, only 90 percent of schoolchildren had received the measles, mumps and rubella shots. That sounds like a high percentage, but experts say you need at least a 95 percent vaccination rate to stop the disease's spread in a community.

Donald Trump's director of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is a vaccine skeptic who feeds distrust of medical authorities. He advises taking Vitamin A (including cod liver oil) as a treatment for measles. He also recommends an antibiotic (clarithromycin) and a steroid (budesonide), claiming they had been "shown very effective." Neither works for measles, according to real scientists. Measles is a virus for which there is no cure.

Unnecessary deaths could be deemed a cost of doing business, one supposes. But for bad cases, so is hospitalization requiring oxygen, X-rays, isolation and long stays. It can be more costly if you put a dollar figure on it.

Kennedy's HHS sounds like a Ministry right out of Orwell's 1984, where controlling truth matters more than addressing problems. This cost-of-business talk is another weaponization of reality: The overhead for addressing measles had been largely limited to cheap vaccinations that are free for most schoolchildren. Preventing the disease from spreading in the first place is cost effective, is it not?

Plagues can be a significant cost of doing business. In the 14th century, the Black Death killed more than 50 million Europeans. It spread mainly through fleas hiding on rodents. Science back then couldn't supply an adequate explanation, and so the best minds of the day blamed the horror on divine retribution and planets out of whack.

Be mindful that Kennedy in 2014 left a bear cub corpse in Central Park. That was against the law because dead animals harbor bacteria and parasites, posing a public-health risk. New York City advises anyone coming across a carcass to report it and not touch it. When it is found near a busy path in a place like Central Park, witnesses are urged to call 911.

Well, Bobby just wanted to get rid of the thing and so dropped the bear under bushes to let the taxpayers deal with it. Nowadays, he's a far bigger threat to public health with his attacks on vaccine safety and nutty theories on cures. He deviously sows distrust by urging Americans to first consult with one's health care provider on whether vaccination "is best for your family."

In sum, outbreaks of diseases that used to be rare are without a doubt an added cost. It's a cost of the business of living in Trump's America.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Where Are All The Fathers? Ask Feckless Male Leaders Like Donald Trump

Where Are All The Fathers? Ask Feckless Male Leaders Like Donald Trump

Where are the babies? Social conservatives keep asking what's happened as the U.S. fertility rate crashes to its lowest level ever. But the answer should be another question:

Where are the fathers? And by fathers, we do not mean men who merely spread their seed and then take off, but men who hang around and provide moral and financial support to their children.

The common but wrong answer is that it has simply become too expensive to raise children: If you just bring down the prices of things then family life will become more attractive to young couples. This is the affordability copout.

Sure, lowering the cost of living would make children seem more "affordable." But parents with a modest income need a partner to maintain a modest middle-class existence.

About 40% of births in the U.S. are to unmarried women. Some of the fathers do pay child support, but 33% of this group send nothing. Meanwhile, 29% of divorced parents received no such payments.

"Earning More but in Worse Shape: Hardship Overwhelms Many American Families," reads the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal article. It centers on Lisa Meazler, a mother of three girls outside Binghamton, New York. Lisa laments that she hasn't been able to take the girls on a "real vacation" for years. And we learn that her credit cards are maxed out and her mortgage payments late. We know that she works at a low-wage job.

What we don't know is the name of the father or fathers of the children. We don't know where they are. We don't know whether they've been sending checks — though the assumption is they haven't.

This is the approach to stories of impoverished families kept afloat by desperate single women.

The New York Times reports on Wanda Lavender of Milwaukee. She's raising six children and one grandchild while working long hours at a Popeyes. Where are the fathers? No one asks.

Social conservatives may largely agree with me on the above points. They blame the culture. But I ask why they give leaders who virtually mock their values a pass. It wasn't always thus.

In 1964, Sen. Prescott Bush (R-CT) condemned Nelson Rockefeller over his divorce and quick remarriage. "Have we come to the point in our life as a nation," he asks, "where the governor of a great state — one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for president of the United States — can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the governor?"

Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative activist best known for helping block the Equal Rights Amendment, said back then, "I've been taking a private poll of Republican women I meet all over the state (Illinois), and their reaction nearly unanimous was they're disgusted with Rockefeller."

Now look at today. President Donald Trump recently crowned himself the "fertilization president." He dumped two wives, mothers of four of his children, then went on to marry wife No. 3 and cheat on her. Trump has the money to keep his five kids dressed and fed, but so did Rockefeller.

Trump gets away with playing the libertine while Rockefeller did not. Even now he stocks his administration with "hot" young women, stamped out of the same thin, surgery-enhanced mold.

Young women looking at the lives of Lisa Meazler and Wanda Lavender and the sad sisterhood of impoverished single mothers might understandably choose to forgo having children without fathers onboard.

In earlier days, men in leadership were expected to model basic propriety — especially where children were concerned. Fathers belong back in the story today.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Will Corrupt Regime And Falling Innovation Signal The End Of American Greatness?

Will Corrupt Regime And Falling Innovation Signal The End Of American Greatness?

Bribery, inflation, plagues, crumbling trade links, stalled innovation — all these negatives helped bring down the once-mighty Roman Empire. But Rome needed centuries of bad leadership to collapse.

Donald Trump seems to be undoing American greatness at warp speed. Sure, the United States possesses strengths that will maintain an aura of power for some time to come. But Trump has turbocharged the kind of destructive governance that could undo us.

Start with bribery, gifts that buy special deals and access. Witness the bags of money going into the Trump family's crypto schemes. Also, Qatar's handing Trump a $400 million jetliner for his eventual personal use. A smaller but astounding act of submission was Amazon's $40 million "investment" in a Melania documentary, most of which goes to her. Grab some Tums as companies needing government favors hand over millions for a White House ballroom, bearing Trump's name.

Such a blatant grift recalls the Emperor Commodus (180-192 A.D.), who turned his palace into a marketplace for selling political payoffs or protection. Consulships and governorships were hawked openly. Roman historian Cassius Dio described Commodus' court as a "shop for offices."

Trump is supercharging inflation, thanks in part to his price-raising trade wars and his spending — the highest peacetime spending outside pandemic disruptions. Add in his tax cuts, which drain the money to pay for the spending, and debt as a percent of GDP is at or near 100 percent.

High tariffs on China led that country — the American farmer's biggest customer — to go elsewhere for corn, wheat, and soybeans. China has already turned to Brazil and Argentina for these commodities.

Trump's response is to call for funneling $12 billion to the suffering farmers. But that's a one-time handout. His unhinged trade policies are fraying long-nurtured trading relationships that could hurt American agriculture for years.

Plagues are not hard to imagine, given Trump's choice of lunatic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. A lawyer who made money suing drug companies, RFK Jr. is determined to sow distrust in vaccine safety and seems to be succeeding.

Take the measles vaccine. Lacking serious scientific evidence, RFK Jr. falsely claims that the vaccine may cause autism in children. That has convinced a growing number of parents to withhold measles shots from their children. This rise in "vaccine hesitancy" is behind several measles outbreaks. Before that, the United States enjoyed official measles-free status. It's about to lose that.

Ancient Rome lacked the medical advances we enjoy today but offers examples of what that means. The Antonine Plague (A.D. 165-180), believed to largely be measles, killed as many as 10 million people across the empire.

Kennedy has overseen mass layoffs and buyouts at HHS, and his ignorant attacks on medical expertise have set off resignations of leading scientists. HHS had been a crown jewel of public health and medical research.

Which brings us to stalled innovation.

Especially jarring is the resignation of the top drug regulator Richard Pazdur — the fourth to bail — one month after he was appointed to the FDA. Such turmoil has reportedly made investors wary of backing cutting-edge treatments.

The National Institutes of Health is funding fewer grants. But so is the National Science Foundation, and in areas such as computer science, engineering, math, and physics. No surprise that top researchers are fleeing the U.S. for institutions in other countries.

Commodus, again. He dismissed senior scientific advisers and replaced them with entertainers. Domitian (A.D. 81-96) executed senators considered too educated.

To distract us from governmental chaos, Trump is building gilded ballrooms and staging colossal spectacles, seen in videos of missile attacks on boats that may or may not be carrying drugs.

Wherever he is, Caligula must be enjoying the show.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump's 'War On Drugs' Is Either Personal Lunacy -- Or Political Distraction

Trump's 'War On Drugs' Is Either Personal Lunacy -- Or Political Distraction

Since President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs" in 1971, federal, state and local governments have spent an estimated $1 trillion fighting it — and losing. Donald Trump now seems fully engaged in that futile conflict, adding his own twisted brand of violence.

It's not enough to bomb boats "suspected" of ferrying drugs to the United States. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the military, after the initial strike, to "kill" survivors clinging to life rafts on the waters below.

Shocked lawmakers, both Republican and Democratic, are calling such actions "war crimes." The law of war authorizes the use of deadly force against enemy combatants. But once they're no longer a threat, the obligation is to care for the wounded.

That's beside the matter of whether the targets were, in fact, drug boats. Some may be, but the U.S. military is fully capable of stopping, boarding and interviewing the crew of a little vessel sailing through the Caribbean or Pacific.

And even if the boats are carrying drugs, there's no easy way of knowing how many of their passengers were traffickers and how many were the traffickers' hostages. Drug gangs are known to threaten innocents and their children to force participation in the ferrying business.

How well has this "war" been working out? Not well.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has killed more Americans than the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And lined up behind it are still more vicious street drugs.

In 2023, about 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, nearly 10 times the number in 1999. The death toll fell in 2024, due mostly to the availability of naloxone, which can reverse overdoses. But it was still seven times the drug-related fatalities of a quarter century prior.

This is counting deaths from both opioids and stimulants, the category for cocaine. Deadly synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are now often added to the cocaine. A recent CDC report found that nearly 80% of cocaine-related deaths involved drugs with opioids mixed in, especially fentanyl.

You can't stop fentanyl from entering this or any other country. Fentanyl the size of a pencil eraser can kill dozens of people. How hard is it to hide that tiny amount sewn in a teddy bear's nose? Not hard at all.

A kilogram of fentanyl contains up to half a million potentially lethal doses. A kilogram is only 2.2 pounds. A quart of milk weighs about that.

In fiscal 2025, the Coast Guard seized almost 510,000 pounds of cocaine. That was the most in its history but a fraction of the cocaine that got past our borders — drugs arriving by land, sea and air.

Go ahead and keep trying to prevent these drugs from coming in, but let's not pretend that this bombing of unidentified boats is anything more than another Trump performance. Perhaps it's another way to divert attention from the Epstein files.

If this were really about punishing drug lords, Trump wouldn't have just issued a full pardon to Honduran ex-President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Convicted last year of partnering with traffickers, Hernandez is credited with helping flood the U.S. with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine.

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who worked on the Hernandez case but was not allowed to comment publicly, called the pardon "lunacy."

That show of inconsistency was so crashing, you can't help but suspect Trump's motive was to even further distract the public from the investigation into the sex trafficking of underaged girls. It was piled right onto the macabre videos of the U.S. military dropping bombs on small boats.

That would seem the best explanation for these bizarre Trump orders — short of lunacy, that is.

This Deviant Presidency: How Low Can Sexual Exploitation Go?

This Deviant Presidency: How Low Can Sexual Exploitation Go?

The central scandal in the Epstein sex abuse ring targeting children is not the sex. It's the children.

What powerful men do with grown-up women — that is, females 18 or older — bothers me little. I never cared much about Donald Trump's assignation with porn star Stormy Daniels. Other Trump critics tried to pile on another layer of immorality by noting that Trump was cheating on a wife who had just given birth. I wouldn't go there.

That was between Melania and Donald. One assumes that the third Mrs. Trump knew what she was getting into. I doubt I'm going on a limb to assume that what attracted Melania to Donald was not his winning personality. She made her deal, as was her right.

Trump has just given in to the inevitable. When it became clear that the House would vote to release the Epstein files, and the Senate would follow, he ran to the front of the parade. Trump is undoubtedly plotting ways to keep information he doesn't want disclosed out of the public's eye. His reluctance to release files on a pedophile ring in which his name appears repeatedly is understandable.

As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) famously complained in 1993, deviance has been defined down so that behavior that was once deemed intolerable is now accepted as normal. One of his examples of deviancy being defined downward was sexual exploitation.

How far downward we've come.

William J. Bennett was a conservative moral-mouth of the 1990s. He went into full fire-and-brimstone mode after Bill Clinton was caught having a fling with a White House intern. Bennett milked the moment with a book grandly titled The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals. (On a roll, he followed with his pious The Book of Virtues.)

About adultery, Bennett wrote, "One reason society needs to uphold high public standards in this realm is because sex — when engaged in capriciously, without restraint, and against those in positions of relative weakness — can be exploitative and harmful."

Come 2016, Trump is running for president, and his adulterous escapades were public. A 1990 tabloid headline attributed to Trump's mistress Marla Maples (but actually planted by Trump while he was married to Ivana Trump) went, "Best Sex I've Ever Had."

Without a blush, Bennett argued that conservatives who refused to back Trump "suffer from a terrible case of moral superiority and put their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country."

Clinton's tryst with Monica Lewinsky was vulgar and inappropriate, but she was not a child. Monica was a 22-year-old college grad, and consent was mutual.

What happened on Epstein's island was not technically adultery — sexual relations between at least one married person and another adult. When one is a minor, the legal term is statutory rape.

Some of Trump's fiercest defenders are now attempting to downplay Epstein's crimes, thus diving below the second circle of hell that Dante reserved for mere philanderers.

Megyn Kelly tried to sanitize Epstein's disgrace by saying on her show, "He was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls." She goes on: "And I realize this is disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I'm just giving you facts, that he wasn't into, like, eight-year-olds."

To which we can add five-year-olds. Epstein was not into five-year-olds, and that's a fact, we think. However, one of the girls, Jena-Lisa Jones, was 14 and still in junior high.

The American public, including a large chunk of MAGA, deserves credit for finally drawing a moral line that they wouldn't let even Trump cross. The story's not over until the Justice Department releases all the files, victim names redacted. We're waiting.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


I Was Wrong: Democrats Won A Dunkirk Victory In Shutdown Defeat

I Was Wrong: Democrats Won A Dunkirk Victory In Shutdown Defeat

In 1940, Winston Churchill ordered the evacuation of 338,000 troops facing annihilation on the beaches of Dunkirk. Churchill called the successful operation "a miracle of deliverance." Historians portray it as a perfect example of victory in defeat.

Democrats raging at eight members of their caucus for ending the government shutdown might take a few lessons from the master of morale and strategy. What some hotheads framed as "capitulation" is, in the long run, the wisest plan.

Right after Dunkirk, Churchill famously said, "Wars are not won by evacuations." That is so, but stopping a potential disaster lets your side fight another day. Ending the shutdown prevented negative outcomes that had begun chugging the Democrats' way.

Shutdowns almost always bite the party that starts them. The record for this is so strong that I thought Democrats had erred from Day One.

I was wrong. Democrats effectively used the headlines to highlight the issue sure to haunt Republicans come the midterms: the soaring cost of health care.

Democrats prevailed in the recent elections, partly on threats to their health coverage, partly on rising food prices, tariff chaos and in-your-face corruption. But at a certain point, the news started turning from the fight to extend the Obamacare subsidies to flights being canceled and the poor losing food assistance.

With Thanksgiving approaching, the sight of family members sitting on suitcases in airports is not optimal. As many more Americans feel shutdown pain at the personal level, Democrats are harder pressed to avoid blame, even if the public liked certain items they were fighting for.

Now some firebrands just want a fight. But their contention that reopening the government caused a loss of leverage is based on illusion. Democrats never held meaningful leverage because they don't have the votes. Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate.

To quote Barack Obama, "Elections have consequences."

The election of Trump and a mostly pliant Republican Congress created such consequences as attacks on Obamacare and, more ominously, our democratic institutions. Democrats can offer a prettier set of consequences, but they can only deliver them if they retake control.

The Democrats' winning message should be, elect us and we will restore health care security. Even the temporary loss of it will hit home. As another great American, Joni Mitchell, sang, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

Now, if the shutdown worked in avoiding even some pain, that would be an argument in favor. But it wasn't.

Speaking for Democrats who voted to reopen the government, Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, posed the right question: "Does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits?" (He's referring to credits that were temporarily increased during the pandemic, making coverage cheaper for millions.)

These senators come from the swing states of Nevada, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Maine. They are key to Democrats obtaining and keeping a majority in Congress. Without them, Democrats have no hope of obtaining real power. And without real power, their politics are just performance.

As noted, the shutdown did succeed in putting the specter of lost health coverage front and center. That mission has been accomplished. Trump's now railing that Obamacare is a "scam" to get the insurance companies filthy rich. Democrats should thank him for calling this revered benefit a "scam."

Assessing the dire situation at Dunkirk, Churchill chose not to make a heroic yet suicidal stand. But he followed closely with his immortal "We shall fight on the beaches" speech — a rally to the nation for continued resistance.

The midterms are the beaches that Democrats should be storming.

Trump crypto

Lame Duck Trump Isn't Fretting Over Polls -- He's Too Busy Cashing Out

Donald Trump's approval numbers continue to crater. Even Republicans have cooled on the president's performance. But the president shows no sign of noticing, nor is he changing his ways. Even his gaslighting has gone wan. He's failed to make Americans believe that prices are going down when they're clearly not.

What gives? Why isn't he trying to win back the public's love? Perhaps because he no longer cares. The only infrastructure he seems interested in building is his family fortune.

Trump charmed farmers into supporting him twice. He's bankrupting them with his trade-war antics. Many farmers have finally turned on him, but so what? Trump's not running again. He no longer needs their affection or their votes.

This ability to seduce then abandon goes way back. In 1995, Trump was a near-broke developer whose Atlantic City casinos were going under. He needed suckers to bail him out and found them through an initial public offering of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts stock. Rubes buying into his spinner-of-gold act poured $140 million into his empty coffers. In 2004, burdened by debt and never turning a profit, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy. For every $10 that his marks invested at that stock sale, they had $1 left.

"People don't understand this company" was his explanation.

The presidency offered new and powerful tools to get people to hand over their money. Days after returning to office, Trump's regulators dropped the fraud case against crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. The Chinese-born speculator, target of an FBI investigation, fixed his problem by "investing" more than $40 million on $TRUMP coins — a crypto meme coin with no fundamental value.

Last month, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao. The Chinese-born Canadian had spent four months in prison for failing to prevent his crypto exchange, Binance, from laundering money. Zhao made his woes go away by having Binance facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial stablecoin. World Liberty was founded by Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Jr.

Asked about the pardon of Zhao, Trump said, "I don't know who he is."

By June, Trump and family had already taken in about $1 billion in crypto ventures alone, according to Forbes' calculations. That included profits from $100 million of World Liberty cryptocurrency tokens that a murky entity based in the United Arab Emirates said it was buying.

You enrich me and I'll get you off whatever hook you're hanging from. How better to embolden financial lawbreakers than a president saying, in effect, I've got your back — for a fee?

Being blatant about corruption is part of the mob boss' business model. Trump is telling those needing government favors that he's not shy about granting them, appearances be damned. Not only does he hand out pardons without blushing, he's been firing the regulators whose job it was to police wrongdoing.

Trump's agenda for a second term appears to be not giving a damn. He doesn't even care about the Republican Party, which just felt the sting of an unhappy electorate. Trump probably figures that Democrats will soon take control of at least the House in the midterms, so he might as well use the months left with a servile Republican Congress to increase his fortune.

He could also turn attention freed from the nation's concerns to immortalizing himself. Start by leveling an entire wing of the White House for a banquet hall that administration officials are already calling "The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom."

Asked about the naming, Trump said, "I won't get into that now."

It hardly needs mentioning that rich donors needing inside deals are paying for the ballroom.

Trump does care about numbers, but his job approval doesn't seem to be among them.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Too Old? Janet Mills Happens To Be A Lot Younger Than Bernie Sanders

Too Old? Janet Mills Happens To Be A Lot Younger Than Bernie Sanders

So Democrat Janet Mills, governor of Maine, is running against Susan Collins, the state's Republican senator since 1997. An established political figure would be running against another established political figure, yet the current reportage for Mills tends to start off with "77-year-old Janet Mills." Collins happens to be 72.

The Democratic Party is grappling with tensions between its senior leaders and younger challengers who want to replace them — worth a conversation. But to hear the lefties complain that Democratic powerbrokers are too old doesn't quite mesh with their worship of 84-year-old Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont.

When Sanders ran for reelection last year at age 83, his fan club never raised the age objection. Should Mills win and decide to run for another six years, she would be about the same age as Sanders is now. Another consideration: Maine has the highest share of population 65 and up.

Ageism seems to start at a younger age for women than it does for men. That would make it a form of sexism, too. Would it not?

Mills has announced that if elected, she would serve for only one term. That's undoubtedly to address many Democrats' pain and anger over Biden's running for a second term as his aides hid obvious cognitive decline.

A senator who has slowed down but is experienced and has a good staff can do the job. A president should be able to run on all cylinders.

Mills recently gained national celebrity when she executed a cutting talk-back to Donald Trump at a White House meeting. Speaking before a group of senators, Trump asked: "Is Maine here? The governor of Maine?"

"Yeah," Gov. Janet Mills answered from across the room. "I'm here."

Referring to his executive order banning transgender girls and women from participating in girls' and women's sports, Trump asked, "Are you not going to comply with that?"

Mills parried with, "I'm complying with the state and federal laws."

To which Trump threatened, "You better comply. Otherwise, you're not getting any federal funding."

Mills returned the lob with Yankee directness, "I'll see you in court."

That was a brilliant defense of a state's power to set social policy — even though it came off as a defense of less-than-brilliant policy.

Mills may be treading dangerously on the matter of transgender athletes in sports. No, biological men should not be allowed to compete against biological women. Maine should change its laws to reflect the unfairness of letting athletes with male musculature take part in women's events. It would make athletic competitions a pointless activity for most girls.

The issue is not about how anyone "identifies." If a boy says he's a girl and wears a dress, that's no business of mine. But that doesn't make him physically a girl. Contrary to some claims, hormonal treatments cannot radically change the muscle structure from male to female.

And that reality has shown up on the playing field. In Maine, a transgender girl (that is, someone born male) reportedly took first place in a student girls' track competition. The year before, he placed fifth in a boys' competition.

A similar story has played out in professional tennis. As tennis star Martina Navratilova complained, "women's tennis is not for failed male athletes."

Mills would do well to carefully position herself as a defender of Maine law but advocate changing it.

Mills faces a crowded primary in which she seems the strongest candidate to defeat Collins. "Our Senate race was just upgraded to a Toss-Up!" she just posted on X. "This is the most important race in the country and I'm the only Maine Democrat to win statewide in 20 years."

Years can matter.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump's 'Love' Is Still Driving American Farmers Into Ruin

Donald Trump's 'Love' Is Still Driving American Farmers Into Ruin

At a 2018 press conference in New York City, Trump said of American farmers, "I love them, and they voted for me, and they love me. ... And they said, 'We don't care if we get hurt, he's doing the right thing.'"

During his 2025 joint address to Congress, Trump said, "Our new trade policy will also be great for the American farmer — I love the farmer."

Hardly any sector has suffered from Trump's trade wars more than agriculture. Soybeans were hardest hit.

Before the first trade war in the first Trump administration, China was the biggest foreign market for U.S. soybeans, taking about 30 percent of total production. Soybean exports to China fell from $12.3 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion in 2018.

Joe Biden came into office, and exports rose in 2022 to a record $16.4 billion. But farmers didn't vote for Biden's successor in 2024. They voted again for Trump, even though he campaigned with a promise for Trade War II, singling out China.

And come "Liberation Day" on April 2, he launched it with heightened ferocity. China retaliated, targeting U.S. agricultural products. This year, just as American soybean farmers anticipate a bumper crop, exports to China are down to about zero.

Other American farm products have also suffered greatly. They include corn, beef, tree nuts, and pork.

The political mystery endures. "It's somewhat understandable that Trump appealed to rural voters in 2016. After all, he kept saying he loved farmers. The first trade war undoubtedly took them by surprise, though he did bail them out with $23 billion in aid, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

But why did they vote for him a second time? Trump received an even larger percentage of their support while promising another trade war. Almost 78 percent of voters in farming-dependent counties supported him in 2024. The reasons were probably part cultural — rural Americans tend to be more socially conservative — and Trump's inflation argument also hit home. Under Biden, prices were rising for fertilizer, fuel, and equipment.

But even if this latest trade war ended tomorrow, growers of commodity crops like soybeans would still face lasting damage. They've spent decades cultivating buyers for their products in China and elsewhere. China is looking for new suppliers, and once those relationships are cemented, it will be hard to win them back.

China has turned to Brazil and Argentina for soybeans — Australia for beef. It's investing in port projects in Peru and Brazil to ensure a reliable supply of farm products from South America. Trump is talking about another big bailout of farmers, but once replaced, Americans have lost long term. No magic wand can bring their export markets back to their former glory.

The trade war has also further raised the farmers' prices, especially for fertilizer. Much of it comes from trade-war target Canada.

One doubts that other business interests would have been as accommodating to Trump's ruinous policies as farmers were after getting whacked the first time around.

Heartland grumbling has turned into louder protest. But no matter. Trump is presumably not running again for president. He no longer needs their vote — or rural scenery for campaign backdrops. And he certainly doesn't yearn for their love. He's a city boy, and the company he favors hails from crypto, tech, and Wall Street.

How did Trump pull it off, abusing farmers while convincing them, like battered wives, that he still loved them? That took considerable talent, reminiscent of his much-quoted remark, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."

Thing is, people on Fifth Avenue are doing just fine. It's the farmers who are bleeding.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


With Assault On Universities, Trump Is Wrecking American Power And Prosperity

With Assault On Universities, Trump Is Wrecking American Power And Prosperity

In the course of three days, six U.S.-based scientists have won Nobel Prizes. Every one of them studied or now works at America's public universities. Five were affiliated with or educated by California's system for higher education.

President Donald Trump's assault on universities, both public and private, targets the engines of American greatness. He pinned much of it on the colleges' failure to defend free speech and stop unruly student behavior, some degenerating into antisemitism. Point taken.

But it's mainly taken the form of shaking down universities. For his gentler audience, Trump frames it as "saving" taxpayer money. To quote the president: We will cut funding by X$ and thereby save Y$."

Over in the biology department, immunologists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell are sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine with Shimon Sakaguchi. Brunkow studied at the University of Washington and Princeton. Ramsdell got both his bachelor's degree and doctorate from the University of California, first at San Diego, then at Los Angeles. Sakaguchi teaches at Japan's Osaka University.

As for physics, three scientists, one British, one French and one American, shared the Nobel Prize. All three, however, are now associated with UC campuses at Berkeley or Santa Barbara. The American, John Martinis, earned all his degrees at Berkeley. They won the Nobel for having discovered — bear with me — "macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit."

And one of the three scientists just awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is Omar Yaghi, who occupies a chair in chemistry at Berkeley. Born in Amman, Jordan, Yaghi obtained his undergraduate degree at the State University of New York's Albany campus. His Ph.D. came from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Our colleges and universities should be sources of American pride as well as power. They are a reason why, if California were its own country, it would have the world's fourth-largest economy. To think that Trump is threatening its public universities with layoffs, budget cuts, and loss of federal grants. He's trying to freeze about $584 million in grants at UCLA alone. That's in addition to his attempted $1 billion shakedown over unrest at the UCLA campus.

With an economy larger than Japan's, small wonder there's a move in California to take over federal funding for scientific research with its own. Specifically, state lawmakers talk about putting a $23 billion bond measure on the 2026 ballot to replace lost federal dollars. If voters passed it, that would give California the wherewithal to make grants and loans to its own universities and research companies.

California would in effect be bypassing the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the world's biggest funder of medical research. And who did Trump put in charge of the NIH? Health Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr., an anti-vax ignoramus (excuse me, "skeptic") who is, mentally, many cards short of a full deck.

At least 24 University of California and California State University campuses have lost NIH training grants. UC already runs six academic health centers. If California taxpayers take over that funding, universities in other states should not expect to receive a dime of it.

That said, other states share these concerns. Washington and Oregon have joined California in setting up a coalition to review scientific data and make recommendations on vaccines. An alliance with similar goals, though probably less money, is being set up on the East Coast. Harvard and Yale do have impressive endowments.

What the great universities in the Trump-voting heartland are going to do, I can't guess.

In sum, many of the smartest people in the country are being sat on by the political dunces. How dumb can America get? Trump is testing us for an answer.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Is Kennedy Profiting From White House Attack On Tylenol? Is Trump?

Is Kennedy Profiting From White House Attack On Tylenol? Is Trump?

On Monday, Donald Trump issued an ignorant warning to pregnant women whose doctors prescribe Tylenol, a brand name for acetaminophen. "Don't take Tylenol. Don't take it," he said. "Fight like hell not to take it." And when in pain, "Tough it out."

The idea that Tylenol use in pregnancy may cause autism has been shot down by researchers studying millions of children. Trump's contention that this over-the-counter painkiller can cause the disorder did serve one purpose. It gave him gobs of attention over what would have been an otherwise unremarkable White House event.

Come Tuesday, Donald Trump is at the United Nations again setting off big headlines as he delivered one of his grievance-linked tirades before the General Assembly. Used to the president's unhinged performances, the attendees quickly moved on. If ever there was a time to "tough it out" while in pain, Trump delivered it to his U.N. audience.

But the attack on Tylenol is dangerous. Medical authorities hold that expectant mothers should treat fever and pain, and Tylenol is one of the safest remedies to do so. Not doing so poses risks to both the mother and fetus, including preterm births.

Trump knew to cover his rear end by adding that women should take Tylenol in cases of "extremely high fever." But what is a pregnant woman to do if she has a fever that the president recommends she "tough out" but she is not sure whether the fever is "extremely" high or just a bit high?

Alternatively, she could listen to doctors. But thousands of Americans died from COVID because they listened to MAGA rather than medical experts who urged them to get vaccinated. And back then, the Department of Health was staffed by serious scientists — and not the collection of quacks Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has replaced many of them with.

Trump has breathed new life into the prospects for trial lawyers who chase after companies for fat settlements. (The lawyers collect up to 40 percent of the award.) They already lost a 2023 class-action lawsuit claiming that Tylenol taken during pregnancy causes autism and ADHD.

A federal judge threw out the case, writing that the lawyers "permitted cherry-picking, allowed a results-driven analysis, and obscured the complexities, inconsistencies, and weaknesses in the underlying data."

About 20 law firms participated in the suit.

Kennedy remains in on the take. He will continue receiving contingency fees from Wisner Baum for referring cases. He gets 10 percent of the award whether the plaintiff wins or settles.

Wisner Baum is currently suing Merck, maker of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil, for allegedly not warning consumers of its risks. Kennedy insists he is not currently receiving referral fees on the case, but critics say he could still collect because the agreement exists.

Autism is a serious concern. It is a brain development disorder that affects social interactions and is marked by repetitive and other unusual behaviors. It is unclear whether the "autism epidemic" reflects more screening for the condition or involves other factors including age of the mother, genetics and environment. No link has been found to vaccines.

More on Trump's bizarre statements about Tylenol and pregnancy: "There's no downside. Don't take it. You'll be uncomfortable. It won't be as easy, maybe. But don't take it if you're pregnant. Don't take Tylenol, and don't give it to the baby after the baby is born."

OK, women under the influence of MAGA. You've been challenged to undergo unnecessary suffering in service to the fumes wafting through Trump's brain. Or perhaps there's an ulterior motive in his promotion of these BS health claims. The link may not be autism but money.



Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump Is Trying To Make Us Forget The Epstein Scandal -- So Don't

Trump Is Trying To Make Us Forget The Epstein Scandal -- So Don't

"Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents," Donald Trump declared at his 2025 inauguration. Hold that thought.

Trump is now using the immense power of the state to distract from a scandal that could bring him down. That is, his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a fiend who sexually trafficked girls young enough to be in junior high.

Watch how Trump uses the power of the state to change the subject. Note how his weaponizing of government to go after foes — or just attract attention — escalates into sheer spectacle.

It's no longer just insulting celebrities. No, he needs the big guns to force attention away from deeper questions about his close dealings with Epstein. He needs to send the National Guard into cities that didn't want them, bomb boats that may or may not be carrying drug smugglers and send immigrants who may or may not be undocumented to third-country dungeons.

News channels have jumped all over FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's mafioso threats against news media that don't do Trump's bidding. He apparently intimidated ABC/Walt Disney into firing Jimmy Kimmel after the late-night comedian made comments at odds with state-sanctioned opinion. Carr used to make fiery defenses of free speech.

This is a serious story, but critics shouldn't let Trump lead them astray from the story that undoubtedly terrifies him: his relationship with the predator who provided rich men with underage sexual partners.

Ignore Carr. He is a toady, a hollow man barren of principle. And did Attorney General Pam Bondi claim that the state could investigate businesses that refused to print memorial vigil posters for Charlie Kirk? Yes, but not gonna happen.

The burning question isn't whether Trump knew Epstein, liked Epstein or even partied with him. We know he did all those things, but those activities are not necessarily criminal.

The question is whether he participated in the sexual abuse of minors. Proof that Trump availed himself of Epstein's young adolescents has yet to be produced. But evidence that he may have is piling up.

Many questions could be answered in the release of all the Epstein files. Trump used to call for that, but when the possibility drew near, he invented a new story: The files are part of a Democratic hoax.

That didn't get much traction. Recent polls show at least 80 percent of the public — including independents and many Republicans — wants all the documents released.

Another hint that Trump may have been deeply involved is his treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited and groomed Epstein's victims. Convicted of the sex trafficking of minors, among the most serious federal crimes, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Why was she summarily moved to a low-security facility that offered Pilates?

Upon Maxwell's arrest in 2020, Trump responded, "I wish her well, frankly." He clearly wants her on his side.

How can Trump explain the affectionate birthday letter he sent to Epstein? It contained typewritten text, a drawn outline of a naked woman and the signature "Donald" written in a way that resembled pubic hair. The letter was reported by The Wall Street Journal, a conservative Murdoch-controlled publication that treads carefully.

We can expect Trump's diversions to become ever more flamboyant as information dribbles out about Epstein's clientele. There's no accounting for the elastic moral standards of Trump's most slavish devotees, but even some of them might have trouble with the sexual abuse of 14 year-olds.

Countering the immense power of the state to distract the public is not easy. But we must. We should ask what ought to concern us more, comedians or sex traffickers of young teens. You choose.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.