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Infant Death Toll Rising As Parents Refuse To 'Vaccinate' Babies With Life-Saving Vitamin K

Infant Death Toll Rising As Parents Refuse To 'Vaccinate' Babies With Life-Saving Vitamin K

What is the death count under Donald Trump? We're not talking about loss of life in his war with Iran. We're not talking about natural deaths by aging or unpreventable diseases. We mean Americans who die because they refuse safe vaccines that Trump or his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., questions or discourages.

A recent occurrence of death and suffering comes from the refusal by many parents to let doctors give their newborns a vitamin K shot. Infants are naturally deficient in vitamin K, which helps prevent blood clots and internal bleeding, which can be horrific. K is a vitamin, not a vaccine. But ill-informed parents have developed suspicion of anything delivered with a needle.

Vitamin K shots were once routinely given, but now many parents refuse them. In 2024, an estimated 5.2% of American babies were not injected with vitamin K, up from 2.9% in 2017. At least 12 such babies have died, and far more have suffered permanent brain damage. Doctors believe the real numbers are far higher than reported.

Who's to blame — the parents for not studying the matter, or a health department that has cast aspersions on accepted science? Jessica Kirk, a pediatric specialist at a Florida hospital, recalls trying to comfort a grieving parent. "But what I could not bring myself to say to her was, 'There's nothing you could have done.'"

Falling vaccination rates are to blame for America's worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years. Parents are refusing the effective measles, mumps and rubella vaccine over the false claim that it causes autism. Trump is said to be hounding Bobby to look deeper for a link that 138 studies by real scientists could not find. Trump now insists that the shot be broken up into separate injections, based on zero science.

Several children infected with measles died last year, when there were far fewer cases. Many more had to be hospitalized with serious complications.

Trump makes us dizzy complaining that he doesn't get credit for speeding up development of a COVID-19 vaccine -- and then putting "Bobby," a vaccine skeptic with a bizarre past, in charge of Health and Human Services. He gushes about having "a Kennedy" from "the greatest political family" in his administration. What fun that must have been.

Trump never directly discouraged Americans from getting COVID shots. But he kept minimizing the severity of the disease. He said it would "go away" or that it was under control. Trump would not receive the vaccine before cameras. That gave Americans who suspected that vaccines posed dangers more reasons to avoid them.

An estimated 250,000 Americans died unnecessarily from COVID by refusing to be vaccinated after the shots became widely available. Who's to blame? The first Trump administration, or people who didn't seek out expert advice to get vaccinated?

Trump is allegedly unhappy with Bobby for not doing more to fan suspicion of vaccines. Really, RFK Jr. has done quite enough harm already putting Americans' health at risk.

Complicating matters for Trump are new findings from a friendly pollster that vaccine skepticism is highly unpopular with voters. In another survey, 80% of adults said they trusted their doctors most, while only 34% put their faith in Bobby.

Why is Trump pushing doubt in mainstream science when he and his family reportedly get all the shots? Could it be fumes circulating in his 80-year-old head? Could it be a pleasurable jolt of power from persuading people to, in effect, gamble with their lives? That possibility is too grim to contemplate.

Suffice it to say, though, the Trump administration is doing real harm, and some of it is costing American lives.

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.

Why The 'Democratic Socialists' Have Repelled So Many Black And Latino Voters

Why The 'Democratic Socialists' Have Repelled So Many Black And Latino Voters

The Democratic Socialists of America use people of color as fashion accessories. Sure, they put black or brown faces on ballots, and they talk a big game about racism. But black and brown voters are not choosing their candidates. The DSA national membership chooses, and it is 85% white.

Look at the crowds. In October 2019, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders staged a rally at the Queensbridge housing project, across from Manhattan. Its residents are 47% black, 34% Latino and 10% Asian. News photos showed a nearly unbroken sea of white enthusiasts.

The head of the Queensbridge Resident Association called the organizers "disrespectful." They didn't even bother to place flyers in the buildings.

During the 2020 presidential race, Bernie Sanders rode high in the early Democratic primaries, where voters are mainly comfy whites. But when the primaries moved south, where Democratic voters are overwhelmingly black, he got creamed. In South Carolina, he lost to Joe Biden by 29 percentage points.

Asked to respond to that massive comeuppance, Sanders waved off the importance of those black voters. They were "conservative," he said. "But you know what? We're out of the Deep South now. And we're moving up."

That rankled several prominent black officials. "I was very concerned with that comment," said New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries. "Black voters in the South are not very conservative" and "essentially dismissing the South was a slight at African American voters."

A recent poll in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary has 67 percent of blacks supporting the white candidate, Rep. Haley Stevens. Only 21 percent back the DSA's Abdul El-Sayed. A prominent El-Sayed supporter, William Lawrence, is on record denouncing black political leaders as a "pillar" of the "capitalist, imperialist" American establishment. Their support of the Democratic leadership, Lawrence said, "defangs the white left."

He really said that.

Sanders has a spotty history on race. He had joined the white flight out of New York City in the 1960s, when a new generation of black activists didn't care to take orders from white liberals. Sanders repaired to Burlington, Vermont, then less than one percent black. There he built a white-dominated socialist movement, using people of color as window dressing from the very start.

In his 2020 presidential campaign, Sanders' chief black intellectual, Cornel West, called Barack Obama a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface." (Also, a "war criminal.")

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has followed the playbook. He has an odd character named Gustavo Gordillo defending his city-run grocery stores. Co-chair of DSA's New York chapter, Gordillo is an immigrant from Peru who studied "radical Latin American cinema" in college. He tried to move up in the art world, but after apparently not succeeding, decided to try his hand as a DSA celebrity.

Gordillo is now on TV "explaining" Mamdani's plan for government groceries, one costing taxpayers an amazing $30 million. Asked whether it's OK for publicly owned stores to put nearby bodegas out of business, Gordillo chirped that if bringing down prices in the neighborhood "is enough to put someone out of business, then maybe they shouldn't have been in that business in the first place."

The bodega owners are largely Dominican, Yemeni or from other recent immigrant groups. Their little stores are entrepreneurial ventures that put families on the path of economic advancement. The owners work their tails off long into the night, often confronting criminals bent on everything from shameless shoplifting to armed robbery.

And now Gordillo is on TV arguing that bodega owners who can't compete with stores built with taxpayer dollars — and that don't have to pay rent or property taxes — are somehow deficient businesspeople.

None of the above is made up, I swear.

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.

Osborn: Not A Face In The Crowd, But A Real Working Class Candidate

Osborn: Not A Face In The Crowd, But A Real Working Class Candidate

A Face in the Crowd is the prophetic 1957 movie about a charismatic drifter "discovered" in an Arkansas jail. The face belongs to "Lonesome" Rhodes, a scoundrel whose folksy act catapults him to national prominence. "Lonesome" (Andy Griffith) abuses women, but the crowd only sees a lovable spinner of down-home yarns. He deflates after getting caught on an open mic mocking his followers as idiots and fools.

Maine's Graham Platner was a face in the crowd, sold to Democrats as a salt-of-the-sea oysterman who actually came from a privileged background. The senatorial candidate survived his sordid history of mistreating women until a plausible accusation of rape finally did him in.

American politics feasts on stories of candidates from humble backgrounds who know what it means to be a working stiff. Some such contenders are uncovered as bums or phonies. But some are the real thing.

They would include Dan Osborn of Nebraska. He is the steamfitter and former union organizer from Omaha running for the senate as an independent against Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

Osborn now has a decent chance of prevailing in November. His is not a new face. He had run in 2024 as an independent who did surprisingly well against Republican incumbent Deb Fischer. Osborn lost by only 7 points in a state that Donald Trump carried by about 21 points. Osborn clearly has appeal.

After the election, Osborn launched a PAC called the Working Class Heroes Fund. Its stated mission is to support candidates like him, regardless of party label. With Ricketts an heir to a family fortune exceeding $1 billion, Osborn has predictably framed the race as between the "billionaire class" and the working class.

One of his challenges, though, is to minimize the extent to which Democrats openly want him to win. Nebraska Democrats are not running their own candidate and urge their contributors to back Osborn.

To prevail in a conservative state like Nebraska, Osborn needs support from disaffected or moderate Republicans. If elected, he vows not to caucus with either party. And he criticizes Democrats for their focus on white-collar professionals.

Working in his favor is the fact that many Nebraska Republicans are not hard right. Omaha Rep. Don Bacon, for example, is a Republican moderate known for often criticizing Trump. His is a swing district, nationally known as the "blue dot." Seeing himself at a disadvantage among MAGA Republicans and Democrats desperate for a win, Bacon decided not to seek another term.

Former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse is a traditional conservative known for his intellect and courteous manners. Sasse was one of only seven Senate Republicans who voted to convict Trump for inciting the Capitol riot. He is now bravely confronting Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

Trump's job approval rating in Nebraska is evenly divided or slightly underwater. And so a working man fixed on pragmatic solutions would seem a serious challenger.

Arizona Democrats have Katie Hobbs running for reelection as governor. The product of a middle-class family, Hobbs put herself through college. While secretary of state in 2020, she earned national renown for defending Arizona's election results against phony claims of voter fraud.

As governor, she has lured business to her state, which explains her directing ads toward Republicans and independents. Many Arizonans, meanwhile, remain incensed at Trump's shabby treatment of the late Republican icon John McCain.

McCain's widow, Cindy McCain, has publicly endorsed Hobbs against her Republican opponent, Andy Biggs. Tied hand and foot to Trump, Biggs tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Moderate Democrats do have a good shot at winning this November. Electorates may have grown weary of faces in the crowd, entertainers offering colorful tales and little more.

Mamdani's 2028 Bombast Doesn't Bode Well For National Democrats

Mamdani's 2028 Bombast Doesn't Bode Well For National Democrats

Yes, Mayor Zohran Mamdani's socialist picks just knocked off some Democratic incumbents in New York City. They included surprising defeats, especially that of Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Espaillat lost to Darializa Avila Chevalier, whose social media swims with past calls to abolish the police, free prisoners and stop deportations for any reason, presumably including murder.

It's not like Espaillat's district was dominated by the young professionals who flocked to Mamdani. His electorate is 52 percent Hispanic and includes such non-hipster neighborhoods as Harlem, Washington Heights, and parts of the Bronx.

Nonetheless, Mamdani may have seriously misread the national mood when he said right before the primaries: "When does the race for 2028 begin? It starts now." That was an awesome display of grandiosity for a guy who didn't get even 50% of the vote even though he was the official Democratic candidate in a very Democratic city.

The New York primaries may indeed be kicking off the presidential contest in 2028, but not in a way Democrats would like. Look at recent history. Backlash against Donald Trump's erratic governing style returned control of the House to the Democrats in 2018. Similar forces helped Joe Biden to take the presidency from Trump two years later.

The Democratic left sold these results as a thumbs-up for its radical agenda. But those same views — things like defunding police and obsession with transgender issues — turned off the middle America voters who gave Biden his win in 2020.

Two years later, Republicans retook the House majority by weaponizing the dumbest things left-wingers had said. Similar dynamics powered Trump's return to the presidency in the 2024 election. It is dangerous to assume that disgust with Trump translates into a desire to stop immigration enforcement.

The recently elected Mamdani, meanwhile, is enjoying an overly long honeymoon. The reality is sure to overtake the massive publicity he attaches to the smallest of achievements. New Yorkers are noticing that there are still no free buses, as promised. The rents are not frozen. And universal childcare has not happened. Mamdani has also antagonized the financial business leaders, jeopardizing the prospects of the young grads seeking white-collar jobs, that is, much of his base.

Democrats seeking victories in the heartland should fear having the excesses of coastal socialists hanging around their neck. The veteran New York political analyst Errol Louis described the dangers New York's far left pose to the Democrats' future. As an anchor at Spectrum News NY1, he has interviewed them all.

"They've got some ideas that will not sell in Des Moines or in, you know, Cleveland," Louis said. Their strategists tell him that they're "gonna fight, fight, fight ... get themselves arrested, introduce legislation, whether or not it has a chance of getting a hearing or ever becoming law."

Barack Obama understands well the radicals' lack of appeal outside choice urban corridors. He's called out affluent progressives who think they earn halos by pushing polices deemed to help the less fortunate but end up costing Democrats at the polls. They can embrace left-liberal politics without personally paying a price, Obama said last year. "You could still make a lot of money. You could still hang out in Aspen and Milan and travel and have a house in the Hamptons and still think of yourself as a progressive."

Democrats have fine hopes that this year's midterms will deliver at least a House majority. The growing dislike of Trump puts wind in their sails.

Come the 2028 presidential contest, however, Trump will presumably not be running. But the Democrats' aggravating radicals will still be at it. If the race for 2028 starts now, Democrats should be concerned.

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.

If Not For China's Smart Energy Policy, Gas Would Be Even More Expensive Now

If Not For China's Smart Energy Policy, Gas Would Be Even More Expensive Now

We can thank China that gasoline prices aren't higher than they are.

By last month, China had cut imports of oil by three million barrels a day, the daily consumption of Italy and France combined. China's economy, meanwhile, hums along.

Americans agonize over how the price of oil affects gas at the pump. Were it not for China, a tank of gas would cost considerably more. "China is Propping Up the World Economy by Importing a Lot Less Oil," reads a Wall Street Journal headline.

There are several reasons China has been able to cut oil imports, but one is its move away from gas-powered vehicles into electric vehicles. China has also invested heavily in electric-powered high-speed rail, letting travelers replace oil-guzzling short flights and trips in gas-powered cars with train travel. By 2030, China's EVs could displace 2.7 million barrels a day, according to the International Energy Agency.

If the war with Iran is truly over, and it may not be, Americans' price of oil should be coming down. That's already started, but economists warn that the decline will be slow.

Thus, Donald Trump's long crusade against electrified vehicles and promotion of gas-powered ones is hard to explain other than his personal ties with the oil industry. The U.S. is producing more fossil fuel, but much of it is being exported to other countries willing to pay a lot for it. Get this: If Americans want more of their fuel to stay home, they'll have to pay more for it.

Trump hollers that Americans must drill-drill-drill to cushion themselves from the cost of foreign energy. And so what did he do first day back in office? He ordered the Energy Department to restart exports of American-produced natural gas. He also supports exporting U.S. oil, branding it as "energy dominance."

Other than environmentalists, and bless you all, Americans tend not to care what powers their cars. Electricity, gasoline, whale oil ... Buyers of cars or trucks generally prefer whichever option is cheaper. Happily, the energy source that does least damage to the planet is now the less expensive one.

True, it costs more to make electric vehicles than gas-powered ones. However — and this is a big however — the cost to operate EVs is a lot less. And the more gasoline costs, the better the electric car deal becomes.

A Chevy Equinox EV costs about $35,000, but the price for the gas-powered version of the compact SUV is $30,000. But if an Equinox owner in, say, Iowa drives about 11,000 miles a year — the American average — over 10 years, they will be spending nearly $10,000 more to power the gas SUV than the electric one.

We get it. If you must have a new Chevy Equinox right now and can't spare an extra $5,000, then the gas version may be regarded as a necessary purchase. What happens 10 or 15 years down the road can be worried about later.

Electricity prices had also been going up, but nowhere near as much as oil prices. That's because power plants use energy sources other than oil, including hydro, wind, solar and nuclear, in addition to natural gas.

But those who can plan for their economic future should be onto it. And so are countries that do planning, such as China. The U.S. tried under President Joe Biden to electrify the economy, but Trump has undermined almost all that progress. What's promoting American consumers' new interest in electric vehicles is the high price of gasoline.

If this country had made the kind of advances China has, we wouldn't be caring so much about what happens in the Strait of Hormuz. On some things, China knows better.

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.

Sonny Rollins, 'Saxophone Colossus,' Knew How Not To Die Young

Sonny Rollins, 'Saxophone Colossus,' Knew How Not To Die Young

How is it that the "Saxophone Colossus" Sonny Rollins lived to 95? Aren't jazz musicians supposed to die at tragically early ages? Actually, that's a myth that Rollins and others proved flawed.

It's true that Bix Beiderbecke, king of the cornet, was gone at 28, Charlie Parker at 34, Dinah Washington at 39, John Coltrane at 40. Billie Holiday made it to 44 — not young, but an age that should have been before her time.

Some musicians, classical and rock, as well as jazz, reach especially advanced ages. The music stimulates their mind, connects them with others and lowers stress. Importantly, performing is also a physical workout. Watch the virtuosi sweat.

Tony Bennett passed at 96, having sung only 23 months earlier (with Lady Gaga). Though the performances were billed as "One Last Time," Bennett seemed in fine form.

The early deaths were usually tied to addictions. Biedernecke was an alcoholic. Washington was cut down by abuse of prescription drugs. Parker, Coltrane and Holiday suffered multiple addictions.

How did Walter Theodore Rollins escape? Born in Harlem, Rollins took some wrong turns. At 21, he helped rob a tobacco store and did time in jail. And he got hooked on heroin. But at around age 24, Rollins put himself into the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, and broke the habit.

Also called the Lexington Narcotic Farm, the facility was both a prison and hospital for addicts. Numerous musicians and artists passed through. Relapses were common, but Rollins was not among them.

From then on, Rollins committed himself to staying sober and healthy, spiritually and physically. He got into yoga and meditation, which he practiced religiously. Many a recovering alcoholic know their power.

It is a falsehood, as Rollins demonstrated, that getting high feeds creativity. A year after leaving "Lexington," as musicians called the hospital, Rollins recorded his seminal album, "Saxophone Colossus." From there he built his legacy as an improvisational genius.

Rollins was not alone among other jazz greats who lived well into their 90s. They include Eubie Blake (96), Marian McPartland and Benny Carter (95), Lionel Hampton and Bucky Pizzarelli (94).

The list of rock musicians perishing in their 20s and 30s from drug abuse is voluminous: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison and Amy Winehouse all died at 27. Sid Vicious didn't make it past 21. But Mick Jagger still performs at 82.

Let's not overstate the extent to which mind-altering substances spur creativity by relaxing the brain and freeing up associations. Researchers find that novel thoughts do not necessarily lead to good art.

I recall attending a memorial service for Horace Silver, the master of hard bop, who had died at the respectably ripe age of 85. The son of a Cape Verdean immigrant, Silver started life with scoliosis among other physical burdens. But he used those challenges to pursue a life dedicated to family, spirit and healthy eating. He had cut down touring to spend more time with his wife and son. It's all there in his autobiography, "Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty."

When the service ended, young jazz musicians filled the church with Silver's gospel-flavored, Brazilian-inspired sounds. (Steely Dan borrowed heavily from Silver for their opening of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number.")

Like Rollins, Silver lacked nothing in creativity and didn't regard self-destruction as the price for producing original sounds. Starting in 1959, Rollins "disappeared" for a while to work on his art. He would practice for hours on New York's Williamsburg Bridge.

He emerged three years later with an album called "The Bridge." And as a bonus, he had 64 years left to make more music. Rollins knew that great artists didn't have to die young.

Why Are Population Alarmists So Troubled By Our Stabilizing Birth Rate?

Why Are Population Alarmists So Troubled By Our Stabilizing Birth Rate?

Back in 1969, President Richard Nixon warned Congress against the rapid growth of the American population: "When future generations evaluate the record of our time, one of the most important factors in their judgment will be the way in which we responded to population growth."

If the American headcount continued rising at the current rate, Nixon said, the nation's "social supplies — the capacity to educate youth, to provide privacy and living space, to maintain the processes of open, democratic government — may be grievously strained."

Since 1969, America's population has boomed by about 202 million to today's 343 million, a 69 percent jump. But today's most prominent discussions on population trends rarely focus on the loss of "social supplies." Quite the contrary. Even though the country is still adding people at about replacement level, population alarmists are painting falling birthrates as an economic disaster in the making.

As economist Nicholas Eberstadt, a leading advocate for higher birthrates, wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine, "For the first time since the Black Death in the 1300s, the planetary population will decline."

There is precious little to be said in defense of a plague that wiped out one-third of Europe's population. But it did sharply raise workers' wages as landowners had to compete for muscle in a much-reduced workforce.

As for today's concerns, a drop in the numbers could ease the housing crunch for obvious supply-demand reasons. And as artificial intelligence takes over thinking jobs and autonomous vehicles end the need for taxi and truck drivers, our economy may demand fewer far workers.

Let's be clear about one thing: Children are a joy. May Americans continue to build families. We certainly don't want a population collapse as seen in Russia. At the same time, we don't have to measure a nation's well-being by how crowded it can get.

Furthermore, a stable or modestly falling population could take pressure off our natural world. "Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet," said nature filmmaker David Attenborough, "is either mad or an economist."

When Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency, he explained that federal programs were needed to guard "the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land that grows our food."

Leading environmental groups back then made "zero population growth" their rallying cry with a focus on birthrates. The massive baby boom generation was in its childbearing years, so the specter of its launching another baby boom seemed plausible. By 1970, however, birthrates were already falling. They had dropped to about 18 per 1,000 people, down from about 24 births per 1,000 people in 1950.

Much of the population growth in the '70s was driven by immigration. But environmental groups, the Sierra Club, for example, steered clear of advocating reduced immigration for fear that could be read as hostile to Latinos.

It seems a bit hysterical to use the term "population crash" or even the loaded word "depopulation" regarding today's birthrates. A major factor in our growing population was Americans having longer, healthier lives. That's a positive development, right?

In any event, things change. Americans might decide to have more children. IVF treatments — fertilizing eggs outside the womb — are now routine. And the prospect of growing babies in the lab from start to finish now seems a matter of time. There already exists artificial wombs for very premature babies.

Meanwhile, I don't recall thinking, as my car crawled in traffic through Rocky Mountain National Park, "Gosh, I wish there were more people on this road."

Was America a sad place in 1958, when it had half as many inhabitants as now? Historians refer to its decade as the "Fabulous Fifties." Think about it.

Case Closed! The FDA Has Determined That Mifepristone Is Safe And Effective

Case Closed! The FDA Has Determined That Mifepristone Is Safe And Effective

The Supreme Court has just restored a woman's ability to obtain the abortion pill by mail without first seeing a medical provider, at least for now. A lower court had tried to tighten that easy access by requiring patients to consult with a licensed clinician in person before acquiring the drug, mifepristone.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute is an anti-abortion organization that purports to provide scientific research for the "pro-life" movement. Among the risks of loosening restrictions on being given the abortion pill, it writes, is that it enables fathers who don't want a child to trick a woman into ending a pregnancy she intends to continue.

The dark scenario goes that a father (or others) could obtain abortion pills through the mail and slip them into a pregnant patient's food or drink. This has happened.

There was a case in Texas in which a man gave his pregnant girlfriend mifepristone-laced cookies to induce an abortion. He was charged with capital murder. Not surprisingly, there have been similar incidents.

But all kinds of drugs can be misused. Over-the-counter medications can lead to coma or death, especially when mixed with alcohol. They include painkillers, flu medications and antihistamines. No one is demanding that people see a doctor before taking aspirin.

Meanwhile, several prescribed drugs have been used to illegally end a pregnancy. In a recent Iowa case, a woman allegedly slipped oxycodone into the lasagna she had prepared and delivered to an expectant mother to cause a miscarriage. Though oxycodone is often addictive, the courts have not banned the opioid, which is used to control severe pain.

Prescription drugs have a long history of being used to commit other crimes. In a 2011 Albuquerque case, a waiter allegedly spiked a glass of wine with Valium and served it to a woman he was interested in. The woman blacked out. The waiter had been asking the woman for her address and phone number, according to the target's friends. The waiter was charged with distributing a controlled substance and aggravated battery. A New Mexico state court dismissed the charges because prosecutors took too long to bring the defendant to trial.

The Justice Department has long classified ketamine as a "club drug." It is prized for creating a dreamlike feeling of being detached from one's body and surroundings. It also serves as a "knockout drug" that leaves users vulnerable to such crimes as robbery or rape.

In 2021, a Utah man was accused of allegedly serving hot chocolate spiked with ketamine to a woman and her young teenage daughter. He was subsequently charged with three felony counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child.

The Lozier Institute seeks to put a roadblock in the ability to end a pregnancy. It is within its rights to make its case, but it is obvious that reducing access to abortions, not advancing women's health, is the motive here.

The Food and Drug Administration and leading medical societies have determined that serious complications caused by mifepristone are rare. Meanwhile, an analysis published by the JAMA Network found that the risk of death from giving birth, though low, is still many times higher than that from a legal abortion.

Medication is now used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States. And it is almost always used very early in the pregnancy, in the first 12 weeks.

The Lozier Institute holds that requiring in-person pill dispensing and follow-up visits to a medical practitioner is "necessary to protect women's health and freedom." There may be benefits to seeing a doctor, but it's unclear how making it harder to obtain mifepristone would protect a woman's "freedom."

Quite the opposite, it would seem.

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.

Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson's Somebody Days Are Nearing The End (Or Should Be)

Tucker Carlson's problem, it would seem, is that what he says doesn't matter, because he has a long history of not saying what he thinks. True, he once starred at Fox News, and even now his followers on social media number in the millions. But he's shifted into crackpot conspiracies and turning on Donald Trump. Anything for an audience.

Carlson long hated Trump in his heart while praise poured from his mouth. The war in Iran polls poorly as does Trump, and so Carlson uses the opportunity to inflate his diminished importance by blaming himself for making Trump possible.

"We're implicated in this, for sure," he said. "You know, we'll be tormented by it for a long time. I will be, and I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people."

On trying to mislead people, Carlson is expert.

In 1999, he wrote that Trump was "the single most repulsive person on the planet." But when Trump was elected president in 2016, Carlson wrote a Politico piece headlined "Donald Trump is Shocking, Vulgar and Right." In it he gave Trump the lightest of spankings. Trump was "imperfect."

After 2020, Carlson expressed contempt for Trump but only privately. He had a job to keep as political pundit on pro-Trump Fox News. There he was paid more than $15 million a year to air fake opinions.

When Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, Carlson sent private messages doubting the Trump camp's claims of election fraud. "I hate him passionately," he also texted.

On air, though, Carlson tiptoed around Trump's phony assertion that Dominion Voting Systems software helped steal millions of votes. Instead, he vaguely stated that "something was wrong with the election."

After Fox dropped Carlson as a legal liability as well as pain in the butt, he rebranded himself on social media. He was now a persecuted truth-teller focused on corporate power, demographic changes and other sprawling issues.

But when Trump ran for reelection in 2024, Carlson jumped right back in line and heartily supported him in public. After the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Carlson said the shooting "changed everything." That's when Trump "became the leader of this nation," he said.

Thus, a "commentator" who wrote in an email that Trump's first term was "a disaster with no upside" started campaigning for him. As a warm-up act at a Trump rally, Carlson did his icky "Dad comes home" routine.

In Carlson's recent telling, Trump has been manipulated by Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu into entering the war in Iran. If true, where was the strong patriarch Carlson had been heralding for a decade?

It is Netanyahu's job to look after Israel's interests. It is the American president's job to look after America's interests. Often those interests align, but sometimes they don't.

Netanyahu had urged other presidents to strike Iran, but the other presidents declined. There may be an argument for stopping the exporter of terrorism from developing nuclear weapons. Too bad Trump's big mouth couldn't stop itself from hurting the cause with bloodthirsty threats against Iran's civilization.

I share Carlson's displeasure at Trump's many character flaws, but I didn't cover them up when Trump was more popular. Nor did I buy into the president's vows to save Obamacare or "drain the swamp" of Washington corruption. Only suckers would believe a man who stiffed his workers, oversaw six bankruptcies and transparently lied about Barack Obama not being American born.

Carlson wasn't a sucker. He knew, like Trump, how to play the chumps by selling himself as an honest man speaking his mind. Nonetheless, The New York Times just ran a long interview credulously titled "What Does Tucker Carlson Really Believe?"

Unbelievable.

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 'Donor-Funded' Ballroom Is Quickly Turning Into A Scam On Taxpayers

Trump's 'Donor-Funded' Ballroom Is Quickly Turning Into A Scam On Taxpayers

Some years ago, I was president of an organization called the Association of Opinion Journalists. Every year we would run a convention in a different city and end it with a celebration in the hotel's ballroom space. Our speaker on that closing night was usually some well-known political opinionator.

Members often talked about inviting the president to give that address, as had happened before. In 1947, Harry Truman spoke to the group (formerly called the National Conference of Editorial Writers), as did Lyndon Johnson in 1966. Other prominent government officials included Vice President Richard Nixon, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

In later years, however, members argued against having the president as speaker because it would subject the attendees to oppressive security checks. After slogging through days of seminars, they wanted to cut loose. The party was for us.

Now consider the recent White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, cut short by an apparent assassination attempt. The target appeared to be the evening's speaker, President Donald Trump, who used the fiasco to hawk his controversial $400 million White House ballroom as a more secure alternative to the Washington Hilton.

A federal judge has frozen the construction for lacking clear legal authority and congressional approval. Congress now has an opportunity to ditch the grandiose plan, saving taxpayers hundreds of millions.

Yes, Trump said it would be paid for by donations, not the taxpayers. The known donor list is heavy with big Wall Street, tech and law firm names. All have business before the federal government. Trump repaying their "kindness" could end up costing taxpayers a great deal. More troubling, some donor identities have been kept secret.

Of course, any events at a palatial White House ballroom would require extra security, and who would pay for that? The taxpayers, of course.

Enter Sen. Lindsey Graham. The South Carolina Republican is pushing a bill to tack another $400 million to the national debt to finish what donors were to pay for — and build a security infrastructure, a Secret Service annex, underneath the ballroom.

As Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, a co-sponsor, explained unconvincingly, "This is about our nation having a place to gather."

The White House already has a State Dining Room that seats about 140 guests, and if more room is needed, the East Room can accommodate as many as 300. Why must the president's residence include a ballroom able to hold, according to Trump, nearly 1,000?

The biggest indoor banquet space at the French royal palace of Versailles — the Gallery of Battles — can serve "only" 650 diners max. That happens to be a lot of people.

Meanwhile, why must taxpayers be billed to provide a catering hall big enough for the White House correspondents' annual bash? They are an independent organization, just like the Association of Opinion Journalists was. We paid for our convention space, the big dinner and, yes, security, through dues, contributions, and participation fees. Had the taxpayers funded us, I'm sure several members would have written editorials or columns and nowadays produce TikToks condemning the use of public money for a private group.

A word about the correspondents' dinner itself. Over the years, it's morphed into a red-carpet event crafted to glamorize what should be working journalists who cover the president. Now there's a ton of "pregame" coverage of who is going, who is not, who got invited to the Vanity Fair magazine party. And don't leave out the Hollywood celebrities.

In his 1678 Christian allegory, The Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan introduced Vanity Fair as an unseemly marketplace for pleasure, status and worldly ambition. "The name of that Town," Bunyan wrote, "is Vanity."

Sounds a lot like Washington, D.C.

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.

Congressional Sex Offenders: What Were Swalwell And Gonzales Thinking?

Congressional Sex Offenders: What Were Swalwell And Gonzales Thinking?

Democrat Eric Swalwell and Republican Tony Gonzales were both accused of sexual misconduct involving staffers. Californian Swalwell said he'd resign from his House seat after giving up on his run for governor. Texan Gonzales said he was withdrawing from the 2026 reelection race.

Back in the day, male politicians cavorted with their female staffers and got away with it. But that was way back and many days ago.

An official cheating on his wife with a woman picked up at a rally doesn't seem to bother voters the way it once did. Donald Trump has numbed the electorate to that level of moral outrage. I don't approve of adultery, but it's generally not a deal killer in my voting for someone. Many men regarded as great national leaders had sexual relationships outside their marriages. Some were Founding Fathers.

An affair with a staffer who may fear losing a job or a chance at promotion if they refuse is another matter. Although I've generally referred to the offenders as men, women can engage in similar misconduct, and some have. They famously include former California Rep. Katie Hill. She was involved in at least one improper relationship, with a congressional staffer. Hill resigned in 2019 under considerable pressure.

The undeniable shift in the rules of conduct makes it incomprehensible that an ambitious congressman would ignore them. That goes doubly so for Swalwell, a Democratic star who briefly ran for president in 2019. Until recently a serious contender to become governor of California, he's now out of the race.

He's been charged with grave offenses that include drugging and raping a woman in a hotel in 2018. I'm reluctant to accept as fact any accusation thrown at a powerful male figure. The #MeToo business may have emerged out of reasonable outrage, but it has often spiraled into a racket peddling half-truths — pushed by women with other agendas or a few screws loose.

Swalwell says the stories about him are "false." He denies the rape charge and insists that the allegations were politically motivated. He might have a point or two. Given the heated gubernatorial race in California, the timing may be questioned. Swalwell's lawyer has publicly threatened legal action against at least one accuser.

But his admission of having made "mistakes" alongside the copy-and-paste announcement, "My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children" leads one to believe he was sexually involved with an underling. That alone is serious.

Power radiating over good looks and smart TV appearances made Swalwell a glamorous figure. He had fans in Hollywood. One can easily believe an unnamed accuser's description of his aura. "When he talked to you, it was like the sun was shining on you," she said. "You felt like the coolest person in the room."

As for Gonzales, the staffer with whom he admitted having an affair later took her life. The congressman insists that the suicide was not tied to their relationship.

Gonzales strayed from his marriage vows while representing a culturally conservative district along the South Texas border. Swalwell's constituents in the East Bay, right across the water from San Francisco, are affluent and socially liberal.

The two couldn't be culturally more different, but both seemed to think they were entitled to disregard the mores of the day. Being sexually involved with an employee is barred by House rules. And for good reasons.

Again, if they were caught having a fling with a woman outside their professional orbit, they might be criticized but could wrangle their way out of it. Their fatal flaw was treating their female workforce as a harem. What could they have been possibly thinking?

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.

Big Tech's Ugly Data Centers Finally Meet The Citizen Opposition

Big Tech's Ugly Data Centers Finally Meet The Citizen Opposition

It appears that folks living in the gently rolling farmland of southwestern Ohio don't want a 2-million-square-foot data center plopped down the road from their front porches. What's wrong with them? Are they snotty not-in-my-backyard liberals?

Not quite. Wilmington, Ohio, is a very Republican region marked by modest incomes. Such demographics may have made the locals, and other rural Americans, look like an easy sale to the tech companies hunting for places to plop their massive data centers.

Amazon Web Services, which is proposing this nine-building data center on about 500 acres of a former farm, has its boosters hard at work. The project would create up to 100 full-time jobs, they say. It could also pay for up to $35 million in improving public infrastructure (much of which may not be needed in the absence of a massive data center).

The JobsOhio website crows that data centers "create positive economic momentum" by generating jobs and attracting talented people — people the locals may never have noticed were missing. Touting "100 jobs" could also be read as "only 100 jobs?"

The controversies in southwestern Ohio are being repeated in rural communities across the country. Their land is cheap, incomes are not great and their local officials seem not too picky about "economic development." In addition, some states like Ohio are waving big tax incentives at Big Tech.

It seems that many rural Americans regard modest incomes as the "price" they willingly pay to live in "God's country." Some families have been there for generations, and many want to keep it peaceful for future generations.

No doubt artificial intelligence is taking over. Americans can't stop it and shouldn't want to. It will be essential for national security and economic survival. AI needs these data centers for power. But it does not follow that the human beings living in their path should have no say on how this all develops.

Wisconsin voters have been presented with four local ballot measures designed to rein in data center projects. One that already passed gives the public more control over incentives officials may offer developers. Maine is the first state to pass a law halting big data-center construction for over a year.

I'm not a fan of class warfare. BUT, there is something unfair about the superrich dumping things they don't want to be near on economically struggling communities without giving a lot back.

Amazon zillionaire Jeff Bezos keeps his main mansion on Indian Creek Island, near Miami Beach. This exclusive paradise limits building heights to two stories, lot coverage to 25 percent. Residents may have only two accessory buildings for those essential cabanas, boat houses and such. A little bridge connects Indian Creek Island to Miami's barrier island. People using that bridge are screened.

Bezos cleverly threw out a distraction from Amazon's building plans by suggesting that data centers be put in outer space. That is in a far and, perhaps, never-gonna-happen future. For now, Ohio farm country is the plan.

As for Donald Trump, he's all for building "colossal data centers" and fast. His administration has moved to speed permits for the centers themselves and the infrastructure they need.

As for quality-of-life concerns, Trump limits them to within his own environment. In pre-presidential days, Trump called for moving the Palm Beach airport because he didn't like the jet noise over Mar-a-Lago.

Some data center foes make cost-of-living arguments against them. The centers' ravenous energy needs could raise local electricity rates. However, that could be countered by the tax revenues the centers would generate. Decisions on placing them should be based on more than the locals' cost of living. There are other values.

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 Trump's Promise To Slash Prices Working Out For You? No? I've Got Receipts

Is Trump's Promise To Slash Prices Working Out For You? No? I've Got Receipts

Donald Trump's assault on our democratic institutions did not stop voters from giving him a second term. The top reason they cited for reelecting him was the economy, notably their unhappiness over high prices.

During the campaign, Trump promised to "bring prices down, starting on Day One." How he would do this was left to our imagination. It seemed something along the lines of using his awesome powers to freeze prices and even make some melt. That and a pack of lies.

Two days back in office, Trump issued a "Fact Sheet" headlined "President Donald J. Trump Delivers Emergency Price Relief for American Families to Defeat the Cost-of-Living Crisis." Oh? Did you feel that instant "price relief" by virtue of Trump simply walking over the White House threshold once again?

His loyal defenders argued that, hey, that's how Trump talks. Give him some time and he'll bring the cost of living to heel. Trump has had well over a year to work his magic, and so let's see how his promises to enrich ordinary Americans have panned out.

— DOGE checks. Remember them? Trump said in February 2025 that he was "considering" a plan to send taxpayers some of the savings achieved by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency. He threw out the number $5,000.

The number of DOGE checks issued: Zero.

— Tariff checks. Come August, Trump floated the idea of sharing the fruit of his trade war with the people. He talked of sending some tariff revenue back to Americans in the form of dividends.

The number of tariff dividend checks issued: Zero.

— Prescriptions 1,500 percent cheaper. Trump's negotiators did get drug companies to "promise" discounts on a small number of drugs. That led Trump to immediately announce something that was demonstrably untrue: "We now are paying the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs."

Meanwhile, our median price for hundreds of brand-name drugs has risen four percent this year.

Not to quibble with Trump's math, but a 100 percent reduction would drive those drug prices down to zero. A 1,500 percent reduction is a mathematical absurdity.

— Credit-card interest rates capped at 10 percent. On January 10, Trump posted his call for that 10 percent limit on credit-card APRs (annual percentage rates). It was to start 10 days later and last a year. He added a threat to his decree: Credit-card companies would be "in violation of the law" if they didn't lower their rates as ordered. As it happens, presidents don't have the legal authority to force credit-card companies to slash their interest rates.

Spring is here, and the average credit-card APR is about 21 percent. That's higher than 10 percent, don't you think?

— Gas under $2.00. Trump promised that, but the war with Iran is incompatible with cheap gasoline. The U.S. average price for a gallon of regular gasoline currently stands at over $4.00.

— Lower grocery prices. On the campaign trail, Trump said, "A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper." Since Trump returned to office, the consumer price index for "food at home" shows grocery prices up about 2.4 percent. That's not a huge jump, but in no way does it translate into "cheaper groceries."

Former President Joe Biden inherited messed-up supply chains in the wake of COVID. That was the main driver of his inflation numbers, though the stimulus spending didn't help. But when Biden left office, the inflation rate was down to three percent. For the record, it's now 2.4 percent.

There was much I didn't love about Kamala Harris, but Trump's attempt to violently overthrow the results of the 2020 election was the ultimate deal-killer for reelecting him. To me, the sanctity of American elections mattered more than the price of a hamburger. Many others, obviously, disagreed.

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.

Democrats, Be Warned: Trump Is Exploiting Your Weak Spots Again

Democrats, Be Warned: Trump Is Exploiting Your Weak Spots Again

Sure, the "No Kings" marches drew millions rightly protesting Donald Trump's assaults on our democratic institutions. But Democrats must dig deeper and ask how Trump could actually win another term after trying to overturn the 2020 election results with a violent attack on the Capitol. It wasn't as though most Americans adored him. Gallup's approval rating for Trump on election eve was a sad 46 percent.

Trump carried the 2024 vote by playing the Democrats on three issues that aggravate even moderate Americans. They are open borders, the demonization of law enforcement and racial, ethnic and other preferences embodied in the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) movement being adopted by companies, schools, and government agencies.

Trump weaponized the most inflammatory statements coming from the fringe left. With the midterms on the horizon, he's doing it again with bait meant to provoke Democrats into taking radical positions.

It helped them little that in 2024, Joe Biden had, in fact, secured the border. But he waited until the end of his term after tolerating caravans of migrants surging into the U.S. The U.S.-Mexico border had just seen a record million migrant encounters in one year. The hesitancy left the strong impression that Biden acted only under political pressure.

On immigration, Trump seems intent on antagonizing Democrats with military-style spectacles of migrants being roughed up, including many who are fully documented. Gone was the sensible plan to deport those convicted of crimes and deal with otherwise law-abiding workers lacking papers in a more humane manner.

And so what did Democrats do? They voted to withhold funding for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency until certain reforms were made. ICE enforces immigration law inside the U.S. Denying it the money to operate sounds a lot like "defunding the police," a slogan that cost Democrats seats in Congress and perhaps the presidency.

While Republicans are in power, the desired changes won't be made. But as long as Democrats cater to their radicals, they won't win enough races to take that power away. Meanwhile, Trump has shrewdly downshifted on the ICE excesses in the cities, letting them face from the news.

As for racial and ethnic preferences, Trump has crusaded against DEI. White males especially resent them, not without reason, and many others consider DEI incompatible with a merit-based democracy.

Biden went overboard on making race a basis for hires. His low point was announcing early on that his next Supreme Court nominee would be a black woman. When the time came, he named Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Thing is, Jackson was a superbly qualified candidate — magna cum laude from Harvard, clerkships for two federal judges and one supreme court justice, service on both a trial court and appellate court, plus experience in private practice. By announcing that his choice had to be a black woman, Biden excluded whites, Latinos, Asians and all men from a candidate pool in which Brown could well have prevailed on her own merits.

Trump goads the left's identity-mongers to double-down on racial arguments — and entertained the racist right — by demonizing individual blacks, notably individual black women.

Social media flame throwers will push Democrats to take positions hostile to moderate voters. Remember, partisans, their reward is getting attention. Your reward should be winning elections.

To recap: Trump would not have won in 2024 had Democrats not helped him. He exploited their refusal to secure the border earlier, fixation on identity (above all, that inexplicable obsession on transgender issues) and hostility toward law enforcement. That put Trump over the top despite a close popular vote and weak Democratic opponent.

Democrats, Trump knows your vulnerabilities. To survive the midterms he's already exploiting those weak spots-- without which, he's basically toast.

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.

How Do We Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes? Beef Up The IRS

How Do We Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes? Beef Up The IRS

"The rich should pay their fair share of taxes." Who can argue with that? But then we must decide who is rich and what is meant by fair. Neither political party has distinguished itself in making such distinctions.

But Republicans play an especially outrageous game in portraying the Internal Revenue Service as the working stiff's enemy. For salaried workers, taxes come straight out of paychecks, meaning most are already paying what they owe. Owners of small businesses have more deductions at their disposal, but the neighborhood bakery that tries to follow the rules doesn't have much to fear.

When Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act funded the hiring of about 15,000 IRS employees, however, Republicans played the public for boobs. "Are they (the IRS) going to have a strike force that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, ready to shoot some small-business person in Iowa?" Sen. Chuck Grassley, the Iowa Republican, asked on Fox News.

In reality, criminal investigation special agents go only after serious tax cheats, and just 2,000 of them are armed. These cases involve destroying records, double-bookkeeping and the like. They aren't persecuting taxpayers whose math was innocently off or were even negligent.

And so to address Grassley's complaint: If some small business person in Iowa is engaged in money laundering, narcotics trafficking or major league fraud, then yes, armed IRS agents may come to visit.

The IRS employed about 102,000 people at the beginning of Donald Trump's second term. Staffing has been cut down to about 74,000. Not only are there fewer agents going after tax dodgers, but there are also fewer customer support workers able to answer ordinary people's tax questions.

The chief beneficiaries of lax tax enforcement are the rich who employ squads of accountants to hide income or manufacture unlawful deductions. The tax code already favors them. For example, capital-gains taxes — which are paid after selling stock or other assets — can pay taxes at a lower rate than wages. That's why Meta magnate Mark Zuckerberg has himself paid a salary of only a dollar a year. He is lavishly compensated through a cargo-ship-sized pile of securities and other assets taxed at the lower capital-gains rate.

There are reasons for treating capital gains differently from earned income, but must the tax advantage for the former be so big?

Democrats crusading for more tax "fairness" have this foolish habit of targeting their own rich residents. The proposal in Democratic-controlled California to slap a one-time five percent tax on everything a billionaire owns is nuts. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wisely opposes this utterly complicated scheme, which it seems would force some Californians to add up the value of their vintage watches, boats and paintings for tax purposes. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, meanwhile, weaves myriad proposals for raising taxes in ways that would seep deep into the middle class.

What the California and New York tax proposals have in common is providing an incentive for the rich to move elsewhere. It's not like these places don't already tax the top incomes. Many very rich people have continued to live in these jurisdictions for their economic vitality, schools, cultural institutions and other amenities. And they pay almost all the income taxes.

But they have limits. It's one thing to tax them. It's another to portray taxing them as a means of punishment. Tax reform that closes loopholes and special deals benefiting the super-rich much be done at the national level.

The IRS doesn't make tax laws. It is federal agency that collects taxes and enforces the laws. Middle-income and "merely affluent" Americans should recognize this: The taxes that the richest among us don't pay are taxes that they pay.

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 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.