Source: Independent Institute
by Raymond J March

“The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability recently hosted Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf in a hearing to discuss the agency’s recent blemishes. The Committee’s website stated that ‘under the Biden Administration, the FDA has stumbled from crisis to crisis.’ The amount of ‘stumbling’ — even for a government agency — has been dumbfounding. … Despite these alarming failures, the FDA asked Congress for ‘more authority’ to address continuing prescription drug shortages and other pressing healthcare issues. It’s an audacious request. They’ll probably get it. They certainly have in the past.” (04/24/24)

https://blog.independent.org/2024/04/24/will-the-blundering-fda-receive-more-power

Source: Orange County Register
by John Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“‘Nothing is real,’ observed John Lennon, and that’s especially true of politics. Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population. Take the media circus that is the Donald Trump hush money trial, which panders to the public’s voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama, keeping the citizenry distracted, diverted and divided. This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today.” (04/24/24)

https://www.ocregister.com/2024/04/24/divide-and-conquer-the-governments-propaganda-of-fear-and-fake-news/

Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by staff

“President Biden today signed legislation that kickstarts a process to ban TikTok and empowers the president to block other communications platforms used by millions of Americans. By passing this bill into law, Congress has set a grave precedent for free speech by starting the clock on banning TikTok. FIRE opposed nearly identical legislation when it passed the House last month. The law effectively grants the president permanent authority to ban widely used speech platforms with only weak connections to foreign entities. This is a dangerous power for the president to hold over websites and apps that Americans use to exercise their First Amendment rights.” (04/25/24)

https://www.thefire.org/news/tiktok-legislation-sets-grave-precedent-free-speech

Source: Brownstone Institute
by Jeffrey A Tucker

“A few weeks ago, the New York Times told us that ‘As It Turns Out, the Deep State Is Pretty Awesome.’ These are the same people who claim that Trump is trying to get rid of democracy. The Deep State is the opposite of democracy, unelected and unaccountable in every way, impervious to elections and the will of the people. Now we have the NYT celebrating this. And the latest bears notice too: ‘Government Surveillance Keeps Us Safe.’ The authors are classic Deep Staters associated with Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush. They assure us that having an Orwellian state is good for us. You can trust them, promise. … These are the people who have rightly warned about government infringements on privacy and free speech for many decades dating way back.” (04/24/24)

https://brownstone.org/articles/now-we-are-supposed-to-cheer-government-surveillance/

Source: In These Times
by Gillian Kane

“When pundits, critics and supporters discuss Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s readiness work plan for a second Donald Trump presidency, it’s always in the future tense. At more than 900 pages, Project 2025’s playbook, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, is a door-stopper of policy recommendations that lays out detailed steps for decimating democracy in the first 180 days of the new administration. Some executive orders include eliminating the Department of Education (‘a woke education cartel’), renaming the Department of Health and Human Services the ‘Department of Life’, and anchoring these commitments in the promise to ‘restore ​the family as the centerpiece of American life’. This Christian nationalist plan is no fever dream: even if Trump loses in November, many core aspects of Project 2025 will still be implemented. In fact, some of its recommendations are already underway.” (04/25/24)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/project-2025-protego-trump-huber-abortion